Resolution Limit Under Mac OS?

[Lutra]

I've just started the game on my Mac Book Pro, and for some reason the game won't let me pick resloutions other than 1024x768, 1280x800 and 1440x900. All of which look crappy on a retnia display.

Is this by design or a bug?

System specs:
MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014)
Mac OS 10.13.6
2.5 GHz Intel Core i7
16GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2048 MB
Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB

[skill issue]

i have same macbook. can u tell if game runs good?
after u resolve ur issue
thanks

[benmann]

I have the same problem

[Yohmi]

No, it's not by design, I use a MacBook Pro touchbar 2017, and I'm using a higher resolution, without doing anything special.
Four possibilities I can think of.

• it's a limitation of your hardware (1) because of a bug (I don't know !), you might need to manually enable your discrete graphic card (by disabling auto-switch in macOS' Settings > Power Saving)

• it's a limitation of your hardware (2), your integrated and discrete graphic cards both can't handle a higher resolution for the game (sounds surprising though, it usually allows you to do it, even with very bad results)

• I'm running macOS Mojave Public Beta, maybe there's an issue with the engine that Mojave fixes

• this one is more like a workaround I've been using with some bad macOS ports, forcing a high non-retina resolution. For this, you can use DisplayMenu (available on the Mac App Store for free). There, you are able to pick various screen resolutions, retina and non-retina. The best is to pick the real unscaled resolution of your screen (2880x1800), and then launch the game, it should now allow you to pick every resolution up to 2880x1800. The only drawback of this workaround is that it messes up your Dashboard and desktop layout (not harming any data of course, but it can end misplaced when you revert to your "retina" resolution).

[benmann]

Thanks for taking the time to troubleshoot, however other resolutions are available when plugged into a monitor. I could get 4K when it was plugged into my tv and higher resolution when plugged into a HD monitor, it just doesn’t recognise the native resolution. This makes me think it’s a bug as it can’t be a hardware limitation if it allows higher resolutions when plugged into a monitor.

[YT GamingTux]

does this help?

-screen-width yourwidth -screen-height yourheight

start option for the game in steam

or try -show-screen-selector maybe there are more options for you

[benmann]

Originally posted by YouTube.GTuxTV:

does this help?

-screen-width yourwidth -screen-height yourheight

start option for the game in steam

or try -show-screen-selector maybe there are more options for you

I don't understand what you've asked to try... is there some option to select the screen size before you open the game?

[benmann]

I'm wondering if it is something specific to this particular Mac build as I have the exact same specs

[benmann]

Shame it wasn't fixed with the update. Surely can't be difficult to fix and it's not a hardware fault as it has higher resolutions available when connected to an external monitor

[Yohmi]

Originally posted by benmann:

Shame it wasn't fixed with the update. Surely can't be difficult to fix and it's not a hardware fault as it has higher resolutions available when connected to an external monitor

It's actually a very common issue with macOS games, so it might not be as easy as you think. Could be something related to the engine. macOS is such a sandbox, it allows 2880x1800 for some contents (video, images), scales other elements… I wouldn't be surprised it's a a mix between Apple not caring at all about video games, and engine companies not caring much about macOS 😛
In the meantime, Display Menu solves the issue, and it's free. You can also select "more room" in macOS' settings, so you'll have access to 1680x1050 (and to be honest, higher res will be hard for a MBP unless it's a 2018 one maybe — also, the UI isn't vector, it's not rendered at 2880x1800 anyway).

After playing with most options, now I play in 1440x900 in maximum quality mode, and because I play like 60cm away from the screen, it's totally fine. I'm too busy managing the hospital anyway 😛 I prefer the lighting quality over sharpness.

[benmann]

Originally posted by Yohmi:

Originally posted by benmann:

Shame it wasn't fixed with the update. Surely can't be difficult to fix and it's not a hardware fault as it has higher resolutions available when connected to an external monitor

It's actually a very common issue with macOS games, so it might not be as easy as you think. Could be something related to the engine. macOS is such a sandbox, it allows 2880x1800 for some contents (video, images), scales other elements… I wouldn't be surprised it's a a mix between Apple not caring at all about video games, and engine companies not caring much about macOS 😛
In the meantime, Display Menu solves the issue, and it's free. You can also select "more room" in macOS' settings, so you'll have access to 1680x1050 (and to be honest, higher res will be hard for a MBP unless it's a 2018 one maybe — also, the UI isn't vector, it's not rendered at 2880x1800 anyway).

After playing with most options, now I play in 1440x900 in maximum quality mode, and because I play like 60cm away from the screen, it's totally fine. I'm too busy managing the hospital anyway 😛 I prefer the lighting quality over sharpness.

Thanks for your response. Possibly is difficult, but it's still not ideal. I'm sure they could have found a way before release. I've been playing Surviving Mars on Medium graphics at 2880x1800, so I'm sure a significantly smaller 'map' area and simpler graphic based game such as Two Point Hospital should be able to render in native resolution. It runs fine at that resolution when plugged into my TV (and even higher resolutions), so I still think it's a bug. Nevertheless, thanks for your suggestions, if only the devs were as responsive!

[Lutra]

So it looks like this is some kind of issue with the game not correctly detecting the screens native resloution / Mac OS scaling feature. Odd as I've not had this issue under Mac OS before with other games including other Unity Engine Games, they detect my rentina display and give appropriate screen resloution options.

For some reason I think Two Point Hospital is picking up on the Mac OS scaling fuction, as that is set to "looks like 1440x900" by deafault. And when I overide that to looks like 1920x1200. I get the option to use resolutions up to that setting.

Using the display menu app from the app store I can even play at native resloution.

Unfortunatly Setting the screen resloution manualy though the start up options doesn't work. -show-screen-selector does bring up a resloution selector but it's still capped at 1440x900, unless i change scaling settings or use display menu.

[Lutra]

Also in terms of performance, I found the game plays perfectly well (about 42 FPS) at 2880x1800 on medium settings, or at 2048x1280 on high I can get about 55 FPS and I can reliably get 60+ FPS on 1920x1200 at very high, which is what I've been running it at mostly because that actually looks quite good. (1440x900 had blury hard to read text and weird pixlation on the UI)

[benmann]

Yep - very weird. You're right about the text, it's blurry on the 1440x900 and it doesn't necessarily ruin the experience of the game massively, but it's enough to make you think you're playing a poor flash game or something similar. Hopefully the devs actually look at this - they haven't even added it to their known issues list.

[Briseph]

Same issue here. Thanks for the replies. Hope they fix this, so frustrating

[Yohmi]

Here's what Jo said on the Mac Update thread about this issue :

Originally posted by jo.koehler:

Hi Yohmi and Benmann

Thank you for your patience with this.

The problem that we have is that performance is poor at 5120 x 2880 in bigger hospitals - we had retina disabled because of this. We are planning to enable retina but limit maximum resolution to 1800 vertical res (which will mean that all options that are available should perform well)

We will also add a command line to disable this limit if your Mac is powerful enough (e.g iMac Pro)

I hope this will be ok - it will be in an update coming soon!

Thanks,
Jo

https://steamcommunity.com/app/535930/discussions/0/2590022385669813411/?ctp=2#c1734339901252506833