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Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

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Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#691

Post by seanmcdirmid »

the_af wrote: post #667
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could still be programming at 640x480 like we did back in the early 90s. Thankfully, technology marched on and we went to 1024x768 and then even better resolutions. One would think that technology would march forward until we had ink on paper-resolution displays, because why not? But of course, we could still make do with 640x480 like we did way back when. The bigger issue is that, like we've been doing for the la…

I get what you're saying. In general, though, I disagree with the notion that newer tech makes old tech automatically -- always -- not good enough. It's the mentality that makes a lot of people rush to buy the latest Kindle (or mobile phone, or whatever) when the one they own does everything they need. More importantly, it's one thing to say "I prefer this new tech/resolution/gadget" and another to claim "how can you…

I just like 200+ PPI displays (24" 4K is the same pixel density as 27" 5K) because I have to spend a lot of time reading text and like not seeing pixels and/or anti-aliasing artifacts. Once you get used to it, going back is like going back from an iPhone 4 to some Windows Mobile 6.1 phone.

It should also be cheap enough now, and at some point fabbing a 200+ PPI display will cost the same as an older one, it won't make much sense to keep making the lower res displays anymore (like it doesn't make sense to fab 32MB DIMMs anymore).

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#692

Post by jiggawatts »

This is a fantastically well written blog article, and there needs to be more attention paid by the industry to issues such as these ones raised by the author.

I've generally found that all the IT vendors have an incredibly lazy and sloppy attitude to imaging of all types, not just display scaling or font rendering. "The pixels went on to the display! Good enough! Ship it!" is the attitude.

Compare this to televisions, where there 120 Hz is common, 8K is a thing now, wide gamuts and HDR are not only supported but consistent and even calibrated out of the box! Dolby and NetFlix in particular have put significant effort into making sure their customers see the original artistic intention, not some faded or garish mess.

In the PC, Mac, and smartphone world it is literally impossible to send someone either a still image or video that'll look even vaguely correct. It'll be too bright, or too dim, faded, or worse: the colours will be stretched to the maximum display gamut. Photos of faces look like zombies or clowns in full makeup.

HDR is simply impossible to use for still image exchange. No matter what some random JPEG committee is working on, don't even think about such nonsense as sending someone a HDR file, it will practically never work, no matter what display the recipient is using. Or even just an SDR 10-bit file. You're wasting your time.

To give you an idea of how insanely bad this is, for years and years if you enabled HDR for your display under Windows 10 it would simultaneously wash out the desktop colours, dim it until it was way too dark, and then blur everything on top of that so that your 4K monitor is pointless.

Clearly nobody actually tested HDR support at Microsoft. After they received complaints, both to their tech support and in public... they did nothing. For years. YEARS.

I just find the whole thing incredibly sad. It's 2020. The future! The physical technology for nearly perfect display output has been available for years, but... no. You just can't have it, because the software won't allow you.

It doesn't matter what display you buy. You can't have HDR, or 10-bit, or colour management on the desktop, or your browser.

Firefox has had full ICC colour management for many years now. It's off by default. Internet Explorer truncates everything to sRGB even on a wide-gamut screen. Safari stretches colours for un-tagged images.

The only HDR and colour-managed thing you can reliably do on a PC is watch NetFlix. That's... it.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#693

Post by disposedtrolley »

godelski wrote: post #677
orestis wrote: post #373

Do all that, of course. But when you’re writing applications for other people, go buy a shitty middle of the pack laptop, resolution 1280x768, with the windows start bar and menu bars eating like 150pixels of that, and try to use your software there.

While we're on it, make sure this is a low end laptop in terms of components too. Make sure your application is usable. No one needs a chat client that eats several gigs of RAM and a significant portion of your CPU.

Yeah, more teams need to do this and consider performance on low-end devices to be a feature.

When Android Kit Kat was under development, the team used nerfed Nexus 4's to simulate a low end Android phone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_KitKat#Development

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#694

Post by rs23296008n1 »

The guy needs to chill. Relax. He's got a point about PPI but don't get too hung up on pixels. Your eyes are your guide.

For my purposes a single 4k 43" monitor is fine. Its not ultrawide either. No need to upgrade. I have another identical one at the other place I "nest". Its like using 4x HD (1920x1080?) monitors but no bezel in between. Very comfortable and the text doesn't hide in obscurity. Plenty of space for everything and doubles as a excellent TV when needed.

Personally I think most of the trouble people have is due to staring at screens too long. You shouldn't be spending more than an hour staring at a screen continuously anyway. Even thats probably excessive. Take a break.

Its kind of like those people who's eyes are so tired they change their preferences to light text on a light background. Ummmm. No. Not good.

But I'm an old programmer, amongst other hats, so what would I know? I remember when 640x480 was crystal clear and so sharp and 1024x768 was "wow" extra real estate!

But yeah. Go higher res and bump up the physical size at the same time. Completely addictive if you have the desk space.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#695

Post by jiveturkey »

I'm reminded of the 90s, I landed a job using IRIX as my desktop. In the days of 72dpi monitors, the 144dpi 21:9 SGI display was a wonder! I think it also worked on the Mac, but there was no scaling like there is today, where there is a render pipeline and application pixels != screen pixels.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#696

Post by craigkilgo »

keenmaster wrote: post #625
mulmen wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently upgraded to a 43” 4k monitor and use it the way you describe. I’m not sure I am happy with it. The real estate is nice but it might be too much. UI elements end up very far away. I rarely need all that space. I either need a bigger (deeper) desk to sit back farther or just a smaller monitor physically with the same resolution.

32” 4K is perfection, right in the sweet spot of size.

This is the correct answer.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#697

Post by the_af »

cmroanirgo wrote: post #310
the_af wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand this and I don't want to argue against anyone's preferences. You know what's best for you . I'm just pushing back against these out of touch fads. Most developers worldwide don't have a three-monitor setup. There is no proven correlation between quality software and 4K displays or mechanical keyboards (to name other fads). More importantly, the best devs I've known -- people I admire -- used tiny laptops…

May favourite dev environment was a 7" Android 4 running Debian. I got plenty done with an external keyboard. I bang away at my mba 13" 2013 these days and the only real gripe i have is the lack of delete & backspace keys combo: I've never gotten comfortable without it. That said, the only reason i could possibly use more screen real estate is web debugging. But to me that's more of an indictment of the environment I…

> May favourite dev environment was a 7" Android 4 running Debian. I got plenty done with an external keyboard.

Wow, that's hardcore! I don't think I could do it though. Thank for sharing your experience!

Which 3dfx games you collaborated with, if you don't mind sharing? (I never owned one, I was a TNT fanboy myself).

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#699

Post by Legogris »

thomaslord wrote: post #239
the_af wrote: post #76

The technical details are all right (or seem right to me, anyway), but this is too opinionated for my liking. No, you do not need a 4K monitor for software development. Some people might like them, some won't. [edit/clarification: someone rightfully pointed out that nobody will actively dislike a 4K monitor. I was unclear here: I meant "some people won't need them" more than "dislike them"] This sounds like when Jeff…

Hello! Person who actively dislikes 4k here. In my experience: 1. No matter what operating system you're on, you'll eventually run into an application that doesn't render in high dpi mode. Depending on the OS that can mean it renders tiny, or that the whole things is super ugly and pixelated (WAY worse than on a native 1080p display) 2. If the 4k screen is on your laptop, good luck ever having a decent experience plu…

> 3. Configuring my preferred linux environment to work with 4k is either impossible or just super time consuming. I use i3 and it adds way more productivity to my workflow than "My fonts are almost imperceptively sharper" ever could

What issues actually? Xmonad on Arch user here and I find the sweet spot for me is 27-32" 4k, 1440p on laptop (I guess 4k would be nice here too, but not sure if it motivates the increased power draw). After getting used to the increased real-estate, I do feel limited on my older 1080p laptop screen; fonts smaller than 8p (which is still all good) noticably impacts the readability to the point I can feel my eyes strain faster. It did take a bit of playing around with Dpi settings to get it right, though, out of the box it's not great. The Arch wiki has some great material.

The only frustration I do have (which IS super-frustrating, specifically for web browsing) is with multi-monitor setups with different pixel density - your point 2, I guess. Even plugging anything larger than 19" with 1080p into my 1080p Thinkpad is annoying.

I think it should be possible to configure it correctly but I just gave up and end up zooming in/out whenever I do this and send windows between screens. Haven't looked at it, but maybe a mature DE like KDE or GNOME (which, if you don't know, you can still use with i3) should be able to take care of this.

Also, this is all on X11, have no idea if and how wayland differs.

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