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Wow. Did i just invent the wheel

-BigMac-

-BigMac-

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Apr 15, 2011
2,522
2,972
Melbourne, Australia
Hi Guys.

Playing around with SwitchResX today.

It can be used to set custom resolutions, so technically you can make HIDPI resolutions at will, of any resolution.

What i just tried sort of blew my mind though.

I set it to 5120x2880. my screen is 2560x1440 natively. so 4x the resolution.

After the reboot i enabled HI-DPI 1440p.

What followed scared me.

It actually looks smoother.

WHAT. NATIVE RESOLUTION, looks SMOOTHER.

WHAT.

Am i tripping balls or what???

heres 2 screenshots of the 2 different settings. one retina native. one normal native.

g7NTQwN.png


full resolution: http://i.imgur.com/g7NTQwN.png
PROVEN.

Well done, you all have retina enhanced native resolutions now. youre welcome xx
 
Last edited by a moderator:
-BigMac- said:
WHAT. NATIVE RESOLUTION, looks SMOOTHER.

WHAT.

Am i tripping balls or what???
Click to expand...

Native resolution looks smoother? Unless I don't get what you're saying (in such an eloquent way), I would say Captain Obvious is Obvious.

As for tripping balls, you should keep your balls out of this and no, you did not and never will invent the wheel. You know the wheel exists today…in all its circular glory.
 
Sure. It has more logical pixels to render in more detail. After the rendering, it's scaled down again and looks smooth because the color values are averaged from the big logical resolution you rendered on.

But think about the performance impact. Everything is rendered in a big textured that is scaled at 60fps.
 
GoCubsGo said:
Native resolution looks smoother? Unless I don't get what you're saying (in such an eloquent way), I would say Captain Obvious is Obvious.

As for tripping balls, you should keep your balls out of this and no, you did not and never will invent the wheel. You know the wheel exists today…in all its circular glory.
Click to expand...

no i dont think you do know what i am saying, sorry.

The resolution is getting processed at 4x the native res, once scaled back to native resolution, it looks clearer than normal native resolution.
 
-BigMac- said:
no i dont think you do know what i am saying, sorry.

The resolution is getting processed at 4x the native res, once scaled back to native resolution, it looks clearer than normal native resolution.
Click to expand...

Oh I understand what you're saying. I'm patting myself on the back for being so god damn brilliant too. Don't worry.

I think the off screen image is a better representation and pmau is right. Well done pmau!
 
GoCubsGo said:
Oh I understand what you're saying. I'm patting myself on the back for being so god damn brilliant too. Don't worry.

I think the off screen image is a better representation and pmau is right. Well done pmau!
Click to expand...

Haha thanks for your understanding.

The performance hit seems to be obvious on my 15" 2013 retina macbook pro, even with the lid closed, the external is using a lot of resources to scale the image, but so far I've only noticed it when moving windows around.
 
So I'm still not even sure what I'm looking at. A 5120x2880 scaled down resolution that looks nice?
 
But that is the point. You're having issues with performance so why would you want to run that resolution? I don't think the point was to not let you run the resolution, it is just that it is not ideal and that is something you are proving as you struggle with moving windows around; a basic task that the machine could handle if you bump down the resolution to true native. I think the "improvement" you see is because of the reason pmau says.
 
maflynn said:
So I'm still not even sure what I'm looking at. A 5120x2880 scaled down resolution that looks nice?
Click to expand...

a 5120x2880 resolution, scaled down to 2560x1440, to make a clearer picture. its the same technique as retina displays use, but ofcourse it is limited by the pixels in this case. but it results in clearer image through the way of processing and scaling

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GoCubsGo said:
But that is the point. You're having issues with performance so why would you want to run that resolution? I don't think the point was to not let you run the resolution, it is just that it is not ideal and that is something you are proving as you struggle with moving windows around; a basic task that the machine could handle if you bump down the resolution to true native. I think the "improvement" you see is because of the reason pmau says.
Click to expand...

by saying 'struggling', i completely expressed the experience of these settings wrong.

It is not a struggle, it doesnt lag, you can do everything at 100%. only difference noticeable is when moving a window quickly across the whole screen, it may stutter one fps. thats all :)

under the hood, ofcourse, the cpu is working harder than usual. but it isnt noticeable per say.
 
So are you getting the screen real estate of a 2560x1440 display?
 
maflynn said:
So are you getting the screen real estate of a 2560x1440 display?
Click to expand...

yep. at a seemingly "higher resolution" than if i used the normal 2560x1440 settings. think about it as extreme font smoothing, on absolutely everything, everything is clearer.

----------

Why was this moved to Macbook Pro Threads?? it has to do with OSX, not Macbook Pros.
 
When you do that, you are essentially using a super-sampling anti-aliasing technique (SSAA). Games have been using this technique and it's approximations for over a decade now. I am slightly surprised though that it would produce a noticeable difference for desktop rendering...
 
leman said:
When you do that, you are essentially using a super-sampling anti-aliasing technique (SSAA). Games have been using this technique and it's approximations for over a decade now. I am slightly surprised though that it would produce a noticeable difference for desktop rendering...
Click to expand...

this is exactly what i was surprised about..

Thought i might try it for fun, and what do you know.. it works.

Am i the first to write about this online? Surely a technique to produce 'retina scaling' on native resolution, would be enough to post on front page about?

It can literally be done on any non-retina screen in the world..
 
I just try that in my old Mac Pro with the Apple Cinema Display (Not thunderbolt), The 1440p HiDPI looks a little burl to me (check the icons).

Screen Shot 2014-05-30 at 0.09.22.jpg
 
Intelligent said:
Tried it, didn't see any difference at all.
Click to expand...

take a screenshot of a part of your screen with it on, and a screenshot of a part of your screen with it off. open them up together, and cycle through them quickly.

you WILL see the difference.

Heres a screenshot i just took for you.

http://i.imgur.com/ug7NRWr.png
ug7NRWr.png


This is on a non-retina screen, and is scaled up, in reality, that detail is shown on an even tighter scale.

Looks amazing.

----------
h9826790 said:
I just try that in my old Mac Pro with the Apple Cinema Display (Not thunderbolt), The 1440p HiDPI looks a little burl to me (check the icons).

View attachment 474073
Click to expand...

thank you for your post,
but both those images look blurred. It seems Macrumors, when uploading the picture, downscaled the image, so both of them are blurred.

can you please upload the original screenshot to a website such as imur please?
 
iPhil said:
Well the 5120*2880 isn't 4x resolution of 2560*1440 its only 2x.. :roll eyes:



to be 4x resolution of 2560*1440 (2560*4 =10220 1440*4=5760 )

4x resolution of 2560*1440 = 10220*5760
Click to expand...

(2x horizontal res) x (2x vertical res) = 4x original resolution.
 
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