Resolution settings do not function, the game is not DSR friendly3.

[SparocheeDoom]

There are 3 very important issues:

 

1. Game resolution settings do not work and do not apply. Regardless of whether I use FullScreen Mode, Window Mode or Borderless WIndow Mode, resolution settings do not apply. They always use Desktop resolution, regardless of settings used in the game. 

 

2. This game is not DSR-friendly. DSR is a method downscaling from a higher resolution that is above native display resolution to a lower one. For example, I can downscale from 4K resolution to 1080p resolution. 108p is the native resolution for my display. DSR 4K function is equivalent of using Super-Sampling Anti-Aliasing, which drastically improves image quality. One of the possible problems of using DSR is that it can make the UI much smaller due to displaying a much broader area, such as one a true 4K monitor can display. Usually, developers honor these feature by allowing to increase the size of the UI & by providing the freedom to zoom in closer than the game normally allows. There needs to be a way to zoom in further when 4K resolution is selected. There is a way select different size fonts, but that's about it... I know there is a way to zoom, using SetZoomRange 0 1.5, but there need to be in-game settings for that!

 

3. There are still no AA options available! AFAIK, one must type "MSAA X" command, where X is the MSAA strength value, to properly set MSAA to desired value. That is very annoying and AFAIK that command needs to be used each time a new area is loaded. I have a high-end PC, but I also use 4K DSR, which makes MSAA almost worthless since DSR 4K / 4x SSAA is a much better AA type than MSAA. There have to be in-game settings that allow to set and lock MSAA strength. I do not know if nVidia Inspector or nVidia Control Panel can actually force 0 MSAA, but selecting "Override..." and "Off"...

 

***Side-Note***: It would also be of great help to those with lower system specs to be able to select SMAA without using 3rd party tools, such as SweetFX / ReShade. SMAA does not function well with MSAA, but by itself SMAA provides much better quality AA than FXAA at barely any cost to performance.

 

FOUR (4) patches came out already and none of them fixed bugs and shortcomings I described above!!!

 

I have MSI GeForce GTX 980 4GB card with the latest drivers, running on i7 3770K @ 4.8Ghz, 16GB RAM, SSD, and Windows 8.1. My PC is in excellent condition, optimized, without anything running the background, except for Steam, but Steam Overlay is turned off. I have no problems running other games and changing resolution within those-games, which does lead me to believe that those are exclusively Pillars of Eternity GAME BUGS and SHORTCOMINGS, but I've been wrong on occasion... OK, let forget about SMAA - maybe there is a technical problem with integrating it, but how hard can it be to fix resolution enforcement, create MSAA, and Zoom settings?

Edited April 26, 2015 by MonarchX

[AndreaColombo]

Hi MonarchX,

 

resolution settings work fine for me on a GTX 970 card, so I am not sure why they don't in your case? Perhaps a dev will chime in on that one.

 

DSR works with the game if you first set your desktop resolution to the target resolution you want to use in game. E.g. if your screen's native resolution is 1920x1080 and you want to use DSR to play at 3840x2160, you first need to set your desktop resolution to 3840x2160 (via DSR), then select 3840x2160 in the game. It will work, but it will likely make backdrops fairly blurry owing to their 2D nature (using SSAA does the same.). This is not a PoE-only issue but rather an issue with the way the Unity engine interacts with DSR (it is just not a particularly DSR-friendly engine.)

 

I agree with you that SSAA is generally preferable to MSAA, but in the case of Pillars of Eternity it really is a sub par solution because 2D backgrounds get really blurry (try forcing MSAA + SSAA transparency anti-aliasing via your graphics card's drivers, run the game, and zoom all the way in: You'll notice backdrops are quite blurry compared to just forcing MSAA.)

 

Patch 1.4 added a "Graphics Quality" slider that controls MSAA (in fact, that's pretty much all it does and it should've been named "Anti-aliasing" instead.). It does work, and setting it all the way to the left disables MSAA. The setting is remembered across area transitions.

[SparocheeDoom]

Thank you for such a prompt reply.

 

If this game had properly working resolution settings, then it would not require you to set your desktop to DSR resolutions first and only then run the game. In Fullscreen mode, the game is supposed to use those DSR resolutions from within the in-game resolution settings. Only Window or Borderless Window modes require setting desktop to DSR resolution first to use that resolution in-game. This is why I said that the game does not have properly working resolution settings and is not DSR-friendly.

 

The game looks immensely better with 4x SSAA (DSR 4K downscaled to 1080p) than with MSAA (even at 8x) as long as you set Smoothness to 0% and disable MSAA, which won't add to the effect of SSAA @ 4K in this game, but 4K + MSAA will only drain FPS. Only SGSSAA blurs the image, but DSR does not use SGSSAA, but true SSAA. I am not sure if you tried running 4K to 1080p downscaled without MSAA and with Smoothness set to 0% because it looks much better with DSR than with MSAA and its quite obvious. There is no need to enable Transparency MSAA!!! True SSAA improves sharpness of textures, not make them blurry. Just make sure to use that Zoom command to see your party closer, otherwise they are too small.

 

You can also add SMAA to DSR resolution if you still experience any aliasing, but it barely makes a difference with such high downscaled resolution. SMAA is helpful if you downscale from 1440p to 1080p or from 1620p to 1080p, but not from 4K to 1080p. Then of course you can add some LumaSharpen since SMAA blurs the image slightly.

Edited April 26, 2015 by MonarchX