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UI too small (Not Flight Navball)


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Kerbal has had this issue for a long time now. At HD resolutions the text is just unreadable. I don't understand why this isn't considered a high priority for development, and especially not featured now that it has been fully released. I'm hoping I can return KSP because I will not invest in games whose developers haven't even made the UI scale with game resolution. Frankly, being able to read the text at resolutions higher than 720p is just a common sense thing. There is no community fix to this, it has to be done by the developers. KSP is a great game when it is playable, but it just isn't when modern resolutions make it unreadable. I hope the developers care enough to read this, but I highly doubt this will ever be fixed. Thank you for taking my money.

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I went ahead and bought a better screen/laptop just to play KSP and was a bit disappointed about this too. The even bigger disappointment settled in when I realized that the performance of the game was not improving, no matter what hardware I throw at it.

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I play at 1080p and the ui text is fine for me. I think the icons could be smaller and auto-hide would be good.

I don't like how the clock moves when you point the mouse at it, bringing a different button under the pointer. But since the ui is being overhauled right now, it's pointless complaining.

 

 

 

 

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5 hours ago, Matt77 said:

 it's pointless complaining.

No, really, it's not "pointless complaining". The time to bring these things to attention is when they are working on the feature, and dismissing these things is what makes problems.

Edited by spink00
quote was huge
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6 hours ago, Dafni said:

I went ahead and bought a better screen/laptop just to play KSP and was a bit disappointed about this too. The even bigger disappointment settled in when I realized that the performance of the game was not improving, no matter what hardware I throw at it.

KSP responds primarily to single threaded CPU speed, and laptops simply do not compete with desktop hardware on that front.

Get a quad-core Intel desktop (not AMD) with otherwise cheap components, overclock the nuts off it, and you'll find that game performance really does scale with the hardware. The problem is that laptop hardware hasn't significantly 'improved' for about 5 years because it's all focussed on reduced power consumption and longer battery life, not higher number crunching prowess. Newer, in this case, won't necessarily deliver better.

Don't shoot the messenger :)

--

However I think the OP has a valid point about display scaling being required :)

Edited by eddiew
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1 hour ago, spink00 said:

No, really, it's not "pointless complaining". The time to bring these things to attention is when they are working on the feature, and dismissing these things is what makes problems.

I agree with your point so I'll just elaborate on my earlier comment.

There's no point complaining about the existing UI because it's being replaced.  I wouldn't dream of complaining about the new UI because I haven't used it, I've only seen a couple of screenshots.

As for suggesting things, I'd say we've missed the boat given that 1.1 is imminent (hopefully).  Squad have tried bolting on features just before release, it backfired spectacularly.

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9 hours ago, Ecnahc said:

At HD resolutions the text is just unreadable.

That surely depends on the size of the display, not just the resolution.

I'll agree that I can't read the UI text when I'm viewing HD screenshots on my 6.4" phone screen (Sony Xperia Z Ultra), even though it is full HD resolution.

If I connect my 55" TV to my computer, I have no issues reading the UI text.

I do agree, however, that it would be nice if it was scalable. Normally I use a 34" Ultrawide 3440x1440p screen, but I play KSP at 2560x1080p (equivalent to 1920x1080p on 27"), because I can't read the UI text at full resolution.

And even at that size monitor, it's only just readable at 1080p.

Edited by Val
However
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There is a flight UI size setting which may help.

I played on a 22 inch 1920x1080 with the setting on tiny and it was fine for me, apart from the clock in the top left which was readable as long as I actually looked rather than just glanced. So that setting may be worth you looking at especially if you have a smaller screen.

 

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The old GUI functions had the font sizes all but hard-coded into them. In order to have text at a larger size, every UI element would have to be written with that size in mind. It's virtually impossible to support multiple pixel densities well with that system.

(side note: The Unity IDE itself is built on that older GUI system, and the IDE still doesn't have proper retina display support. Unity has copped to that being one of their bigger regrets in designing that system - they're had to spend a LOT of developer time working around it.)

The UnityUI system that KSP 1.1 is using has a built-in component called CanvasScaler, which essentially forces a given UI canvas to simulate a predetermined resolution - if you designed your UI at 1920x1080 and you want it to look about the same on all screen sizes, you just add a CanvasScaler, set it to that resolution, and it'll scale up or down with the screen size as if you were just viewing an image fullscreen. And it'd be trivial to customize, too - if your eyes suck and you want large text on your not-that-big display, you could do that.

I don't know if Squad has plans to expose that customizability to the end user, but even if they don't, I strongly suspect it would be trivially easy to mod that - like FindObjectOfType<Canvas>().gameObject.AddComponent<CanvasScaler>(), and then you're good to go. So I wouldn't worry about it until after we see how 1.1 behaves.

Edited by StarManta
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Well I know the pictures they have shown of the console versions have a ridiculously huge UI.  Quite frankly, I want to see the action, not the UI so with the exception of the NavBall (which I use Enhanced NavBall for) I like it small.

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 2/25/2016 at 9:11 AM, Val said:

That surely depends on the size of the display, not just the resolution.

I'll agree that I can't read the UI text when I'm viewing HD screenshots on my 6.4" phone screen (Sony Xperia Z Ultra), even though it is full HD resolution.

If I connect my 55" TV to my computer, I have no issues reading the UI text.

I play on a 42" plasma TV. The game is unplayable at 1080p, because the font and UI are so small. Maybe if I sat 2ft away from the screen it would be ok, but Kerbal is being marketed as a game for the Steam Machine, streaming to a tv in Big Picture Mod, and using the Steam Controller. 

I had no idea they were working on the UI at this time. Nobody said any particular details about it. Scaling might not be implemented at all. I didn't even think about the console versions, and they have a larger UI? 

@StarManta You raised a lot of good, technical points. If Squad fails us, would you make an addon to increase the size. lol

After they officially released Kerbal, I just assumed nothing big like, well, a bigger UI would be added. This is a necessity for many players though, and  I'm sure there are more. They just don't complain. All I am asking for is something almost all modern games do.

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On 2/25/2016 at 4:48 PM, Alshain said:

Well I know the pictures they have shown of the console versions have a ridiculously huge UI.  Quite frankly, I want to see the action, not the UI so with the exception of the NavBall (which I use Enhanced NavBall for) I like it small.

You can always toggle the UI off to "see the action." I just want to see the words, which are especially important in Career Mode.

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8 hours ago, Ecnahc said:

You can always toggle the UI off to "see the action." I just want to see the words, which are especially important in Career Mode.

You can't toggle the UI off and still fly with instruments, that is just silly.  I need the instruments to fly, I just don't want them taking over the whole screen.  It doesn't matter, the PC version has a UI size slider to fix this, I just wish they would let us resize items independently.  For the console version, I would imagine there will still be a UI size slider.  At any case, it is as good as it gets on Unity 4.

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