The game looks blurry on a 4K monitor

[PTNLemay]

I just recently got a new monitor and decided to make it a 4K one. Broadly I like it, but I noticed some bugs with the GUI of some of my mods in game. Not all the text gets upscaled when you change it in settings. So I just set the game to 1920x1080 and I assumed it would just map the game's output to the monitor's exactly, 2x2 in height and width. But the actual result is... very blurry. Here the letters (I zoomed in just to be clear) end up about 18px or 20px in font size. And the blur is so bad many of the letters are blended together. I think this might be because the game or the computer is interpolating the pixels instead of mapping them directly. It's not just the monitor because when I zoom in I can see the pixels have been smooshed as they were produced by my computer.

So, is there an easy way to stop it from doing this? It's frustrating when the whole point of a 4K monitor (improved crispness and better resolution) is completely undone and everything looks more blurry than before.

 

Edited February 23, 2020 by PTNLemay

[linuxgurugamer]

Im going to guess that when you play the game in 1920x1080, the monitor itself is still in 4k mode, which would mean that either the. Monitor or the computer are playing games

[Guest]

I know this doesn't exactly answer your question, but... my solution is to play in 1440p. In my opinion it strikes an excellent balance between performance and appearance; in fact at a normal viewing distance I can't even tell the difference with 4K unless I'm specifically looking for it.

[PTNLemay]

@linuxgurugamer

Right.  That's why, when I make a screengrab, it still sees 3840x2160.  The computer continually outputs all of those pixels to meet the monitor's demand.  But I was hoping that the game would be able to send it's output (at 1920x1080) to the computer, and that the computer could understand it needs to multiply every pixel by 4, and just give that to the monitor.  Instead it upscales it but applies a hugely blurring effect on everything.

 

@Brikoleur

It's not so bad for stock, yeah.  Because I can change the GUI and everything mostly fits.  But I do like to play modded sometimes, and even at 2560x1440, the difference between stock text an modded  text becomes really jarring.  

Also, I noticed something weird, when I set it at 2560x1440, sometimes I'll load the game back on and it will have automatically switched back to 4K.  It doesn't seem to do this when I set it to 1080, but for some reason the game doesn't like staying at 1440.

[Guest]

Yep it does that. 

TBH I’m regretting buying a 4K monitor. A good 1440p one would have been a better choice at the same price.