X3: Reunion blurry text and jerky mouse steering

[dirtcheap74]

Hi I have played X3:TC and wanted to try X3:R. I have two issues.

1. All the text in-game is small, gray, fuzzyish no matter the resolution. I can read it but its not fun, especially in all the small menus at top of screen and sector maps.
a. steam install fresh
b. X3:tc and X3:ap are fine
c . ati radeon setting all turned off and set to default in graphics program - have no effect
d. Tried different resolutions in game and changing my windows 10 desktop res. no effect
e. all windows 10 desktop settings default.
Out of ideas to try.

2. When I use mouse steering (which I like better than joystick) it is not smooth at all and acts like I am pressing the keyboard arrow keys really fast. Does not matter the mouse dpi settings and it sucks to play. Imagine trying to turn to the right by rapidly ( am mean very fast) tapping the right arrow key on your keyboard and that is what my mouse steering is like. I plug in a joystick and its smooth. If I use the keyboard arrow keys its smooth (when pressed down). X3: TC and AP are smooth when using mouse steering.

Is there a setting I am missing in the controls to correct this?

Can I load the Reunion plot missions into TC and just play them there? i have searched for mods on this but can find nothing. The UI in Reunion is pretty clunky but willing to give it a go if I can figures these two things out.

Thanks.

[Cursed Ghost]

Don’t know if this would help but here goes.

Have you tried playing round with the text rendering options in windows 10? because I have seen this issue in my browser in windows 10 and I had to go into windows setting and play around with the settings to resolve it so maybe since reunion is an old game created before windows 10 existed maybe it has an issue with the text rendering in windows 10 so try playing with the settings and see if that helps

With regards to things becoming very small on screen this is likely a resolution issue since the UI and text don’t rescale when running the game at high resolutions like 1080p or above which results in things becoming very small on screen so try running the game at a lower resolution like 1152x864 this works well for me on my 23" wide screen monitor everything is a good size, nothing is stretched or cut off and the detail is reasonably sharp.

Another though that comes to mind is that it could be an issue with the graphics setting so you could try going into your graphics cards control panel and playing round with the settings to see if adjusting them help I know that your post mention that you set the settings to default but that wont solve the problem you need to go through each setting 1 by 1 trying out each option then saving the change and then reloading the game to see if it helped and by doing just 1 setting at a time you can figure out what works and what doesn't I know that this sort of systematic process of elimination is slow tedious and time consuming but it is the best way to diagnose and fix problems.

it could also be an issue with your graphics drivers so you could download the latest drivers then do a full uninstall and a full clean reinstall see if that helps.

Another possible issue I can think of is that maybe there is just a fault with your monitor or the cable that attaches your monitor to your computer so if you have a spare you could try plugging in a different monitor you could also try using a different cable just in case. While this is unlikely for the sake of being through and eliminating hardware issues a potential cause for your problem its worth trying.

The reason I suggest this is because I had the issue of blurry text and pixelated graphics after my monitor broke and had to use a portable LCD TV as a monitor while I was waiting for my new monitor to arrive, I also had to try a couple of different HDMI cables until I found one that would play nice with my computer.

With regards to the issues with the mouse I have this problem with X2 normally I have my usb mouse plugged into the port that had a little icon of a mouse next to it however if I try playing X2 with my mouse plugged into that port it wont work and mouse movement is very jittery so I have to plug it into a regular old usb 2 port why I don’t know because xbtf, xt, x3r, x3tc and x3ap all work fine when I have my mouse plugged into the port with the mouse icon next to it so I can only assume that its an issue with the way x2 handles mouse input but in any event its worth trying changing the port the mouse is plugged into see if that helps it would also be worth while going into mouse setting in windows control panel and turning down the pointer movement speed because this could be set to high making the mouse movement way to fast because for me x3r plays just fine when using mouse movement though I only have mouse movement speed set at 50%

Also if you are using a gaming mouse then I would also try going into the settings panel and see if adjusting settings in there help.

Also keep in mind that depending on the ship you are in some will turn much quicker then others especially with full rudder tunings for example when I'm used to playing in a hyperion which has a relatively slow turning speed even with full rudder tunings and I get into say a disco it takes me a little while to adapt given the fact that a disco is much more nimble when it has full rudder tunings so it might be worth trying adjusting how many rudder tunings you are applying if you feel like the turn rate is to quick I have this problem in XBTF if I apply all 30 rudder tunings to the experimental shuttle things just become way to sensitive and the ship turns way to quickly.

It could also just be an issue with the OS its self I've had this problem on any number of occasions particularly if I haven't reformatted the drive and reinstalled the OS in a long time and usually if there is some corruption in the system somewhere causing things to malfunction this usually sorts it although I will admit this is the nuclear option so this one is best left till last once you have tried everything else and still can't fix the problem.

Another though comes to mind are you sure your installation of reunion isn’t corrupted because if it is it might load and run but won't work right so you could try uninstalling and reinstalling just to make sure it would also be worth while making sure the game is fully up to date you can find the patches for reunion here

https://www.egosoft.com/download/x3/patches_en.php

yet another though comes to mind have you tried running reunion on a different OS ? don't know if this is an option or not but if you do have a different OS you could try duel booting boot into the other OS and see if reunion works properly if it does then that would point to an issue with the OS meaning either the game just had a bug when running on windows 10 or there is an issue with your installation of windows 10.

Also I know this last one might be a bit of a shot in the dark but it could also be a frame rate issue as low frame rates can make games very jittery and excessive frame rates can make games way to fast also I believe that reunion has an issue where the game will crash if the frame rate is to high which is very possible with modern hardware as old games can easily run at like 100 to 200 frames a second with good modern hardware.

So apparently the way to fix that is to cap the frame rate I believe this can be done by turning on vsync which if I understood the post correctly should lock the frame rate to your monitors refresh rate which for me is 60hz so for me that should stop reunions frame rate going a above 60 frames a second and hopefully stop the game from crashing constantly although I haven't yet tested that.

in any event that's about all I can think of right now but that should give you a bunch of stuff to try see if you can track down the cause of the problem.

Realistically you would need to post more detailed information about your system before others will be able to help you further.

[Alan Phipps]

From a problems and solutions sticky that might help:

"Illegible Text at High Resolutions

If text looks as if it is written on a tube with the top and bottom of the characters fading away, then look in your graphics card control panel under gaming 3D settings, and see if 'Morphological Filtering' is set to on. If so, turning it off may improve text legibility."

On the jerky mouse, see if your mouse driver/set up is somehow providing digital output where an analogue game input is expected, or the other way round.

X3:R and X3:TC are different games on roughly the same game engine and were not designed to be able directly to swap missions, plots or assets. You might find some 3rd party modders have scripted look-alike stuff across games, but that is unknown to me and further hampered by some old X3 mod links being unsupported now.