I want to know how to simulate a higher resolution than what my notebook's screen can actually display. What I mean by this is rendering the desktop and OS windows to a higher resolution than my screen's top resolution, then scale it back to the native resolution so it can be displayed. This would allow programs to display content as if I had a higher resolution display (hence displaying more content). I don't mind the loss of detail that comes with this.
In Ubuntu I can use a tool called xrandr to do exactly this. Check pictures 1 and 2 to see what I mean. I haven't found a way to do this on windows and I was hoping somebody would know how to do it.
1: OS as it looks at max resolution (1024×768)
2: OS as it looks at a scaled down, simulated higher resolution (1600×1200)
Best Answer
This is not natively possible in Windows. The only way is to add a monitor capable of displaying a higher resolution. There are some cheap ones out there that can do this. They are like 19" but can output to 1080p even though their native resolution is small.
Some graphics cards can force a custom resolution, but it is up to the monitor to support it or not, and scale down properly. This is usually not possible however.
The last option that does work is to use a Virtual Machine. Its not ideal, but at least it does work.
In your case, you can look into getting Age of Empires II to work under Wine with Ubuntu, given that you have managed to get the scaling to work there.