[0.16.51] Factorio Ultrawide Monitor support?

[Hestekraft]

I bought a 3440x1440(21:9 ratio) monitor and it gives less vision than a 1920x1080(16:9 Ratio).

In most games I got you get a wider field of view but here you don't get any more width so the game cuts the top and bottom part of the picture to fit the 21:9 ratio.
It would nice if the "draw distance" was based on height of the monitor instead of the width since vast majority of monitors/multiple monitor setups has a higher width to height ratio so it would make more sence to have it based on height since with how it currently is you get less vertical view the wider the monitor gets.

There is 3 attatchments to compare the view of 1920x1080,3440x1440 and an unknown resolution, The unknown picture is not mine but I grabbed it off an old post since you can clearly see what I mean with it.

[Zavian]

+1
12 months ago when I upgraded from a 1920x1200 monitor to a 2560x1440 monitor, I was disappointed that factorio wouldn't let me zoom out to see more of the map than before.

[Hannu]

+1
12 months ago when I upgraded from a 1920x1200 monitor to a 2560x1440 monitor, I was disappointed that factorio wouldn't let me zoom out to see more of the map than before.

Zoom is limited to certain size of game area. It is (officially, as far as I know) because huge number of entities lower UPS and may cause problems with weak computers. Monitor resolution has nothing to do with it. However, there is a command (you lose achievements):

Code: Select all

/c game.player.zoom=0.1

0.1 shows significantly larger area and is good value to begin with relatively decent desktop computer. The smaller value the larger area you see, but extremes may cause crashes or very long delays. Zoom command is very practical for example with huge blueprints or deciding a place for a new factory (in railworlds).

[posila]

Good news is that this is more likely to be handled, than let's say 144Hz displays. Bad news is that it is not happening yet.

There few aspects of this. The game works with a constraint that the player can see at maximum 100 tile radius from player's position (total 200 tiles over the longer side of the screen). So, the player normally doesn't see chunks being generated, non-factory things being frozen as they were deactivated, etc. Another aspect is that the game has to render 2 or 3 screens worth of entities and sprites. And since the game often struggels on 4K displays with one of the common aspect ratios, having to draw twice as many sprites might be really big performance problem. That might be much less of an issue after the rendering rewrite, but we have to really benchmark that before opening this Pandora's box.

Good solution for me would be to let player zoom-out so that 200 tiles are visible over the shorter side of the screen, and on the longer side fade tiles beyond "player's vision" to black fog of war.

[Hestekraft]

Good news is that this is more likely to be handled, than let's say 144Hz displays. Bad news is that it is not happening yet.

There few aspects of this. The game works with a constraint that the player can see at maximum 100 tile radius from player's position (total 200 tiles over the longer side of the screen). So, the player normally doesn't see chunks being generated, non-factory things being frozen as they were deactivated, etc. Another aspect is that the game has to render 2 or 3 screens worth of entities and sprites. And since the game often struggels on 4K displays with one of the common aspect ratios, having to draw twice as many sprites might be really big performance problem. That might be much less of an issue after the rendering rewrite, but we have to really benchmark that before opening this Pandora's box.

Good solution for me would be to let player zoom-out so that 200 tiles are visible over the shorter side of the screen, and on the longer side fade tiles beyond "player's vision" to black fog of war.

Only time will tell then I suppose, either way it's far more pleasant to play with "a bit" cut off the top/bottom in 21:9 ratio than my other 16:9 monitors even if I get less on screen. PS: I would just prefer I didn't get less>.>

[bobingabout]

I have a 2560x1440 screen too. I was surprised it reduced the zoom out level so that the same area still filled my screen, but I just shrugged and continued... not playing, because I was mod testing.
At least the game supports the resolution.

[Hannu]

At least the game supports the resolution.

The game supports arbitrary resolution. I have 2560 x 1440 monitor but I play mostly in window mode with slightly smaller window. Sometimes I narrow it to be near square if I want to see something else at the same time. I have never had any problems. Normal zoom limit is impractically small, especially with large endgame buildings, but I have no problems with commands or temporary low ups and I understand also devs' point of view.

[warlordkn]

could we in the mean time get an option to run this game in windowed/ windowed borderless/ fullscreen options? and a resolution slider?.

for other games i play that dont support ultra widescreen i can at least tell them to run fullscreen 1920X1080 and my display will put black boxes on the side to compensate.

this so far is my only game that has no such options.

[Zool]

I‘m actually using a 2 x 4k monitor setup, and using a single of the screens, everything works like a charm (gfx 980 + i7-7700k) on our multiplayer map (40000 rockets launched, 600 trains moving).

When I tried windowed-mode on 2 x 4k screen, it still works fine perfance-wise, but also got the limitation of 50% height.

The perfect solution from a player perspective would probably be an option in the graphics-settings, labled „Experimental“ where you can simply modify the maximum rendered tile width ... or select the screen ratio

[bobingabout]

could we in the mean time get an option to run this game in windowed/ windowed borderless/ fullscreen options? and a resolution slider?.

for other games i play that dont support ultra widescreen i can at least tell them to run fullscreen 1920X1080 and my display will put black boxes on the side to compensate.

this so far is my only game that has no such options.

There are only two options for factorio.
1: Windows
2: Window borderless.

There is no fullscreen mode, it's a limitation of allegro.


Having said that, they're going to be using SDL and a hand-written Direct X11 or OGL4 graphics engine... Full screen mode COULD be an option if there's significant reason for it. Honestly though, I don't think there needs to be. Other options should be looked into.

[posila]

There is no fullscreen mode, it's a limitation of allegro.

Not really, Allegro does support exclusive fullscreen. It way mainly that we did lot of small hacks in Allegro over the years, that we didn't bother to do on codepaths that we weren't using, so when I tried to enable exclusive fullscreen in 0.15-ish, it was really broken. The major pain was that DirectX 9 reseted all textures when Alt+Tabing from fullscreen, and it was major pain to debug exclusive fullscreen application in DirectX 9 (or at least I didn't know how to do it back then).

Having option to run the game from non-native resolution is something a lot of people could benefit from - so we plan to add exclusive fullscreen support.

[bobingabout]

There is no fullscreen mode, it's a limitation of allegro.

Not really, Allegro does support exclusive fullscreen. It way mainly that we did lot of small hacks in Allegro over the years, that we didn't bother to do on codepaths that we weren't using, so when I tried to enable exclusive fullscreen in 0.15-ish, it was really broken. The major pain was that DirectX 9 reseted all textures when Alt+Tabing from fullscreen, and it was major pain to debug exclusive fullscreen application in DirectX 9 (or at least I didn't know how to do it back then).

Having option to run the game from non-native resolution is something a lot of people could benefit from - so we plan to add exclusive fullscreen support.

I understand. lovely.

[Annihilannic]

Reviving this old thread, I've just run into the same problem with an ultra-wide (32:9) monitor... couldn't figure out why I was seeing *less* than I used to be able to on my 16:9!

There are various clunky zoom mods out there... all I want is to be able to see the same level of detail vertically as I could before... is there still no simple solution (other than Windowed mode - which I dislike for lack of immersion) for this?

The current policy basically makes a square monitor the ideal for Factorio, which makes no sense. I think something like the 200 tile policy is fine, but it should operate on the smaller dimension of the window, whichever that happens to be, or just be tunable?

[cpy]

Soooo any SUW support yet?

[mrvn]

You can install the infinizoom mod and zoom out much much much further. Just don't come back and complain about any UPS/FPS slowdowns.

[cpy]

Infinizoom is laggy on multiplayer, can we finally get native support for extended zoom? I can run factorio at probably 1000+ FPS but I don't play at that high game.speed anyway.

[FuryoftheStars]

Just posting in support of this. I also have a 3440x1440 monitor and find it a pain sometimes when dealing with things on the horizontal.

Good solution for me would be to let player zoom-out so that 200 tiles are visible over the shorter side of the screen, and on the longer side fade tiles beyond "player's vision" to black fog of war.

I think this would be a great solution.

[BlueTemplar]

is there still no simple solution (other than Windowed mode - which I dislike for lack of immersion) for this?

Well, until we get a maximum tiles setting (or "fog of war"), you can always run the game with black borders (aka "pillarboxing"), but monitor or graphic card support tends to be a crapshoot : https://www.wsgf.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=13914

[Tertius]

Having bought a 32x9 monitor myself (it's like 2 2560x1440 monitors merged together) just recently, I was a quite disappointed to actually see less in Factorio instead of more with this fine monitor.

I read the comment about the 100 tile rendering/processing distance, however in editor mode you are able to zoom farther away, and as far as I see there's no impact for me (Windows 10, i7-6700k with GTX 1070). If I buy a monitor of this size, I expect to require higher system resources, and I also expect to benefit from the layout. If there is a performance penalty, it's perfectly fine to get a more powerful CPU if this is required to keep up performance with a bigger screen area.

So I respectfully ask for an option to allow more zoom out in the vanilla game. Don't calibrate the zoom on the horizontal resolution, instead calibrate it on the shorter of (horizontal, vertical).

I cannot even get near nests vertically or horizontally. If they get into my view, I am already attacked. To see what's behind the very near horizon, I need the map. To prepare for a fight, I need to get to the right or to the left of them to have enough visible space. That cannot be right.

Example: I am already too near and already being attacked. One second later the player was dead.

Screenshot 2022-01-11 124804.jpg (2.46 MiB) Viewed 7090 times

[Mskvaer]

Good solution for me would be to let player zoom-out so that 200 tiles are visible over the shorter side of the screen, and on the longer side fade tiles beyond "player's vision" to black fog of war.

+1 from me, and don't let this stop you from implementing it

I presume that the minimap and info will be still drawn on the black part, ie fewer tiles get obscured by menus. Which leads to the next thought (which should be a seperate post?) move all menus (including QuickBar) to the sides for wide aspects