Text size on HD screens

marcus2704 · 21 May 2015 at 23:14

My gaming time is spent on my PC with a 47" Samsung LED Smart TV. I am finding that on many games, some of the text within them is near impossible to read due to it being so small on high resolution.

I imagine PC games are made with gamers who sit right in front of a monitor in mind, rather than living room gamers that sit 10 feet away of which a console is designed for and I expect there is nothing that can be done about this other than move closer to the screen or lower the resolution.

Is there anything in windows that can help with this, or is it entirely dependant on the game?

Cliste · 22 May 2015 at 01:09

A pair of binoculars should do the trick.

Vinno · 22 May 2015 at 01:34

I assume you're playing at 1080p?

Are your eyes ok?

Rroff · 22 May 2015 at 01:34

Depends on the game - some have ui dpi/scaling options but most don't.

spoffle · 22 May 2015 at 01:41

Vinno said:
I assume you're playing at 1080p?

Are your eyes ok?

This!

SonniLombardi · 22 May 2015 at 01:48

I also do same as OP but with a 42" LED TV, got my rig plugged into it in my bedroom, wireless mouse/controller and pad, some games I must admit the text is small, such as Diablo 3, Marvel Heroes, but most are fine, I'm not that far away from the screen though...

I don't think there is anything apart from lowering resolution to make the text bigger to be honest.

marcus2704 · 22 May 2015 at 06:29

I admit my eyes aren't brilliant but I've asked other people whose are that also tell me text is alone games is virtually illegible from a living room seating distance of 6-8ft. The Witcher 3, GTA5, Wolfenstein all examples of games that have text which is tiny on 1080p screens. I am soon to buy a 4k screen which I imagine will only magnify the problem.

sprite1275 · 22 May 2015 at 06:34

Same here, I'm on a 50" Sony but I just push the sofa closer to the screen when this happens.

Haggisman · 22 May 2015 at 06:53

No problems here, 42" screen, about 2m away, text in windows is sometimes a bit fuzzy, but I think that's more to do with the screen.

picnic · 22 May 2015 at 08:13

I've recently moved from a 42" Full HD TV to a 40" 4K monitor. I didn't really struggle before but I do badly on the new 4K monitor, and I'm probably sitting 18" closer to it.

And it's not just text that doesn't scale, in Assetto Corsa you get these red triangles to show when a car is beside you, these don't seem to scale and are minuscule at 4K.

However some in game graphics are just awesome with that better pixel density

Digit · 22 May 2015 at 12:12

I'm also in the same boat with a 48" TV and my Intel NUC connected to it in my living room. The one thing i did have a mess about with (on somebody else's advice) was Windows Scaling. The problem is though, that it wants to change the resolution too which causes parts of the screen to be cut off or it ends up with a completely wrong resolution alltogether.

Its a great little setup for Steam streaming, Kodi and everything else except when it comes to reading text on say web pages or in general. I know there are zoom options or accessiblity options but it just makes for a lot of fiddling about. Even more so when you're trying to control it all via a Logitech K830 keyboard...