Rendering on different sized monitors

[Otlecs]

I have two monitors. One is a 27" running my master ("hot")session at 1920 x 1200. The other is a 22" running 4 tiled drones over a total area of 1680 x 1050 (so the same aspect ratio).

All clients are currently rendered at 1920 x 1200.

The problem is that the drones are completely unreadable without switching to them. Now, switching isn't a huge hardship but I'd much rather be able to actually read them at a glance.

I thought it was because I was rendering at very high resolution in a small window (~840 x 525), but I get the same problem rendering at 800 x 600.

Can anyone offer any suggestions on how to fix that? It seems such an obvious problem that I'm sure it's come up before, but a quick search for various combinations of window, render, IS and ISBoxer didn't show anything.

Thanks in advance

[Igg]

I too seems to have noticed this issue when switching over to ISBoxer from hotkeynet.

When using HKN, 4 clients split up 4 ways @ 1650x1050 is still readable/legible,

But the same cannot be said for ISBoxer, the text is very blocky and not legible at all.

/ponders/

[Otlecs]

Yep, that's exactly the same problem as I have. The drones all render fine when I use KC, but I can't find any way to make them in any way legible under IS :(

Fingers crossed for a solution though.

[Ualaa]

I've noticed this as well.

Part of my problem would be the IS wizard has made my slaves regions very small.
My layout with Keyclone was before the wizard, and the slaves were easily 3x larger then what I'm using now.

However, with IS, the switch speed is incredibly quick.
And unlike Keyclone, I always have the correct toon in the hot window even if I spam the swap keys as quickly as I can press them.
Also with Jamba, text is automatically forwarded to the master toon.
So, while I'd like more readability of the slave windows, its not really that big of a deal.

[Otlecs]

Agreed on all the positive points, but since it's clearly possible for the smaller windows to be rendered so that they're actually readable (because KC and HKN can do it), I'd like to see if anyone knows how to solve it.

I've played around with all the most obvious options (fixed render size in IS, changing the resolution in-game, etc) and haven't yet had any luck.

[zanthor]

Agreed on all the positive points, but since it's clearly possible for the smaller windows to be rendered so that they're actually readable (because KC and HKN can do it), I'd like to see if anyone knows how to solve it.

I've played around with all the most obvious options (fixed render size in IS, changing the resolution in-game, etc) and haven't yet had any luck.

I believe this has a lot to do with the fundamental difference between ISBoxer and other solutions for PNP. I would expect the windows to render properly if you dropped the render resolution, but apparently thats not the case...

if this is just for periodic reading have you considered enabling the "zoom on rollover" which allows you to mouse over a window and "zoom" it in from it's thumbnail size?

[Igg]

I believe this is one of the things that make IS swapping instantaneous too. while it's not deal breaking it would be one of the nice things to quickly glance over and see some text that pops up

[Otlecs]

if this is just for periodic reading have you considered enabling the "zoom on rollover" which allows you to mouse over a window and "zoom" it in from it's thumbnail size?

I've tried that, and the big parts of it remain unreadable, although I haven't tried that with different rendering sizes.

I'm hopeful that there's a solution out there.

[Lax]

Cross-posting my response from the post on my forums:

There are trade-offs you need to consider here. You can call it a bug if you like, but it's not. Rather, it just trades off something you liked, for something else that entices you.

All of the clients are rendering at the full 1920x1200 to enable:
a) Precise mouse broadcasting
b) Fast window swapping

If you don't want either of these things, then the answer is simple: disable the Swap option in your Window Layout, and they will then render at the size assigned to the region. Granted, this currently will permanently disable the window switching, instead of providing slow window switching that would be similar to competitors.

One downside of this trade-off, as you're observing, is that the window itself is going to be smaller, meaning the display -- 1920x1200 -- will be scaled down to the size of the window -- 840x525. This is the same aspect ratio, so at least there would not be distortion (as opposed to 800x600 which is a different aspect ratio), but it's still going to be 43.75% of the original size, making it harder to read. (12pt font becomes 5.25pt, assuming font sizes scale at the same rate. 5.25pt is indeed hard to read)

Since other software doesn't have this scaling capability, your old setup would have actually rendered the clients at 800x600, so the text would be 100% of its original size, so it would presumably not be that difficult to read.

If you want them to be readable, but still have all of the great features from ISBoxer, you have 2 choices off the top of my head:
1. Increase the font sizes in the game
2. Set the "Desired Rendering Size" option in your Window Layout to the same size as your smaller windows (840x525). This will have the effect of blowing UP the main window, instead of scaling DOWN the smaller windows (though this could be similarly annoying by making things 2.29x the original size).