UI on a 4K Monitor

Hello fellow EQ stans:

Thinking of getting a 40"+ 4k monitor and am curious if anyone else out there has one.

The UI is bad enough (re: hard to read) on my Surface Pro 4 because everything becomes so minute (spell gems, right-click spell selection menus, etc.), so I'm wondering how those of you with a 4k monitor are coping with the size of the UI elements. Is there any way to make the UI scale with resolution? Any custom UIs that are 4k friendly? Or do you just play in full screen?

Thanks for the input!

12 inch monitor? i guess it would be hard to see anything.
anything cheap enough HDMI, 27 inch is fine. Asus etc..

Unless you dont mind throwing the bucks out. Remember it has i think a 30fps cap, you have to unlock if i am not mistaken on most 4k monitors. Not much info on it until you see the video lag.

Huh??? I don't think you quite understood.

Try changing the resolution of EQ in fullscreen mode on your monitor. As the resolution goes up, the UI elements get smaller. And considering things are small enough on my Surface (with a 2736x1824 resolution), a 4k monitor will basically HALF the size of them now.

It has nothing to do with monitor size. A 27" monitor at 4k resolution would have the same problem, things would be microscopic.

The resolution of 4k is 3840x2160. This means that all of the UI elements are extremely small. I.e.: A spell gem, which is a few tens of pixels by a few tens of other pixels, is the size of a pencil eraser.

I'm asking if anyone has a UI or any other optimizations for making EQ playable at 4k resolution.

right click a UI element (for example, a hotbar) Click button size.drag scroll bar to the right. Bingo, larger hotbar.

/edit - theis only seems to work with hotbars sorry i'm not more useful.

Unfortunately I don't think anyone does, the issue i notice is the opposite is making UI more comfortable on other reso's esp wide screens. By default they seem too big for everyone other screen. They need to completely re-overhaul the UI frankly.
Making things more scale able. I hate to admit it but I like how the UI is done in Vanguard Saga of Heroes, NWNnline and WoW

I may equally be misunderstanding but... you did say your going from a surface pro screen to a 40 INCH monitor correct. Some of your worries about resolution size will be countered by the dramatic increase in surface area. I don't actually think I'd like playing on a monitor that big. I've been thinking of upgrading from my 21 inch ( which works perfectly fine) to a 27 just to have a slightly bigger actual playing screen.

the hotbar gets larger but the text does not.

Depending how close the 40 inch monitor is it may be fine. With a 29 inch monitor I still find the text too small in hotboxes and in the typing pane at 4k resolution. /chatfontsize 8 only works on the reading panes of message windows.

My main monitor is a 27" 1080p panel which is the perfect resolution. I was using the Surface for comparison since it has a much higher resolution.

Guess no one uses a 4k panel :\ I think I'll bite the bullet and buy one anyway.

43" or 48" is now the question

Well keep in mind 4k is still fairly new and not much content for it, it's also still quite expensive. I imagine most EQ people are on old 10 year old potato PC's so they probably wont be running the game in 4k


I'm not sure how heavy the UI has to be made to look nice for it, it might be something on Daybreaks side, especially since you can only make the chat so large font wise even for chat windows.

No idea if you plan to use the new monitor with your surface pro, or a desktop system, however, you should be able to set resolution, from in game options> display> video mode. Obviously a 40" screen would make things much larger, and your video range will allow game settings within it.

There are some UI's out there for larger resolution displays. Check out eqinterface.com for them.

AYA UI has some different resolution packages on their UI.

http://www.eqinterface.com/downloads/fileinfo.php?id=5518

I run the game in 4k reso using the standard ui. Here's how it looks.. note I couldn't find a site that would allow me to upload the full reso picture but I believe this still gives an idea of how it looks. My monitor is 27" and EQ is totally playable with 4k from a normal monitor workstation distance.

Not sure how old you are Supafro but I definitely have to concentrate to read the words on any hot buttons or anything I type in the typing portion of the message windows since the font size cannot be changed with /chatfontsize . Is it playable. Sure. Would it be better if text in the hotboxes and the typing pain could be enlarged. For me and probably some others yes it would be

To increase the font on your UI window pieces, you'll need to copy the default UI into a custom folder, if you use the default UI or else the patcher will just overwrite your changes. Find your Everquest folder, then uifiles. Create a folder in there, no spaces or symbols in the name. Open up your default folder, hit ctrl a. Then ctrl c. Go back to the custom folder you created, open it up, ctrl v. Once it's done copying files over, find the .xml files for the windows you want to increase the font for. For example, EQUI_PlayerWindow.xml.

You'll need a editor that can edit XML files. I use editplus. It's basically HTML. Anyways, once you open up the file, you can do a search for whatever font size you want to change. The font code looks like this <Font>2</Font>. The values are usually 3 and below. The larger the number, the bigger the font. Just do a search and replace if you want to change all the font in a file.

http://www.eqinterface.com/downloads/index.php?


Note, I do not use that large of a resolution but this may help.

Note, I do better when I use selected specific UI pieces and putting those pieces in a separate folder, and have learned out to edit them. Complete sets are okay, until the author no longer plays, thus no more updates.

/chatfontsize 0 to 5 in a chat window then resize those windows
In the Options Windows Alt O, you can also change the font type.

On the standard hotbuttons, you can also make them larger while in game. Mouse Right Click on an empty space of a hotbar, select Button Size and move the slider or input a number. Default is 100 for 100% so that hotbar can be increased or decreased. Just tested mine, it allows me to increase it via slider by 175%, or decrease it by 40%.

I use a customized spell bar that shows both name and spell icon, and have learned how to enlarge it.

I also use a command that moves the 3D portion of the screen to cover part of the screen, allowing most of my UI pieces to be located in the black locations without covering up the game graphics

I set these up as a hotkey command
First two numbers are the X and Y locations. 130 over from the left size, no drop in Y axis.. Note that is 130+130 = 260

The 2nd set of numbers is the size of the 3D screen resolution itself. 1660 wide. And to make the sides have an even amount of space, 1920-260 = 1660. The 900 is the Y axis. Since my the first set of # had 0 for the Y axis, my screen has a black space on the bottom of the screen and two equal black spaces on the sides.

Again, a different hotbutton for each of these.
/viewport reset (this resets to default 3D resolution)

/viewport 130 0 1660 900

/viewport 0 0 1920 900 - This one is noted as weird/testing

I changed the bottom left chat font to 10 just for reference. Also this pic is posted in full 4k.

Supafro, can you post one showing the hotbars at a larger resolution using the directions I listed in my previous post? One of his main concerns was reading the hotbuttons.

The boxes get larger but the text size stays the same when you enlarge the buttons. Tried that one myself.

If the OP is using a 40 inch monitor at standard desktop distances the text might just be large enough to be easily readable on buttons and the writing pane. I find that on a 29 inch wide screen that the text on buttons and the writing pane are just a bit to small to quickly read and I have to concentrate on it a bit more which can slow me down some.

Okay, I see that now.

OP, locate UIFILES folder. Right click on that folder and select create a new folder (if you are not currently using a customized UI pieces.

Locate EQUI_HotButtonWnd.xml in your EQ/UIFILES/Default folder and copy it to your customized folder. Right click, open w/Notepad. Edit, Replace and input the following on FIND WHAT:
<Font>1
And change that 1 to a 3 (or a larger number than 1. The words in the right click descriptions are in a Font 2 size), so in the Replace with it looks like the following.
<Font>3

Save file.
Alt O, and select load UI and select the customized name of the folder you had created. That will change the font size for you, then all you would need to do is resize the hotbutton boxes itself in game.