What game resolution do you use?

[CapnScurvy]

Please make a selection above in the poll question.

I'm working on a project and have come across a problem within the stock game structure that effects game play and my intended modification. I'm wondering what game resolution you have set in the Graphic Options menu?

The reason I'm asking can be found in the following images from a stock game set at two different resolutions 1024x768 and 1280x1024.

Here's the 1024 x768 showing a ship at 1000 yards distance and the stock periscope telemeter marks showing the length at 22 and 3/4 marks (nearly 23).


http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w132/crawlee/Stock1024x768.jpg



Here's the same ship, same distance, at the 1280x1024 resolution.


http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w132/crawlee/Stock1280x1024.jpg


My problem is this, the game uses the same stock "periscope mask" for the two different resolutions. But more importantly, the different game resolutions create different results of the same sized periscope telemeter marks. I'm planning on correcting the accuracy of the telemeter markings to give accurate measurements of both height and length but this problem seems to create a need to have a corrected scope (camera settings) for each resolution you use! So a poll may help in working toward the resolution most used by the community.

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This morning I started a poll thread on the "SH4 Mods Workshop" forum with a limited listing of game resolutions. I've quickly found out many respondents use resolutions greater than the ones I listed. With this thread I'm using a greater number of choices to make a better account of the question.

Thanks in advance


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[Hans Uberman]

Since my monitor died, I've been using my HDTV, which is 1920x1080 16:9.

[WernherVonTrapp]

Well, for what it's worth, my native resolution is 1920X1080 but, for some reason, I cannot take SS at that resolution. Therefore, I'm currently set at 1862X1058.:salute:

[Rockin Robbins]

I'm running 1600x900 right now, but I'm going to step back to 1680x1200 for compatibility with the 3000 yard/meter bearing plotter. Edit: make that 1152x864. You can't exactly get 1200 vertical pixels on a 900 pixel screen..... duh!!!!

Edit to edit: 500 fps in the menu screen????!!!!!! OMG!

[Bothersome]

I'm running full screen with high settings at 1920 x 1080 on a GeForce 470.

[CapnScurvy]

Thanks for responding everyone, please keep it up.

I've looked through a large portion of the larger, wider-screen resolutions and have found them to be consistent with the games native 1024x768 size. That's good news!! The stinker out of the bunch seems to be only the 1280x1024 resolution. Ive not found any other resolution that follows the games 1280x1024 sizing. The only resolution I can't test is the 1600x900 setting. Neither computer I'm using has that as an option.

More importantly, if the poll shows a large portion of you use larger, wide screen monitors, then this gives me some ideas on creating a mod that uses those capabilities. The 1024x768 size is very restrictive in what gets put onto the screen, where larger sizes give greater possibilities.

[cdrsubron7]

I'm running at 1920x1080 on my computer. Video card is a HIS HD 5870 1024 MB. :D

[Theros]

running on 1920x1080 on a asus geforce 6600:D

[Rockin Robbins]

Capn, a related but unrelated question. How difficult would it be to scale the 3000 yard/meter bearing plotter for different resolutions, in my case especially for 1152x864 and 1600x900?

I've played a bit with scaling the dds image in Xnview but there are some details that have made my efforts completely useless. What are the gotchas there? And how do you go about scaling the graphics?

It sure is a shame that the game didn't have a built-in scaling routine for all possible resolutions so that the tic marks on our periscopes and range marks on our bearing plotters were always right. It seems like a criminal offense that they neglected that! What were they thinking?

[CapnScurvy]

Hi Double R,

Before I go shooting my mouth off I need to make sure I'm on the same page as you. Is this the 3000 yard/meter tool you are asking about?

Found HERE (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=110133&highlight=3000+yard%2Fmeter+bearing+plotter).

[Runnybabbit]

I'm using a Dell 2407 monitor, native resolution 1920x1200...:arrgh!:

[magic452]

1920x1200 here also.

Magic

[Rockin Robbins]

Hi Double R,

Before I go shooting my mouth off I need to make sure I'm on the same page as you. Is this the 3000 yard/meter tool you are asking about?

Found HERE (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=110133&highlight=3000+yard%2Fmeter+bearing+plotter).
Actually I'm unable to get NonWonderDog's links (or the mirror) to work, so here is the version (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/downloads.php?do=file&id=174) that I uploaded to the Subsim mod section. Before I posted it I asked who was responsible so I could give proper credit and nobody responded. If anybody has NonWonderDog's version and can confirm that they are identical I'd like to give him credit in the Subsim download section.

I have a couple of implied clues from the thread you linked but I'd still like your observations and pointers. If you can give me clear instructions I'd love to make the bearing plotter for different screen resolutions and leave you to your periscope work. I'm not looking to increase your workload!

[Deephunter]

1366x768 - Dell monitor IN1910N, Nvidia GEForce 9400G.

I too am getting some screwey SShots...Is there a conflict going on here..??

RR...How far does the 3000 yd/meter go off-scale..?? Is this resolution related..??

[Rockin Robbins]

The version of the 3000 yard/meter bearing plotter I use works accurately for 1280x1024. All other resolutions will have some inaccuracy. For instance, at my 1600x900 resolution 3000 yards indicated on the bearing plotter is only 2400 yards actual distance, requiring an upscaling of 125%.

I believe that textures in SH4 have to have certain definite sizes. It looks to me that you have to double the size of the canvas, then increase the size of the plotter by 125%. But CapnScurvy is the one I trust here as he is an expert at what I'm dabbling in. I'm sure the details still evade me.

[CapnScurvy]

I'm not looking to increase your workload!


Well, it's too late my friend!! :D

I spent the better part of yesterday looking into the 3000 yard/meter problem and have corrected the plotter for accurate measurement at 8 of the basic resolutions. I say "basic" because for some reason the vertical resolution (the "768" found in 1024x768) doesn't have a role to play with the plotter's scaling. Least not when it comes to the in-game difference's of the "Y" (vertical) factor of the screen resolutions . All of the 1280x"whatever" where the same distance when measured with the navigation ruler. The 1280x was the closest to being accurate but it read 3,050 yards (not 3,000) at the outer ring, so I corrected it too. I'm going to do some more testing, then bundle up the different resolutions into separate downloads for making a smaller mod size.

The plotter will be accurate with:

1024x "whatever"
1152x "
1280x "
1360x "
1440x "
1600x "
1680x "
1920x "

To get back to your real question RR, what do you do? Well, I'm not too bad at math but even with the answer in-hand I haven't figured out the "how"!?! The original plotters image size is 4096x4096 (that's a LARGE image size). It will test your computers horse power putting that size of image onto the screen. I understand "why" the image is so large though, it's so the figures of the plotter can be easily seen when you zoom in at the navigation map. The size though is like putting 40 pounds of women into a 10 pounds pair of pants!! It's big!! One thing I noticed is the image had loaded Mip Map images with it. That's fine for viewing objects that will be seen at different distances (a ship on the horizon, then moving closer) but the Mip Maps don't need to be loaded when the screen rendered is not changing. The navigation map screen changes zoom but it is static to the viewer from an in-game perspective. So mip mapping is unnecessary. This will save some memory size. To have an accurate ruler measurement at the outer plotter's ring of the 1280x resolution it required an image size of 4020x4020. That's a difference of 76 pixels to cover a distance of 50 yards. What the devil does it mean with an in-game resolution set to 1024x768 as the native size of the navigation map? I don't know!! I quit trying to figure out the rhyme or reason to the Dev's plans and hard coded stuff when they couldn't get the calculations right for metric to U.S. conversions (or back again) correct. Took them to the fourth patch to set it straight!!

The 4020x4020 image without the Mip Maps will give accurate measurements at all the 1280x screen sizes (x768,x800,x960,x1024), at a memory size of about 15,000KB, compared to the 4096x4096 memory size of 21,000KB. I've got to admit, you better get hooked up to a bigger horse if you plan to use the 1920x1200 plotter. It's size weighs in at just under 36,000KB. The fact that the navigation map screen doesn't have a lot of other objects moving about (like a periscope's view of a fleet of 3D rendered ships), helps in not seeing a hit with the frame rate. I'm also figuring anyone using 1920x1200 has a pretty good computer setup to cut through the game anyway.

I did figure the difference's between what the screen resolutions gave as a measurement at the outer edge of the plotter, compared to what it should have read. However, I still relied on good old guess work to get me close, then trial and error to "fine tune" the image size. Who needs a calculator when you've got fingers and toes!? The main tool I used is Photoshop with the nVidia .DDS plug-in to change the image size. The alpha channel carries the image and by adjusting the overall size both alpha and the main image are changed. The one thing that makes the image lose some of it's detail is resizing/saving the same image over and over again. Always, use the "Save As" feature and rename the newest image. This way the original image keeps what details it has preserved. So, I basically made an image, then fired up the game to see what the results were, left the game, and took another shot at a different image size with Photoshop, then restarted the game to check again. Yep, even a blind hog will find an acorn now and again!!

I should post the files later today, in a new thread. I know you have a download with the 1280x 3000 yard/meter plotter, so what I'll end up doing is making it obsolete, I'm sorry for that Double R. That wasn't my intention. But like you, I'm not sure who made the thing. Captain Cox comes to mind, but did he do a 3000 yard one, I'm not sure. But, I do see the need in correcting the thing with so many different resolutions used these days.

Best regards

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Oh, and by the way. If you haven't given a vote in the poll question please do so. As of now, only 27 have given an answer. Again, this will help in figuring out what future mods need to address which resolution gamers use.

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EDIT NOTE, 12:40 PM:

I was just testing the plotter with the metric measurements and just as I suspected, their off. So before I release the Yard Bearing Plotter I'm going to make a metric set as well. Might as well do this all the same time. So, the release probably won't be today. When it's done I'll post here, but have the thread over on the Workshop Forum page.

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[Rockin Robbins]

Amazing Capn! Now we'll have 3000 yard/meter bearing plotters for all resolutions. It's not as important as what you're doing with the periscope, but I think it's plenty cool!:up:

[Sailor Steve]

Looks like I came here late because I have a brand new 28" monitor, and I had no idea what to do with it. I had to be shown that to change my resolution I had to change it and then exit SH4 and load it up again to see what I had done.

At 1900 x 1200 my old eyes could barely read the guages, so I had to go smaller. I notice that at the different resolutions I tried the main picture seemed to remain unchanged (I looked forward it the Type II [oops, playing U-boats here] and kept the TDC on the left and one of the depth guages on the right, and the positions were the same at every resolution).

I finally settled on 1440 x 900, as the icons are plenty big and the stopwatch is all in the picture. Other than that I don't know anything. :sunny:

[CapnScurvy]

Thought I'd pass along to you that a group of mods called "3000 Yard (or Meter) Bearing Plotter Tool" has been released on the "WorkShop" forums page found HERE (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=174874). There are specific downloads for the various in-game graphic resolutions one may use, and whether you use metric or the imperial set of measurements. Because of the large image files being bundled together (13 stock subs means 13 images per download) I've had to separate each edition based on what resolution you use and whether you use metric or the U.S. Customary (imperial) units of measurements.

They are in the SubSims "Downloads" section if you wish to go directly to the download.

[Rockin Robbins]

Woo Hoo! I'll leave mine for historical reference but make a note that it is now superseded by a family of better mods for just about all resolutions. And I'll link them to your download.

Now that you have this lousy distraction (I apologize for that) taken care of you can get back to the much more important periscope work. Thanks Capn!:up: