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  • UI Scaling

    L
    L

    My current setup involves a 50 inch 4k TV that is setup directly in front of my Motif XF8 (which doubles as a very overpriced midi controller). When I maximize ensemble or instruments (or the pro version), I expect the UI to increase to the size of the window so I can actually see the text. I dont quite understand music software, it all seems to have this underlying problem; apparently, users are expected to have 20/20 vision plus a telescope to read the text in these music apps, as they all seem to have scaling issues. When I maximize ensemble, shouldnt the vienna instruments panel increase to the size of the frame on the right hand side? Same thing with instruments, when I maximize instruments, 50% of the screen real estate is empty, and the ui is identical in size. Why not scale the size of the UI to fit the window they are in?

    Below are screenshots with both maximized. Why isnt the UI scaling to match?

    [img]https://i.imgur.com/h6w4osP.jpg[/img]

    [img]https://i.imgur.com/NgxJ9PE.jpg[/img]
  • bbeliusB
    bbeliusB

    Dynamic scaling is not as easy to implement... And it was not that important when everyone had just a 1080p display. If you are on Windows 10 try following: Go to Settings -> System -> Display -> Scaling and adjust the scaling factor.

    This should fix most of the UIs.

    Ben@VSL | IT & Product Specialist
  • L
    L

    Im not sure I understand... Dynamic scaling is available in most software. The windows 10 scaling is quite frankly, terrible, understandably, because it was only recently just added to windows 10 and has to use "intuitive" guesses to figure out how to scale correctly.

    You mentioned that this was not a problem when people were running on 1080p displays, which is also, just not true. The UI in Vienna's software appears to be built around when people were running 800 by 600 displays. I didnt do an actual pixel count, but, I have a dual monitor setup, one is a standard 1680 by 1080 display (22 inches) and the UI comes nowhere close to extending across the entire display on that monitor either.

    Instead of discussing legacy reasons for why this problem exists, lets discuss why, in 2018, music software continues to have this problem and more importantly, how we as an industry can make music software more accessible. As a side note, I would venture to guess that the problem stems from the fact that music software developers are busy trying to check the next box on the feature list, and UI scaling isnt high on the list of checkboxes. In point of fact, accessibility options have always been low on the priority list for software across the board and I think this is a shame.

    I dont know what programming language vienna software is written in, however, most modern programming environments have UI scaling builtin, if the programmer takes the time to account for it.

    I would also argue that if I have to use the operating system to fix a display issue specifically related to one program, or a group of programs that all fall under one category (music editing, photo editing, video editing, web browsers, etc), that industry might have a problem that it should strongly consider looking into.

    This is not just a problem with Vienna, this is a problem across the board. East West, Kontakt, and Cubase, all software suites I have in my workflow, have this issue. As music software gets more complicated, more buttons and fiddly bits are crammed into the UI until eventually, the little 5x5 pixel icon is shrunk down even smaller and a tooltip has to be added. I kid you not, some of the fiddly bits in this software contain more than 100 controls in a single paged incidence of UI, which appears to have a screen resoultion of 800x600.

    When a person buys a 50 inch TV to use as a display monitor, they arent doing it because they want the UI elements to stay the size they are on a 22 inch monitor. They are doing it because they want things to be bigger... Music software developers dont seem to care about this however, and that is unfortunate.
  • L
    L

    I dont need to scale everything, just Vienna and Cubase. How do I do that? Because the Win10 scaling changes everything and I certainly dont need my display settings window bigger, its probably too big as it is.
  • DaddyOD
    DaddyOD
    last edited
    last edited

    Well said. No doubt there are solid reasons why it has so far proven too difficult (costly? distracting from other priorities?) for VSL to implement what seems to users like an obviously needed feature.

    I like how you expand the issue beyond VSL to the whole industry. I agree that industry-level problems require industry level effort. If the problems are too daunting for individual companies, perhaps they could pool their resources.

    This may not be feasible, but somehow it simply has to be accomplished. My guess is it would require extensive rewriting of code, and it becomes a choice to charge update prices for new musical capabilities or for UI scaling. There's probably not the programming capacity for both.

    The calculation may be that users would not pay for UI scaling as the primary feature of a new software version. Myself, I would consider UI scaling a feature perhaps equal to or more important than many other potential new features.

    @littlewierdo said:

    Im not sure I understand... Dynamic scaling is available in most software. The windows 10 scaling is quite frankly, terrible, understandably, because it was only recently just added to windows 10 and has to use "intuitive" guesses to figure out how to scale correctly.

    You mentioned that this was not a problem when people were running on 1080p displays, which is also, just not true. The UI in Vienna's software appears to be built around when people were running 800 by 600 displays. I didnt do an actual pixel count, but, I have a dual monitor setup, one is a standard 1680 by 1080 display (22 inches) and the UI comes nowhere close to extending across the entire display on that monitor either.

    Instead of discussing legacy reasons for why this problem exists, lets discuss why, in 2018, music software continues to have this problem and more importantly, how we as an industry can make music software more accessible. As a side note, I would venture to guess that the problem stems from the fact that music software developers are busy trying to check the next box on the feature list, and UI scaling isnt high on the list of checkboxes. In point of fact, accessibility options have always been low on the priority list for software across the board and I think this is a shame.

    I dont know what programming language vienna software is written in, however, most modern programming environments have UI scaling builtin, if the programmer takes the time to account for it.

    I would also argue that if I have to use the operating system to fix a display issue specifically related to one program, or a group of programs that all fall under one category (music editing, photo editing, video editing, web browsers, etc), that industry might have a problem that it should strongly consider looking into.

    This is not just a problem with Vienna, this is a problem across the board. East West, Kontakt, and Cubase, all software suites I have in my workflow, have this issue. As music software gets more complicated, more buttons and fiddly bits are crammed into the UI until eventually, the little 5x5 pixel icon is shrunk down even smaller and a tooltip has to be added. I kid you not, some of the fiddly bits in this software contain more than 100 controls in a single paged incidence of UI, which appears to have a screen resoultion of 800x600.

    When a person buys a 50 inch TV to use as a display monitor, they arent doing it because they want the UI elements to stay the size they are on a 22 inch monitor. They are doing it because they want things to be bigger... Music software developers dont seem to care about this however, and that is unfortunate.

    Hobbyist ... Sy Woods, Brass, Perc I, Str Pro, Elite Str, Duality Str & Sordino, Prime ... Sy-ized Woods, Perc, Solo Str, Ch Str, App Str, Harps, Choir, Dim Brass, Dim Strings ... VE Pro, MIR Pro 3D, Vienna Suite Pro ... Cubase 12, Studio One 6, Dorico 5
  • bbeliusB
    bbeliusB

    Most of the times you have to rewrite the entire UI and this is time-consuming and expensive.
    If I remember correctly, VST 2.x has a lot of restrictions regarding UI and scaling. This adds a lot of additional problems. (Btw: The new Synchron Player has UI scaling)

    In Windows 10 you have to scale everything. Maybe they will implement single App scaling in a future update.

    Ben@VSL | IT & Product Specialist
  • DaddyOD
    DaddyOD
    last edited
    last edited

    @bbelius said:

    If I remember correctly, VST 2.x has a lot of restrictions regarding UI and scaling. This adds a lot of additional problems.

    That right there represents a huge obstacle for VSL...and the industry. Steinberg's VST3 is not an industry-wide standard. 

    Hobbyist ... Sy Woods, Brass, Perc I, Str Pro, Elite Str, Duality Str & Sordino, Prime ... Sy-ized Woods, Perc, Solo Str, Ch Str, App Str, Harps, Choir, Dim Brass, Dim Strings ... VE Pro, MIR Pro 3D, Vienna Suite Pro ... Cubase 12, Studio One 6, Dorico 5
  • L
    L
    last edited
    last edited

    @bbelius said:

    Most of the times you have to rewrite the entire UI and this is time-consuming and expensive.
    If I remember correctly, VST 2.x has a lot of restrictions regarding UI and scaling. This adds a lot of additional problems. (Btw: The new Synchron Player has UI scaling)

    In Windows 10 you have to scale everything. Maybe they will implement single App scaling in a future update.

    Quite frankly, these companies are raking in the money. Im not promoting East West here (although, if you are a person like me on a tight budget, they have a deal that cant be beat - $30 monthly gets you access to everything they have), just go to their order page for cloud composer. Every time someone purchases a monthly plan, it pops up in the corner. Spend 5 minutes there and you'll see a dozen people or more subscribe within a 5 minute time frame. Multiply that across a day, that is alot of money.

    Im not asking for miracles. Vienna only has what, six software applications, two of which, I dont believe even has a UI by itself, the UI is built in to Vienna Instruments (MirX and their effects plugin suite). Vienna Instruments and Ensemble, the main engine of the Vienna suite, doesnt have scaling?

    I was reading the Ensemble Pro features (the paid upgrade of ensemble) and it appears the paid version has retina display (whatever that means - some arbitrary marketing term Apple coined up that is defined differently depending on the company), but I dont know if that includes scaling. As a side note, Ensemble Pro's feature set seems kind of weak to warrant charging for, which is likely why they sweetened the deal and locked the epic orchestra behind it, but I digress.

    This is not to rag on companies. make money. I am after all, I am a red blooded American capitalist. I just find myself not writing music as much as I would like to because quite frankly, it gtives me a headache trying to read and navigate these UI's. By the way, I have nearly perfect vision, I am not saying this as someone who is nearly blind.

    Because I am not writing as much as I would like to, that results in spending much less money on Vienna products, and I know I cant be the only one who feels this way.

    How hard would it be to redo Instruments and Ensemble Pro? Instruments has two pages - basic and advanced view, and even then, the UI doesnt change all that much (the matrices and piano consume the majority of screen real estate). Ensemble has a mixer and Instruments is rendered inside of Ensemble, hence, fix Instruments and much of the work for Ensemble should already be done.

    As another side note, Im not buying Synchron any time soon. Hell, I can barely afford to purchase the little Special Edition packages every once in awhile (full time student, full time nearly minimum wage job - hence the reason Im going to school). I only recently completed the SE core, will probably start on the pluses later. Compound that with health issues (just had open heart surgery, now on the transplant list awaiting a new heart - hurray defective body parts), and you start to get the idea - money is tight for me right now. I write music because I enjoy it. I dont make any money from it. It is merely a very expensive, overpriced hobby.
  • M
    M
    last edited
    last edited

    There is single app scaling in Windows, or at least the possibility to allow certain apps to scale but not others - although legacy software doesn't do a great job at it (it basically blows up pixels into a sometimes blurry mess!). Nevertheless, it's better than using a magnifying glass. I wrote in the other thread:

    "Here's perhaps a better fix: find the Vienna Ensemble.exe (mine in program files > vienna), right click, properties, compatibility tab, select Override high DPI scaling behaviour, and change to System or System Enhanced. Now the application will be blown up by a factor defined by system. I believe this is somewhat new, perhaps a Creator's Update or so. It's less than ideal, obviously, as things won't look as crisp as they would on real scaling; basically we're just doubling pixels here. But for everybody who doesn't have laser-eyes, or wants to use an analog/digital magnifier, it works much better."

    Perhaps it's useful to you.

    Note that this thread was from 2015. The suggestion was then, too, that this was being looked into and that this was certainly next in line. I think VI/VIP could really do with an update by now!

    Best,

    mspape
  • F
    F

    Hi,

    regarding scalable GUI, is it possible to know if the update for VIPro is still scheduled or has it been canceled?

    If I remember well (there was a topic about it, can't find it anymore), it was supposed to bring scalable GUI and other features, like VEPro6 and Vienna Suite Pro before.

    Best regards,
    Ferdinand.
  • DaddyOD
    DaddyOD

    I think it's safe to say that the new Synchron releases have had an impact on available development time for other Vienna libraries and software. 

    I too very much look forward to an updated VI with GUI scaling.

    Hobbyist ... Sy Woods, Brass, Perc I, Str Pro, Elite Str, Duality Str & Sordino, Prime ... Sy-ized Woods, Perc, Solo Str, Ch Str, App Str, Harps, Choir, Dim Brass, Dim Strings ... VE Pro, MIR Pro 3D, Vienna Suite Pro ... Cubase 12, Studio One 6, Dorico 5