Playfield
The playfield is a portion of the game window where hit objects are placed. On screen resolutions with a 4:3 aspect ratio, the playfield is partially covered with interface elements such as the leaderboard, key counter, or replay controls.
Gameplay
The osu! window (purple) with the playfield (blue), 4:3 aspect ratio.
The osu! window (purple) with the playfield (blue), 16:9 aspect ratio.
The playfield's coordinate system uses resolution-independent units called game pixels, or osu! pixels, such that a game pixel is equivalent to a pixel when osu! is running at a 640x480 resolution. On higher resolutions, the visual size of game pixels stays the same. The playfield is slightly shifted vertically, placed 8 game pixels lower than the window's centre.
The beatmap editor's grid is 512x384 game pixels.
| Playfield top left | Playfield bottom right | Playfield centre |
|---|---|---|
| (0, 0) | (512, 384) | (256, 192) |
It is possible to place objects outside the playfield by editing the .osu file in a text editor, or by using automatic stacks triggered by stacking leniency. However, gameplay elements that are at least partially off-screen on screens 4:3 aspect ratio break the ranking criteria.
Note that in the editor, the playfield is scaled down and misaligned to the background compared to gameplay; always look at gameplay when aligning hit objects with the background, storyboard, or video.
Storyboards
The coordinate system used for storyboards has a slightly different origin point, but has the same scale as the playfield coordinate system (i.e. 1 unit has the same size).
| Aspect ratio | Screen top left | Screen bottom right | Screen centre | In-bounds dimensions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4:3 | (0, 0) | (640, 480) | (320, 240) | 640x480 |
| 16:9 | (-107, 0) | (747, 480) | (320, 240) | 854x480 |
To convert a position in playfield coordinates to storyboard coordinates, add the offset vector (64, 56), which is the position of the playfield's top-left corner in storyboard coordinates.