I'm writing a wxWidgets (3.1.0) app that is supposed to work on windows and mac.
On windows when i set the scaling of the text to more than 100% the sizes of my controls get all messed up. I have a dpi manifest that says my app is dpi aware. I also set the font pixel size on my dialogs and that works to some extent. When i set the size of some element from code it is resized to that pixel size which is what i need, but any size that is set in the xrc file gets scaled up. Also when i try to reduce the size of any wxSpinCtrl it can be reduced normally to some point but then only the text box gets smaller and the buttons remain unproportionally large. So is there a way to tell my app not to scale any sizes and just let everything be exactly the same pixel size as it would be on a normal dpi (despite the fact that my app will look small on higher resolutions)?
There is no way to prevent the proper scaling from being applied using wxWidgets API and I don't think this is going to change because it just doesn't seem to make any sense.
However rebuilding wxWidgets with wxHAVE_DPI_INDEPENDENT_PIXELS defined should trick the library into thinking that the underlying graphical toolkit already scales the pixel values and so prevent it from doing it on its own. I've never tested this but, AFAICS, this should result in what you want.
Nevertheless let me reiterate that what you want is totally wrong and the real fix for this problem is to explain it to whoever decided to do it.
Related
My app has a toolbar which is normally 64 pixels height. On OS X (with a retina display) the toolbar's height still equals to 64 (logical) pixels.
If I pass 64x64 bitmap when creating a wxBitmapButton I get a blurry image (which is expected), so I need to pass somehow a 128x128 bitmap.
When I pass it, it's just shown cropped without proper scaling. So how can I use wxBitmapButton to show high-quality bitmap?
I know this is a rather old question by now, but there is finally a good answer to it now if you're using the latest versions of wxWidgets from Git or 3.1.6+ once it will have been released.
The answer consists in using wxBitmapBundle which is basically a smart container for bitmaps to be used in different resolutions/at different DPI scale factors. In the simplest case, which is sufficient under Mac, you just need to create a bundle from the two bitmaps, to be used at normal (or 100%) and high (or 200%) DPI by using wxBitmapBundle::FromBitmaps(bmpNormal, bmpHigh) and pass this object to wxBitmapButton::SetBitmap().
This also works with wxToolBar tools, wxStaticBitmap and other (although not yet all) classes. And the bitmap bundle can be created from resources, which is especially convenient under Mac, as you can just have normal.png and normal#2x.png files in your application bundle (which has nothing to do with wxBitmapBundle, it's just an unfortunately overloaded term) Resources subdirectory.
wxWidgets 3.1 claims to fix the Windows High DPI issues. It works too but I see blur UI (fonts/bitmaps) looks stretched.
I went through the https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/hidpi/high-dpi-desktop-application-development-on-windows
I did the manifest changes to make my application DPI-aware, it removed the blur effect but application layout went wrong, every layout looks smaller (unusable UI).
Note* issue more vigilant on 3K and 4K system. Hardcoded pixel sizes are not scaling (like 400px width button, 500pixel width panel etc).
wxWidgets gives you a (relatively simple) way to make your application work in high DPI, but doesn't -- and can't -- do it automatically for you, in particular only sizer-based layouts without hardcoded pixel sizes will work correctly and you do need to provide your own higher definition artwork.
Concerning the existing pixel values, the simplest (even though not really the best) way to make them work better is to put FromDIP() calls around them.
Also note that you don't need to do anything special for pixel values in XRC, they're already interpreted as being resolution-independent pixels and are scaled according to the DPI automatically.
Question : What are the uses of changing display resolution in full screen mode in GAMES and should it be allowed?
More info : The way i see it,
Privilege perspective : When you request your window manager for a window context, you also have the option via a flag usually to set the window to a fullscreen mode, In fullscreen mode, you can set the window resolution to a resolution of your choice usually from a given list, In most cases, that will change the display resolution, affecting your desktop environment, Should a program that is not your window manager have control over your display monitor?
Bugs : OS / Software depended in mind, When a program faults and trigger a crash, if the program fails to exit correctly, You may still end up with the same resolution asked by your software (also applies to gamma ramps when not using shaders).
Practices : Since the dawn of pc video games as far as i know, You always ended up having a "Native resolution" and everything just getting re-scaled to it, In today's world, You also have "Dynamic resolution scaling" methods and other tricks with frame buffer objects, Do we gain any benefit from actually changing the display resolution?
Performance wise, You can always change other settings to improve performance, Not just resolution.
Aspect ratio in mind, If your display monitor by default is using 16:9 for your desktop environment, Would you actually change it to something else? Obviously you should have the option, but should it be changed through a software that is not your window manager?
Thanks in advance, I may end up revising the question during the first few hours after posting.
Always pick nice defaults that don't change the display mode on launch. If the user wants to go to the graphics settings page and set it to 1024x768 full-screen mode though, let them - they probably know what they're doing.
As for performance, there can be reasons to use non-native full-screen. In addition to the performance benefit you get from drawing fewer pixels, you get access to fixed-function hardware that scales up the image on scan-out. If you scale up in the renderer itself, this is at least one extra full-screen read + write. If you're fill-rate bound, this can impact your framerate.
Something to consider though is that if you have any kind of post-process pass, you will usually be doing a read+write anyway, so you can do scaling at the same time effectively for free. Also, using native resolution for your final target is the only way to get crisp edges for things like text. Often, a game will use a scaled down target for 3D rendering, and merge with a native-resolution overlay.
In a nutshell:
Pick good defaults (windowed, or windowed-fullscreen native resolution).
Allow the user to set the window target resolution and mode (windowed, windowed-fullscreen, or fullscreen).
Allow the user to independently select the 3D resolution scale factor (25% - 200%).
Always draw the HUD and any text at the window target resolution.
I'm not sure if this is a Windows feature or it is a part of the video driver, but when you change screen resolutions you have the option of making the font size 125% or 150% of normal. This causes me endless headaches when designing forms because one woman in the office has her's set to 125%. Before I publish I must set my development machine to match her resolution to make sure everything is visible. This means logging off and on.
Is there a way to have VB.Net ignore that so it does not increase the font size and stretch controls to accommodate? I've noticed that it does not appear all programs increase font size.
Greg
I'm using a 40 x 40 sized image as a search result suggestion image in Windows 8 search. Only advice about the image format I can find is to have correct size for it (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/Hh700542.aspx: "Windows will scale or crop smaller or larger images").
However, the correctly sized image blurs annoyingly. The same thing happens whether I use jpg or png. Original image looks fine, but the result suggestion in the search charm is very ugly, being still of same size! Is Windows converting the image somehow, and how could I get the image to stay crisp?
I haven't noticed blurring with photo-like images, but this image contains clear lines and areas which are vulnerable to any scaling etc.
Update Sep 24:
Here is the test image I used when trying to figure out the problem. I also created different scale versions, but in my case the 100% version was used (that's why the "100" marking) - as I supposed because the resulting image really is 40x40. As you can see, the resulting image (right) is of same size as original (left), but blurry.
it does not happen that often but it seems the right solution in this case was simply to wait ;) I haven't done anything new regarding result suggestion images in my solution and today I realized that the images became crisp. Probably fixed by any of the windows updates.
[Took a stab at answering what seems the related question mentioned in the comments, so I'm posting here as well.]
It sounds like this could be related to automatic scaling of the images. Windows will automatically scale up/down based on pixel density, and you can help things scale well by either using vector-based images or, for bitmap images, supplying scale-specific versions.
For example, to scale an image referenced in markup as "AppLogo.jpg", you'd include these images:
AppLogo.scale-100.jpg
AppLogo.scale-140.jpg
AppLogo.scale-180.jpg
You can also use folders, e.g. "\scale-140\AppLogo.jpg".
For search result images, the 100% image is the 40x40 pixel version, 140 is 56x56, and 180 is 72x72. Just reference the image as "AppLogo.jpg" and the appropriate version will be used automatically. (You can also detect scale with DisplayProperties.ResolutionScale and manually choose an image.)
Here's a couple of articles with more examples/details:
"Guidelines for scaling to pixel density"
"Quickstart: Using file or image resources"
There's also some scaling discussion in the forums (general, not specific to search) here and here.