KVR :: Instruments » To All Devs: please cater to BIG SCREENS!!! [View Original Topic]
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Breeze - Sun Jan 04, 2009 12:01 pm

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As many users are transitioning to bigger and bigger LCDs (I'm now using a 32") the issue of readability on a large monitor is becoming increasingly important. I'm posting this here in "instruments", where it's often more critical, but it also applies to plugins as well. The Mac has a system wide zoom option which really helps, but it's not as smoothly integrated on the PC and really both are makeshift solutions since detail just gets fuzzy when zoomed in, and its not optimal to lose the rest of the DAW outside the screen.

I find myself squinting or at least leaning forward to read my older VSTi's like the Kompakt Player. I had to reposition my monitor closer than I liked just because of this. I understand that older VSTi's and plugins are going to continue to be a problem till replaced, but there's no excuse for newer designs not to incorporate various GUI size-options to accommodate high-resolution monitors.

While Native Instruments has made some effort with Kontakt to supply different size GUI options, the one company that REALLY gets it is u-he and I would suggest developers take a look at how Zebra2 offers a wide-palette of size options that make it a real pleasure to use on any screen.

I've bought some relatively new plugins and VSTis in the last year that are just a pain to use because of the color and size choices the devs have made.

Thanks for reading.

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Funkybot's Evil Twin - Sun Jan 04, 2009 12:06 pm

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...but how does Poly Ana look?

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Chris Walton - Sun Jan 04, 2009 12:21 pm

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Dunno, I can't see the bottom half on my 24" screen.

And my message to devs is - if you can't offer various size options, please go with the smaller ones. It's not rare that I'm on my 1280x768 laptop screen instead of my 1920x1200 desktop screen.

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Breeze - Sun Jan 04, 2009 12:58 pm

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I guess it's a problem in both directions

So far Zebra2 is the best example, giving the user display options that range from 400x295 all the way to 2000x1475 (no typos!). And it rescales instantly, on the fly.

If you haven't seen this it's worth a look; you can download the demo here.

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ruud07 - Sun Jan 04, 2009 1:30 pm

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+1

If the GUI doesn't fit on my laptop screen, that would be the reason not to buy the synth or effect. U-he does it very well indeed by offering different sizes for Zebra 2.

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jobromedia - Sun Jan 04, 2009 2:06 pm

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I agree. I can't unfortunatly build synths larger than 1024x768 since that is the largest resolution I have available. So you guys have to stick with my masterplan if you want to use my gears.

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Nystul - Sun Jan 04, 2009 2:20 pm

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Scalable GUIs can only be a good thing, especially with technology ever changing. But it does beg a question. Why on earth would you get such a huge monitor, if not to have more real estate available to see more things at once? And how can you see more things at once, if you are sitting away from the monitor and scaling up the GUIs of every plugin to take the same amount of screen space that they would on a 15" monitor? It only seems to make sense if the computer doubles as a home theater.

One always has the option of using lower resolutions than the native resolution as well.

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jobromedia - Sun Jan 04, 2009 2:27 pm

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I can export larger synths, but then I can't see the valid reason for doing that when you have the same design behind the stage for it. Scaleable GUI's are a nice feature, but unfortunatly not available for SynthEdit users like me.

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0100 - Sun Jan 04, 2009 2:28 pm

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+1 love how zebra does this. Wish everyone would do it that way.

Running 2 26" lcd's both at 1920x1200 gives me eye strain on some vsti's.

Would also like everyone to build 64bit hosts and vsti's.

Come on it's 2009.

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novaflash - Sun Jan 04, 2009 2:40 pm

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all plug should be like Synth1 GUI : user resizable

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tony tony chopper - Sun Jan 04, 2009 2:45 pm

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I don't see the link between buying a bigger monitor and having to squint.
It should be the opposite: you buy a bigger monitor (you didn't mention a higher resolution), things should be bigger.

So the problem isn't that you bought a bigger monitor, it's that you bought one with higher precision - nothing to do with the size (unless you bought a bigger monitor to look at it from far, which would be stupid).

And normally you don't resize bitmaps, it will look ugly. Only UI's that can be more or less rescaled half-properly are vectorial ones. But even there, to match the quality of a fully bitmap UI, we'd have to switch to at least 3x finer pixels, and it's not really happening right now.
Other than with SynthMaker that does it the best it can, I've never really been convinced by resizable UI's. SynthMaker got it right, but to look perfect it'd require precision that's not available yet.

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MaxSynths - Sun Jan 04, 2009 4:20 pm

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Totally agree
This is the right answer to the OP.

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Doug B - Sun Jan 04, 2009 5:11 pm

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Some people have bad eyesight and use a bigger monitor to see better. Instead of using say a 22" monitor at 1680x1050, they might use it at 1024x768 to be able to see the controls better. A rez of 1024x768 is larger on a 22" monitor than a 17" monitor, for example.

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MitchK1989 - Sun Jan 04, 2009 5:23 pm

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Those of us on laptops require plugins that are no more than 800 pixels in height at the very most, with the usual resolution on a GOOD 15 inch laptop screen like that of my macbook pro (generation before the current one) being 1440 x 900.

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foosnark - Sun Jan 04, 2009 5:43 pm

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LCDs have native resolution. If I run mine at anything other than 1680x1050 it gets harder to read.

Certainly monitor size/resolution, at both ends of the spectrum, is something for devs to consider.

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BONES - Sun Jan 04, 2009 7:23 pm

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What do you mean by "high resolution" I'd imagine a 32" would probably only be about 2k res, so everything should look plenty big enough, I'd have thought. I get by just fine at 1920x1200 on a 17" laptop screen but if I didn't, I'd do something about it myself, i.e. get a monitor with appropriate resolution, rather than expect everyone else to do the work to accommodate my bad choice of monitor.

I dunno, they would have to cause compromises in other areas, I'd imagine, as they would rely on vectors rather than bitmaps for a lot of elements. Either that or they'd need all the UI bitmaps in multiple sizes. I prefer skinnable UIs so that I can make them any size/layout I wish.

I don't mind the way that Olga's UI works - options to show hide different parts as well as two different sizes but Synth 1's resizable UI is ugly at any size.

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Nystul - Sun Jan 04, 2009 8:48 pm

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I've heard it many times, but it doesn't jive with my own experience in recent years. I turned my LCD monitor from 1920x1200 to 1024x768, and I could read browser text standing about 8 feet away from the monitor. I even play some old 640x480 fullscreen games, and they look better with the scaling algorithms than they ever did on the CRT monitors they were designed for. On any monitor, the sharpest picture will come from it's ideal resolution, but it's not like the alternatives are so terrible. Compared to the old days of CRT monitors that had to calibrated absolutely perfectly and still were terrible for text...

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foosnark - Sun Jan 04, 2009 9:05 pm

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Well, I can read text in 1024x768 on my monitor, but I'd rather stab myself repeatedly with a fork.

In fact I'd have to be about 8 feet away for the blurriness to not drive me mad.

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contrary - Sun Jan 04, 2009 9:35 pm

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My viewsonic simply looks like crap at any other resolution than the native one (1680X1050).

I use Custom DPI settings , but that has it's downside , Really , it can't be that hard to at least offer two different sizes can it ?? ( Leslie Stanford's Colbalt is a good example )

I've always loved the sounds that come from styrus , for example , But the UI always is a deal breaker because good sounds don't trump the eye strain.

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MaliceX - Sun Jan 04, 2009 9:55 pm

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I don't see what everyone's complaining about. I can see small GUI's fine with the aforementioned resolution (1680x1050), on a Samsung 22" SyncMaster 226BW LCD monitor.

In addition, if the devs were to 'cater for big resolutions', chances are you'll get the Helix GUI haters. (ZOMG TOO BIG ZOMG SMALL TEXTS!!!!111 )

If all devs were to be like synth1 or KarmaFX with adjustable GUI sizes, that would be great but sadly it's not possible at all instances. (Particularly in the case of dimension increase as opposed to image scaling, which can't always be done if GUI relies on raster images.

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tomg - Sun Jan 04, 2009 10:52 pm

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Virtual Magnifying Glass Portable
http://portableapps.com/apps/accessibility/virtual_magnifying_glass_portable

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kritikon - Sun Jan 04, 2009 10:58 pm

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Exactly. Having only recently gone onto a bigger screen, I'm still overjoyed at how much more of my sequencer I can see, how many more plugins I can have up without losing crucial parts of the sequencer, and how much less organised I can be because I've got more space to waste. I don't want it all clogged up by huge GUIs thanks.

If you've got to squint, buy spectacles - it helps no end.

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tomg - Sun Jan 04, 2009 11:03 pm

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Or use the one in Windows if you need an active cursor.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/accessibility/magnifierturnon.mspx


This one is good.. You can resize the window and position it anywhere on the screen you want. Make any VST any size you want..

http://www.gipsysoft.com/zoomplus/#downloadit

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stefancrs - Mon Jan 05, 2009 2:20 am

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I have to join the "I-don't-get-it-crowd" here. Higher screen resolution on computers is supposed to give you more screen estate (the actual DPI precision has, imo, been good enough for quite a long time now). If you want a large screen but less native pixels, maybe using a LCD TV could be an option? Or just use a smaller computer screen but sit fairly close to it.

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JavaJ - Mon Jan 05, 2009 9:38 am

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Well, I run a 17" laptop at native resolution and all VSTi's are too small for use on a stage where my laptop will be at an arms length away from me. If I drop the resolutions down- the text is then scalled and I get odd visual anomalies with the lower res (which is normal as you are scalling outside of the physical pixel count). Wusikstation has a large GUI option which helps. MDrummer can fill the entire screen- but maintains the same text size which is hard to read. I guess we will have to wait for higher res screens to be the bare minimum before everyone codes for it.

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Breeze - Mon Jan 05, 2009 9:40 am

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OK: I have to clarify a few things because there's more and more "I don't get it" posts.

A 30" monitor typically has 2560x1600 resolution and it's absolutely fine with my DAWS, either Logic or Nuendo. I find it priceless to have a really wide and long arrange window and I'm able to get two rows of the fully vertically expanded Nuendo Mixer along with the Control Room on one screen. Visibility in the DAW operations is perfect and the detail is fantastic. Scoring benefits from seeing more staves on the screen as well. Yes, the point is to see more and this purpose is accomplished.

I much prefer the single 30" to the dual 21"'s I had before because I don't have to move from screen to screen and I don't have to deal with the middle bevel issue. On Mac, Spaces does a great job of dealing with multiple desktop layouts and Nuendo's window system works (most of the time...).

The problem, as I mentioned in the OP, is that some VSTi's have information cramped into tiny spaces often with tiny fonts that are difficult to read on a large monitor probably because the devs developed on smaller monitors. Next time you're in an Apple store, take a look at Logic's Sculpture synth on a 30" screen and you'll understand what I mean. The tiny Kompakt file selections are also very much a hassle. I don't want to start targeting specific devs; it's a competitive market and the OP was meant as a general observation, but there are others that suffer from the same issues, sometimes also made worse by color choices.

I recently became a Zebra2 user, and when I saw how flexibly it could adapt to different monitor sizes, I thought a heads up to other devs was called for. I don't use Zebra's LARGEST resolution, but it's there if I need it. It just struck me how forward thinking an idea it was. I was lol!

BTW: thanks for the links to magnifying utilities. I'm going to check them out. The Mac allows you to just hold control and the mouse wheel zooms in and out of the screen (system wide), which, for example, helps a lot when working with Sculpture.

The point is making UIs that can adapt to a user's needs. I'm not going to scrap my 30" monitor just because a handful of GUI's cause me grief especially with the workflow enhancements I've gained. And as this thread has shown, alternate GUI sizes can be useful to smaller monitors as well, especially for mobile platforms. I hope the point is clearer.

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tony tony chopper - Mon Jan 05, 2009 9:48 am

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they can, in 2 ways:


-2 drawings/layouts of the UI. Basically twice the work, and you're the one who will pay for that.

-a vectorial UI, but today's resolutions aren't good enough to have scaled vectorial UI's looking as good as bitmaps (& this is why the font of this text you're reading still requires proper hinting. When screen res will be 3 or 4x higher, the font you're reading will have 3 or 4 pixels-thick bars, won't really require hinting anymore, and vectorial renderings will be perfect to the eyes. But that's for the future. Vista has started predicting this & offers post-scaling of windows for future compatibility reasons)


And I'm sorry but Zebra isn't the best example of a scalable UI, it exhibits everything of what we're talking about: fonts aren't perfectly hinted, thus require higher sizes to be as readable as say, cleartype in Windows, and bitmaps are stretched without any good resampling, making them look even worse than they would ideally do (plus this can be pushed to the extreme with fractal-based rescaling). At the same time, its panels stay pixel-aligned, so that's a good thing.

If you want to see a good example, try SynthMaker. Still, SynthMaker does it as perfectly as it could (& of course it's slower but everything has a CPU cost), but it still can't match bitmap UI's on today's monitors.

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Rock - Mon Jan 05, 2009 9:49 am

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No giant guis!

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Kyran - Mon Jan 05, 2009 10:12 am

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[quote="tony tony chopper"]

So what have we learned: people don't mind a little bit of graphical imperfection if it drastically increases usability.

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koalaboy - Mon Jan 05, 2009 10:36 am

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Vector UIs are perfectly doable these days (I'm writing them for work - non music, in Java) and the resolution is easily enough. They're the best solution, but require more effort generally.

There's no reason why any UI can't be user rescalable, other then time and effort (and therefore cost), and the fact that there may not be a system library to easily do the work for you.

The biggest problem is fitting everything on to a small resolution, for backwards compatibility.

Then again, good User Interface design takes far longer than anything else, and so is generally left as a lesser priority.

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Shabdahbriah - Mon Jan 05, 2009 10:37 am

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Doubtless there are many for whom that will be a great comfort.

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tony tony chopper - Mon Jan 05, 2009 10:42 am

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yes, some people are less demanding than the programmers themselves, but that's not a reason to make steps backwards in quality





They are doable, they just won't match the quality a bitmap UI can achieve.
They also look obviously vectorial, but that's not a matter of quality, more taste. They also have some advantages, like you can easily recolor stuff or perform other transforms than rescaling.

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koalaboy - Mon Jan 05, 2009 10:47 am

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Why won't they match bitmap UI quality ? Most Icons and many other UI bitmap elements these days are created as vectors and then converted to a bitmap at the end of the process.

They won't match 'photographs' but then, this isn't something you often find in a UI. A bitmap is just a grid of single point vectors

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tony tony chopper - Mon Jan 05, 2009 10:54 am

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I know I still have to hand-draw small things, because they would just look like blurred crap if vectorial & scaled down too much.

Vectorial scaling requires hinting. Hinting can be done for fonts, basic geometry, but not everything. And hinting usually only exists for fonts anyway, so even if you want a proper hinting, it's hard to find tools to manually add hinting. And without hinting, it will just look blurry.
No one in a bitmap editor will draw a vertical 1-pixel line by drawing 2 half-grey lines. With non-hinted vector art, it will happen all the time.




I won't really argue because that's a matter of taste. I like simple, vectorial stuff too.
However look at all the existing plugins, they often have very fancy backgrounds with metallic/wooden textures, fake scratches, handles, etc. It's unique to audio plugins, but it's there.

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foosnark - Mon Jan 05, 2009 12:27 pm

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The other side of having all that screen real estate on a large, high-res screen is the feeling of wasted space when GUIs are too small.

Ogun for instance... I love it as a synth, but it uses 5-pixel-high fonts and two-letter abbreviations to cram everything into a tiny little space. Maybe that's good for small, low-resolution screens or maybe not, but I hope you don't hold it up as a triumph of bitmapped graphics over vector...

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Penis Arcade - Mon Jan 05, 2009 12:52 pm

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No offense, but to make sweeping statements like that - maybe you should post examples and let others nitpick through your "perfectly doable" interfaces.

There are valid technical reasons why vector UIs are a big compromise at this time due to available technology. I am sure that some people place less importance on visuals - but i am sure you'll find an equal amount of those who hold the opposite opinion.

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koalaboy - Mon Jan 05, 2009 1:12 pm

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Vectors may not be suitable for every thing, but they are perfectly suitable for a resizable user interface. You may not think it's as glamorous as you'd like but a good UI is about usability and not glamour.

Graphs, curves, dials, buttons, selections... all of these are easily rendered as vectors. I'm not sure why you think vector UIs are a big compromise, but they've been usable for years.

I'm not going to post examples - partly because I don't 'own' my work, but mainly because it'll just turn into an opinionated flame-fest on what looks good.

The point is, vectors will work, and it's down to the developer whether to use them. There are some limitations, as Tony mentioned with small scale vectors and hinting, but they're just as easily worked around as the bitmap workarounds. Vectors have been around a long time.

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setAI - Mon Jan 05, 2009 2:11 pm

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I disagree- I think there should be more consideration for those of us who are using the GUI's directly on our touchscreens- controls that respond better to touch and have size/form for fingers-

ideally this would mean more large sliders / X/Y controllers and drawable envelopes/waves- and less knobs and small switches

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aciddose - Mon Jan 05, 2009 2:32 pm

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the solution is to render a gui with textures, not apply a "background texture". it's easy as heck to resynthesize a texture or bitmap at any size.

"vector" should simply mean that you use relative coordinates rather than absolutely coordinates. you can automatically hint important features by writing intelligent code to do so. the real reason nobody does true vector guis (vector does absolutely not take away your ability to use bitmaps or photographic elements!) is that there is no free code to do so. nobody is willing to write their own code.

my code is just about 100% capable (requires some better rendering code to remove bitmap based fonts, for example) but in order to write a vector gui with the same quality as a absolute coordinate based gui would require 3x more effort than writing the graphics code did in the first place.

there are solutions to the problem, for example using proper object models and rendering using d3d or opengl. you don't need to render in realtime, just render the bitmaps while drawing the first time and render again when properties change. i would already be doing this if i had some proper models to start from.. blender doesn't work right on this ati card for some reason.

another problem is the fact it isn't possible to resize reliably in older vst versions.. maybe some new plugins might come out that allow resizing...

http://xhip.cjb.net/hardware/images/ads-x1-layout-sttex.png

this is a vector gui, the texture is synthesized and it's resizable to absolutely any size - except for the fonts, which are bitmap. this is the type of "vector looking" thing that has been talked about. it's possible to make this look equal to a fully 3d rendered bitmap gui, it's just very difficult and time consuming. would you pay $1500 for a vsti that had this type of 3d looking gui, or would you rather keep the one i posted and pay $200? that's what it would take.

(by the way, it's possible to recolor bitmaps too, just store them as HLS, not RGB...)

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tony tony chopper - Mon Jan 05, 2009 2:54 pm

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to each his own minimum quality requirements, but rescaling bitmaps is always to be avoided in my book (unless it's animation where you can't spot artefacts)



changing the hue is not exactly the same

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emdot_ambient - Mon Jan 05, 2009 3:12 pm

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Exactly. My DAW has a 17" LCD screen with native 1280 X 1024 resolution. Run it on anything other than that and text looks horrible...blurry every couple of letters.

And even at that resolution many VSTi's are so small I acan hardly use them. And even if you can see them often the knobs are so small it drives me crazy.

Ultimately I want like 3 24" or bigger monitors. But even with one huge one you could have much larger synth GUIs and still gain screen real estate. And anyway, do you people really leave the synth GUIs up all the time? I don't. I open them when I'm making presets...one synth at a time usually. After the preset's done, there's no point having the GUI open. All the rest is MIDI file recording and graphic manipulation of CCs. So having a huge synth GUI, even if it eats up most of my screen, would make preset creation much easier. It's not like I'm going to be doing a lot of live knob twiddling directly from the GUI.

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emdot_ambient - Mon Jan 05, 2009 3:18 pm

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While I would be one to ask, what's the point of having all those plugins up at one time anyway? How many of them do you work on at one time? In Cubase every plug-in is at most two clicks away. At most I'll have 3 up at one time: a BEFORE spectrum, an EQ, and a AFTER spectrum. Once you've finished editing, close the freaking things. Even with a big screen, what's the point of cluttering up the workspace with junk you're not actively tweaking?

Unless your'e doing live work, I don't see the point of having all that stuff open.

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emdot_ambient - Mon Jan 05, 2009 3:27 pm

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And that will be more and more a real issue as multi-touch screens become more widely available/cheaper.

Editing a small UI synth with a mouse is like someone handing you a Doepfer modular synth and a toothpick and telling you "Here, edit it only using this one toothpick, and . . . Have fun."

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tony tony chopper - Mon Jan 05, 2009 3:38 pm

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Size of UI is really the least problem with multi-touch screens. You're not likely to see multi-touch supporting plugins any time soon because NOTHING in Windows is made for multi-touch, everything is based on mouse control through very old messaging. There are new SDK's but since our domain is always the last to evolve..

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aciddose - Mon Jan 05, 2009 6:20 pm

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resynthesize, not rescale. major difference. the texture must have been synthesized at some point whether it was in a graphics app like photoshop or whatever. it's just that you need to actually do the synthesis in your plugin rather than depending on a static bitmap. it's like the difference between a synthesizer and a sampler.

here is the code for the texture in the above screenshot i posted:


void genbgbmp2(gfx &van)
{
 ADGFXVANILLA v2(van.width(), van.height(), 0);

 float nx = rand()/32768.0;
 float ny = rand()/32768.0;
 float r1 = 1.0 / 8.0;
 float r2 = 1.0 / 8.0;

 long hx = van.width()/2;
 long hy = van.height()/2;
 long xx = van.width()-1;
 long yy = van.height()-1;
 long zx = van.width();
 long zy = van.height();

 if (!van.Lock())
 {
  van.Clear(0x00000000);
  van.pushMode(transparent, 32);

  long n = 1000;
  while (n--)
  {
   float ra = rand()/32768.0;
   float rb = rand()/32768.0;
   float rc = rand()/32768.0;
   nx += r1 * (ra - nx);
   ny += r2 * (nx*nx - ny*ny) * 2.0;

   float s = 1.0 + ny * xx/5.0;
   float x = rc * xx;
   float y = rb * yy;
   
   long xh = (xx - s);
   long xl = s;
   long yh = (yy - s);
   long yl = s;
   long c = (0xFF000000 * nx);
   if (ny > 0.2) c |= 0x00FFFFFF;
   if (x > xh || x < xl || y > yh || y < yl) ;
   else van.Circlef(x, y, s, 0, c);
  }

  van.popMode();
  van.Unlock();
 }

 if (!v2.Lock())
 {
  v2.Clear(0);
  v2.Rectblt(0, 0, xx, yy, (long *)van.pixel.mem, zx, zy, hx/2, hy/2);
 
  long y = hy;
  while (y--)
  {
   long x = hx;
   while (x--)
   {
    long c = v2.Read(x, y);
    v2.Pixel(x+hx, y, c);
    v2.Pixel(x, y+hy, c);
    v2.Pixel(x+hx, y+hy, c);
   }
  }

  v2.Unlock();
 }

 van.Lock();
 van.Rectblt(0, 0, xx, yy, (long *)v2.pixel.mem, zx, zy, 0, 0);
 van.Unlock();
 
}


this is quickly made code, it took about 5 minutes. it can do a large range of marble-like textures and it can generate at any resolution in a matter of a couple ms. the later block of code is to tile-ize the bitmap. you can write FAR better texture synthesizers than this one in the same five minutes time frame.



ever heard of planar bitmaps?

(three seconds of thought should make you realize how easy it is to provide bitmap data of monocolor planes or properties and then adjust those properties rather than providing static color data.)

again, it's just a LOT more work. the fact is developers don't want to do the extra work, it's not a technical problem or anything like that. it's just pure and simple laziness.

laziness - of course if you were paid to do it you might change your mind.

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tony tony chopper - Mon Jan 05, 2009 6:39 pm

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yes, that's just a storage method, I don't see the link




of course, I too use monochrome planes as light planes, but what's the link with HLS as you originally wrote?

Recoloring bitmaps is only good for things that the user really needs to color (tracks, etc) to identify them.

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tony tony chopper - Mon Jan 05, 2009 6:48 pm

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Ok, I wasn't gonna comment on that screenshot you posted , but now I understand why it's so ugly.
No, textures are generally not synthesized, they're generally photo's, and backgrounds in good-looking UI's generally require lots of layers that would be pretty hard to achieve by code. It's not a wallpaper tile that you repeat behind knobs.

That screenshot you posted would be much better without background texture at all. It's not a problem if you can't draw, all you have to do is to achieve good-looking stuff by simplicity (look at Live, it looks good enough & hardly requires work).
I know I put work in my UI's for the fun of it, but if I couldn't do them or if I had time constraints, I would do with flat, sober stuff (but they're so boring). And I also know that when I started my stuff was butt-ugly (I only wish someone told me).

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aciddose - Mon Jan 05, 2009 6:50 pm

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well planes could be stored in hls or whatever, generally each plane might have any number of sub-planes... we're talking here about either partial synthesis (using layers of samples to create a scalable output sample) or full synthesis (using a full model.)

if the bitmaps could be created in the first place, you could create them in code. it's a simple fact, there is absolutely no reason other than a lack of effort to fully vectorize the graphical parts of a vst. i'm not saying you should: i think for the current market it would be absolutely retarded to try to do so, bitmaps are the proper way to handle the current market. however, the "best" way would be a full graphics synthesizer.

these are all also 100% synthesized:

http://xhip.cjb.net/xhip/releases/xhipgui/limeflavour/lf2.png
http://xhip.cjb.net/xhip/releases/xhipgui/branis/branis.png
http://xhip.cjb.net/xhip/releases/xhipgui/standard/standard.png

don't blame me if the first two look bad in your opinion, that's how the artists designed them. branis' could use a bit of work, but again it's a matter of time thing, not a capability thing. the "standard" one is what i prefer, no fancy graphical nonsense. if i had something to work with that looked any better i could do it, it's just nobody has suggested or designed such a thing. i'm a coder, not some homosexual graphics guy.

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tony tony chopper - Mon Jan 05, 2009 6:53 pm

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Sry but no. Metallic/wooden/rust/scratches textures are generally pictures. Some UI's are also fully synthesized, but using complex 3D models & rendering qualities so that too excludes resynthesis on the fly.

Yes you can definitely do good-looking vectorial UI's, there are proves out there, but the best-looking UI's out there are still bitmap ones that no vectorial UI would match.

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tony tony chopper - Mon Jan 05, 2009 6:58 pm

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actually, the first 2 look good (& could be made even better with more artwork [& a better font rasterizer of course]), the last one looks bad (such bevels should be your enemies).

Are you sure the orange panel in the first one isn't a bitmap btw? It definitely can be generated by code, but if you can render text with proper antialiasing, why are the other labels all pixellated?




didn't know you had to be gay to draw UI's

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aciddose - Mon Jan 05, 2009 7:01 pm

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when i was wanting to do my own gui to demonstrate the library these others were made with, i did a search for screenshots of GUIs. the stuff people post here on kvr looks like shit, as well as anything i could find on google. the best looking examples i was able to locate were extremely simple 3d rendered:

http://xhip.cjb.net/temp/public/abl210b.jpg

or cheap looking:

http://xhip.cjb.net/temp/public/poizone2uib.jpg

if you want to rant on about imaginary guis "usually are photographs" that's ok with me, but i'd rather if you actually posted something material.

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aciddose - Mon Jan 05, 2009 7:04 pm

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"graphics gay":

http://www.lifeclever.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/09/dress_mac_01.jpg

come on...

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jkleban - Mon Jan 05, 2009 7:07 pm

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Just chimin in to say YES, larger VST gui.

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Teksonik - Mon Jan 05, 2009 7:09 pm

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I know you're not criticizing way someone else's fonts look.

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tony tony chopper - Mon Jan 05, 2009 7:09 pm

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I definitely agree and that's why Live-looking UI's should be most people's choice. But that doesn't mean it's the best choice to get the best results.




yes, looks good, but good luck to do that realtime (here we're talking 3D, not flat-vectorial anymore). It would require proper acceleration, and a very good soundcard to achieve good oversampling.





if you're asking for an example, you have one to the right, it's called 'center' (good luck generating such scratches algorithmically)

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Teksonik - Mon Jan 05, 2009 7:11 pm

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You guys want an example of a Pro Gui.......................

http://www.kvraudio.com/get.php?mode=show&id=2543#

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tony tony chopper - Mon Jan 05, 2009 7:14 pm

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I really fail to understand how someone can crap out such a nice UI with those ugly little LED switches badly rescaled. Looks like a programmer who destroyed someone else's artwork & shouldn't have been allowed to.

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aciddose - Mon Jan 05, 2009 7:15 pm

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i don't mean this in an offensive way (realizing it might be understood as such after typing it): that looks more cartoonish than usual.. and you're arguing you used photographs to create that gui? that could be easily synthesized, and as you're not using 3d for the knobs they could be created from a single bitmap and rotated in real-time. look at the limeflavour or limeflavour2 guis for xhip to see realtime rotation in action, or actually take a look at this:

http://xhip.cjb.net/temp/public/guitest_coocoo.dll

this is a realtime rotozoomer - unoptimized. using sse2 optimization it could easily be 16x faster. i decided it doesn't need to be. the bitmaps come with alpha-layer of course. with lower detail bitmaps (like your knobs in 'center') you could synthesize those quite easily. when i say "quite" obviously i'm talking about a number of days work on a single knob - but you're supposed to be getting paid for this.

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tony tony chopper - Mon Jan 05, 2009 7:26 pm

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You mean Wave's Center? I have nothing to do with that UI, it was just the most recent example. Here's a shot of mine (that the OP would surely qualify as way too small)





argh rotating bitmaps now, that's an heresy.

Really, better draw a plain circle (Live again) than rotate bitmaps, please.
(& if you really really need to rotozoom, use Intel's IPP)

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Teksonik - Mon Jan 05, 2009 7:28 pm

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Oh of course. It doesn't have a little girl's dancing Anime Doll. No wonder you don't like it at all.

You of all people have no reason to talk. Your FL Studio GUI is Impractical, Unreadable and Plain.

Once again your staggering arrogance and ignorance shines through................

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Teksonik - Mon Jan 05, 2009 7:29 pm

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Once again Tiny Unreadable Gui elements.

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tony tony chopper - Mon Jan 05, 2009 7:30 pm

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can you read? I wrote it's a really great UI destroyed by a little crap repeated button that a programmer probably added behind the artist's back.




and also fit everyone's screen

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Teksonik - Mon Jan 05, 2009 7:33 pm

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No you wrote.............



I can read, can you remember what you wrote 2 minutes ago? Can you post without contradicting yourself? Crap out and Nice don't exactly add up to really great.

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Teksonik - Mon Jan 05, 2009 7:35 pm

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You could make it fit on a cell phone screen but that wouldn't make it practical. What good is it to be able to see all of a GUI if you can't see any of it clearly? Example Sytrus.

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tony tony chopper - Mon Jan 05, 2009 7:35 pm

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keep arguing with yourself

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Teksonik - Mon Jan 05, 2009 7:36 pm

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Why? You give up?

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tony tony chopper - Mon Jan 05, 2009 7:37 pm

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you distort what I write, so let's say yes I totally hate it because it has no dancing girl on it




Depends who, I know I can see it clearly. Maybe I have bionic eyes.

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Teksonik - Mon Jan 05, 2009 7:40 pm

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Perhaps you do. I can't see any of the fader labels on your screenshot above on a 22" monitor.

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Teksonik - Mon Jan 05, 2009 7:42 pm

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Seriously the labels on the Reverb Faders look like the bottom line of the Snellen Eye Chart.

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tony tony chopper - Mon Jan 05, 2009 7:45 pm

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you still don't understand that the size of your monitor doesn't matter in the problem - its DPI's do.

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aciddose - Mon Jan 05, 2009 7:47 pm

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come on, i have a 17" here that i use for pixel graphics where i can absolutely clearly see the edges of the pixels - perfect, absolutely perfect, and i still have trouble making out what those fonts say. i'm not one to complain, but to be honest that's way too small to be practical. it looks like you're using smallfonts-5 there... (i think you are...)

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Teksonik - Mon Jan 05, 2009 7:53 pm

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Well it's a good quality monitor set to a native resolution of 1680 x 1050 and everything else looks stunning on it, most plugins, other hosts, games, videos etc. You still don't understand that some of your gui elements are......... Too Small.

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tony tony chopper - Mon Jan 05, 2009 7:53 pm

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that's because they're mostly 2 or 3 letters, not because they're small. The reasons I don't write full names are
-that there are too many controls & an oversized UI is worse
-that tabs are a solution but people apparently hate tabbed plugins
-that 'timbre fullness' isn't any more informative than 'full' anyway, in both cases you'd have to read the manual to know what it does. The label is just to be sure of what you tweak, not to understand what a knob does - that can't be written on a label, not even in a full line.

Anyway, I'm well aware it's often seen as too small, there's no news here. But we have complaints about oversized UI's too.

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aciddose - Mon Jan 05, 2009 7:56 pm

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no, i can understand them fine, it's just that each character is only four pixels wide, ok? let's look at this: at a resolution of 1800 horizontal pixels, on a 20" monitor, that gives 90 pixels per inch. so, our characters are about 1/20th of an inch wide. are users supposed to be using a magnifying glass? that's smaller than the fine-print on my "increase your male endowment" pill bottle. may cause manbreasts

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Teksonik - Mon Jan 05, 2009 7:57 pm

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I've got Ogun called up in FL as we speak and it's a great looking GUI it's just too small. I don't see any reason for it to be that small. I think you could increase the size by a considerable percentage and still have it fit even on the smallest of monitors/resolution.

Perhaps you have some High Powered Uber Monitor. I'd like to know the model number so I can get one too..........

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Teksonik - Mon Jan 05, 2009 8:02 pm

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Same comment for Sytrus. Great sounding synth, good looking GUI that's just way too small. I think that's a reason you don't see more presets for Sytrus available. It's just too much of a pain to program. I almost have to put nose to screen to work with Sytrus.

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tony tony chopper - Mon Jan 05, 2009 8:04 pm

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for the size it should be around mine in DPI's, so I guess I do have bionic eyes or you need glasses.

Considering my UI's are as 'tiny' as those plugins or apps that everyone was using 10 years ago, and that OS recommended GUI DPI's hardly changed (for compatibility reasons), if you don't see them properly that only means that:
-you couldn't see those UI's 10 years ago either?
-your eyesight decreased?
-your monitor have too high DPI's (but normally it's more a problem of today's laptops, not desktop monitors)

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Teksonik - Mon Jan 05, 2009 8:06 pm

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Ok I'll leave you two developers to slug it out for the night. I'm just a lowly end user who thinks ImageLine makes guis that are just way too small, the D-16 GUI's are works of art that are a pleasure to use and that Britney Spears is a skank.

EDIT: Ok one more for the road. So you're programming stuff to look like it would 10 years ago? And yes my eyesight has decreased but why then can I work with every synth I own from Absynth to Zero Vector with no problem (PolyAna being the exception)?

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tony tony chopper - Mon Jan 05, 2009 8:07 pm

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In FL there are simple & complex synths all behind small UI's. I can tell you that the # of presets is directly related to the complexity (& also price - free ones are more used) of the plugin. We got truckloads of TS404 & 3xOsc presets. They don't look any bigger.

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Teksonik - Mon Jan 05, 2009 8:12 pm

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See EDIT above. I wouldn't know about the 3 Osc or TS404. Don't use them. G'night.

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tony tony chopper - Mon Jan 05, 2009 8:13 pm

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I want a plugin's UI to be fully visible along with FL's toolbars at 1024x768 (& when FL started I wanted the same at 800x600).
First because if it's 1 standard res under the one I use (1280x1024), it's surely still used a lot, second because I also think of tablet PC's or rotating monitors that can be used in portrait mode, thus I consider it should work for a square of the minimum size (1024x1024).


Now if you own Vista, you can tell it to post-stretch apps. FL8 still has some knob handling-related problems when the window is rescaled, but that'll be fixed in FL9 (third-party plugins will probably won't like rescaling, though. But that can't be enabled per-window).
You can even set FL to look twice bigger in Vista.

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tony tony chopper - Mon Jan 05, 2009 8:22 pm

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This is for those who complain about UI sizes & own one of those laptops with way too high pixel density (that they probably thought to be better). Don't complain to programmers, complain to marketing for not caring about existing apps/backwards compatibility.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms699473(VS.85).aspx

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InfiNeat - Mon Jan 05, 2009 8:25 pm

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Voxengo are also doing some interesting things with their new UIs. The free Overtone GEQ is a good example. I don't know how they do it. Some parts of the UI scale better than others, but it's not bad at all.

I have good eyes and that's why I don't like small UIs. I have two 22" monitors at 1680x1050. If I come closer than about 2ft from them I can see the individual pixels very clearly which is annoying (and tiring). Some VSTs are hard to work with from 2ft away when the fonts are only 5x8 pixels or so...

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herodotus - Mon Jan 05, 2009 9:21 pm

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In almost every case, I prefer my hosts default gui for plugins.

You gui aficionados are a strange breed.

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zerocrossing - Mon Jan 05, 2009 9:53 pm

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Just use this:

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foosnark - Mon Jan 05, 2009 11:06 pm

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I personally think the D-16 Drumazon screenshot there is overblown.

A screen real estate comparison:



The blue background represents a 1680x1050 workspace.

The purple background you can barely see, because it's covered up, represents 1024x768.

The yellowish bordered grey rectangle is TERA's size. It's too large to use well in almost any host at 1024x768, in its full form like this, and I used to have trouble with it back when I ran on a 15" CRT at that res.

The light blue bordered rectangle is Alchemy's size. (Has anyone heard complaints about Alchemy being too big? It may be slightly awkward at 1024x768 in some hosts, though I suspect it was designed to just barely fit.)

The white bordered rectangle is FM8's size, with the optional keyboard turned on. Trim its height about 25% with that disabled.

The orange bordered rectangle is Morphine's size.

The grey bordered rectangle is Ogun's size, with the optional keyboard turned off. With its keyboard turned on, it's a bit taller than Alchemy.

The green bordered rectangle is Synplant's size.


Now for control size comparisons:



(Pardon the JPG artifacts, I thought I'd had the quality cranked up higher on export.)

TERA is very dense throughout as well as being too big -- it really cries out for some tabs IMHO. Of course, some people hate tabs. Modulation is hidden in popup windows in some cases, but not others.

Alchemy is not overly dense. It's clear and concise; it does hide modulation but excellently indicates its presence and operating range.

FM8 I took several mini-shots of because it varies. Overall the spacing is pretty loose and generous, and the only place it starts to get dense is the "expert" routing screen.

Ogun is pretty dense everywhere. TINY fonts that I cannot really read without squinting 3 feet from my 22" monitor, and yes, I'm wearing glasses and the prescription is current. Very fine markings near most of the sliders that don't convey information but add to visual clutter, and a monochrome but not flat look. (Generally I don't have a problem with the FL Studio color scheme, but some variation could help lend a sense of openness maybe?) In about the same space where FM8 put four knobs (with unabbreviated names and value labels), Ogun fits 6 sliders, two numeric fields and two switches.

Morphine combines very dense but obvious/simple additive bargraph/sliders, with generous knobs, clean fonts, and plenty of space.

Synplant is of course, a little different -- under the hood it's the simplest of these synths and has a unique interface. The one part of its interface its fans don't like is the "DNA" panel, which is also the densest. This is why I included it as an example.

I think one can generally say that GUIs that look and feel dense tend to be a turnoff. (Poly-Ana, my vote for Worst GUI Ever, looks CRAZY dense as well as having a big window and squinty fonts.)

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SuperFly76 - Tue Jan 06, 2009 12:37 am

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The flip side to that is that there are a lot of people who do live knob twiddling and record the automation.

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SuperFly76 - Tue Jan 06, 2009 12:53 am

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I can post one example of when I have multiple guis open. When I record Drums I usually have 8 to 12 discrete tracks, 2 mics on snare (top and bottom), 2 on Kick, one on each tom (3), 2 overheads, maybe a stereo room mic, and I also might drop a mic on the hat if needed. When it comes to eqing and mixing the drums I'll have most every plugin visible so I can quickly tweak the sound. Each mic directly affects the others so if I tweak a setting on the snare compressor, I might need to quicly adjust the eq on the kick to mix it in well.

Like you, I close windows when they are not in use. My point is that just because you don't need to have 8 to 10 plugin windows open, doesn't mean that others don't too.

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Kyran - Tue Jan 06, 2009 2:28 am

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The overall quality of a gui depends on both the usability and the prettiness. So introducing small artefacts in your gui is ok if it really increases the usability.

A rescalable gui is a definite plus for usability because people on a 24" monitor have different needs than people using the same synth on their netbook for a live performance in a band. I think you'll find that 99% of the users won't mind a small bit of artefacts on the background bitmap if it allows them to rescale it, like in zebra 2.

Good design is always about tradeoffs. It's very rare that you can go for perfection in one area without making great sacrifices in a lot of other, equally important areas.

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Teksonik - Tue Jan 06, 2009 5:59 am

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G'Morning..........Seriously you can read all the labels and readouts at 1280 x 1024?

Sytrus is only 590 x 424 certainly you could make it 800 x 600 and still fill all requirements? I wonder how many people use Rotating Monitors as opposed to people who run at a higher resolution than 1280 x 1024?

Sytrus is a powerful synth with a great range of sound. I wonder why you don't hear much about it outside the IL Forums? Too complex.?..............perhaps, hard to read Gui?.............

EDIT: Ogun is 479 x 646 (I'm not counting the wrapper frame in either case). 800 x 600 wouldn't work?

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Teksonik - Tue Jan 06, 2009 6:00 am

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You people who would want to look at the same interface for all their plugins hour after hour are a strange breed.

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Teksonik - Tue Jan 06, 2009 6:03 am

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ImageLine should issue one of those with every Sytrus.

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tony tony chopper - Tue Jan 06, 2009 6:38 am

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As you can see I had to fit 8 controls in an area others place 3 or 4.

I should have used tabs, afterall there are at least 2 clear sections: the synth engine & the effects. However our users say they hate tabs, prefer 1-screen synths. So the last solution is a dumbed-down version of it without all of the controls (afterall, some other synths would have offered you a couple of named reverb presets instead of all of the controls).

(you will also see that NI's labels are more or less in 5 pixels high like mine. Lowercase vs uppercase, but it's still mostly in 5 pixels. If my labels can't be read, then NI's lowercase letters shouldn't be either?)

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Teksonik - Tue Jan 06, 2009 7:22 am

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I just called up FM8, Absynth 3 and Pro 53 and all are easily readable here. I'm beginning to think contrast is an important factor. Just as in FL's Mixer Strip Names the labels on Sytrus and Ogun don't have enough contrast to stand out from the background making them hard to read.

For an example of a great GUI in my opinion look no further than Sawer.

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Teksonik - Tue Jan 06, 2009 7:28 am

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The letters above the Unison section of Sytrus are only 3 pixels wide. The ones I measured in FM8 are 5 pixels wide.

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tony tony chopper - Tue Jan 06, 2009 7:33 am

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I count 2 to 3 for mine vs 2 to 4 for theirs. I'm talking about the lowercase since most of their labels are in lowercase.




This is the problem you know, people can't use the right terms.

For years I've heard "it's too dark, I can't read it" about my UI's. I then just assumed that most people's screen gamma was too low (but it's weird as I made my UI's for CRT's and LCD's raised the average gamma a lot).

I then tried to make them brighter. And I couldn't understand that I was still getting "it's too dark" remarks, especially from people who were loving UI's out there that were mostly *black*.
Yes, those people were talking about contrast, not darkness. If you're not specific enough, don't expect things to change.

I have no idea what kind of eyesight problem is linked to contrast, though. I would rather suspect a lot of people have bright windows behind their monitors, reflecting on them?

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tony tony chopper - Tue Jan 06, 2009 7:44 am

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you're aware that the mixer's default labels ARE not contrasted on purpose, in order to make user-named, brighter ones stand out, right?

I've also heard such 'not enough contrasted' remarks about things that were basically not contrasted on purpose, because unimportant (like, a plugin's title/logo, it's really the last thing that should stand out on a UI)

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foosnark - Tue Jan 06, 2009 7:59 am

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Well, one obvious difference in font sizes is that with yours, we're counting maximum size of a capital letter (5x3) but with FM8, you're comparing it to lowercase letters without descenders.

I'm not sure it's just contrast at stake, either. If you take that little snippet of screenshot in my post and push the contrast so it's all pure black and white, FM8 would still be clear (but boring) and Ogun would still be busy and relatively hard to read.

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foosnark - Tue Jan 06, 2009 8:08 am

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Oh, and I appreciate the kind of focus that happens through intentionally not contrasting some things; I think that aspect works well.

Overall I do like the look of FLStudio (much more than 95% of the alternate skins that people have posted in various places), and compactness is often a virtue if not taken to extremes. I think Ogun takes it to extremes though. It could use about 50% more horizontal space, with bigger text labels and spacing between sliders, and still be a fairly compact UI. Moving the FX to a separate page would only reduce the vertical height.

The tiny text, gradation lines next to sliders that are so small that they obscure rather than clarify, and packing everything so closely, along with being narrower than most plugins of its complexity level, just make it feel cramped.

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tony tony chopper - Tue Jan 06, 2009 8:13 am

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what I'm saying is, if you can read their 'a', you should be able to read my letters. Otherwise you can't read their 'a' and you're guessing the labels by their first capital letter only?



but your jpg also makes most labels unreadable




it would have given more room for effects of course

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