I wish they would use this in Windows 8. As far as I can tell, their scaling algorithm for 4k displays is: scale up 2x using nearest neighbor, then randomly drop pixels to get back to 125% or 150%. The result is horrifyingly bad. Not just kind of bad, but unusably bad. (Adding insult to injury, they ClearType the text before scaling.)
While something similar would probably be better, this is heavily optimized for pixel artwork. Lots of curves, shading, and most importantly - limited colors. UI is generally much straighter, less shaded, with far more colors.
Here's an example of UI that's scaled with potrace (a similar algorithm): http://i.imgur.com/jDq4M7e.png (left side is the converted side, right side is nearest-neighbor. Top is 3x, bottom is 2x)
That's with the highest amount of colors/depth that potrace allows. On an i7 processor, it takes a LONG time to compute all of that. Each icon is no longer just a couple hundred pixels, it's a couple hundred vector paths. Even rendering it takes a number of seconds to refresh the screen in inkscape.
I think the ideal would be something similar to fonts: there's the vector definition for big sizes, and optional pixel-perfect definition for small sizes, because rendering vectors on very small sizes (16x16, 32x32) might look worse than hand-crafted pixel work.
These days, font rendering does not often rely on bitmaps, even at small sizes. Instead, they typically use hinting and subpixel rendering. I would love to see these effective techniques applied to vector graphics too.
Linux has had vector icons on the desktop for over a decade now. It truly boggles my mind how Apple (especially once they realized Retina was coming) hasn't gone fully resolution-independent on the UI side by now…
Do you know if MS is working on Mac-Style resolution independence for W9? I'm currently running a Retina MBP, at 2x res I think, and it works _perfectly_. The first few months some apps didn't work well, but the community adapted very quickly.
Windows has had support for resolution independence where DPI is configurable across a continuum (rather than only available as 1x or 2x scale like on the Mac) for quite some time - the issue is that with a huge legacy application base, a giant morass of drawing technologies, and no shipped "HiDPI" or "Retina" Windows hardware until recently, there's been no real incentive for app developers to support it.
In Windows 7 and 8, WPF apps are already supposed to be resolution independent (vector-based).
Old-style GDI+ apps which aren't marked as "resolution aware" (i.e. almost everything) are poorly scaled by the window manager and hideously ugly.
It's not just the "legacy application base" or "app developers" which are at fault; even most of Windows itself is still using the old drawing libraries. As soon as you start digging into system properties, MMC, etc, everything is horribly blurry.
But yes, apps are also broken, even very popular ones like Chrome and Steam.
Fair point - even some of the shallowest corners of Windows itself are broken too (like Windows Media Player), although most of the other big user-facing shell apps like Explorer and IE are great.
Google almost had support in Chrome 34 after a few false starts, but it looks to have been disabled yet again in current releases.
Now that Windows users are trying to use Retina MacBooks via BootCamp and 2x-resolution Windows 8 tablets like the IdeaPad Yoga2 are out, the DPI scaling issue is finally starting to get mainstream exposure. Most reviews of the IdeaPad called out Chrome specifically and once 4K displays come down in price the gamer crowd will probably jump on the bandwagon as well.
Right, but as noted in the blog you link the application is still only exposed to 1x or 2x scale (where 1pt = 2px), and then everything is scaled back down.
Prior to retina display Macs, OS X implemented resolution independence as an arbitrary scale factor, with most of the UI elements being vector rendered. You could test it out with Quartz Debug. TextEdit, for example, scaled very nicely and remained crisp at arbitrary scale factors.
They didn't end up using this approach because the 2x mode is so simple, and will likely be the last scale factor really needed (especially with the additional scaling modes).
>Windows has had support for resolution independence where DPI is configurable across a continuum (rather than only available as 1x or 2x scale like on the Mac) for quite some time - the issue is that with a huge legacy application base, a giant morass of drawing technologies, and no shipped "HiDPI" or "Retina" Windows hardware until recently, there's been no real incentive for app developers to support it.
The same was true for even longer (IIRC) on the Mac. You could enable it with a hidden preference, but lack of app support, compatibility with existing stuff and lack of hidpi displays at the time made it take the back seat. And vector drawed apps only go that far, you need pixel assets at some point or another.
The 2x scale was just the solution finally used by Apple because of the same kind of issues as you describe for Windows.
@DougBTX: Technically, there are 2 scaling levels. There's 1x for normal screens and 2x for retina. If you want one of the intermediate resolutions, it will actually render at 2x, then scale down.
Old style GDI+ apps that are incorrectly marked as being resolution aware even though they aren't is a bigger problem than programs not marking it at all. If it's not marked you get simple 2x scaling but if it's marked and not implemented properly anything can happen.
What is needed for this to work is a user setting to override the programs own preference. There is just too much legacy cruft that accidentally marked themselves as being resolution aware even if they're not. Or drop the old flag and create a new one called something like "really really resolution aware"
Didn't there used to be a user setting in the "Compatibility" tab?
I haven't played with this stuff in a few years - my housemates and I tried to use a 46" TV in the basement as our web browsing machine for a while and ended up frustrated every time we tried to scale the UI on any platform (OSX, Ubuntu with both Unity and GNOME2, Windows).
It works perfect on the Mac but I wonder if that would be the case if you could still run old 'classic' apps.
You'd think Microsoft of all companies would work in compatibilty fixes for at least the major apps. Like how they worked in so many fixes to make them compatible from 98-XP and such.
"Classic" apps will be scaled (using the normal bicubic filter) to twice their resolution on Mac. If they were implemented using Apple APIs, there's a good chance that text will be at a higher resolution and will appear clear.
Even when there were a few apps that didn't work well, in my experience at least, it was no one near as bad as W8's HiDPI features continue to be today. Apple did a really good job with that.
I have 4 i7 cores and a $500 graphics card. I feel like it's possible :)
TF2, for example, plays beautifully at 3840x2160@60Hz. Scaling up the graphics for an 800x600 visual novel that plays at 1 frame per 30 seconds is computationally possible.
(The good news is that someone has written an emulator for one VN that I'm working through, so I should be able to play with scaling in that way. If I can get it to compile.)
