Windowed Resolution Question

I need help with the window resolution... the ingame text looks rather choppy and is an eyesore to look at.

Here is the details..

I'm on Windows 7, the taskbar is set to use "small icons" and from what I can remember, the taskbar looks pretty much like the Vista one at that setting.

My monitor dimension is 1280x1024, which I believe is 4:3?

I edited the game's registry setting for resolution (mainly to double the background resolution so the game looks sharper)and the main resolution is 1280x1024.. the same size as the monitor.

Problem is, in windowed mode since the game is in it's own little box that scales it down a bit, and when I full size it to the screen, which also leaves the taskbar showing at the bottom, its really not at 1280x1024 (being fullscreen)..but rather... being at most of it. Does anybody know what resolution setting I should set it at? So the text is clear? I've tried a few combinations and no luck... @_@

official or unoffical windower?

oh whoops i forgot to mention that..
I'm using the offical windower.
That is an option in the FFXI config tool.

The background resolution is what makes the actual visuals clearer. The normal resolution just changes the window size.

Set the Background resolution to 1024x1024, which should be the highest you can set it to.

Otherwise, you can edit the Registry and set it to up to 2500x2500 (I think).

I used the wiki page on graphics settings to make the changes.. http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Graphics

I doubled the background resolution to make the game look sharper like it shows on that page. It also says that changing that setting has no effect on the chat logs and user interface.

When I was changing the overall screen size it would alter the way the text looks... I've just been unable to determine which number would make the text clear.

I played around with the official windowed mode when it first came out. Overall it is just horrible, i dont think you will be able to get some good settings out of it, at least not like with unofficial windower.

Oh. I misread what you were asking. If you were actually using the windower.net windower, I could help you. What I did was just click the True Fullscreen box. It sort of makes it like it's fullscreen but you can still easily tab out of it and stuff. Graphics all look smooth and un-compressed any everything.

Yar, I'd suggest using unofficial windower, if only for the graphical enhancements.

The 3rd party windower does the same thing.

The problem I'm having is that full sizing the windowed box to fit full screen, which leaves the box outline itself and the Windows 7 taskbar on the screen, forces it to resize to fit the available space on the screen.

Its like taking a Firefox window and clicking the fullsize button, it doesn't literally take up the whole screen to the point where you can't see the taskbar, it resizes itself to the total area above the taskbar.

Trying to find out if theres a number screen size I can set the game registry data at to make the text clear from the resize distortion that obviously occurs.

Eh.. maybe I'll play around with the screen size numbers a bit more, if no success I'll just put it back to normal 1280x1024 and deal with the slightly sluggish looking text.

There's a setting in FFXIConfig that says Overlay Resolution. Setting that higher will improve the resolution of your text, windows and names. I keep mine set on 1024x768 as anything higher than that makes it a pain for me to read (so you definitely shouldn't need to go above what the config program allows using regedit). Its a nice middle ground between sharp image and big letters.

In short, no registry altering necessary for what it sounds like you're trying to accomplish.

Remember that you want your background resolution, which is the one that you should be editing in your registry, to be two equal numbers. This is the resolution that your graphics card will render the game data at before altering to your display settings such as, for instance, monitor resolution. Its not actually the window size that will pop up on your screen. Overlay Resolution controls all windows sizes, including the windowed FFXI. A higher resolution setting there will mean less stretching when you maximize as the window will actually start out bigger.

Any distortion that occurs from maximizing the game window should be relatively minor. If I'm off base on this, perhaps you could post a screen shot of what you're talking about using FRAPS or some similar program so that we can see the problem first hand?