Best screensize for faf

Hi all,

I would like to get some of your experiences regarding optimal screen setups for faf + maybe streaming.

I tried a 32incher but I see the following problems:

• you need to move head to see all so grasping all takes longer
• resolution is too high so rescaling needs to take place for HD streaming. check out foleys stream it looks shit as a result

27inch:

• I find full HD on 27inch ugly you see pixels, and you need to be farther away from the screen and I dont have unlimited desk space. but otherwise its kinda a nice size for a screen. Does 27inch 4k yield a better overview? is it better for faf?
• are there convienient solutions that allow to rescale the output to HD so that stream viewers in 1920x1080 have a good experience?

24inch:

currently my choice. why: because you see everything at once and it looks decent at 1920x1080 which is the best streaming solution.

@competitive players
is there any benefit to higher resolutions? do you see more, or quicker, or do you have a better overview that can maybe improve your gameplay? asking for a friend.

What are your experiences?

Thanks and regards,
BENNIS

i use a 27 inch 4k screen at a distance of about 2 foot, i play at 2560 x 1440 res with no ui scaling that seems to be the sweet spot for me

The software OBS Studio does quite a good job on Windows: it has all kinds of integrations and it is open source. You can easily rescale the output with that software, there are tutorials out there to help you out . For more information: https://obsproject.com/

With regard to the screen, that is all personal preference and I have no real opinion on that.

I have 32' 4K monitor and I play with 1,5 UI scale. No problem and Im surely not moving my head to see stuff.

@Jip isn't there an issue when dividing by a non multiple of 2? Not sure how smart you can make your scaling algorithm. But 1440p would be an issue then.
Regarding screen ratios. I think a 4:3 monitor would be perfect for playing and you could fill out the sidebars with chat and or minimap in obs when resizing to 16:9 for stream output. But where do you get a modern 4:3 monitor?

27 inch with 2k resolution is the perfect balance

Does anyone have experience with the ultra wide screen and FAF?

35" ultra wide works really nicely with FA, obviously you can see more or use split screen. For streaming purposes might not be optimal like bennis pointed out too.

looks at my laptop...

I have a middlin' 34" ultrawide and stream at native 2560x1080p using the NVENC encoder. At the maximum twitch bitrate, it uses <1Mbit/s and any scaling issues are avoided. Yes, people with 4:3 aspect ratio screens are going to get black bars, but that's their problem. I don't stream for money and can't be arsed about subs and bits and whatnot, but it's something to keep in mind if you have a commercial interest in it.

I specifically got a 1080p monitor because I wanted to dual-screen with my old 27"er, but it turns out the setup is just too wide for the nook where I sit. I /should/ have gone for 1280 or more vertical pixels in hindsight, but I can live with it. Needless to say, I could never return to a smaller screen size for FAF, the increased viewport is just so much nicer and improves your situational awareness.

One problem I did have was that the default UI layout is not workable for me - the resource bars at the top left are basically out of your ocular angle and you don't even see it flashing red. MovableUI mod sorted that out for me, I now place my stuff towards the center of the screen and it works well. Even though the mod has some issues, I couldn't go without it even on a smaller screen I think.

Oh - I'm using a GTX970 for playing and encoding and it's powerful enough even at the highest quality settings I can configure. My bottleneck is my processor really - I only have 4c/4t and would recommend at least 4c/8t for creating a quality stream with overlays and allsorts.