Font problems - how is this product even usable?

[kholt]

I have a 32” 4K monitor with a RTX 3080 Ti GPU running Windows and the fonts in the fly-out menus are unreadable. First off they were ridiculously small (like a 4pt font), so I changed the screen resolution to 2560x1440.  Now the font quality is so poor it is still unreadable.  Looks like only half the necessary pixels are inked.  Some characters can be deciphered with some effort but most cannot.

How does anyone use this product?  I know I never will and feel that the money I spent on it was completely wasted.

Keith

Edited September 29, 2021 by kholt
typo

[Litjan]

Hi Keith,

I already replied to your problem on avsim as well.

I know that the font is a bit small on 4k - but it is not hard to read on my screen at all. I use 4K as well, and while I wish the font was bigger (and the boxes a bit more easy to hit with the mouse), it still is absolutely possible for me to do so.

I believe that changing the font to something odd like 2560x1440 might have cause the pixels to get blurry - it is always best to change resolution to a full fraction of the native resolution (i.e. for a 4K monitor you would need to drop to 1920x1080), otherwise pixels will get cut off.

Let me know if this helps - and we are definitely planning to make the menus work better in 4K!

Cheers, Jan

 

[kholt]

A non-native resolution of 2560x1440 on a 4K monitor cannot be the problem.  Since the 1990’s Microsoft Windows has used TrueType and later OpenType font technology. This technology essentially uses a vector definition of the font outline so that it can be rendered at any resolution.  Bitmap fonts which you are alluding to were phased out 25 years ago with the introduction of Windows 3.1.

I guess it’s possible that IEXG contains UI code from the 1980’s or 1990’s, but that in itself would speak volumes about the quality of the codebase.

[Cameron]

5 minutes ago, kholt said:

I guess it’s possible that IEXG contains UI code from the 1980’s or 1990’s, but that in itself would speak volumes about the quality of the codebase.

Or an assumption you probably shouldn't be making.

Thousands of users. You're the one in here reporting broken font issues. The other bits were acknowledged.

You may be smart, but let's not go so far as to assume you should be condescending.

[kholt]

1 hour ago, Cameron said:

Or an assumption you probably shouldn't be making.

Thousands of users. You're the one in here reporting broken font issues. The other bits were acknowledged.

You may be smart, but let's not go so far as to assume you should be condescending.

I think you are the one being condescending.  The fact is, it doesn't work.  I have no idea why.  It's your software.  Apparently you don't have any idea either.  So why not just say that rather than attack me?

As for "thousands" of other users, that is an idiotic thing to say to defend yourself.  There are literally billions of possible hardware configurations out there and probably no two users have the same setup.  I doubt many others have the same hardware setup as me including an RTX 3080 Ti and a 32" 4K monitor with a 16-core AMD 5950X processor and 128 GB RAM because they can't afford it.

From my end, I ran the installer and that was it.  It didn't give any errors.  I have a clean install of Windows on new hardware.  I asked for help and you reply with your snide comments.  People like you are the reason I hate forums, because the fan boys always come out and attack the guy that dares ask for help or to see if others are having similar problems.

As a software developer myself with 35 years experience it's obvious I know a lot more about software than you do based on your reply.

[Ben Russell]

5 hours ago, kholt said:

I think you are the one being condescending.  The fact is, it doesn't work.  I have no idea why.  It's your software.  Apparently you don't have any idea either.  So why not just say that rather than attack me?

As for "thousands" of other users, that is an idiotic thing to say to defend yourself.  There are literally billions of possible hardware configurations out there and probably no two users have the same setup.  I doubt many others have the same hardware setup as me including an RTX 3080 Ti and a 32" 4K monitor with a 16-core AMD 5950X processor and 128 GB RAM because they can't afford it.

From my end, I ran the installer and that was it.  It didn't give any errors.  I have a clean install of Windows on new hardware.  I asked for help and you reply with your snide comments.  People like you are the reason I hate forums, because the fan boys always come out and attack the guy that dares ask for help or to see if others are having similar problems.

As a software developer myself with 35 years experience it's obvious I know a lot more about software than you do based on your reply.

It would be nice if you'd included more than a verbal description of your bug. 

Instead you've just filed a rant. 

[kholt]

49 minutes ago, Ben Russell said:

It would be nice if you'd included more than a verbal description of your bug. 

Instead you've just filed a rant. 

A post outlining a font problem is a rant?  What kind of problems are ok to ask about according to your highness?  Maybe you could post a list of allowable bugs to post about.  I take it font problems arent on your list.

How much is there to say about fonts that are unreadable?  Are you going to dissect some meaning out of missing pixels?  I doubt you, me or anyone else has such a skill.

Oh, wait, I get it, you just wanted to rant because you have nothing constructive to add to the conversation.  Nice…

[Ben Russell]

1 minute ago, kholt said:

A post outlining a font problem is a rant?  What kind of problems are ok to ask about according to your highness?  Maybe you could post a list of allowable bugs to post about.  I take it font problems arent on your list.

How much is there to say about fonts that are unreadable?  Are you going to dissect some meaning out of missing pixels?  I doubt you, me or anyone else has such a skill.

Oh, wait, I get it, you just wanted to rant because you have nothing constructive to add to the conversation.  Nice…

You claim 35 years of experience and this is how you behave. Well done.

[kholt]

Who else wants to take a swing?

It’s obvious this forum has no interest in addressing a technical software bug or what might be causing it.  

 

[kholt]

9 minutes ago, Ben Russell said:

You claim 35 years of experience and this is how you behave. Well done.

Good work.  Next?  Keep it coming.  How many jerks are there in here?

[kholt]

BTW, I am now able to localize the problem to an incompatibility with IEXG and the use of Vulkan for rendering.  IEXG clearly has a problem with Vulkan.  If Vulkan is turned off the fonts are rendered properly, if not a bit smaller than is my personal preference.

I know now no one here cares about these sorts of things, so I won’t elaborate further on what other details I found so as not to bore this crowd.  I know what you guys really like is a good brawl.  Have at it…maybe I can learn to appreciate what it is you guys enjoy about it so much…

[Cameron]

Incredibly immature, @kholt.

I think you need to look in the mirror with pointing a finger at those being condescending. You'll quickly find what the mirror tells you.

Time to cool it for a bit with a few day suspension.

[Ben Russell]

10 minutes ago, kholt said:

BTW, I am now able to localize the problem to an incompatibility with IEXG and the use of Vulkan for rendering.  IEXG clearly has a problem with Vulkan.  If Vulkan is turned off the fonts are rendered properly, if not a bit smaller than is my personal preference.

I know now no one here cares about these sorts of things, so I won’t elaborate further on what other details I found so as not to bore this crowd.  I know what you guys really like is a good brawl.  Have at it…maybe I can learn to appreciate what it is you guys enjoy about it so much…

Thank you for the detail about Vulkan.

Vulkan is a relatively new addition to X-Plane and has resulted in some weird edge cases that are beyond our control.

X-Plane gives plugins an OpenGL bridge to play with.

How well it works is upto nVidia and AMD. Mostly it works well. Sometimes not so much.

I would still like some screenshots and possibly photographs of the final font rendering.

As you will appreciate, screenshots may not show the end result of the complete rendering pipeline once it hits your display.

If you bother to take some screenshots and you feel they accurately convey what you see on screen "in sim" please email them to me: br@x-plugins.com

 

[Litjan]

So I sleep for 8 hours and this is what I wake up to :-/

I believe that you have a problem with the font - I sometimes run X-Plane on my 4K monitor in 1920x1080 and get a distinct visual downgrade besides the resolution, a fuzzyness, so to say. If I run at anything but full fractions of 4K it gets even worse.

I outlined that we know about the readability problems of the menues in 4K and explained why we did not cater to 4K at the time we developed those menues...in addition to mentioning our plans to enhance this in the future.

It is your right as a customer to be upset about it or not be satisfied with it - as Cameron said (and you can verify this by searching this forum dating back many years) - this is not a widespread problem (i.e. only one or two complaints about it) and therefore does not warrant an emergency fix from our side.

We will get to it when we get to it.

Sorry for not being able to offer another solution, Jan

 

[kholt]

On 9/29/2021 at 7:47 PM, Cameron said:

Incredibly immature, @kholt.

I think you need to look in the mirror with pointing a finger at those being condescending. You'll quickly find what the mirror tells you.

Time to cool it for a bit with a few day suspension.

Why are you such a dick?