Preventing graphics distortion in odd-sized WoW windows?

[Ozbert]

I recently saw a screenshot of someone's multiboxing window layout where they had their main window across the top half of their screen, and four clones in windows beneath, something like this:



+-------------------+
| |
+----+----+----+----+
| | | | |
+----+----+----+----+



The lower four windows were almost square in proportion, while the upper window was extremely wide compared to it's height.

The strange thing was, the graphics inside all five windows were completely undistorted. How is this achieved?

Whenever I've tried resizing a WoW window to any odd proportion, other than 4:3 (normal monitor) or 8:5 (widescreen monitor), the graphics have ended up horribly distorted, as in this screenshot ('http://www.zen113011.zen.co.uk/wow-2wins-wide.jpg').

Any pointers appreciated.

[keyclone]

i believe it prolly has to do with keyclone's maximizer adjusting the resolutions as it starts each wow

[Basilikos]

I had a similar problem with Maximizer. What you need to do is look inside your WoW/WTF direcotry and find the config.wtf file so you can edit it. There is a resolution setting in there (just look around for it - it's near the top) and set that to whatever you wish to run WoW at. Note that this doesn't work all that well if you're running more than 1 resolution outside of the same WoW directory.

[Ozbert]

Can you put non-standard resolutions in there?

For example, four Wow windows in each quadrant of a 1920x1200 screen will be 960x585 each (taking 30 pixels of taskbar into account).

[minty]

Ozbert I'm doing close to that on my setup(on a Mac), but can only get the windows to 960x600 by setting in the config.wtf, and have to deal with a little overlap on the top and bottom windows. I've played around with other settings, but it doesn't seem to like anything less than 800x600, if I drop either parameter below those limits, it will size itself to 800x600.

[Basilikos]

Can you put non-standard resolutions in there?

For example, four Wow windows in each quadrant of a 1920x1200 screen will be 960x585 each (taking 30 pixels of taskbar into account).

Sure can. I have my main on a 1680x1050 monitor and there are two secondary machines on either side of me each running two 1050x840 (the monitors are tilted 90 degrees). There's no graphical distortion at all.

EDIT: I just saw minty's post and although I can't verify the contents, I recommend investigating.

[keyclone]

it might be interesting if we could get the currently used aspect ratio being used within the wow client. kind of like ctrl-r to show the fps... something like ctrl-shift-a (or in video-settings) to show the current settings being used.

might be worth a post to the wow forums ... with PiP pics (some nice, some distorted) of course

[Ozbert]

Well I tried modifying the config.wtf for each of my clones, and changed the window size from 800x600 to 960x600. WoW Maximizer still resizes my windows to 960x585, but the graphics are still rendered much more accurately.

I would guess that WoW chooses it's rendering "aspect" based on the resolution selected in video options or in the config file at startup, and sticks with that aspect no matter how you resize the window. If you start off with your window in a 4:3 aspect but resize it to a 16:10 aspect, the graphics stay at 4:3 and distort horribly. Only when you select a new resolution in video options will WoW recalculate the aspect of it's rendering.

This probably means that if you want undistorted graphics for a really wierd window size, say 500x500, you should probably set your config file to 800x800 (based on minty's observation of WoW not accepting less than 800x600).

[keyclone]

you cannot change the settings on the fly (that i know of.. might be a console command for it).

if you are changing the dimensions, you will want to exit wow and restart (they set their aspect ratio at start up)

[Basilikos]

Well I tried modifying the config.wtf for each of my clones, and changed the window size from 800x600 to 960x600. WoW Maximizer still resizes my windows to 960x585...

I don't use Keyclone, so I don't know how to configure the Maximizer using it (or if you even do), but recall that the Maximizer settings need to have the right boundaries setup for each clone since Maximizer will resize the window regardless of what the game thinks the resolution should be.

[keyclone]

the problem isn't resizing the window... the problem is doing it in such a way that the graphics within the wow window look correct, and not squashed or stretched... basically, a circle would look like a circle, and not an egg or football.

ie:
http://solidice.com/keyclone/keyclone_v1.8e_pip_1.jpg

or

http://solidice.com/keyclone/maximizer_01.jpg

[Basilikos]

the problem isn't resizing the window... the problem is doing it in such a way that the graphics within the wow window look correct, and not squashed or stretched... basically, a circle would look like a circle, and not an egg or football.

Sure. But it's been my experience that Wow handles it just fine assuming the window it is displayed in is the same resolution that it thinks it should display. The Maximizer configuration settings must have the appropriate boundaries so that the space given to WoW matches what is listed inthe config.wtf file.

[Sanctume]

A squarish display is 800 x 600, or 4:3 ratio, or 4/3 = 1.33
Same for 640 x 480. 640 / 480 = 1.33

If the max width 1900, divide that by 4 = 475 wide.
So with a client that is 475 wide, we can fit 4 of them in the bottom.
What would be the height for a 475 wide client?
475 / x = 1.33
x = 471 / 1.33 = 357 height

Log into WoW on each of the 4 bottom clients, one at a time.
Go to Video Settings. Set to 800x600.
Turn down all graphics. Set Scale UI to .62 and Turn off sounds.
Log out WoW normally.
Edit the the WTF/account.cfg
Look for the GFxResolution line and change that to 475x357
Save.
Make a copy of the account.cfg into "475x357 account.cfg"

Run the WoW client and see if you like the scaling. If you go into the Video settings again, it will over write your 475x357 custom resolution. So don't go to video settings if you don't need to.

If you're ok with that, copy the "475x357 account.cfg" into each WTF\account.cfg of the other bottom WoW folders.

To get the top wide client working (WoW Main):
I load WoW Main there by itself, go to video settings and choose one of the lowest (wide) resolutions.
Change the graphics options, and set UI scaling down to .62 (left most).
Log out of the game.
Edit the WTF/config or was it account.cfg file.
Look for the GFxResolution line and edit that to what you want the WoW Main client should be.
Save a copy of the new account.cfg file to "1900x725 account.cfg"
Run maximizer manually and see if your WoW Main is how you like it.

[Ozbert]

Just to be clear, I have a solution to my problem now :) My last post was just an attempt to describe it to everyone else.

To summarise, if you want correct looking graphics in any window that has specific proportions, then wow has to be started with a window sized with the same proportions.

To use the example in my original post, the four lower windows would be 480x480. If you configure the four config.wtf files with a window size of 800x800, when the windows are resized the graphics would still look right. If they are started at 800x600, the graphics would distort when the window is resized.