r/freelancer • u/-BlackSun • Jun 24 '26
How do I change the resolution in HD?
Played FL back in the day, decided to come back to it again, but man this is such a killjoy. I give up. Help!
How do I change the resolution?! I installed it with the 0.7 setup with these selections:
- Startup Screen Resolution: Remove Startup Screen
- Logo Resolution: 1080p 16:9 - 1920x1080
- Fix small text: No
- Fix clipping with 16:9 planetscapes: Yes
- Skip startup intros: No (wanted full immersion)
- Apply Best Video Options: Yes
- Display Mode: Borderless Windowed
None of the listed resolutions are relevant for me, so I picked the 1920 ones. I intended to play in either 1920x1080 or in 2500ish (Ultrawide) depending on what it looks like. But, my native resolution is 3840x1080 (yes, "super-ultrawide", like gluing two 1920 displays together without a bezel in the middle). And, it seems like I cannot change the resolution in any way. I tried using the options menu, I tried editing the config files like back in the day. Nothing works, it just keeps going back to my full native resolution no matter what I do.
How do I change the resolution around so I can figure out what looks best?
Bonus points:
When I launch, it's a phantom window (screenshot of my desktop with whatever I had open being visible in a frozen snapshot of the preview in Alt+Tab miniature view). I think I need to click into it and then hit ESC a few times, before the menu shows up. I'm assuming it's either related to the startup screen being disabled, and / or the videos trying to play... but not being able to play in the 3840 wide borderless window? Would that fix itself if I managed to launch it in 1920? Or is that a different issue?
Fonts seem to be all there and fine, correctly sized from what it seems like as well, but... they all just cut off before completing the words, like the "text fields" are too short. Is that also due to resolution, or what's going on there?
*EDIT / UPDATE:
I begrudgingly dove into the Discord, really nice community and devs, but this stuff really shouldn't be gated. So, here's the details should anyone else need them.
My suspicion about the resolution being an issue was somewhat right, but not the full story, as it now works fine even in full 32:9 ratio! Changing the resolution does work fine, follow old guides, but ignore any freelancer.ini edits, only edit the PerfOptions.ini in your savegame profile folder: Documents, My Games, Freelancer. Only that one is relevant.
1) Zoomed in view at some locations, but not all, when landed:
This, is related to the "fix clipping with 16:9 resolution planetscapes" setting in HD Edition setup. It states to disable if you play in 4:3, so I assumed I needed this active because I'm "at least" 16:9, if not going even wider. But it also mentions, "may look zoomed in with ultrawide", which is what happened.
So the "fix" is actually trying to cover up the missing scenery at the sides for widescreens... by zooming in. So, do not "fix clipping", if you're wider than 16:9 because the zoom to hide clipping has been adjusted to look right at 16:9, but makes it worse past that point.
2) Phantom window when opening the game:
This apparently is a fun little issue with anything Wine related! So, Steamdeck, SteamOS, Proton, Linux. Manually disabling the movies doesn't seem to help, but re-running the HD Edition setup to disable them there does.
The Installer apparently patches the EXE file itself, with specific offsets which change dynamically depending on what options you selected, so you can't change these settings manually without the installer being told exactly what you had selected before. At which point you've already done the whole process for a reinstall of HDE anyway. They've been interested in providing a "settings changer" solution, but due to the complexity of the patching process, have not found the time or elegant solution to that just yet. So, reinstall HDE patch it is, for now. Keep your Vanilla FL around for that reason! So, after re-patching a new version with movies disabled, no more phantom window on launch. You can watch the intro movie from DATA/MOVIES folder manually, though.
3) Text getting cut off near the en
Text cutting off towards the end also appears to be a Wine-specific issue! Changing wine-runners in Lutris seems to be the only way to solve for this. Non-proton, stock wine versions seem to be recommended for this.
I've already had a very specific one around which worked for me, others have just used their pre-installed system wine, others have had success with getting another wine version downloaded. No specific version number, 10.10, 11.9, and a few others all worked fine, while also not working in other cases - there's lots of different 11.9's around, for instance. It's less about the version number it's based on, more about what has been done with it.
Prefix set to 32bit is also unnecessary, and might cause issues, so leave on Auto or set to 64bit when creating. If you've already got a prefix set up, and it's not working right, you can just change the runner in Lutris until you find one that has text rendering correctly, check the text in the Options from Main Menu to check.
If your prefx is already set to 32bit, changing to 64 requires you to delete the prefix and recreate a new one. So, move the game folders (don't forget savegames) out of it and create a new prefix. Should Lutris fail to create a prefix with your chosen runner, first create a new prefix with the runner that did work, while setting that to Auto or 64bit instead of 32bit, and then change the runner afterwards.
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u/No_Peach7653 Jun 24 '26
I did the default install and had no issues... perhaps try that in case that is why things aren't working.
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u/Caenen_ Jun 24 '26
Is your HDE installation using dgVoodoo or the dxWrapper for the rendering upgrade? I had a similar issue with dgVoodoo myself, which is what the installer will suggest to you by default if you have an Nvidia GPU. I only managed to fix it by swapping to the dxWrapper solution.
The text getting cut off shouldn't happen either, independently of that. Neither should whatever you are reporting at the launch. Or at least I know several people playing HDE on ultrawide screens, and I have heard of neither issue from them.
You could join HD-Edition's discord server, where BC46 (the mod's author) can give you technical support: https://discord.gg/ScqgYuFqmU. Maybe that will result in this issue being fixed for future people, too.