Poor DPI scaling on 4K monitor. What to do?

[Richard Morrison]

This appears to be an issue in all versions of AC that can run on a 4K monitor, including AC20.

I have a new 4K monitor, but the screen for AC is sharp only in native resolution, and then everything is too tiny to use. If I scale the display in Windows 10 up to 150% or 175%, it is large enough, but then the sharpness of icons and text is lost. This is not a problem for other programs. Is there any fix for this?

[matjashka]

Richard,

Unfortunately, the only way to scale up pixels without losing sharpness is going by full increments like 2x, not 1.5x or 1.75x.
200% will use 2x2=4 monitor "dots" to display one pixel without blur, unless the graphic interface is resolution independent (I don't know if the new interface in v20 is or not). Even then you will experience problems with icons that are not correctly hinted (look up "font hinting" for reference)

[Richard Morrison]

matjashka wrote:
Richard,

Unfortunately, the only way to scale up pixels without losing sharpness is going by full increments like 2x, not 1.5x or 1.75x.
200% will use 2x2=4 monitor "dots" to display one pixel without blur, unless the graphic interface is resolution independent (I don't know if the new interface in v20 is or not). Even then you will experience problems with icons that are not correctly hinted (look up "font hinting" for reference)

Thanks, Matt. I'll give 200% a try, but I am disappointed that I wasted about $300 for a resolution that has no benefits in AC.

[Anonymous]

Richard wrote:
I'll give 200% a try, but I am disappointed that I wasted about $300 for a resolution that has no benefits in AC.

Don't be. Just keep this thread alive until someone from GS answers it.

AC, as any other expensive professional application, should work with any current hardware. If it does not — you just need to make a clear point to GS to address it.

AC20 is specifically marketed for as "Retina Displays Fully Supported on Mac".
I can see from your signature that you are on Windows, but HDPI monitors are common to both platforms, so lets see what GS has to say.

[Richard Morrison]

Until GS responds, I may give this a try: http://lifehacker.com/fix-blurry-fonts-in-windows-10-with-this-utility-1734246822

[Anonymous]

Richard,
I think this is due to how MacOS and windows take two very differing strategies to dealing with HiDPI, on MacOS icons and interface elements are a vector graphic hence they scale to any size but on windows graphics are bitmapped therefore the developers need to create suites of icons for each resolution.
If you think ARCHICAD handles HiDPI not well you should see how poorly AutoCAD handles it, I'm finding AutoCAD almost unusable on my new laptop as I cannot read half of the dialog boxes (either text too small - even with magnifying glass, or too large to fit within dialog box.

Scott

[matjashka]

Richard,

This video: http://helpcenter.graphisoft.com/videos/archicad/archicad-20-new-features/archicad_20_interface_and_... clearly states that v20 has vector-based interface icons, which are scalable to support both old and 4K monitors. Looks like your investment will pay off as soon as you upgrade to v20.

[LiHigh]

matjashka wrote:
Richard,

This video: http://helpcenter.graphisoft.com/videos/archicad/archicad-20-new-features/archicad_20_interface_and_... clearly states that v20 has vector-based interface icons, which are scalable to support both old and 4K monitors. Looks like your investment will pay off as soon as you upgrade to v20.

No. AC 20 is not compatible with Windows 10 dpi scaling!

[matjashka]

I'm sure that sooner or later somebody will elaborate a bit more on this topic. For now, live v20 hasn't yet been spotted in my neck of the woods.

[Richard Morrison]

As a followup, I tried the font utility (which renders fonts the way that Win8.1 did.) It was better but still not great. I was hoping to achieve something like a Retina display in Windows, but apparently, that's just not going to happen. I'm taking the 4K monitor back (and hope they give me a refund), and bought a 1920x1080 27" standard LED as a second monitor. Running in its native resolution, the monitor displays fonts and icons very crisply, but still not a Retina display.