[Windows] Windows 8.1 DPI Scaling Enhancements (4k)

[wand3r3r]

http://blogs.windows.com/bloggingwindows/2013/07/15/windows-8-1-dpi-scaling-enhancements/

They talk about DPI scaling. I've been wondering about it a lot since I've been waiting to go 4k.

It's pretty interesting that 32" 4k has the density of a phone (nokia 920).

I like the pictures, it helps explain what it looks like.

You can fit so much more (duh) on a 4k screen! I can't wait to try battlefield with 4k.
Check out how much you are missing out on.

 

[Mondozei]

DPI scaling on Windows 8.1 should be pretty fine now from an OS standpoint.

There are still issues, however, primarily for various programs who haven't done their homework on high-DPI stuff. (Various Adobe programs have historically been terrible at this).

I'm guessing once we get 4K displays at the sub-300 dollar price range with decent quality, these issues will go away completely as it will induce enough developers to get their act together.

 

[Eric1987]

If we could configure our own per display DPI. Thats the only issue I'm having with my 4k screen.

 

[Canbacon]

If we could configure our own per display DPI. Thats the only issue I'm having with my 4k screen.

I believe that they have this feature slated for Windows 9 (Threshold). Hopefully they will announce it officially on the Sept 30 keynote.

 

[wand3r3r]

If we could configure our own per display DPI. Thats the only issue I'm having with my 4k screen.

Were you on 8.1? According to that link it is supposed to be possible when you untick the checkbox.

Update: There have been some questions about when per-display DPI scaling is used (different DPI scaling values per display) and I wanted to add a note here to clarify. On Windows 8.1 when you have the “Let me choose one scaling level for all my displays” check box checked (not checked by default) one uniform DPI scaling value is used for all displays. If you don’t have this checkbox checked (the default behavior), Windows 8.1 will determine the best DPI scaling value for each display and use separate DPI scaling values for each display when needed. See the screenshots in this article for more information.

 

[poohbear]

@ 1440p text still looks blurry in a lot of 3rd party programs & games. Win 8.1 itself works great with DPI scaling (all win 8.1 apps eg resource monitor, taskbar etc), but any 3rd party app still looks blurry. I can only imagine how blurry things would look on 4k screens....

 

[toyota]

Windows 8.1 scalling is great in my opinion

yet every review from actual tech sites have plenty of complaints. no offense but you seem to be an example of ignorance is bliss on this topic.

 

[Phynaz]

yet every review from actual tech sites have plenty of complaints. no offense but you seem to be an example of ignorance is bliss on this topic.

New reg trying to bump his post count.

 

[toyota]

New reg trying to bump his post count.

yeah maybe he is hoping to hit the fs section soon...lol.

 

[know of fence]

They talk about DPI scaling. I've been wondering about it a lot since I've been waiting to go 4k.

It's pretty interesting that 32" 4k has the density of a phone (nokia 920).

Your pictures serve well to demonstrate the problem of a mismatch between resolution and size.

32" (3840x2160) 4K = 138 ppi
Nokia 920 4,5" (1280x768) = 332 ppi

Whatever 138 ppi may just be big enough that you don't need to scale, but whom am i kidding that calculator is tiny 70% of it's intended hight and width.

To avoid scaling related aggravation altogether people need to stick to the 96 ppi standard (meaning ~23" 1080p/~46" 4K), or choose multiples there off, like 192 ppi. (~23" 4K) This way your monitor will always show the default, intended sizes of things in the right proportion to the full screen. To me slightly larger 27" or 28" 4K scaled to 200% is the most appealing.

 

[Eric1987]

My density is better at 160 ppi for my 28 inch screen. And if Windows 9 allows those features its going to be an A+ for me.

 

[AkumaX]

I hated the 28" 4K monitor on Win 8.1 - the DPI scaling was terrible. Don't think any version of Win 8.x will fix it.
Wish I had time to try it on a Mac, but the monitor was defective so I had to send it back.
Hopefully Win 9 will be better.

 

[Eric1987]

It would be great for me if I could choose the scaling. At 125-150% it looks great but then my 1080p monitor looks like shit.

 

[Grooveriding]

I didn't have many complaints with 4K. Scaling worked well enough for desktop usage, but you run into many apps that do not scale. Just a simple example; the battle.net desktop app does not scale properly at 4K delivering very tiny text, menus, buttons etc. Photoshop is the same, which really annoyed me. You would expect an app geared to content creation to work perfectly with 4K...

You also get the issue of websites that don't stretch properly, leaving you with empty bars on either side. You get this same behaviour even running 2560x1600 though. It's just the consequence of not running any resolution but 1080, which is where the overwhelming majority still is. I think gamers are starting to migrate up, if not to 4K, to at least 1440p - but your general PC user browsing the web and doing work-related tasks is going to be running 1080p.

 

[BrightCandle]

Its not just Windows and multiple monitor scaling issues, its also something software specifically needs to implement. Quite a few apps are broken and don't scale properly, either they just lower resolution and look kind of bad or everything goes really small because they report to the OS that they support scaling when they don't. Windows 9 just can't fix this.

 

[know of fence]

I hated the 28" 4K monitor on Win 8.1 - the DPI scaling was terrible. Don't think any version of Win 8.x will fix it.
Wish I had time to try it on a Mac, but the monitor was defective so I had to send it back.
Hopefully Win 9 will be better.

"dpi scaling" is a %-slider buried somewhere in windows display settings, that has been there and it has worked flawlessly since the XP days. You should check out the value at witch it set next time around. Maybe adjust it yourself or at least include the set value in your complaints.

The reasons why windows doesn't to it automatically are complicated.

Windows - with disastrous results for older software - could do the sizing automatically and exactly scale the proportions of UI and text to the screen size. This is probably what's happening on windows tablets and phones and the "Modern UI" side of Win 8. But on monitors there are much less pixels per inch to work with, and the ugliness of scaling is much more pronounced, so windows likely just defaults to display everything pixel per pixel, as is.

Like the majority of people, I personally don't want big monitors to be just enlarged phone screens, which is why the whole idea of Win 8 and a unified UI for both is such a dismal failure. The issue isn't windows though, the issue is small screen devices, they ignored the 96 dpi standard and simply stretched things proportionally to the full screen, an approach that will never work for multi monitor setups or cluttered productivity applications. On windows the user has a choice, use the big resolution for more real estate or use it scaled for finer picture/text quality, this requires the user to know where to find the dpi option in the windows screen settings. Choice is bad, that much we learned from Steve Jobs. Hopefully the monitor industry won't try to sell us too many bad choices.

Thus complaining about windows not auto-scaling everything is a lot like complaining about black bars during video playback after buying a 16:10 monitor. Standards are important! Supporting a multitude of products that go outside of this standards is a rather complicated issue, with no satisfying solutions in sight. Apple simply has two eco-systems for desktop and mobile. Chrome OS's solution is to make everything into a web-apps, and let you resize at your leisure.