Changing Resolution in ISBoxer

[kalos72]

Well, from the lack of response maybe I need to add some detail here...

I am having performance issues, my laptop anyways, when running 5 man teams through the Invasions and looking for some performance improving tips. In other threads people have talked about two things I have questions on:
1. "Renderscale" - Not sure I understand this concept honestly.
2. Lowering window resolution to improve performance - I assume we aren't talking about my desktop resolution so are we talking the way the windows are sized in IS Boxer, meaning smaller the better performance?

I do use broadcasting a fair bit so I wouldn't want to effect I believe...

Tonight I messed with the Windows layout and reduced the size of all 5 windows but I dont think thats the same thing people were talking about here, I am not sure. Am I completely off track here?

[mbox_bob]

Performance per window is tricky.

• Render Scale usually refers to an in game setting in WoW, which render your game image at a higher resolution than the game is set to, this is then scaled back down for display. Assuming a 200% render scale on a 1920x1080 resolution your game may be rendering internally at 4k. If you already have 4k, then it would be rendering internally at 16k. Idk if you can set a render scale < 100% to improve performance (/e appears you can) , but if you did, it would increase blockiness (i.e. look more like minecraft - although not bad).
• Lowering window resolution to increase performance is fine, but usually the game UI doesn't scale down with the resolution change, so at lower resolutions the game UI is taking up a larger proportion of the game screen relative to the resolution. e.g. say you change from 1920x1080 to 960x540, this is a 50% drop, but the game UI elements, like the actions bars, may only have a drop from 32 pixels high to 24pixels high, so only a 25% reduction. This can effect your broadcasting ability because all of a sudden UI elements are not necessarily the same size, nor in the same place as they get shuffled around. This tends to be one of those options to avoid if possible. Resolution shifting also causes delays on switching characters as the game resets itself to the new resolution (and may shuffle the UI elements around to fit). This one only applies if the games are in individual resolutions
• In ISBoxer, the Window Layout Wizard also has an option for this called 3D Render Size (on the right hand side at the bottom). The effect of this is you can set a Render size less that the display size (or active region size). Again it will come out a bit blocky and minecraftish, but, as the preference is for all windows to render internally at the same resolution to keep the broadcasting lined up and the game UI the same scale, this works for that option. On WoW, with the renderscale option, it is better to avoid this one too.
• With WoW, you can set certain render quality and LOD rendering properties via the CVars, which MiRai covers in this post, and a video (thanks Wubsie, couldn't find that). In this setup you use a couple of macros, and have these switch your main toon to look nice, while the backgrounders don't get a high LOD, or all the fancy trimmings. The idea is to stick to settings which can change almost instantly, so this rules out texture quality changes and such like as they require a full reload from disk.
• Another option is to just turn off/lower the rendering settings on your slave toons via the in game options. They wont change to look nicer when you switch toons, but it should lower the requirements for presumably the toons you mostly don't drive from.

[Wubsie]

1. "Renderscale" - Not sure I understand this concept honestly.

This is a new-ish option that allows you to basically change the resolution at which the game environment is rendered, either going above or below your monitor's resolution, and then scaling the image to fit again. This is different to dropping the resolution of the actual game client, as this has 0 impact on how your UI is rendered, meaning you can drop it down to non-existant levels, making the game a blurry mess, but your frames, bars, menus, etc will remain the exact same.

Changing this setting can have a decent sized impact on your performance and since we often have a bunch of scaled down game windows, dropping it to something like 0.5 (50% renderscale) doesn't have such a big impact on how those windows look.

Another great thing about this setting is that it can be changed instantly, unlike client resolution. This means that you can make a slot-swap macro system, and automatically have your focused client be rendered at your normal resolution, while non-focused ones will use a lower one, saving performance.

**NOTE**
The video was made before Legion came around. As such a lot of those variables are now different. You can find an up-to-date list here: http://www.dual-boxing.com/threads/5...tings-(Legion)

*edit*
Damn, Bob beat me to it.