Font rendering quality, 8.1 vs 7

[It's Not Lupus]

Is it me, or does the font look slightly more blurrier in 8.1 than in 7?

 

[ashetos]

Did you try changing DPI scaling to the absolute lowest? Maybe there is some upscaling going on.

 

[vbuggy]

Also try tuning the cleartype. I'm personally a fan of the 8.1 rendering. Comparing e.g. the legibility of my 720p-screened Wintabs with the Retina and old iPads, it's way closer to the Retina, and FHD screens are more effective in practical (non-photo editing) use than the Retina Mombooks.

 

[code65536]

In what context?

On the desktop, they should be the same.

Subpixel smoothing (e.g., ClearType) requires specific orientations of the red, green, and blue subpixels, and with Metro designed for screens that can rotate (thus changing this orientation),CT is not used in Metro. Or in Office 2013 on the desktop.

 

[readymix]

Is it me, or does the font look slightly more blurrier in 8.1 than in 7?

it's terrible on my 1920 x 1200 x 24" x .27 pixel pitch desktop and decent enough on my 1680 x 1050 x 17" x .21 pixel pitch notebook. I've abandoned W8 on the desktop and notebook entirely, the latter adds crappy chiral scrolling.

 

[mikeymikec]

Comparing default settings (96dpi) I can't say I can notice any difference between Win8.1 and 7.

However, at 120dpi I noticed something odd recently on Win81 which I haven't noticed on any previous version of Windows with the 120dpi setting, which was that the text in Device Manager was blurry / upscaled in a nasty way, whereas the text everywhere else in Windows was fine.

@ code65536
If Win8x doesn't use ClearType, what does it use?

 

[code65536]

However, at 120dpi I noticed something odd recently on Win81 which I haven't noticed on any previous version of Windows with the 120dpi setting, which was that the text in Device Manager was blurry / upscaled in a nasty way, whereas the text everywhere else in Windows was fine.

That's because Windows 8 introduced a new form of scaling where everything is rendered at 96dpi and then the entire rendered window is blown up, instead of scaling the individual parts. This avoids some of the problems with traditional scaling, and is used only for programs that do not flag themselves as DPI-aware. One effect of this is that the text is rendered at 96dpi and then blown up, so it's blurry, since it wasn't rendered at the target DPI.

If Win8x doesn't use ClearType, what does it use?

Traditional "grayscale" smoothing (well, it's gray scale if it's black-on-white, but same concept). No guarantee of consistent subpixel orientation = no subpixel smoothing. Again, this is only for Metro (and Office 2013) and does not affect the traditional desktop.

 

[ninaholic37]

80x25 text mode is the easiest to see. Try coding in that for a few hours, then switching to Windows, and even at 1024x768 all the Windows fonts/words will make you squint and you go WT* and wonder why you've been torturing your eyes for so many years.