Stupid retina / HiDPI / resolution question

[alttrash]

Hi!

I'm probably stupid, but I can't understand anything regarding the resolution change in Civ5 [vanilla] on my 15" RETINA MBP.

Ideally, I would like to play in 2880xwhatever since it means high level of details to me, and a large portion of the map is visible.
Unfortunately, it appears very pixellated to me. The pixels in the game are really visible and the map does not seem "larger".

I've tried 1440x900, it "seems to look better" as pixel are much less visible, but everything is somewhat blurred, in particular in the menu/interface. But I don't really notice a major change in the game itself.

Also, it seems that the resolution you're coming from in OS X (I mean "Best for retina" or "More space" in the System Preferences) seems to change the look of the menus resolution in Civ5 !?!

Honestly what is the HiDPI mode in Civ5??? shouldn't I be able to get a very high def? Currently i only get pixellated graphics and quite choppy UI...

 

[CGPanama]

Alttrash,

Welcome. There are two settings for screen resolution with the following names:
2880 x 1800 (HiDPI)
2560 x 1600 (HiDPI)

Which take advantage of the Retina Display while compensating for the higher resolution so that objects do not appear tiny (which happened after the Retina MBPs first came out) but instead appear as if the screen is 1440 x 900 and 1280 x 800 respectively. They should not appear pixellated and the biggest problem might be if you do not have enough processor/RAM the system can get bogged down with the extreme resolution.

 

[alttrash]

I've noticed those 2 resolutions marked as HiDPI. But do you really find them nice to look at? (I don't talk about slow graphics here, just beauty!)

HiDPI applications on OS X are beautiful to look at, with very sharp graphics.
In Civ5, I can't find anything sharp, but even more pixelated!!!

 

[CGPanama]

I would not argue that they are particularly "beautiful". The app has obviously been programmed with a limited range of resolution on objects based on the graphics set for the Mac, just like in DirectX 9 on Windows. I find the experience to be almost identical between the two on the MBPwR.

 

[Somian]

I have an even bigger problem:

I'm playing on an iMac and it seems that even on desktop machines they force you to use hiDPI mode, so the game looks like this to me now since a recent update:

http://cl.ly/TVMP

help!

 

[jpinoniemi]

My Civ5 looked bad on my MBP 15 Retina until I changed my OS Display settings. I use:

Resolution: Scaled
More Space

After changing that Civ looks great. Hope this helps.