What I want is simple, and cannot get it

[Alge]

I guess you could always re-do your UI for the way that ISBoxer scales the window but you seem to be wanting to avoid the work involved and have someone give you a magic bullet that fixes all the problems you have been having.

The issue here is, I believe, entirely due to the fact that when you multibox you cannot have multiple windows set to run as Fullscreen as that is, by its very nature, an exclusive mode. The issue is compounded by the fact that your video card does not allow you to run EQ at the native resolution of your monitor.

Forgive my rudeness, but, I am not the one that purports to provide a product that makes multi-boxing on a single system simple and easy. I suppose I could go and pull quotes from your glossy advertising that indicate this...

But, that seems to be a waste of your time and mine.

Essentially the last few posts your stance is that your wonderful product is perfect as is and the defects are in your potential customers. I will point out that my system, with the video card that you clearly find inadequate to support your program, works fine with running two instances and with me using ALT-Tab to switch from screen to screen.

Making disparaging remarks about me and/or my systems us NOT a way to gain customers.

I am trying to understand the interactions between ISBOXER and EQ and what I am seeing.

Had you simply said that ISBOXER is, in fact, overriding the display settings of EQ (if indeed that is what is happening) so that I am seeing a much wider screen view and that I will need to reposition the items within the window I might be still seriously considering subscribing to your program. Instead you seem to find your sense of superiority in calling me lazy. Which is interesting in that you don't know me from shinola ... nor what limitations I might be constrained by financially, physically, etc.

To put it pretty bluntly, I have not had any problems with the scaling of my displays from EQ with my set-up for the year or so I have been playing it on this monitor, enter your program and I am still unsure what is happening... and your "ez set-up" seems to be not necessarily so easy after all ...

And support seems more interested in not clarifying what the application is doing so I can give it a fair evaluation.

And, by the way, you could have told me that it is entirely possible I was looking at the video options (or asked if I had been) that are in the external options for the video modes. Which, as it turns out, I had been ... the in game options, cleverly hidden away, were pointed out to me by an-ingame player who apparently knows how to help more than you folks do... As it turns out, my video card is quite adequate thank you very much and can support the native 1920x1080 native mode of the display. It would have been nice if you had pointed that out FIRST before making snide comments about my hardware ... or my supposed lack of enthusiasm for the additional work needed to make your product work.

Bottom line, you, in your treatment of me, is the reason customer service is so reviled. You did not ask, you did not help, mostly what you managed to do is to make your company, and yourselves look bad.

[Alge]

I'm not "customer service", I'm a user who gives his time freely to support a fantastic product. I won't make the mistake of trying to help you again.

I'm not "customer service", I'm a user who gives his time freely to support a fantastic product. I won't make the mistake of trying to help you again.

It may well be a fantastic product. If it works for you. It does not work for me. And calling someone lazy is not a way to recommend yourself, the company, or the product. And your "Help" was nothing of the kind. And, yes, a product that advertises itself as a magic bullet for virtualizing game sessions has a lot to live up to. Furthermore I am unreasonable enough to hold them to the glossy advertising and have the expectation that the application suite will indeed virtualize my game sessions. And moreover, if it advertises itself as easy to use that it will prove to be so...

Now about 10 hours into this experience and this is what I have established:
a) There are two sets of settings for video options in EQ, one in the patcher and one in-game, the one in game has more settings (Options panel, Display tab, Video Modes button).
b) Setting the internal option to the actual physical 1920x1080 resolution of the monitor seems to allow the program to function and my video card is up to that task.
b1) Switching between game instances is smooth and faster than the use of ALT-Tab and two separate running game instances.
c) There are two reasons I have not opted for this resolution: 1) It is distorted (squares aren't) and 2) it is hard on my 60 year old eyes.
d) EQ is quite able (or windows, not sure which) to correctly map the internal 1600x1200 to the physical display of 1920x1080, square objects are still square and the text is large enough for me to read easily.
e) I still do have an unreasonable expectation that an application that advertises that it can virtualize my EQ sessions should be able to do so in a way that I could not tell if I was running a ISBOXER session, or not.
f) Going to the higher resolution is not an option in my case due to the physical discomfort produced while gaming.

TO that end, the application suite seems to be able to scale and correctly display all regions numbered 2 and up to a smaller physically displayed screen size. But this option is not only not provided for region 1, region one appears to be always scaled on a 1 to 1 basis on the setting of the video resolution within the game. So that if you select 1600x1200 and a single screen the output is not scaled to the physical screen as it is when playing the game natively.

Which gets me back to the question that I started with. Can this application suite actually and seamlessly virtualize my game sessions with what I consider a not unreasonable idea that if EQ can correctly map its internal display from 1600x1200 to a physical display of 1920x1080 that this application suite should be able to do the same for the main operational view?

Or is this a capability that does not exist within this product?

If the capability does exist, how do I achieve this end?

I'm with Alge. Your Window Layout should be just fine; the game should come up and fill the entire screen, and the in-game resolution should be the same as your screen size. When they "come up smaller", how much smaller? A few pixels less than full screen?

Are you using the current version of EQ1, or by "Original" are we talking about a version of the game from 7-10+ years ago? Old versions of course may behave differently than the new version. (And we don't specifically support "private servers")

For the first set of questions, see prior posting.

I mean original EQ not EQ II or those private servers. I am running on the "Live" servers and I am running with all 18 expansions on both accounts and both accounts are "Gold" level. The main account has been deep scanned for files (using the patcher option to do so) and all files 5,000 some odd files are reported up to date.

Hopefully the string of posts I made explains what I mean by distorted output and what I am trying to accomplish.

If I force select 1600x1200 as the size for region 1, that is the size that is displayed, meaning the bottom sixth or so is clipped off because the 1200 pixel height is not scaled as it is when EQ is played "natively" ...

It certainly looks like my best option is to simply get a second display and run the second instance on my other computer instead of using the KVM switch.

[lax]

The problem here isn't that the program isn't easy to use. It's that you're asking to do something that can't be done. And it's not about this product. Allow me to explain...

d) EQ is quite able (or windows, not sure which) to correctly map the internal 1600x1200 to the physical display of 1920x1080, square objects are still square and the text is large enough for me to read easily.

No it's not. These are not even the same Aspect Ratio, it is impossible to map 1600x1200 to 1920x1080 and have square objects square and readable text. (Note: This is why widescreen movies on a 4:3 TV use letterbox)

What is happening is the game, because it is in Full Screen Mode and not running in ISBoxer, has adjusted your monitor to the resolution 1600x1200. When it switches modes like this, it takes a few seconds. That's why when you're playing and you Alt+Tab, it takes forever to switch from the game to any other window on your computer. In Windowed Mode -- as with ISBoxer -- the monitor is left in the resolution configured in Windows, which would be 1920x1080. This is why, when the game is in Windowed Mode, it does not take forever to switch from the game to any other window on your computer.

ISBoxer forces the game into a window, as opposed to allowing it to actually be in Full Screen Mode, because Full Screen Mode by definition is exclusive. You can't have more than one exclusive (Full Screen Mode) 3D app running.

By the design of Windows, Direct3D, your video drivers, and the hardware, this is how it works.


So.... if you would like it to be exactly the way you're telling us you want it to be, the best answer is to put your monitor in 1600x1200 resolution in Windows.

Ok, your explanation makes sense. And clarifies what I have been seeing and why I have been seeing it.

Setting the windows resolution to 1600x1200 is also not a viable solution as it makes the system unusable in other windows applications. And if I do make the switch I still cannot seem to get from here to there ... were I to have a monitor big enough I can see where I could use your application to do what I would want it to do... then again, it will be just as simple and easy for me to buy a second small monitor and run my alternate characters on the other windows system I have with the other display (and stop using the KVM switch).

Anyway, it does not look like I can get from here to there with your product even though I still cannot fathom why it cannot scale the current display output to the physical screen, in a proportional rendering, when you have demonstrated that capability for all regions other than region one.

[Ualaa]

1600 divided by 1200 = 1.33333
1920 divided by 1080 = 1.77777

If you want a square object, to appear as a square (no distortion) after scaling down, you'll want to use the same aspect ration.
It doesn't matter if the region is:
- 1600 by 1200
- 0160 by 0120
- 088 by 0600...
Each of those is the same aspect ratio.

If you want to go from a 1.333 to a 1.777, there is going to be a bit of distortion.

WOW!!! I just read this whole thread , and even though it's an old thread, I had to conmment. If I ever come across in a forum, displaying as much ignorance as this poster did, pleasae, somebody just shoot me. I'm as old as he claims to be, and I've seen alot of people get forgetful as they age, but you don't get ignorant as you age, that's something you carry with you throughout life. Even though my thought processes don't seem to mesh with young people very well any more, this is still an excellent product, and I have the wisdom to see that. Thanks Lax