configuring the console on 14-stable with hdmi-attached screen

Hello list,

tl;dr: I'd like to have a smaller/better font/finer "graphics" in a 
non-xorg console.[1] Is this possible with FreeBSD at the moment?

I can see there's "sc" and "vt" in the kernel but have never successfully 
set a console screen font going by the handbook. In addition to the font
being smaller, it'd be good to have it less blocky and for the usable screen to
go to the full extent of the (1920*1080) screen. Right now there's like a 
3cm unusable margin all round. The kernel is unmodified GENERIC
stable/14-n265022

In the handbook, 3.2.3. Changing Console Video Modes suggests:

# kldload vesa
# vidcontrol -i mode

returns "vidcontrol: getting active vty: Inappropriate ioctl for device"

man vt states there's a sysctl tunable "hw.vga.textmode" but that appears absent:

# sysctl hw.vga.textmode
sysctl: unknown oid 'hw.vga.textmode'

[1] The graphics environment works fine (nvidia-driver-470). The reason
for wanting the console setup is for a distraction-free environment
--