Client Tweaks: Additional Screen Presets
Ever notice that Second Life graphic presets don’t actually provide you with that many useful presets?
640*480 - Really too small for most peoples screens. Standard for youTube 4:3 uploads so of some use to machinima makers.
800*600 – Just about big enough…
720*480 (NTSC) – Good if you playing on a tv.. still too small imho.
768*576 (PAL) – Good if you playing on a tv.. still too small imho.
1024*768 – These is about the most useful setting in my opinion.
Now I fully understand that a lot of people don’t have a computer that is capable of dealing with a huge resolution, but at the same time these resolution are not exactly the most useful. I personally usually run windowed and then just stretch sl to a size I like.
However say you are doing machinima. For youtube there are two different pixel dimensions that are reccomended for uploads. 640*480 which is already covered in the presets, and the HD mode which is 1280*720. HD runs at 16:9 which is not currently covered by any of the standard preset. 16:9 is also becomming a standard in terms of monitors and laptops.
So, to remedy this situation I did some digging in my skin XML. This really is quite a simple fix. Navigate to your equivalent of the following directory.
/home/tal/Games/SecondLife/skins/default/xui/en-us
I am on linux in case that directory structure doesn’t give it away. Windows XP users would have to goto something like;
C:/Program Files/Second Life/skins/default/xui/en-us
The directory you are looking for should be filled with XML files. These files are what tell your computer how Secondlife should appear.
In that directory you are looking for a file called “panel_preferences_graphics1.xml”. Open that up in whichever text editor is closest to have. Notepad for Windows for example. Now check out what it says between lines 27 and 41. This section tells Secondlife what presets it should show in the pulldown for screen sizes.
For the sake of this example I am just going to add the two youTube recommended upload sizes. Starting on line 41 press enter and then on line 42 add;
<combo_item type=”string” length=”1″ enabled=”true” name=”1280×720″ value=”1280 x 720″>
1280 x 720 (16 x 9 HD)
</combo_item>
<combo_item type=”string” length=”1″ enabled=”true” name=”640×480″ value=”640 x 480″>
640 x 480 (4:3 SD)
</combo_item>
Now all you need to do is save that file and then restart Second Life and you should be find that when you goto preferences again you have two additional screen size presets.
I’ve included the entire of the text of that file below 