In game screen scale setting vs inc. resolution

[PeterD1001]

What exactly does the screen scale setting do in game and how does increasing it on a 1080p monitor compare to say having a 1440p monitor. 

 

So for example setting a game (bf1 say) at screen scale of 130 on a 1080p screen, how would that look compared to 100 on a 1440p screen, and how would the fps compare on both?

[Tabs]

The scale is simply to make UI elements bigger, so that on higher resolutions you can still read the actual UI comfortably.

 

I'm not sure your question really makes sense, but I realise this is because you weren't sure what the setting does.

 

The FPS is unaffected by this setting, simply the size of things on the screen. If you put scale to 130 on 1080p, you'll see 30% larger UI elements... but the game is still 1080p. No difference in fps.

 

Likewise, at 1440p and 100 scale, the UI elements will be at their default size, which might be too small to read comfortably. So the setting is there basically so you don't have to *lower* your resolution in order to see what the game is trying to show you.

 

I suck at explaining things like this, but does that make sense?

[PeterD1001]

3 minutes ago, Tabs said:

The scale is simply to make UI elements bigger, so that on higher resolutions you can still read the actual UI comfortably.

 

I'm not sure your question really makes sense, but I realise this is because you weren't sure what the setting does.

 

The FPS is unaffected by this setting, simply the size of things on the screen. If you put scale to 130 on 1080p, you'll see 30% larger UI elements... but the game is still 1080p. No difference in fps.

 

Likewise, at 1440p and 100 scale, the UI elements will be at their default size, which might be too small to read comfortably. So the setting is there basically so you don't have to *lower* your resolution in order to see what the game is trying to show you.

 

I suck at explaining things like this, but does that make sense?

No you make perfect sense!

 

I understand what you’re saying, but I thought that applied to the Windows scale setting. I’m talking about the screen scaling setting in game which does seem to make the graphics look sharper and does have a hit on my fps

[Tabs]

1 minute ago, PeterD1001 said:

No you make perfect sense!

 

I understand what you’re saying, but I thought that applied to the Windows scale setting. I’m talking about the screen scaling setting in game which does seem to make the graphics look sharper and does have a hit on my fps

 

The Windows scale setting only applies to desktop elements like applications, the taskbar, icons, etc. It has no impact on a 3d application, which is why they usually have their own (unless it scales automatically). I have to run 150% scaling on my 4k 27" panel, but the games I play - if run at 4k and don't automatically scale - will render their elements at their normal size without an in-game setting for scaling.

 

I'll have to find out what that exact setting does in BF1 then, since UI scaling should have zero impact on performance. It's possible the game is referring to internal render resolution as "scaling", which is not the normal use for the term.

[Mira Yurizaki]

Some games allow you to render the game internally at some resolution, but output it at the desired resolution. So you can ask the game to render at 1080p on your 2560x1440 screen and it'll simply scale it up. Alternatively if it offers it, you could ask the game to render it at 4K and scale it down (though at that point you should use DSR if you have NVIDIA)

[Tabs]

1 minute ago, Tabs said:

 

The Windows scale setting only applies to desktop elements like applications, the taskbar, icons, etc. It has no impact on a 3d application, which is why they usually have their own (unless it scales automatically). I have to run 150% scaling on my 4k 27" panel, but the games I play - if run at 4k and don't automatically scale - will render their elements at their normal size without an in-game setting for scaling.

 

I'll have to find out what that exact setting does in BF1 then, since UI scaling should have zero impact on performance. It's possible the game is referring to internal render resolution as "scaling", which is not the normal use for the term.

Okay, I just googled it. The setting is for internal resolution rendering in the game, so that's my bad. It effectively works like brute-force antialiasing then (same as NVidia DSR, but on an internal game basis instead of a graphics card basis). Short answer is that 30% higher internal scaling would be similar to running a 30% higher resolution, but scaled down so you'll see slightly more aliasing (so antialiasing together would cause edge blurriness which could look nice on larger 1080p displays).

 

The difference in resolution between 1920x1080 (2,073,600) and 2560x1440 (3,686,400) is about 90% more for 1440p, so theoretically if you ran the game at 1.9x scale you'll be approximating the resolution if it were running 1440p.

[ShredBird]

For speed, computer graphics engines render 1 sample per pixel.  By increasing the render scale you are increasing the number of samples per pixel which improves the image quality (as Tabs mentioned, this is used for anti-aliasing, a method known as supersampling).  Some games will allow you to decrease to less than one sample per pixel for speed.  This is sometimes advantageous to set in game as opposed to changing the resolution at your graphics card.  For example, if you're on a 1080p monitor but are rendering internally at 2160p (4k), the game engine may decide to keep certain things like shadows or other effects rendered at 1080p while the assets you'll see a difference in at 4k.