(Windows) I’m trying to fully master HIDPI, but I use an older monitor (ASUS VE278 1080p) and I’m guessing this doesn’t show anything that is HIDPI anyway. How does one lowly programmer test HIDPI ?
(I’m skipping Mac on this because I’m sure a Retina display is far too expensive than my need for simple testing. I’m happy with my old monitor, I’m not a “get the latest” type of person. Besides, this monitor serves my 6 computer setup perfectly.)
Should I get a newer monitor that is like 4K or something? Any recommendations?
Can you adjust the screen scaling at all ?
Thats one thing you should try
Try running at 150% scaling , 200%, and then try some screwy ones if you can like 163% 
Is this with the monitor settings (if so, I can’t find anything), or with Win7 Display control panel (if so, is it the “Make text and other items larger or smaller”? If so, it just makes stuff larger, and from screenshots from clients, I seem to ahve issues when things are smaller and that item only does 100% to 150%, which is larger)
I seem to recall that Win7 and HiDPI don’t play well together.
I’d recommend Win 8 or 10 and a 4K display. You might be able to mess with the scaling with a 1080p display but you’ll be left with so little screen real estate it will be harder to test.
Windows 7 itself works fin with varying hidpi settings
Depending on what version of Xojo you’re using on Windows 7 you may encounter some issues
You’ll find some useful bits at @Jürg_Otter’s web site particularly the ones for dealing with Windows & multi monitor set ups
That said Windows 7 is getting to the point, in terms of percent market share, that you might just skip it and support Windows 10 which has per monitor scaling (something Windows 7 didnt support)
With Nvidia video cards, you can enable “Dynamic Super Resolution” which would allow you to generate a 4K resolution and scale it back down to your 1080 actual resolution. Then Windows display scaling to 200% would make everything look the same… just a little blurry. Your app would be using and rendering at 2x though, allowing you to test without actually losing screen real estate.
AMD cards can probably do the same, but I don’t know since I don’t use those.
I’m using mostly/all laptops, no NVIDIA on them. I really enjoy Win7 and really don’t prefer Win8/10, but again this is just for testing,and I have full access to Win8/10 computers.
So from the “expert panel” responses, it seems the best way is to just splurge on a 4K display, that there is no practical way of simulating 2x/HiDPI rendering on a 1080 display?
Before buying a new display, make certain your computer can run it. Based on it being a Win7 laptop, there’s a fair chance its video system can’t drive that many pixels. With the exact model of your computer, but we might be able to find more options for you.
Yeah, ok Thom, yeah, none of my laptops have this kind of power/resolution support. They go as high as 2500x1600 (Intel HD 3000 chipset).
My 15yrold son runs a desktop with Win10, probably can do 4K, but I don’t want to GIVE HIM a 4K monitor =) - maybe just hook it up while he’s at school, but then I have a 4K display unused most of the time.
Yeah, looks like my son’s WIn10 machine supports 4K, so I’ll just go ahead and get the 4K monitor.
One more question: my daughter’s have MBP’s that I’m sure are Retina displays. Does those reflect the 2x-type of HiDPI drawing the same way the 4K monitor on a Windows computer would?
(As you can see, I procreated correctly. =))