ARC Display Text Fuzziness Issues

You can find information on that subject in this link. Rather than copying and pasting the document here : https://synthiam.com/Support/troubleshooting/screen-resolution

Well, after trying the methods in the link above the problem persists. It boils down to making my 4K screen a 1920×1080 with scaling set to 100%. (huge looking text.)    Enable "Fix scaling for apps" in Advanced Scaling Settings is not have an available option on my computer.

Not sure what to do now.  The screen is so crisp on all applications and programs except ARC.

If the text is "huge" at 1920x1080, it means the scaling is set to a value greater than 100% (mentioned in the support document as recommended scaling size for 1080p resolution). This document does its best to explain how Windows scales and why some apps will be blurry with 4k: https://synthiam.com/Support/troubleshooting/screen-resolution

As mentioned in the document, it's not an issue with ARC - it's how Microsoft Windows handles scaling for 4k. ARC is a desktop application that hosts its own desktop (where you add robot skills) and other features. With Microsoft Windows 4k scaling, some apps of a similar nature can appear blurry due to the scaling system built into Microsoft Windows. More information is listed in the link above.

Yeah - support is correct. If there were something we could do about it, we would. There are two ways to make applications in Windows. Desktop applications that use Forms (what ARC uses), and WPF (xaml/Maui uses it) (which is what Office programs and such use).

All our laptops are 4k as well, but we run them at 1080 with 100% scaling. That works with 100% of all programs. Even Microsoft's Visual Studio designer struggles with 4 K, so we have to use 1080. Our video editor also has to use 1080 for a similar reason, as does our video editing suite. As the support document says, Microsoft designed Windows around 1080, just like they designed DOS around 640k (haha). And their "hack" to fix it was by copying Apple's mobile device UI, which doesn't help genuine desktop software.

WPF occasionally scales well, but you can't have a windowing system within WPF. And you can't have a GUI plugin system with WPF. There are tons of limitations because Microsoft didn't quite figure out which direction to take with their GUI. They painted themselves into a corner with WPF and Maui and such by playing a terribly bad game of catch-up with Apple's OS (macOS & macOS). Microsoft saw the significant market share that Apple had and thought, "Hey, let's do that too!" - but without realizing that Microsoft Windows is used for a whole different reason. People who use Windows are programmers, engineers, etc. All 3D design tools and software development environments are strongest or most supported on Windows. Sure, sure, the Linux guys are gonna get all bent out of shape when they read that. But I'm talking legit, genuine corporate design software, not open-source hippy stuff.

Microsoft has no idea what people use Windows for, so they keep changing the product, pushing it further away from its user base.

Anyway, when Microsoft chased Apple, they really fell short on their GUI libraries. They made .NET cross-platform, which is fantastic if you're making console apps (text only). But they fell short by not creating a suitable desktop widget library, like WinForms. Instead, they made this XAML-based tablet/phone type designer. So sure, you can make a program with a few buttons look good on a phone/windows & linux. But you can't make a complicated UI like ARC with it. Other companies that experience the same issues include SolidWorks and similar products, which require the Windows legacy UI library.

So yeah, it's a huge bother for me, too. Every few months, I have the team explore new UI options. We got really excited about ARCx being web browser-based, but we ran into a ton of issues with cross-platform libraries that weren't complete or fully compatible. This lies with the UI, sound, and video libraries. All in all, it got ugly, so we keep having to shelf it. However, I really do think with how upset people are with Windows 11 and Microsoft literally reading and training AI on people's email, we'll see significant effort into better third-party cross-platform libraries so we can move to some variant of Linux (hippies don't manage that, haha).

So in the meantime, if you don't want to experience the common 4K bluriness or poor malformating with any other applications in the future, rock 1080p and set 100% scaling - you'll be happy.

Quote:

I'm talking legit, genuine corporate design software, not open-source hippy stuff.

Thanks for the detailed explanation DJ!  Must be so frustrating for you guys.  I understand now and will use the 1080p set to 100%. After all,  it’s a gateway to an awesome robot programming platform . I’m very proud and always impressed with the quality of the effort shown here!

Thank you for the kind words. Whenever we receive feedback, we take it very seriously and prioritize user experience. After all, we're only successful if you guys can make amazing robots.

That said, I added an item to our list to have someone look into new WinForms features that scale better with 4k. I saw an update to .NET 4.81 a while ago that mentioned scaling improvements, specifically for Windows 11. That would be wonderful if it's something that helps ARC scale better with 4k. Cross your fingers