What's Native Instruments Doing About Hi-DPI Support Of Instruments & Effects ?

[THE INTRANCER]

I've many commercial Native Instrument plugins and ensembles I've bought over the past 5 years, and I'm at the point where I'm thinking that I'll have to manually re-scale every single element of an ensemble like Form for example, just to make it less of a nightmare to actually use comfortably, at 1440P, whilst there's other plugins like Replika for example that have no ability to be scaled at all by the user.

Are they updating their catalogue of Instruments & FX at all ?

Modern AMD graphic cards for example support Virtual Super Resolution, so one can view a higher resolution, even on monitors which are by default limited to 1080P for example. Naturally this provides greater screen estate which is beneficial to music production programs which support Hi-DPI like Studio One 3 /4 / Cubase, besides other graphical applications. https://community.amd.com/docs/DOC-1301

If that new update to Massive instrument doesn't provide any GUI scaling/ Hi-DPI support then I don't see much point in it, for all the razzmatazz that's there's been... I mean if I can't friggen see it to use it properly then what's the point...

[SLiC]

I was really hoping they would address this in Kontakt 6, it was the first major update for a long time...but the GUI and HiDPI got no love...particular annoying if you use instruments like Output which end up very small unless you use a DAW that can individually scale VSTs like Bitwig.

[THE INTRANCER]

I was really hoping they would address this in Kontakt 6, it was the first major update for a long time...but the GUI and HiDPI got no love...particular annoying if you use instruments like Output which end up very small unless you use a DAW that can individually scale VSTs like Bitwig.

Yeah... I mean Studio One has the ability to scale Hi-DPI plug's with a certain release of Windows 10, but of course not everyone is on Windows 10 to make use of it, and Hi-DPI needs to be supported by the plugin dev as well if they don't have builtin scailing, which in itself needs to be at a high enough level. Ensembles are in their own container as are Kontakt which is even more restrictive than that of the Reaktor shell environment.

[DuX]

Get a 52" HiDPI screen. Problem solved.

[EvilDragon]

It is a huge project to overhaul 20 years old codebases like Kontakt and Reaktor for the thing that didn't exist back then. It is not a topic NI is not concerned about, and if you'll notice, the latest released products (Dirt Pack, Mod Pack and Massive X) all have scalable GUIs. So they are working on it, but it's a more complicated thing than you could imagine.

Do note that there's probably nothing NI can do about the bitmap-based GUIs for libraries/ensembles done for Kontakt/Reaktor. They would have to be scaled with their current assets, so they will get blurry at 4K for sure. No other way except redoing each and every library/ensemble ever made, which I'm sure you can understand not every developer will be willing to do, if any.

[Elektronisch]

Id personaly would be better with a blurred GUI then a one i cannot see at all (absynth, massive, fm)

[SLiC]

Id personaly would be better with a blurred GUI then a one i cannot see at all (absynth, massive, fm)

Ditto...

I don’t expect Absynth, FM8, GR etc to get a lot of GUI love, they will either be dropped or updated significantly I suspect. As Reaktor and Kontakt are the delivery method for 80% of their products I think they should update this ASAP, they are slippin* a long way behind developers like Arturia in my opinion, they updated even their oldest products and have consistent feature for scaling, presets and general GUI look and feel across the range...

[Stokely]

My "solution" for this right now is indeed to use a relatively large, lower rez monitor...25", 1080p. My eyes are old!

The guis for NI are not my favorites, for sure.

Personally I prefer the 100% scalable simple guis like VAlhalla uses...I don't want or need realistic textures etc.
New slogan for Valhalla, though I doubt they'd want to use it: "VAlhalla - we make guis that old people love!" LOL

[Elektronisch]

Id personaly would be better with a blurred GUI then a one i cannot see at all (absynth, massive, fm)

Ditto...

I don’t expect Absynth, FM8, GR etc to get a lot of GUI love, they will either be dropped or updated significantly I suspect. As Reaktor and Kontakt are the delivery method for 80% of their products I think they should update this ASAP, they are slippin* a long way behind developers like Arturia in my opinion, they updated even their oldest products and have consistent feature for scaling, presets and general GUI look and feel across the range...

Well its sort of possible to do that inside FL Studio, just thing is that besides plugin being scaled then whole FL Studio becomes blurry even at 1440P resolution which is someting not comfortable at all because you have to stare all the time at the DAW.

[Forgotten]

Do note that there's probably nothing NI can do about the bitmap-based GUIs for libraries/ensembles done for Kontakt/Reaktor. They would have to be scaled with their current assets, so they will get blurry at 4K for sure. No other way except redoing each and every library/ensemble ever made, which I'm sure you can understand not every developer will be willing to do, if any.

It might not be such an arduous task for developers if they can convert any raster images to vector, as they would scale better.

Is there a limitation on the image type that can be used or are vector graphics possible?

[EvilDragon]

PNG or TGA files are used when creating Kontakt/Reaktor stuff. No support for vector formats like SVG, simply because (my conjencture) NI's own frameworks don't support it.

[THE INTRANCER]

It is a huge project to overhaul 20 years old codebases like Kontakt and Reaktor for the thing that didn't exist back then. It is not a topic NI is not concerned about, and if you'll notice, the latest released products (Dirt Pack, Mod Pack and Massive X) all have scalable GUIs. So they are working on it, but it's a more complicated thing than you could imagine.

Do note that there's probably nothing NI can do about the bitmap-based GUIs for libraries/ensembles done for Kontakt/Reaktor. They would have to be scaled with their current assets, so they will get blurry at 4K for sure. No other way except redoing each and every library/ensemble ever made, which I'm sure you can understand not every developer will be willing to do, if any.

Given the cost and lack of need of Massive X in my setup, I've not downloaded it yet to explore it's scalability options, how did they implement that ? (i.e the method / location for rescaling). I don't use Kontakt any more, due to the scale issue and that's with the free version...

I'm aware of how long and tedious it is to do just one ensemble such as Razor, Skanner, Kontour and what you see on the surface is actually far more complex with multi-layered, parent / child linked elements to resize and reposition. I considered resizing NI Form, before moving up in resolution, but it's become more apparent that some small elements like text and widgets are just blurry and tiny now... I settled for the re-skinning option and I made these skins available for users to download back in December to use and edit as they wished, from here.

I think rescaling these myself will be another project, which will be worth doing... in the year ahead.

[glokraw]

It is a huge project to overhaul 20 years old codebases like Kontakt and Reaktor for the thing that didn't exist back then.

Are people becoming totally wussified? If developement ever got to
the point, where different monitors were required for different
excellent collections, that wouldn't be a problem. I'd get one for U-he,
one for NI, one for IK, and one for the synthedit era.

So now, based on the difficulties you mention, it makes sense
to have dedicated monitors. Those saying they don't have room
for them need to study the world of mounting gizmos, if not re-prioritize
their square-footage, and also consider the benefits of multiple displays.
With both feet in the game, the eyes will soon follow.
I rarely see a highlighted high end system in the print mags,
that has only one monitor.

To me, Reaktor with blocks is strong enough to stop updating,
draw continuing profits from new ensembles, and have a team
create a vector based scalable replacement as a separate product.
Kontakt might be in the same boat?
Cheers

[Scotty]

Here is an an idea... can a developer make a shell to load a plugin, then tell the shell- plugin the approximate size of the hosted plugin and have the plugin shell make a magnifier for the hosted-plugin? Viewed within the shell the plugin would be jaggy but big, ugly perhaps but usable but the control points and automation would work. Is something like this possible. I'd pay for it.

[glokraw]

... I settled for the re-skinning option and I made these skins available for users to download back in December to use and edit as they wished, from here.

I think rescaling these myself will be another project, which will be worth doing... in the year ahead.

What is your estimate on man-hours for the Form project?
Is it likely that the experience and creations will make
subsequent efforts easier? Sounds like a commercial scale
project (no pun intended) to me, as a total non-coder.
I did a small mod to U-he ColourCopy beta, using Inkscape and Gimp,
it was tedious, but rewarding. Layered some see-thru zebra stripes
on the main panel, changed green LED to blue. Need to apply that
to the V1.x when time is available.
Cheers