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External monitor and DPI

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  • WTFH
    replied
    Originally posted by VectraMan View Post
    If it's anything other than the native resolution it's either got to stretch it or pillarbox/letterbox it. If you've dropped your monitor from 1680x1050 to 1440x900 then it's doing one or the other.

    If your laptop pillarboxes when you drop the resolution then that's not a lot of use. If I get a 3200x2100 laptop and I put it into 1920x1080 mode (or whatever is closest) then the text will be tiny and I'll only be getting a small area in the middle of the screen!




    OK, either I am not understanding you, or you are not understanding me...


    You don't need to put the laptop into the same resolution as the second screen and you don't need to have them at the same ratio.


    And, the letterbox bars are only to get the ratio right - it's not switching off pixels to get the resolution.
    (I've just tested that to check - take the laptop resolution down to 1280x768 = 15:9 and the image almost fills the whole screen. If I drop it to 1280x720 (16:9), hey presto the screen is full, no stretching)


    Now, I'm wondering if your idea of stretching and mine are different - to me stretching would imply it's done in one axis only, so you lose the original ratio.


    Maybe rather than talking about this in terms of my monitors, what is the monitor you'll be connecting the laptop to? What is it's resolution and size (also that for the laptop)?


    e.g. laptop with 15.4", 2560x1400, monitor = 24", 1920x1200

    Leave a comment:


  • VectraMan
    replied
    Originally posted by WTFH View Post
    Right now my laptop is running at it's recommend 1600x900 (16x9)
    My monitor is running at 1680x1050 (16x10)
    So, you might say I won't see the difference between 1600 and 1680. I'll drop the monitor down to 1440x900. No stretching.
    Next test - drop the laptop from 1600x900 to 1440x900 (i.e. change the ration from 16:9 to 16:10) - laptop now has black bars down either side. It does NOT stretch the output to fit the panel.
    If it's anything other than the native resolution it's either got to stretch it or pillarbox/letterbox it. If you've dropped your monitor from 1680x1050 to 1440x900 then it's doing one or the other.

    If your laptop pillarboxes when you drop the resolution then that's not a lot of use. If I get a 3200x2100 laptop and I put it into 1920x1080 mode (or whatever is closest) then the text will be tiny and I'll only be getting a small area in the middle of the screen!

    Leave a comment:


  • sal
    replied
    It doesn't work properly in Win 8.1 or rather it works, but gets screwed intermittently. In my case I have a 4k display on my desktop which is also connected to the TV which is 1080p. You can setup different scaling for the 2 displays and it works fro a while, then at some point it gets screwed, eventually i gave up trying to troubleshoot it. No idea how well it's handled in Win10

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  • WTFH
    replied
    Originally posted by VectraMan View Post
    Nothing to do with that. If you have a 1920x1080p LCD panel and you put it in 800x600 mode it's going to look crap as the pixels from the output don't correspond to the physical pixels in the panel. This is how it's always been with LCD. Text is stretched, because everything is stretched because the OS thinks it's in 800x600.
    Right now my laptop is running at it's recommend 1600x900 (16x9)
    My monitor is running at 1680x1050 (16x10)
    So, you might say I won't see the difference between 1600 and 1680. I'll drop the monitor down to 1440x900. No stretching.
    Next test - drop the laptop from 1600x900 to 1440x900 (i.e. change the ration from 16:9 to 16:10) - laptop now has black bars down either side. It does NOT stretch the output to fit the panel.


    Check your graphics card settings.


    (running Win7 on an Lenovo laptop with Intel graphics)

    Leave a comment:


  • VectraMan
    replied
    Originally posted by WTFH View Post
    OK, so if you want to keep both displays at their maximum (and the graphics card can cope), then do so, but you'll have differing "sizes" of text. You cannae change the laws of physics.
    Actually you can change the laws of physics. In this case anyway as the program running on one monitor can increase the size of its fonts based on the system DPI setting for that monitor. Also it seems under Windows 8.1/10 the system scales the output of a non-compliant application to suit the monitor it's running on.

    Read all about it:

    https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/library/dn469266.aspx

    What I was trying to find out is if anyone is doing this in practice and can confirm how well it works. Obviously I'm just going to have to buy the thing and try it.


    As for the "irregular stretch", again, your graphics card should cope with that based on how you set it up. The text will not be stretched.
    Nothing to do with that. If you have a 1920x1080p LCD panel and you put it in 800x600 mode it's going to look crap as the pixels from the output don't correspond to the physical pixels in the panel. This is how it's always been with LCD. Text is stretched, because everything is stretched because the OS thinks it's in 800x600.

    Leave a comment:


  • WTFH
    replied
    Originally posted by VectraMan View Post
    Which is a crap solution as you lose the benefit of the higher resolution display and if you can't get exactly half resolution it'll be doing an irregular stretch which looks terrible on LCD displays.


    OK, so if you want to keep both displays at their maximum (and the graphics card can cope), then do so, but you'll have differing "sizes" of text. You cannae change the laws of physics.


    As for the "irregular stretch", again, your graphics card should cope with that based on how you set it up. The text will not be stretched. If a character is 10 pixels high by 10 pixels wide on one screen, it will be 10 pixels high and 10 pixels wide on another screen, irrespective of screen resolution. If one screen has a different ratio to the other (e.g. one is 16:9 and the other is 4:3) then the results will depend on your graphics card. Either one screen will be displaying more vertical information than the other, or you will have black bars on one screen to mimic the ratio of the other.


    Let's say a character is 10px square and screen 1 is 3200x1800. You will get 320 characters across the width of that screen. Screen 2 is 1600x1200. You'll get 160 characters across it. That's using both screens at their maximum resolution.


    So, now you tell me that screen 1 is 15" and screen 2 is 31"
    1. 15" diagonal = 32cm width (roughly). That means each of the 320 characters will take up 1mm of space.
    2. 31" diagonal = 64cm width (ish). That means each of the 160 characters will take up 4mm of space.
    Physical size difference is x4 due to the screen size and pixel size.


    Back to what I said earlier - if you want to change the text to be the same physical size on the two screens then you need to adjust one screen to suit the other. In the above example, that would mean dropping the laptop to 800x450, or upscaling the text on the laptop (if the graphics card supports independent upscaling)

    Leave a comment:


  • NotAllThere
    replied
    Originally posted by VectraMan View Post
    I mean what if the laptop screen is much higher resolution - i.e. 3200x2160 (or whatever they are)? That's going to make the text unreadable with standard settings, ...

    Leave a comment:


  • VectraMan
    replied
    Originally posted by WTFH View Post
    You go into the settings on the laptop and adjust each display to suit.

    Your limitations are:
    1. The graphics card capability of the laptop
    2. Each individual screen resolution.


    (I've just tested this by dropping my monitor down to 800x600 while running the laptop at 1600x900. Both displayed at their respective resolutions/sizes.)

    If you want the text to remain the same size on both screens then you drop the res of the laptop when it's connected to an external.
    Which is a crap solution as you lose the benefit of the higher resolution display and if you can't get exactly half resolution it'll be doing an irregular stretch which looks terrible on LCD displays.

    Leave a comment:


  • WTFH
    replied
    Originally posted by VectraMan View Post
    I mean what if the laptop screen is much higher resolution - i.e. 3200x2160 (or whatever they are)? That's going to make the text unreadable with standard settings, so you have to increase the DPI, which then means the text is too large on an external second monitor, unless it also has a QHD resolution. Even a 1080p 15" laptop is going to be hard to read without increasing the DPI.

    All the high end laptops are pushing the QHD / Retina displays, but does this make them unusable with external second monitors? That is the question.


    You go into the settings on the laptop and adjust each display to suit.


    Your limitations are:
    1. The graphics card capability of the laptop
    2. Each individual screen resolution.


    (I've just tested this by dropping my monitor down to 800x600 while running the laptop at 1600x900. Both displayed at their respective resolutions/sizes.)


    If you want the text to remain the same size on both screens then you drop the res of the laptop when it's connected to an external.

    Leave a comment:


  • VectraMan
    replied
    I mean what if the laptop screen is much higher resolution - i.e. 3200x2160 (or whatever they are)? That's going to make the text unreadable with standard settings, so you have to increase the DPI, which then means the text is too large on an external second monitor, unless it also has a QHD resolution. Even a 1080p 15" laptop is going to be hard to read without increasing the DPI.

    All the high end laptops are pushing the QHD / Retina displays, but does this make them unusable with external second monitors? That is the question.

    Leave a comment:

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