Can't run rMBP in 1440x900?

[shurcooL]

It will not look as good. One of the posters above me said it must be a software problem, and he is correct.

The reason: subpixel rendering

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpixel_rendering

Subpixel rendered fonts will not look right at non-native resolution.
This is why things involving text look considerably worse on the retina MBP running at 1440x900

That's a good point. If an app were to use subpixel rendering, it'd look slightly worse on a Retina screen (running in non-Retina resolution emulation mode) than a regular one.

However, Apple's font rendering just uses regular grayscale antialiasing. Zoom in on any black text and you'll only see shades of gray.

 

[wundram]

That's a good point. If an app were to use subpixel rendering, it'd look slightly worse on a Retina screen (running in non-Retina resolution emulation mode) than a regular one.

However, Apple's font rendering just uses regular grayscale antialiasing. Zoom in on any black text and you'll only see shades of gray.

Image

Actually it does use subpixel rendering. Here is a screen grab from pixie, while I have the rmbp in 1440x900 mode (real mode, not scaled). You can see it is using sub pixel, and was't smart enough to turn it off in this mode. Of course you can disable sub pixel rendering in the system preferences.

 

[shurcooL]

Actually it does use subpixel rendering. Here is a screen grab from pixie, while I have the rmbp in 1440x900 mode (real mode, not scaled). You can see it is using sub pixel, and was't smart enough to turn it off in this mode. Of course you can disable sub pixel rendering in the system preferences.

You are right.

After unplugging my external LCD monitor, I can see the subpixel rendering is in effect (as it should be, since I have the "Use LCD font smoothing when available" checked (as per default) in System Preferences. Strange that it gets disabled with the external LCD; perhaps it's because it can't figure out what subpixel layout is used?

 

[leman]

Some additional info: see joevt's post in the "why it looks like ***" thread and my follow up:

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/15185747/
https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/15185949/

Basically, it seems that OS X does not simply pixel-double the non-HiDPI images but also applies some sort of blur to it. No wonder it will look washed out. I am still puzzled why they do it though. I will do some tests using the HiDPI mode later.

 

[shurcooL]

Basically, it seems that OS X does not simply pixel-double the non-HiDPI images but also applies some sort of blur to it. No wonder it will look washed out. I am still puzzled why they do it though. I will do some tests using the HiDPI mode later.

Yeah, this is the same conclusion I came to.

I'm guessing the reason they apply smoothing to 1440x900 instead of simply pixel-doubling (nearest-neighbour scaling) it is to keep the already-incredibly-complex scaler simpler. It simply does the same thing - smooth scale - to all resolutions, whether they are even multiples of 2880x1800 or not.

 

[leman]

I'm guessing the reason they apply smoothing to 1440x900 instead of simply pixel-doubling (nearest-neighbour scaling) it is to keep the already-incredibly-complex scaler simpler. It simply does the same thing - smooth scale - to all resolutions, whether they are even multiples of 2880x1800 or not.

Its not so simple as that. The scaler for the resolution is certainly not a smooth filter - because text does not look washed out in 1680x1050 etc. modes. They only blur particular content (such as non-HiDPI images). For instance, if you have an application which displays some pictures and some text (such as a web browser), the text will be crisp and the image will be blurred (if it is not a HiDPI image already). So what they do is upscale the low-res image, blur it and then draw it on the window. I guess they do it because they figured that blurred upscaled images actually look better than just pixel-doubled ones. Or it might be a bug. As I said, I will do some tests with differently scaled resources later this week.

 

[Panini]

It will not look as good. One of the posters above me said it must be a software problem, and he is correct.

The reason: subpixel rendering

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpixel_rendering

Subpixel rendered fonts will not look right at non-native resolution.
This is why things involving text look considerably worse on the retina MBP running at 1440x900

So if it is a software problem is there a chance that this may be fixed in the future by software updates or third party software?