Screen Resolution

[huhr]

I have a new monitor running at 2560x1440 and the screen looks terrible in the game.  Any fixes for this?

 

Thanks

 

[Erwin]

Am not a techie person but you'll need to describe for them exactly what you mean by "the screen looks terrible in the game".  Maybe post a screenshot so the techies can see what you mean.

[huhr]

Hi Erwin,  Thanks for getting back to me, the game doesn't look as crisp as when I had the game on a 60hz tv flat screen monitor, i have a 32" LG gaming monitor running 2560x1440

 

[Schrullenhaft]

I can't discern anything that is wrong with that screen shot. Going from a TV to smaller, dedicated monitor usually should be an upgrade image-wise, unless you have a very expensive TV with high-end image adjustments.

Are you running at 2560x1440 in CM ? Typically this is done by selecting the 'desktop' resolution (the default) within the Options panel. The significant problem with increasing your resolution is that the user interface (UI) isn't scalable, so it gets quite a bit smaller. Looking at what you have in that screen shot suggests that you MIGHT be running at 1920 x 1080 and NOT at 2560x1440.

[37mm]

As the UI isn't scalable, to my eye, I think you're running at 1440 & not 1080... but @Schrullenhaft is correct that you should check.

Looking at your screenshot full screen (on a 4k TV) the only issue I really notice is that the AA could be somewhat better (although I've been spoiled by Reshade & its SMAA options)... I suppose we need to clarify what you really mean.

Does the game look "terrible" or just not quite as "crisp" as before?

If the latter, it might be that something has changed with your AA options... either in-game or perhaps with how your system is interacting with the new monitor.

[MOS:96B2P]

20 hours ago, huhr said:

I have a new monitor running at 2560x1440 and the screen looks terrible in the game.  Any fixes for this?  

What the tech knowledgeable guys up above said is probably your answer.  They are both very sharp and helpful.   

I also noticed that you provided a screenshot of what looks like hazy, overcast conditions.  In addition I think a ground objective and setup zones are displayed (or something is creating those funky colors and making things look weird).  Could this, at least in part, also be contributing to the problem?  How does it look on a clear day away from the setup zones etc.? 

    

[Lethaface]

Perhaps try ALT-R to turn on shaders?
Running at 2560x1440 without issues here.

[z1812]

Be sure to recheck all your graphic settings. What connection type are you using? Anything other than a Displayport (DP), or an HDMI connection will probably not deliver the quality that your looking for.

I bought a widescreen 2 years ago and had the same problems. I resolved them by using the displayport setting with a 3440x1440 resolution and a 100Hz refresh rate.. The improvement was quite striking. I highly recommend using the display port if it is available on your monitor.

Goodluck. Let us know how you get on.

[A Canadian Cat]

I recently switched to a 2K monitor and had some issues because I wanted to run at a scaling of 125%. That caused the game text to look odd. What I did to fix it was switch the game .exe settings to allow the application to handle its own scaling.

1. Select the game .exe file - right click select properties.
2. Click on the "Compatibility" tab
3. Turn on the "High DPI scaling behaviour" and pick "Application" from the drop down.

This is only a fix if you are using a scale and layout other than 100%

[Redmarkus]

I had the same problems as those described by the OP. as well as very fuzzy text, after installing on a new gaming laptop with a wide screen external monitor.

I adjusted my Nvidia and program exe Properties settings as shown here and the game is now crisp and clear again.

[Jabble]

In case it's relevant, there's a known issue with some laptops where some of the text gets distorted, though that's only with integrated graphics AFAIK.  If you're on a gaming laptop it's maybe worth checking that the game is running through the dedicated GPU instead of integrated.

[BletchleyGeek]

On 11/24/2020 at 2:56 AM, IanL said:

I recently switched to a 2K monitor and had some issues because I wanted to run at a scaling of 125%. That caused the game text to look odd. What I did to fix it was switch the game .exe settings to allow the application to handle its own scaling.

1. Select the game .exe file - right click select properties.
2. Click on the "Compatibility" tab
3. Turn on the "High DPI scaling behaviour" and pick "Application" from the drop down.

This is only a fix if you are using a scale and layout other than 100%

I'd like to follow this up for reference of anybody having issues with CM textures looking blocky or blurry in "very high" resolution displays with DPI scaling.

A few months back I upgraded my system and got a new monitor etc. DPI scaling became set to 150% by default. When reinstalling my CM games, and following the instructions to enter very high resolutions on the "display_size.txt" file, I observed that all the game textures (including the UI ones) were featuring quite ugly anti-aliasing artifacts. The effect was quite weird, similar to what you get activating FXAA antialiasing with Reshade does to the game. Interestingly, the game UI was occupying a more screen pixels than I had expected for the resolution I have (3840x2160). This was no Reshade issue. Obviously, on a fresh system and install, this wasn't a matter of some lingering dll's or config files laying around. I did a bit of research - thanks @Lethaface for running some enquiries - and I gave up as I got distracted with the work busyness characteristic of the pre-xmas period.

After a few weeks off the CM world altogether I decided to look again into this issue and came up with this thread, and this post by @IanL. I overrode the DPI scaling settings as suggested above (the layout of this menu changes a bit if you're using Windows 10 pro with the latest patches btw) and voila, no more graphical artifacts and the UI is now as tiny as I expected it to be.

I find it very curious that the Windows DPI scaling post-processing was messing up the in-game 3D and graphics textures as well. I haven't seen anything like that in any "modern" games, but also none of those games are using legacy the OpenGL rendering pipeline. If @IanL hadn't mentioned the above I would have keep going in circles around this issue for quite a while...

Edited January 6, 2022 by BletchleyGeek

[Lethaface]

Great you were able to fix it!
 

[A Canadian Cat]

7 hours ago, BletchleyGeek said:

the layout of this menu changes a bit if you're using Windows 10 pro with the latest patches btw

Interesting. I did that on Win 10 Pro. Mind you it was over a year ago now. I wonder what its like in Win 11...

 

7 hours ago, BletchleyGeek said:

I find it very curious that the Windows DPI scaling post-processing was messing up the in-game 3D and graphics textures as well.

I think what is happening is the game is effectively running at a lower resolution but scaled by the OS. So the game engine renders things at 2160p and the OS scales that by the scaling factor when actually displaying it on screen. If I recall correctly my screen capture dimensions were not the full 2K size until I switched the scaling setting. That would explain the super ugly effects at least.

[BletchleyGeek]

5 hours ago, IanL said:

I think what is happening is the game is effectively running at a lower resolution but scaled by the OS. So the game engine renders things at 2160p and the OS scales that by the scaling factor when actually displaying it on screen. If I recall correctly my screen capture dimensions were not the full 2K size until I switched the scaling setting. That would explain the super ugly effects at least.

Re: the menus, there is now a checkbox that you need to check for the override options to be enabled.

Re: the resolution, it could indeed be the case that it wasn't rendering at full res, but I would say it is weirder that the OS dpi scaling "locks down" the resolution set by an application (in this case via the display_size.txt file).

[A Canadian Cat]

19 hours ago, BletchleyGeek said:

Re: the menus, there is now a checkbox that you need to check for the override options to be enabled.

Interesting. I'm not seeing anything extra. I'm on Win11 now and I see the same dialog choices I remember and the same ones in @Redmarkus's screen shots above. What exactly do you see that is different?

Not that it is particularly important if people have been able to follow the steps. I'm just curious.

[BletchleyGeek]

 

As you can see there are more options now and the text/layout has changed a bit from what you reported.

This is on Windows 10 Pro.