Enabled higher resolution on background textures. Game looks amazing. Look to see how

[Joshua]

What do you mean by pushing it until "it's just painful to use"?

So then, assuming background resolution can be raised virtually without limit, why do so many people use 2048x2048? Why not go higher?

[Ellipses]

Because a lot of people play at 1024x768, probably, and pushing it higher than double can start to degrade performance, depending on the hardware. Although I don't see where there are any numbers on how many people use 2048x2048. (Incidentally, those values also don't have to match; I've never gotten any better performance out of making it square vs. just doubling resolution in both directions.)

[Feba]

I'm not exactly sure what Mhurron is talking about, but he's probably talking about some visual effect caused by trying to squeeze ten pounds of pixels into a one pound screen. there's also the glitches it can cause-- for example, I once turned mine up too high, and it caused the background to be very flickery, and replace parts of it with a chalkboard pattern, because my graphics card couldn't keep up. It was impossible to use.

why do so many people use 2048x2048? Why not go higher?

Diminishing returns, hardware requirements. Turning the resolution up to infinity isn't going to make the game look that much better. It will make your computer run much slower, and again likely cause the problems Mhurron was referring to.

[Joshua]

Then, is there any benefit to doubling the background resolution (versus the overlay resolution) on both axes? I mean, is there any reason that the guide I linked to doubled the resolution on both axes, instead of changed the resolution by some other multiplier (triple, quadruple, just some random number, etc.)?

[Ellipses]

Doubling the overlay resolution doesn't really make a heck of a lot of sense, since the monitor is not twice as big as itself.

Doubling the background resolution gives you fake anti-aliasing, which is what most people are after when they're doing this. Tripling or quadrupling it would likely slow the game down too much for most people to bother. And doing things in strange multiples (like 1.5x or something) is just weird and doesn't look as good.

As far as doubling the width and then using that value in both dimensions (2048x2048), instead of doubling the width and then doubling the height (2048x1536), I really don't know why people go with the first option. It may be that on certain hardware, that works better. Or it may be that it used to be required on certain hardware, and now it's just how everyone does it, especially since the resolutions you can set through the provided settings app are square. Or maybe they only want to multiply once instead of twice. Personally, I've always gotten better performance out of just doubling each dimension (2048x1536, or, in my case, 2880x1800). YMMV.

[Joshua]

When I said "doubling the background resolution (versus the overlay resolution)", I meant "setting the background resolution to be twice the size of the overlay resolution on both axes". You still answered my question, though. And I understand the overlay resolution stuff you mentioned in the beginning of your post, anyway.

Really, I just wanted to know why people double it (instead of just make it larger by some other value), and why people render it square. Now I understand why people double it (looks good without hampering performance too much), and that it's not necessary to make it square, even though people do.

When I get the game, I might just double it...Or set the background resolution to the same as my overlay resolution. I'll play around with it, though.

Thanks, all.