Baldur's Gate at 5k
GreenWarlock
Member Posts: 1,354
I just got my new iMac today, and to celebrate 1st world problems thought I would post about my first experiences of BG at 5k.
At first, the interface looks rough and blurry, as the textures are relatively low resolution when blown up to 5k, even if the pixels are tiny. I'm not sure how real that effect is, vs. it just looks blurry after seeing other apps at 5k (mostly Apple apps already tuned for the new resolution)
So I load up a saved game that is in the first Cloakwood area, just outside Aldeth's lodge.
Naturally, the next thing I do is turned off the auto-scaled UI. This leads immediately to a crash-to-desktop - although switching suddenly to 5k on a patch predating that resolution is a mildly unfair test ;~)
So I restart BG, and change graphics options to not rescale before loading a save. This works like a charm, the load/save/options screens no longer look blurry, but are quite difficult to read as they are also the size of a postage stamp - but that is fair, that is the UI I just requited
Now I reload that saved game, and the *entire* area map fits onto the screen, in fact there is a small black border to spare. Now THAT is what I call a view Naturally I will zoom in a little to play, but it is nice to have this major zoom-out feature! The main problem is that the rest of the UI is so tiny.
Given the tiny UI problem, I switch back to scaled UI, and suddenly everything is huge and blurry again. What I had not understood with the scaled UI is that I can no longer zoom out to the full game resolution - I am constrained to play at this blurry depth of detail.
It is late so I am deferring further experiments till tomorrow, but it does not look like there is a sweet spot in the UI settings to cover 5k yet. Clearly BeamDog need to invest in a brand new iMac for Dee to help testing of the next pending games and patches ;~)
Concluding impression is that the ability to zoom out to see the whole map for any area is a lot of fun, but we really need UI elements roughly doubled in each dimension to remain playable. Alternatively, allow the game area to zoom to the limits of resolution while maintaining a fixed scaling for the other UI elements when auto-scaling is turned on.
At first, the interface looks rough and blurry, as the textures are relatively low resolution when blown up to 5k, even if the pixels are tiny. I'm not sure how real that effect is, vs. it just looks blurry after seeing other apps at 5k (mostly Apple apps already tuned for the new resolution)
So I load up a saved game that is in the first Cloakwood area, just outside Aldeth's lodge.
Naturally, the next thing I do is turned off the auto-scaled UI. This leads immediately to a crash-to-desktop - although switching suddenly to 5k on a patch predating that resolution is a mildly unfair test ;~)
So I restart BG, and change graphics options to not rescale before loading a save. This works like a charm, the load/save/options screens no longer look blurry, but are quite difficult to read as they are also the size of a postage stamp - but that is fair, that is the UI I just requited
Now I reload that saved game, and the *entire* area map fits onto the screen, in fact there is a small black border to spare. Now THAT is what I call a view
Naturally I will zoom in a little to play, but it is nice to have this major zoom-out feature! The main problem is that the rest of the UI is so tiny.Given the tiny UI problem, I switch back to scaled UI, and suddenly everything is huge and blurry again. What I had not understood with the scaled UI is that I can no longer zoom out to the full game resolution - I am constrained to play at this blurry depth of detail.
It is late so I am deferring further experiments till tomorrow, but it does not look like there is a sweet spot in the UI settings to cover 5k yet. Clearly BeamDog need to invest in a brand new iMac for Dee to help testing of the next pending games and patches ;~)
Concluding impression is that the ability to zoom out to see the whole map for any area is a lot of fun, but we really need UI elements roughly doubled in each dimension to remain playable. Alternatively, allow the game area to zoom to the limits of resolution while maintaining a fixed scaling for the other UI elements when auto-scaling is turned on.
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Comments
Now, as a comparison, the standard view on tablets (~5-9") is to disable the scaling user interface to purposefully enlarge the controls in order to see them on smaller screens. That's fine for 5-9 inch displays, not so fine on 27-32 inch. So enabling the scale user interface option is the best bet so far as gameplay is concerned (area map and moving your character). That, however, makes everything too small to adequately see; fiddling around with tiny icons in my inventory is not my idea of fun. In addition to that, the only way to see some text at the high end of the resolution scale is to increase the font size to maximum. That can create a disparity between font sizes and controls/interface objects.
For example, let's use the inventory since I mentioned that just previously (link). The double line of text for the hit points would already be smaller under normal circumstances. When the scale user interface is disabled and the font size is increased, it looks almost illegible. Imagine if a spider could write, now imagine trying to read that writing.
The problem is that the display sizes are not increasing with the resolution—which to some degree would defeat the extra clarity and increased PPI (e.g. 'Retina' displays). For this game to be enjoyable at 4K:
- With scale user interface disabled and controls are tiny, the display size needs to increase (I would suggest ~48 inch display, e.g. television)
- With scale user interface enabled and the control sizes increase, the display size needs to decrease when compared to the increased resolution (5-10", maybe a bit larger with an upper limit of ~17 inches)
The third option is to implement some sort of option where the user can pick a scaling option that best suits the resolution they are playing with; on 4K/UHD, somewhere between the two current options:- tiny and humongous.Looking up some of the specifications for the 5K iMac, it looks like it's 27". That means you'll probably run into the issues noted here and in the original post.
To be comfortable playing on a 27 inch display at 5K, you're going to want to enable interface scaling—that, in turn, gives you the blurry interface also mentioned in the original post. Of the two, I'd pick the blurry interface over not being able to read anything.
Realistically, the question should not be "is it playable," but rather "is it enjoyable." Physical display size and personal preferences can affect that. The only way to know for sure is to try it yourself, or accept someone elses' preferences as adequate information (i.e. the original poster and the information provided is the best source for the question).
4K on a 27-30 inch display with scaling enabled is obnoxious. It's garish and monstrous in size, and controls / interface look blurry. It's not really enjoyable. With scaling disabled, controls are very small. Equally not enjoyable.
If you want a binary yes or no answer: the answer is yes, the game is playable at 4K and presumably 5K.
Is it enjoyable at 27 inches? I'd say no. Not at the moment. If you were to get an iMac, I would advise keeping a spare 1080p monitor around along with a mini-VGA adapter (or whatever they're using now (mini DisplayPort, I assume)). Which, yes, defeats the entire point of having an all-in-one, and having 5K resolution.
But Daaaaaaammmmmmnnnn: I want that!
@TrentOster Sorry for tagging you like this, but wouldn't this be solved relatively easily by offering a 50% scale for 4K/5K resolutions? It won't be so blurry as to be unplayable, but neither will it be so small that you can't even press a button.