Will I need an electron microscope to read the text in this game?

[jpinard]

I've had to mostly stop playing your games because on a modern monitor the text is the size of individual atoms (only a slight exaggeration). Or I can run a non-native resolution and get splitting migraines from fuzzy interface and text, despite maxing out sharpness settings - a terrible stop-gap for non-native settings.

I love your games, but I can't play them much anymore because it is so frustrating. If I had the desk space or the money I'd buy a second monitor that maxed out at 1920x1080 or even less. But I don't. This is the only game series I can think of that makes me wish I had stuck with ancient hardware, thus my question has high hopes... Have you done anything to make text more readable on modern displays? This is the one thing keeping me from pre-ordering the game. I can forgive a crapload of bugs and buying a thousand pieces of DLC. but not when I can't enjoy the game because I happened to buy a decent 2560x1600 monitor 4 years ago.

-faithful friend

 

[AlfredMV]

Modern monitors are usually 1080p and it's what most content aims for. It's a fact of life. Higher resolution is slowly coming even tho the technology is going very fast, I would speculate 4k support being the next step.

 

[BeauNiddle]

I think Podcat mentioned he played on a 4k monitor at work once. But I wouldn't swear to it.

 

[Victor Cortez]

[disclaimer]
The following post is not to be taken seriously
[/disclaimer]

This is the one thing keeping me from pre-ordering the game.

Well, no. The one thing that is keeping you from preordering is that preorders have not started.

 

[GsusNSV]

I think Podcat mentioned he played on a 4k monitor at work once. But I wouldn't swear to it.

There you go.

game plays fine on our 4K display at least

Edit:
FOARP said: ↑

Basically, the UI has to scale to the resolution setting. Does it do this?

no it doesnt. we have made fonts and stuff bigger since the average display is bigger now

 

[vcgetdown]

I play with a 1440p monitor, don't have a significant issue. I remember taking note of the size when I upgraded to my monitor but I have never had any issue after that first time playing it.

 

[Gr1pen]

I game at 2560x1440 and have no such problems with paradox games. I'm not trying to be rude or anything but maybe it's an eye problem? Could be right?
Also you can set the game to 1920x1080?

 

[Will Steel]

Quite opposite from the OP, I would like to see some support for those of us who still use low resolution monitors. I have a little space problem in my room, and thus I had to buy a rather small monitor. It had a lot of problems running EU4 properly in 1024x768, and font used to be really distorted and unreadable until they fixed it. Some UI elements still get hidden.

I hope HoI4 will not have a botched UI at lower resolution.

 

[CyberianK]

1080p is still the standard for the majority of players but its more the standard of the past as more and more peoples are trending away from that. Current games who want to be played for the next years should make sure they are fine on 1440 and 4k.

In general I would like to see more games with scalable UI so where you have a slider or setting small/medium/large that sets font sizes and the size of specific UI elements. Unfortunately almost no games do that. Peoples have so many different gaming experiences especially today.

Could be 720p on a laptop could be on a 4k TV some meters away from the couch, could be multimonitor etc... time devs makes UI more scaleable

 

[SchwarzKatze]

IMHO the main problem is dpi, not resolution per se. What looks fine on a 24" 1080p monitor looks like it's meant for ants on a 15" 1080p laptop. Same for 4k TV vs 4k monitors.

Unfortunately, I don't see any programs providing settings for target dpi besides the Windows OS itself, even the it doesn't work for games that doesn't render through the OS, nor does it work for supposingly "native" .NET framework.

 

[Sir Garnet]

some fonts are demonstrably more readable than others of the same size - urge that those be used even if they were not in active use in WW2

 

[Raptor83]

HoI3 on 4K monitor - unusable

from @Centurion1973

I hope, that HoI4 isnt made with same shortsighted ideas about UI design.....

 

[safe-keeper]

I've had to mostly stop playing your games because on a modern monitor the text is the size of individual atoms (only a slight exaggeration). Or I can run a non-native resolution and get splitting migraines from fuzzy interface and text, despite maxing out sharpness settings - a terrible stop-gap for non-native settings.

I love your games, but I can't play them much anymore because it is so frustrating. If I had the desk space or the money I'd buy a second monitor that maxed out at 1920x1080 or even less. But I don't. This is the only game series I can think of that makes me wish I had stuck with ancient hardware, thus my question has high hopes... Have you done anything to make text more readable on modern displays? This is the one thing keeping me from pre-ordering the game. I can forgive a crapload of bugs and buying a thousand pieces of DLC. but not when I can't enjoy the game because I happened to buy a decent 2560x1600 monitor 4 years ago.

-faithful friend

Not sure why your post received so many dislikes. I've got a 1920x1080 (or whatever it is) monitor and I definitely agree the text in EU4 is displayed too small when I set the game to that resolution. Surely there could be a "larger text" option?

 

[Zaku]

Not sure why your post received so many dislikes. I've got a 1920x1080 (or whatever it is) monitor and I definitely agree the text in EU4 is displayed too small when I set the game to that resolution. Surely there could be a "larger text" option?

I have very bad eyesight, but I can easily read EU4 UI in my 1080p monitors.
I don't know about 4K resolution, I never tested it that way,

 

[yonderTheGreat]

Not sure why your post received so many dislikes. I've got a 1920x1080 (or whatever it is) monitor and I definitely agree the text in EU4 is displayed too small when I set the game to that resolution. Surely there could be a "larger text" option?

Probably due to hyperbole (the size of atoms) and implied condescension (modern monitors).

But he's not really an over-the-top jerk about it. I actually agree w/ Gr1pen's post about the possibility that it's an eye problem with the OP.

I've never had that issue at all and I have terrible vision. Without my glasses it's WELL over 20/100. I have dozens of friends who play the game and none of them have had this issue either.

Sure, it's anecdotal, but I've also never seen that posted on the forums either, and people here are NOT shy about giving feedback.

 

[yonderTheGreat]

HoI3 on 4K monitor - unusable

from @Centurion1973

I hope, that HoI4 isnt made with same shortsighted ideas about UI design.....

How was it "short-sighted" for a game that came out SEVEN years ago to not support a futuristic resolution that, as of 2016, still isn't standardized. Are you going to call HOI4 short-sighted because it doesn't support holograms?

 

[Raptor83]

How was it "short-sighted" for a game that came out SEVEN years ago to not support a futuristic resolution that, as of 2016, still isn't standardized. Are you going to call HOI4 short-sighted because it doesn't support holograms?

In games which are well designed, things like UI shouldnt be a problem even years after release - especially when last paid DLC was released 2-3 years ago.

And even HoI3 had problems with UI / text size on some 1080p high DPI monitors.

PI is no longer tiny company with minimal resources, so IMO its reasonable, to expect things like modern (scalable) UI....

 

[jpinard]

i dont have good eyes like a lot of men (most?) my age. For someone using 2560x1600 and claims he does not issues having to move their face less than 12" from the screen for these games - well you're one of the lucky ones. I happen to not be that fortunate in life and I don't think it's asking too much that a game being released in 2016 have an accessible, scalable interface. Otherwise it feels like we're accelerating sight decay putting hundreds of of hours into PI games.

People who can sit back, read all the text easily at 2560x1600 though? You are awfully fortunate. I wrote about this two years ago and had a ton of people who agreed and were in the same boat as myself. And I wrote about it the year before as well with plenty of people again asking PI to do something so text was easier to read at higher resolutions.

 

[adam_grif]

An electron microscope would be really bad for increasing font size. it picks up shapes and details but not so much colors, it doesn't "zoom" an image as much as it scans it with beams of electrons, more in common with a radar station than with a magnifying glass.You would probably just get a flat monitor with no picture on its screen as the end result of scanning with the electron microscope.

Anyway yeah, please take into account high res displays.

 

[Shade205]

You probably won't need a microscope to see the text, howver if you are one of the unfortunate souls like myself who have a surround sound headset you will probably need a hearing aid after initially loading the game for the first time after each fresh install. Me and my cat have been terrified by the incredibly high default music volume during launch