To All Devs: please cater to BIG SCREENS!!!

[Breeze]

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.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

...but how does Poly Ana look?

[Chris Walton]

...but how does Poly Ana look?

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.

[Breeze]

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.

[ruud07]

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.

+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.

[jobromedia]

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.

[Nystul]

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.

[jobromedia]

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.

[0100]

+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.

[novaflash]

all plug should be like Synth1 GUI : user resizable

[tony tony chopper]

I find myself squinting

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.

[MaxSynths]

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?

Totally agree
This is the right answer to the OP.

[Doug B]

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?

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.

[MitchK1989]

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.

[foosnark]

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.