Support for Retina screens on Mac

[tphinney]

After installing FGU, I started trying to use it. Besides the usual learning curve issues everyone mentions, I am finding the half-resolution text and graphics just to painful to look at.

One of the reasons I went for the Unity version was that, while there might be a variety of issues, at least it would be a modern platform. So for example it can be run on current macOS. I figured that since Unity started out on the Mac, surely FGU would be reasonably Mac savvy? But it sure does not seem so.

What are the plans — if any — for retina updates for the core interface and main rulesets?

I will note that Apple introduced this feature in 2012, and by 2015 all new Macs operated in retina mode, unless you went out of your way to change to a non-default resolution.

[tahl_liadon]

.
unfortunately, if you use just a mac laptop with retina display, even with the most current 16", you're not gonna have a good time.
especially if you plan to run a game with just the laptop.

the problem is not fg, or any app for that matter. it's the retina display.

if you're a player (i.e. not gm), you can set:
a) you retina display to a lower resolution, which would make everything not look like ants
buy also effectively reducing your screen real estate, to make fg interface more legible;
or
b) set the scale of your fg interface to be more than 100% (maybe 125% - 135%),
which would scale everything up to accommodate tiny pixels retina display.

otherwise, find an old monitor or buy a cheap one that's at least 20" to create multiple display setting
and make the experience more enjoyable.

[tphinney]

.
unfortunately, if you use just a mac laptop with retina display, even with the most current 16", you're not gonna have a good time.
especially if you plan to run a game with just the laptop.

the problem is not fg, or any app for that matter. it's the retina display.

if you're a player (i.e. not gm), you can set:
a) you retina display to a lower resolution, which would make everything not look like ants
buy also effectively reducing your screen real estate, to make fg interface more legible;
or
b) set the scale of your fg interface to be more than 100% (maybe 125% - 135%),
which would scale everything up to accommodate tiny pixels retina display.

otherwise, find an old monitor or buy a cheap one that's at least 20" to create multiple display setting
and make the experience more enjoyable.

1) I never said I was using a laptop. (As a matter of fact, I am, but with a 30.5" and two 27" external monitors, so... irrelevant.)

2) You clearly do not understand how retina displays work.

3) Setting to a lower resolution is not the problem. The fact that the app is not retina-aware is the problem. And no, the retina display is not the problem. Every Mac sold of any size in the past five years has had one. So, the notion that this app is Mac-compatible is dubious.

I used to be CEO of a software company. We didn’t get a retina version of our flagship app out until December 2017. That made us really late.

[LordEntrails]

From what I can gather from comments made by the devs, the following are their current priorities;
1) Ability to run, such as the networking issues we have been seeing recently and the updater problems
2) Promised features
3) Performance
4) cosmetics

This issue probably falls into the number 4 category. I suspect it is already on their list, but if you want to make sure you can always add it to the wishlist; https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?41885-Character-Converter-for-D-amp-D-Beyond

[notrealdan]

I think LE meant to put this link: ;)
https://fg2app.idea.informer.com/

[tphinney]

If it was solely graphics-as-graphics, I might consider this purely cosmetic. Important, but cosmetic.

But this affects ALL TEXT in the app. I would have thought it was because everything in the app is a graphic (an unfortunate architectural decision). It is just brutally unpleasant. But even the installer isn’t retina-aware for text, and that text is definitely plain old text, and it looks pretty awful.

I will with to hear something from somebody on the FG side. If this really isn’t going to be addressed any time soon, I will likely get a refund and forget about it (until FG catches up to this 2012–2015 technology).

Everybody has their own dealbreakers for what they want from the app. But this is probably one of mine. I am willing to learn a weird interface and try to drag my friends through it. But if all the text looks like crap and is unpleasant to read, as well as all the graphics being chonky, that is too much for me, I think.

[notrealdan]

Have you tried using the /scaleui chat command? If not, try it and see if it helps. Usage is like:
/scaleui X
Where X is a number from 50-200.

[tphinney]

The UI is not the wrong size, rather it is half the resolution.

The /scaleUI switch just makes everything bigger or smaller, using either more, or fewer, of the double-scaled pixels. But it does not fix the problem.

[tahl_liadon]

.
first off, i am not here to speak on behalf of or know what are planned by smiteworks...

i was simply offering what i thought was friendly and helpful insight.

then here is where we can agree to disagree:


The fact that the app is not retina-aware is the problem.
subjective.
an app being retina-ready is great, but when in retina mode: images may appear crisp and clear
(only if prepared as at least @2x high-resolution), but on-screen text legibility is practically
not user-friendly by default unless user increase font size in settings.


And no, the retina display is not the problem.
again, subjective.
i work with retina display every day. same issue as (1) above. a lot of users are not equipped with retina.
when retina-ready contents are served on non-retina, the result is effectively enlarge to at least 2x,
making contents "spill" outside of view area of most non-retina screens.


Every Mac sold of any size in the past five years has had one.
those same macs are targeted to certain social-economic groups. just because the technology is there,
and one uses it everyday may give one the impression that a large segment of users can afford and use such same technology.
the statement doesn't really mean much here.


So, the notion that this app is Mac-compatible is dubious.
from the amount of posts you've garnered here, it seems this comment comes from a place
of self-importance and lacking appreciation for the efforts and support of the a community
that has practically been the backbone of this app.
which part of "mac-compatible" is not true?
are many solid apps out there are not retina-ready but "mac-compatible" dubious as well?

i am sure many will disagree with you.

[LordEntrails]

If this is a deal breaker for you, then you will probably have to contact support directly to find out what their plans are. [email protected].

And I don't know if this is unique to retina displays, 4k windows screens have a similar issue, There are threads on it. Myself I don't run my screen at 4k because I don't need it and it makes most apps and text too small.

[bmos]

I'd just like to chime in with the fact that many Windows devices also have screens of similar sharpness.
Less, proportionally, than the number of Macs but we are out there.

I'm not too bothered by the pixelated text being harder to read (my eyesight is very good), but it would be nice to improve on once the bugs are worked out and would likely help with eyestrain (which seems much worse in Unity after a 6 hour session).

[tphinney]

Some perfectly reasonable replies, thanks folks. (Except for the one guy trying to start a platform war.)

Just to explain more clearly, because there is some lack of understanding: “Retina” is a specific OS screen mode on macOS, that invokes a bunch of particular things. It does not have a simple direct correlation on Windows; the operating systems just work differently. On Mac, you can be at the same number of pixels either in retina mode, or not, and they are radically different. “Retina” is not only a branding buzzword for high resolution. (Although of course Apple gets mileage from the branding, I am just saying that it also has a specific technical meaning.)

When an app is not Retina savvy, running it on a Mac in Retina mode gives a similar effect to running the same monitor/screen in Windows, but at half its native resolution. Everything is the right size, but blurry. So making things bigger is not a helpful solution, as they are already the “right” size.

On Mac, one can get the same effect as running the app on Windows—by using semi-hidden system options or third-party tools to set the screen res to be the same resolution, but non-Retina.

Doing that while FGU is running does not help. The app just gets very small. Crisp, though.

BUT, doing the screen res change to non-Retina 4K, and then launching the app does something very interesting. The app internal features run as if it was a Retina app running at the previous settings! That is, it is scaled to the right size, with the right number of pixels, and twice as big as when I changed the res after. Text elements are text-based and crisp, and other stuff seems tolerable so far.

Of course, the OS resolution is different, so there are issues like the system menus are microscopic and the mouse is twice as hard to move. But clearly the underpinnings are here. Basically, it seems the app does have a Retina mode on macOS, it just isn’t wired up correctly right now. I don’t know exactly how hard this is to fix, but I suspect it is not crazy hard. Certainly nowhere near the absurd amount of work of supporting Retina mode from scratch if you haven’t already been working on it.

I took the advice of just emailing support, but I will have to update them with this additional news.

I probably won’t be posting here again. This is supposed to be a leisure activity — I don’t need to be attacked because somebody doesn’t like my choice of hardware.

[LordEntrails]

Thanks for the details. Wish I had an answer for you, but suspect it is just that up until recently FG hasn't needed to be savvy in other platforms. I'm sure it is a learning process for them as it was for me.

[bmos]

Some perfectly reasonable replies, thanks folks. (Except for the one guy trying to start a platform war.)

Just to explain more clearly, because there is some lack of understanding: “Retina” is a specific OS screen mode on macOS, that invokes a bunch of particular things. It does not have a simple direct correlation on Windows; the operating systems just work differently. On Mac, you can be at the same number of pixels either in retina mode, or not, and they are radically different. “Retina” is not only a branding buzzword for high resolution. (Although of course Apple gets mileage from the branding, I am just saying that it also has a specific technical meaning.)

When an app is not Retina savvy, running it on a Mac in Retina mode gives a similar effect to running the same monitor/screen in Windows, but at half its native resolution. Everything is the right size, but blurry. So making things bigger is not a helpful solution, as they are already the “right” size.

On Mac, one can get the same effect as running the app on Windows—by using semi-hidden system options or third-party tools to set the screen res to be the same resolution, but non-Retina.

Doing that while FGU is running does not help. The app just gets very small. Crisp, though.

BUT, doing the screen res change to non-Retina 4K, and then launching the app does something very interesting. The app internal features run as if it was a Retina app running at the previous settings! That is, it is scaled to the right size, with the right number of pixels, and twice as big as when I changed the res after. Text elements are text-based and crisp, and other stuff seems tolerable so far.

Of course, the OS resolution is different, so there are issues like the system menus are microscopic and the mouse is twice as hard to move. But clearly the underpinnings are here. Basically, it seems the app does have a Retina mode on macOS, it just isn’t wired up correctly right now. I don’t know exactly how hard this is to fix, but I suspect it is not crazy hard. Certainly nowhere near the absurd amount of work of supporting Retina mode from scratch if you haven’t already been working on it.
I took the advice of just emailing support, but I will have to update them with this additional news.
I probably won’t be posting here again. This is supposed to be a leisure activity — I don’t need to be attacked because somebody doesn’t like my choice of hardware.Windows has support for that too. Retina is just apple's brand name for displaying higher-res assets at a smaller size than proportional to the same asset at lower res. This results in a higher final dpi which looks more sharp. Making Unity work with that would mean a lot more overhead considering that they are already maxing out their computational budget with the medium-to-low-resolution maps we're using currently.

[freddieknets]

Hi, all!

Just chiming in here as a new user.

I can see that most people replying to this thread are not aware of the true meaning of retina. It is not just a brand name, it is not just a matter of higher resolution. It should be rather interpreted as a sub-resolution per pixel. Upscaling resolution might in the end give the same result for graphics, but it won't for text. And let this exactly be the point of retina screens: crisp text.

I have a macbook at home but am also working full-time on a Windows machine at work (though not during these Corona days ��). And I can tell you: there is no Windows equivalent of retina. Windows can indeed support high-resolution screens, by upscaling the GUI to compensate for that (I have a 4K monitor at work so I know the drill). Though that's only for the Windows gui; opening a program (and whatever splash screen it has) will again be tiny until you change the settings inside that program. Retina, on the other hand, is hard-coded in the OS. For instance, the current resolution of my 13" macbook is 1280x800 and looks exactly the same (scale-wise) like what you'd get from a 1280x800 screen on windows. However, every pixel is internally divided by 4 to get a much sharper image (and crisp text). The OS then takes care of how the subdivision works. It was implemented like this back in 2012 such that older software (not yet "retina proof") would still run smoothly without resolution quirks - it would just appear less sharp. That old software believes the screen is just 1280x800 pixels.

Now believe me: for a mac user not having retina support IS a dealbreaker. The last time I encountered a program that did not support retina, was in 2015. And now comes the irony: it was Fantasy Grounds which I wanted to give a test (I'd actually forgotten this, but was reminded now after recovering my password from my last login in February 2015). Already then, this was one of the reasons for me not to use it (also because I didn't really need a virtual tabletop), as I did not have a single other program that wasn't retina-ready (after all, it had been around for three years already). When every piece of your computer is sharp and crisp as hell, looking at fantasy grounds really hurts your eyes. It is extremely disappointing to see that after 5 years, mac hardware is still not really supported.

Unity was originally developed on macos. Hence "Making Unity work with that would mean a lot more overhead" is nonsense here, it natively supports retina since a long time now. We're talking decennia-scale. All unity programs I've ever seen or tried, support retina. I'd even go as far as to say that making unity software that doesn't support retina, feels as if it's done on purpose to make a statement. All Steam games I own support retina. And to be fair, "mac supported" on Steam often means just coding a wrapper around it to translate windows instructions to macos instructions - severely hurting performance - and adding retina support. It is the minimum baseline. But even that can't be delivered apparently.

Now that I'm gonna move to virtual RPG for the first time due to Corona, I just spent a few hours trying to decide between Roll20 and FG. I made my choice, wanted to invest in FG, just to be disappointed by FG not being able to deliver the bare minimum on a mac graphics-wise. What a shame.

[tphinney]

I appreciate Freddie chiming in about retina support. I am not demanding some kind of special treatment for Mac users, just looking for basic normal behavior from the app. The available options now are a bit rough.

1) Running with a Mac in its normal screen mode yields horrendous results. Not really tolerable.

2) Running with /scaleUI 200, PLUS make the Mac try to pretend it is Windows (run screen at native resolution, but non-retina) is ALMOST useable, except:
- I am running with maximum system-level mouse cursor speed. So switching to non-retina same resolution halves my mouse speed. It also makes all the scroll bars, system-level menus and system interface elements for FGU half-size and hard to use.
- all OTHER apps on the same screen are pretty much unusable, so heaven help me if I want to do anything else at the same time with that screen (e.g. run SyrinScape for audio, or just do some system-level stuff with files, or...)

I was planning on running this in my home office with a multi-monitor setup. Then I could have dedicated a screen to FGU. But since my daughter is now also going to be playing locally, my office is not really big enough and I have moved to the dining room. I suppose I could make it work by hooking up an external monitor as well, a bit painful to drag that around, but not impossible.

I shall still continue to give it a try, but if I were to bet now, I would bet that my conclusion in a week will be to just give up on using FGU for this purpose, unless the devs say they are working on addressing this issue. Contrary to somebody else’s reply, this is NOT just cosmetic. This is usability.

[TheKoyoteKid]

Just to chime in, running the current build (update and relaunched) on MacOS 10.14.6 on a 2018 MBP, the UI looks fine on the internal display on /scaleUI 100. I haven't run it on an external display however.
Running in Low Resolution mode (Get info in Finder) doesn't appear to make any difference.

[tcdo]

I agree with the many posts here already that Retina support is not mere cosmesis - it's vital to true cross-platform support, for reasons already outlined. That said, the program is still in beta (it makes my Mac run pretty hot).

For those of us with non-eagle eyes, fuzzy small text is heartbreaking. Telling me to get a larger monitor for the app is not an appropriate solution eight years on. Technology has moved a lot in the last eight years.

This needs to be addressed before commercial release. It just does.


From what I can gather from comments made by the devs, the following are their current priorities;
1) Ability to run, such as the networking issues we have been seeing recently and the updater problems
2) Promised features
3) Performance
4) cosmetics

This issue probably falls into the number 4 category. I suspect it is already on their list, but if you want to make sure you can always add it to the wishlist; https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?41885-Character-Converter-for-D-amp-D-Beyond