Windowed mode blurry

[psycosmos 0]

Hi there, Arma Community!

While there are some problems with the game it's great fun and the time I sank into the mission editor already scares me.

Well, I'm a fan of windowed mode in games and I've played all games over the last four years using it and it never gave me trouble until ArmA. While some people might not like windowed mode, it does have its advantages ( and disadvantages too, ofc! ).

-Using the windowed mode (by adding "-window" to the Arma.exe Target, as seen here), I've found that the game looks very blurry, as you can see in these two partial and pixel resized to double resolution screenshots (both taken seconds apart, therefore same settings):

this one was taken using Fraps and shows what Arma processes while in windowed mode. It's what should get on the screen, but it doesn't.

now, this one was taken using another capture tool, it shows what actually gets on the screen.

Even the untrained eye might notice the problem.

While the windowed mode surely isn't finished (for example, you can only change the resolution by editing your ArmA.cfg), I still would like to know if this maybe is a specific ATI problem (you can find my specs at the end of my post), not finished implementation, or my PC having some serious software trouble.

Other players who have tried the windowed mode, please share your experience with it and your basic specs (at least graphic hard- and software).

Some things I've already tried: Playing around with most ingame settings like AA and AF, editing ArmA.cfg values related to windowed mode, both to no avail. I won't change my drivers version unless it's proven to help, because everything else works fine and as you should know: "never touch a running system".

-Also, another gripe I'm having with the game: It looks like it changes its sound settings by changing the value the windows "wave" output is set to (i. e. change everthing ingame to 50% and the "wave" output in your Sound Play Control will go to 50% if you start the game. If the Play Control doesn't show the change imidiatly, close and reopen it).

This is not so good for some reasons: It's not possible to listen to music on your computer that is louder than the game (while working on editing a mission for example), also you probably can't set Voice Software like teamspeak or ventrillo to a higher volume than the game itself because ArmA just lowers the Volume for every Wave source on the system.

I've found a little workaround for this problem by setting one value in ArmA to 100%, I've used music because there simply isn't much music to listen to.

Ye olde specs:

German retail version of the game, patched to 1.02

Athlon XP 2800+ on Asus A7N8X

Saphire Radeon 1600pro 256MB, Omega 3.8.291 (always gave me less trouble than Ati drivers)

Windows XP Prof. SP2 with all the updates and streamlined to low use of ram by not starting useless services and so on.

1,5 GB Kingston Value Ram, Maxtor 6Y160P0 Harddrive, LG generic DVD-Rom

[Millenium7 0]

I use window mode for mission editting and theres no problem. I'm using a geforce 6600GT

as for the audio yes its annoying and I hope BIS fixes it, I also hope they add another slider 'voice adjustment' that when set to below 100% will drop all ingame sound/music to this percentage when someone on teamspeak/ventrillo/built in voip speaks and return to normal when they shut up. In OFP you either had to deal with migraine inducing volume levels on ts/vent or OFP's volume on a whisper to hear anyone

[fasad 1]

Windowed mode works fine for me, all graphics settings seem to behave as they would in fullscreen. I launched ArmA using the following parameters: -window -x=1024 -y=768

Demo 5116

Asus Radeon 9600 XT 128MB, ATI drivers 7.1

21" CRT

[troop 0]

No problems here in windowed mode.

German version, patched 1.02

1024x768

1152x864

1280x1024

tested.

Opt165@2.8GHz

MSI K8N Neo2 Platinium

2GB G-Skill HZ

NVidia Geforce 7800GS+ 512MB AGP (93.81)

Raptors (16MB)

Audigy 2 ZS

terrain low

rest normal

low postprocess and shadow detail

no AA (but 16xAF forced with nhancer)

playing 1280x1024 fullscreen; HDR=16

Viewdistance 1000-2000 (depends; ground or flying)

min 15 / mid 25 / max 37

[papa-lenin 0]

I have the same problem... windowed mode is blurry no matter what settings I set.

Gainward GF7800GS+ 512MB (7900GT on AGP) drivers: Official 93.71

Athlon64 3400+

1GB RAM Kingston CL 2,5

MSI K8N Neo Platinum

Edit: Upgrading drivers to 93.81 Beta didn't help.

[mattxr 9]

i have no problem in window mode with

Quote[/b] ]-window -x=1024 -y=768

GeForce 7600 GT

[desertfox 2]

Erm .. I might be wrong but I figure the guys who encounter problems in windowed mode are using TFT's ?

EDIT: On a second thought it might also have got something to do with Cleartype font smoothing ..

[papa-lenin 0]

I've made comparison screenshots. It looks like image is gettng shrinked a little, causing effect similar to rescalling resolution on LCD monitors.

http://img248.imageshack.us/img248....MG]

Changing font settings in Windows didn't help.

[mattxr 9]

ive got a big LCD and i rescaled down to 1024-768 and was perfect.

[december 0]

No problem here. I use ArmA Launcher to open in windowed mode which I think runs at my desktop resolution 1024X768

x1600Pro

[psycosmos 0]

Thanks for the quick responses everybody!

After the first two posts I assumed it's a driver problem because nobody with a Ati Card had the same problems, uninstalled Omega drivers (inc. driver cleaner and manually checking the registry for leftovers), but official 7.1 and 6.12 drivers produced the same problem so far. With another User having the same problem with a nvidia card, drivers can probably be ruled out anyway (tried different driver settings like forcing AA&AF on or off and worse mip mapping and texture settings on driverside too).

Erm .. I might be wrong but I figure the guys who encounter problems in windowed mode are using TFT's ?

EDIT: On a second thought it might also have got something to do with Cleartype font smoothing ..

<span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%'>Yes, I'm using a widescreen TFT, but I've had a hard time to imagine how it could be its fault, it kinda looks like if you let the monitor upscale a signal, just smoother, but since it's in a window, it would be something like a partial upscale, wich I realy doubt that it is even possible for the TFT itself. Still, I will give my old CRT a try, it's a possibility that can't be ruled out 100%. Thanks for the input.

Thought about cleartype too, sad thing is, I had turned everything that enhances windows graphicaly (and therefore uses system resources) off anyway, but maybe I shouldn't do that because I make my windows unhappy (I wish I was kidding). On close inspection of my screenshots I've already thought that it just looks like the "smoothing threatment" the text in arma gets (don't know how the type originaly looks, but I asume it's rather sharp), just applied to the whole screen once again. Here's something to show what I mean:

Interestingly "Geschw." looks almost the same, while FFAR gets more of the treatment, strange.</span>

I've made comparison screenshots. It looks like image is gettng shrinked a little, causing effect similar to rescalling resolution on LCD monitors.

<span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%'>Yeah, that's exactly how my editor looks too. Every single pixel wide line bloated up to two or three pixels and so on. I've already played around with the values for window mode added in ArmA.cfg

<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">winX=16;

winY=32;

winW=1280;

winH=720;

winDefW=1280;

winDefH=720;

because I thought that the image doesn't fit the window and somehow gets scaled to the correct size. But I've also found that the programmed picture and the window both seem to have the correct size (not that that realy means this can't be the problem).

And what does winX and winY do anyway? Something with the axes ofc, but the values change in a way that I couldn't find a logical explenation for them so far, in another cfg backup they have both a value around 50, for the same resolution.

Well, I'll try to be a good beta tester and just continue with what I'm doing. http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/wink_o.gif' alt='wink_o.gif'>

My last resort would be a clean windows install, but going through all the ridicule reactivation processes ( I'm looking at you, native instruments! ) for my soundsoftware probably takes more time than playing around with settings anyway.

Maybe re-installing the game isn't a bad idea, but I doubt it's the problem, running as good as the game tends to run on such a low end machine, no crashes and I've tested fresh configs anyway. But yeah, you never know.

Thanks again, it's "good" to not be alone on this issue.

Speaking about bugs, looks like the forum sets the textsize for a quote and the rest of the post after it to 0, instead to the size of 1 that it uses as default for posts. They're surrounding us!</span>

[desertfox 2]

Okay that's creepy. I had the same thing yesterday with all 2D overlays .. but while running full-screen on a CRT.

All the menus looked blurry - I especially noticed it when the loading screens showed up, with the Arma logo on the lower left. It looked like washed out.

It's gone again now though.. and I have no idea what caused it.

Another thought on the problem with the windowed mode blurriness .. I thought about something to the effect of different settings in the gfx card control panel for 2D and 3D enhancements. Not sure about the nVidia cards, but the ATi control center offers different settings for Desktop and Fullscreen applications. Maybe one's set to application controlled while the other one ain't ? Worth checking it out maybe.

[fasad 1]

Maybe it could be caused by different aspect ratios in the game settings, game window size and windows desktop aspect ratio??

Try starting ArmA in windowed mode using the command parameters rather than messing with the config.

[jasono 0]

Strange.

I always work in window mode, and its never blurry. I also manually drag the corner to the size I want, so its always a random ratio. When editing etc I make a smallish window.

My desktop resolution is 1440x900 and im on an LCD widescreen monitor with a nvidia gf 7500.

[kikinchaz 0]

Disable or Lower Anti Aliasing. Anti Aliasing often causes blurring in games...dunno why.

[psycosmos 0]

Okay that's creepy. I had the same thing yesterday with all 2D overlays .. but while running full-screen on a CRT.

All the menus looked blurry - I especially noticed it when the loading screens showed up, with the Arma logo on the lower left. It looked like washed out.

It's gone again now though.. and I have no idea what caused it.

Another thought on the problem with the windowed mode blurriness .. I thought about something to the effect of different settings in the gfx card control panel for 2D and 3D enhancements. Not sure about the nVidia cards, but the ATi control center offers different settings for Desktop and Fullscreen applications. Maybe one's set to application controlled while the other one ain't ? Worth checking it out maybe.

Might've been a different problem, because here everything gets washed up, including polygons, their borders/textures and all 2D sprites for the trees further away and such, as all the 2D overlays.

As far as I've seen my drivers only differentiate "desktop" from "fullscreen 3D" in Color profiles, other games are sharp in windowed mode too, it's only ArmA that shows this behaviour. But you're right, it's worth checking out :)

Maybe it could be caused by different aspect ratios in the game settings, game window size and windows desktop aspect ratio??

Try starting ArmA in windowed mode using the command parameters rather than messing with the config.

Because I use 2 Monitors with different aspect ratios (4:3 and 16:10) that's one of the first things I've tried.

By command parameters, do you mean the "-window" and "-x= / -y=" added to the ArmA Shortcut? That's what I did, don't know if you can start windowed only with config settings (i.e. without the "-window" added to the start). I've also tried deleting window mode related config settings, changed them, used clean configs, to no avail.

Disable or Lower Anti Aliasing. Anti Aliasing often causes blurring in games...dunno why.

didn't help, see OP :(

Judging from your posts in UK Release Version you may've got the same Problem. It's easy to find out by starting windowed mode and making a screenshot by using "Print Screen" and pasting the image in a picture application, take another one with fraps and compare the two shoots enlarged at like 4:1, the difference should be huge, like in the OP.

[desertfox 2]

'Couple thoughts for the brainstorming ..

Refresh rates ?

V-sync ?

Did you try getting drivers for the TFT from the manufacturer site, or do you use the windows plug'n play driver ?

Anyone with a CRT affected by this issue ?

Do only people with CRT dual display setups experience it ?

[psycosmos 0]

'Couple thoughts for the brainstorming ..

Refresh rates ?

V-sync ?

Did you try getting drivers for the TFT from the manufacturer site, or do you use the windows plug'n play driver ?

Anyone with a CRT affected by this issue ?

Do only people with CRT dual display setups experience it ?

Since I play on low fps, it probably gives me an unplayable result if I turn v-sync on, but that's no reason to not try it, thanks.

The biggest Problem with the TFT I have is that it's exactly the same if I use my "old school" CRT, but since I've always used both monitors together, I'll give it a try and disconnect the TFT for a session (with restart of windows), gotta try different drivers than the plug and play ones too. Maybe I'll borrow another Monitor too, just for checking it out.

Btw, it's a cheap LCD and has only VGA in, so no DVI involved (at least I didn't have to pay for it, would've bought a different one myself). Since Screenshots with Fraps look fine I assume the Problem happens somewhere in the process of getting the Output of the game on the Screen, but probably already leaves the graphics card blurry, as my CRT has shown me. Either it's Windows, or a problem that all the three drivers that I've tested share with certain windows settings (or maybe ArmA), or ArmA itself, or a funny combination off all the three, oh the joy. :)

[churowero 0]

hi guys, i have the same problem here, but in fullscreen mode, and a rarely blurry effect

here some screenshot i take:

http://xs414.xs.to/xs414....mg]

http://xs414.xs.to/xs414....mg]

http://xs414.xs.to/xs414....mg]

i don't know how this things happens, but on some alt+tab i get this issue

mi rigg

gforce 6600gt

amd64 3200

1.75 Gig. ram

arma 505games + 1.05

LCD screen