Civ 5: Adjusting Font Size/HUD size

[Goldribbon]

I can't seem to find an answer yet ... playing Civ 5 on a HDMI powered 32 inch VIZIO LCD. Beautiful, but problems:

The fonts are way too small to read.

The display is also wonky (size wise). I turned off auto-sizing that made some things larger.

I can't really zoom in that far ... it still is small on this resolution.

How can I fix this, especially font size?

I know that most people are not playing at my resolution, but in this day and age, I would think a good percentage are.

Thanks for suggestions!

 

[SmegInThePants]

I'm no expert, but I've used some large tv's as computer monitors myself:

try hooking up via vga, if your tv has a vga input.

Windows will probably think you have a generic analog monitor and you'll have to manually set your resolution, and it might limit you to 1600x1200 unless you make a custom resolution (can do so w/nvidia cards at least). I'm told a free program called powerstrip can do the same thing if one has a graphics card that can't already do it. Some games don't recognize custom resolutions, but civ5 seems to, so ya should be able to get any resolution your tv supports.

Your tv will probably no longer be auto-detected by windows, however, if you go via vga, so make sure you are in a supported resolution under 1600x1200 before switching the cable over. Then switch back to what you want after the switch.

trouble w/hdmi is many tv's will think its a tv signal and resize the image so that some of it is off screen, and w/many of these tv's you can't adjust it, the tv keeps re-adjusting it to be larger than your screen so parts are off screen. Colors are off on some tv's too via hdmi making things look fuzzy and whatnot. If ya hook up via vga, however, this tends not be a prob (or at least can be adjusted, most tv's w/vga inputs allow picture adjustment for that signal, shrinking, expanding, move left, move right etc.., just like a computer monitor, that they may not have available for hdmi input).

make sure whatever resolution you use its the same ratio as your monitor's native resolution, in the least, and try using the native resolution itself if fonts are fuzzy in other resolutions.

 

[Sherlock]

If you go into options you can make them SMALLER.

You know, when I told Firaxis I wanted adjustable fonts in Civ V that is NOT what I had in mind - making them SMALLER.

Blue Marble, we need you....

 

[Tylerryan79]

If your playing on a high res on a big tv it's always hard to read small text. On a 22" moniter it's no problem, but the larger you go the harder it will be to read. Also the zoom only goes so far this time around. To read text try changing to a lower resolution, your just going to have to go through trial and error.

I somtimes play on my 42" plasma, and cannot read a thing. I find that 1600x900 works, sometimes even lower if it's late and I'm tired, all the squinting doesn't help me stay awake .

 

[chopster]

How close are you to the screen?
In the demo all fonts looked fine at 1920*1200 on my 28 inch monitor, but that is on my desktop not at TV viewing distance.

 

[Goldribbon]

Chopster:

About 6 feet away. I like to lay in my lazy-boy with my feet almost touching the screen. But I have gotten used to running the OS at like double font size.

T79:

I have Win 7 set up so the the fonts are really large and very readable, even high-res. It just seemed like there has to be some way I could scale Civ 5.

Sherlock:

I hear you.

Smeg:

Actually, I haven't had any problems you mentioned. I was worried about that when I first tried the new Vizio-TV monitor. But when I plugged the Vizio via HDMI into my new Win 7 machine, it auto-detected it perfectly. And it has run flawlessly since that time. Some of my friends who work in IT didn't think it would work as well but it has. I made them all jealous when they saw my rig.

Btw, my rig for Civ 5: 2 8-core Xeons (16 cores total), 12 Gig of Ram, ATI HD5800, Dual monitor (1 32" Vizio, 1 20" Dell) so everything rocks except that I'd like to increase font size and the interface by like 30%.