Graphical Weirdness in both neighborhood Screen and on lots... Part II
Hegelian:
Quote from: J. M. Pescado on 2007 August 25, 15:57:52
...although you'd think this wouldn't actually matter for the screenshot as YOU see it, since a pixel should be a pixel, and thus it should only look weird on their computer. Never figured out why it would do this.
Rereading the original post, I suspect that the image showing the on-screen anomalies was taken with a digital camera—she says that the first image is her screen capture, which shows a normal screen image.
As you suggest, this is what we would expect. The screen capture is going to be what the video controller is sending to the monitor, not what the monitor's interpolation circuitry is sending to the screen. If the anomalies appeared in the screen capture, we would know the problem lies upstream, in the video controller (or its drivers) or the game itself, for example.
Quote from: Lorelei on 2007 August 25, 17:53:56
It's a refurb Vaio, so no owner's manual, just manuals about media center tools and Bluray. This is not the first time I've been annoyed by this, so I should bug Sony to send me one.
But which model is it? The manual should be available on one of Sony's Web sites.
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The 1920x1200 res is the highest available, and I use that,
As Pescado suggested, this is probably the native resolution. I don't know for certain, but I don't think LCD displays can be driven at resolutions higher than native. That must be some giant screen for a laptop—my 19-inch desktop LCD runs at 1280x1024 (I run the 19-inch CRT at 1280x960 to maintain the proper aspect ratio). Either that, or everything on the screen is minuscule. To be honest, the two times I have bought laptop computers, I've made sure to get one with a resolution no higher than what I find comfortable for viewing, which means I end up with machines that some would consider "inferior" because they don't have the latest and highest (and most unreadable) native resolutions. It took me long enough the adjust to 1280x1024 on this LCD after years of using 1024x768 on 17-inch CRTs; when I bought a laptop for work a couple years ago, I stuck to 1024x768 on a 15-inch screen. I don't mind giving up some display "real estate" in the interests of readability.
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Screenshots and art are not distorted when transferred to lower res / non-widescreen machines at school.
This is as expected. The screen captures are what the video controller sends to the display, before the monitor's circuitry modifies the image to fit the screen at the selected resolution. Again, CRTs and LCDs work differently, and what works fine on a CRT may not work so well on an LCD. So now your saying, "But then, why would sims that appears smooshed on-screen also appear smooshed in screen captures?", my thought is that this is because you set the resolution for game in the game, so it is sending a pre-sized image to the video controller. The controller sends this on to the display, and if the game resolution is not appropriate for the monitor, the sims (and other objects) won't appear in their proper proportions. They appear this way in screen captures also, because the "distortion" is already present in the image the video controller receives from the game.
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For other apps, I could choose that OR 1680x1050 (wide) via display settings. I also have a 1360x768 option, but never use it.
Personally, I've never seen an LCD display running at a non-native resolution that didn't give me a headache because of the blurry text (and everything else). Of course, I don't use ClearType either because it makes on-screen text blurry also, as if out of focus. Out of curiosity, do you do your own artwork on this machine at a non-native resolution? I ask because if you do, I wonder how you know what it really looks like. I could never edit photographs at a non-native resolution; although in truth I find LCD displays inadequate for photo editing anyway, even my mid-high level monitor. Of course, I've never seen (and certainly can't afford) one of those dedicated graphics LCDs like the Eizo ColorEdge CG211 (US$2716 from CDW), which are claimed to eliminate the traditional shortcomings of LCDs in displaying fine tonal gradients, especially in shadow areas. Wait—let me check these lottery tickets. . . . ;D
Lorelei:
Quote from: Hegelian on 2007 August 26, 16:14:32
Quote from: Lorelei on 2007 August 25, 17:53:56
It's a refurb Vaio, so no owner's manual, just manuals about media center tools and Bluray. This is not the first time I've been annoyed by this, so I should bug Sony to send me one.
But which model is it? The manual should be available on one of Sony's Web sites.
No need. Here's the stats.
Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_qfe.070227-2300)
Sony VAIO VGN-AR190G
BIOS: Phoenix NoteBIOS 4.0 Release 6.1
Processor: Genuine Intel(R) CPU T2500 @ 2.00GHz (2 CPUs)
Memory: 2046MB RAM
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600 GT
Driver Name / Version: nv4_disp.dll / 6.14.0010.8457 (English)
But I'm not having any graphical weirdness like the OP, I was just curious about how to find out if I was using my native res or not. It simply isn't something I'd given thought to before. Apparently the answer to my question = "the highest resolution your machine can run." Clear enough for me!
Quote from: Hegelian on 2007 August 26, 16:14:32
Quote
The 1920x1200 res is the highest available, and I use that,
As Pescado suggested, this is probably the native resolution. I don't know for certain, but I don't think LCD displays can be driven at resolutions higher than native. That must be some giant screen for a laptop
17" and I need the real estate, but any smaller and it would be too small.
Quote from: Hegelian on 2007 August 26, 16:14:32
Quote
Screenshots and art are not distorted when transferred to lower res / non-widescreen machines at school.
This is as expected. The screen captures are what the video controller sends to the display, before the monitor's circuitry modifies the image to fit the screen at the selected resolution. Again, CRTs and LCDs work differently, and what works fine on a CRT may not work so well on an LCD. So now your saying, "But then, why would sims that appears smooshed on-screen also appear smooshed in screen captures?", my thought is that this is because you set the resolution for game in the game, so it is sending a pre-sized image to the video controller. The controller sends this on to the display, and if the game resolution is not appropriate for the monitor, the sims (and other objects) won't appear in their proper proportions. They appear this way in screen captures also, because the "distortion" is already present in the image the video controller receives from the game.
I don't have smooshed Sims, but I bet this helps the OP understand the problem s/he is having; very clearly stated.
Quote from: Hegelian on 2007 August 26, 16:14:32
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For other apps, I could choose that OR 1680x1050 (wide) via display settings. I also have a 1360x768 option, but never use it.
Personally, I've never seen an LCD display running at a non-native resolution that didn't give me a headache because of the blurry text (and everything else). Of course, I don't use ClearType either because it makes on-screen text blurry also, as if out of focus. Out of curiosity, do you do your own artwork on this machine at a non-native resolution? I ask because if you do, I wonder how you know what it really looks like. I could never edit photographs at a non-native resolution; although in truth I find LCD displays inadequate for photo editing anyway, even my mid-high level monitor. Of course, I've never seen (and certainly can't afford) one of those dedicated graphics LCDs like the Eizo ColorEdge CG211 (US$2716 from CDW), which are claimed to eliminate the traditional shortcomings of LCDs in displaying fine tonal gradients, especially in shadow areas. Wait—let me check these lottery tickets. . . . ;D
If 1920x... is native, then no, I don't, I only work on art pieces at that res. I wouldn't mess about with lower resolutions because I need the screen space, and because it doesn't make sense to me to do otherwise.
The top four-five available resolutions are clear, though some are cropped because they are not widescreen mode, but below those, yes, it is blurry.
Games that require lower res, even a res lower than what I can select, tend to run fine, with no stretching, but some of the lower res games are visually unappealing. Not blurry, exactly, but definitely blocky.
I don't know if this is a Media Center PC deal or standard with laptops, but my old laptop did stretch and blur at lower res choices than the highest available.
When I was having graphical anomalies, it was a RAM and driver issue, but that was resolved back in April. Geek Squadders tried to hook me up with a Vista desktop driver and this was major PHAIL. Lappy complained, spammed up fake RAID disk failure errors and borked repeatedly. (That it ran at all was a miracle.) Since then, I am not overly impressed with Geek Squad, at least the in-store geeks. (Travelling Geeks seem to have a higher skillset level and more autonomy, and have done more good than harm; in-store Geeks tried to sell me more (unneeded) crap and pass "throwing money at the problem" off as a valid solution to the problem they caused. In my (limited) experience, salesGeeks just don't have the chops to tackle problems without a full wipe and reinstall, apparently, whereas traveling Geeks apply both official and unofficial GS tools to solve problems, and if they fuck up, they aren't satisfied with a wipe and reinstall, it insults their geekdom to be that lazy or to be beaten by a mere machine.) My geek friends in Atlanta were the efficient, knowledgeable sort.
Hegelian:
Quote from: Lorelei on 2007 August 26, 20:11:31
Sony VAIO VGN-AR190G
According to the specifications, the native resolution of the 17-inch WUXGA display on this model is 1920x1200. I think I would go blind! ;D
You can find the specs here.
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I don't have smooshed Sims, but I bet this helps the OP understand the problem s/he is having; very clearly stated.
Sorry! I didn't intend to suggest you did. I think we've all seen examples of this on download sites, and this is my guess for why it occurs. I was just using it as an example.
flowerchile:
Quote from: Hegelian on 2007 August 26, 16:14:32
Quote from: J. M. Pescado on 2007 August 25, 15:57:52
...although you'd think this wouldn't actually matter for the screenshot as YOU see it, since a pixel should be a pixel, and thus it should only look weird on their computer. Never figured out why it would do this.
Rereading the original post, I suspect that the image showing the on-screen anomalies was taken with a digital camera—she says that the first image is her screen capture, which shows a normal screen image.
As you suggest, this is what we would expect. The screen capture is going to be what the video controller is sending to the monitor, not what the monitor's interpolation circuitry is sending to the screen. If the anomalies appeared in the screen capture, we would know the problem lies upstream, in the video controller (or its drivers) or the game itself, for example.
Since I have played on a lower res, not problems at all. The thing that really bugged me, was the fact that I had no graphical weirdness at all until I took the Sims to a community lot. The first pic was taken with the in-game camera and showed things as they should be, but the second was a screenie. So yes, the anomalies do appear in the screen capture, yet not the in-game camera.
eevilcat:
Quote from: flowerchile on 2007 August 27, 01:51:15
Since I have played on a lower res, not problems at all. The thing that really bugged me, was the fact that I had no graphical weirdness at all until I took the Sims to a community lot. The first pic was taken with the in-game camera and showed things as they should be, but the second was a screenie. So yes, the anomalies do appear in the screen capture, yet not the in-game camera.
I suspect that if you are running your monitor at a non-standard resolution then the game will render the scene to a (game) standard size DirectX buffer which will then be resampled to be displayed on your LCD. It is the resampling that causes the graphical anomalies. When you do in an in-game screenshot using the game camera it will write directly to a buffer in memory which is then saved out to your hard disk as a JPG/BMP. The size of the screen grab is determined by the low/med/high snapshot size camera setting but the aspect ratio is fixed and 'game friendly' so no graphical anomalies.
I run the game at 1024x768 on my laptop with a 15 1/4" display set at its max screen resolution of 1680x1050. I normally run the game in windowed mode and have noticed that the camera clips off a chunk at the top/bottom of the screen so have learned to compensate for this when using the camera. Oddly enough, I'm pretty sure that there is no clipping when running the game full screen so I've come to the conclusion that the game is centering the vertical FOV to match the camera aspect ratio and compensate for the odd display resolution.
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