7 ms·

It would be great if we could also go ahead and fix subpixel anti-aliasing for OLED screens. People have been been trying for years to get Microsoft's attention

by calebh 2y ago

It would be great if we could also go ahead and fix subpixel anti-aliasing for OLED screens. People have been been trying for years to get Microsoft's attention about this issue. [1] The subpixel layout of OLED screens is different than the the traditional layout, so text ends up looking pretty bad. Patching ClearType would be the first step to fixing this issue. I'm surprised that none of the display manufacturers have tried twisting Microsoft's arm to fix this issue. At the present moment OLED screens are the superior display technology, but cannot be used for productivity because of this issue. [1]: https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/issues/25595 https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/issues/25595

kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
They should just ditch ClearType and use grayscale AA like Acrobat used to have. PPI is high enough on modern displays that the reduction in resolution won't matter.
- kevingadd 2y ago
  The linked issue points out that grayscale AA has color fringing on some of the subpixel layouts. It's not obvious to me how one would fix it though, it seems like a deficiency built-in to panels with weird subpixel layouts and the subpixel layouts are a compromise chosen to achieve (fake?) higher PPI
- wtallis 2y ago
  > PPI is high enough on modern displays that the reduction in resolution won't matter. Have you looked at the desktop monitor market recently? There are still a lot of models that are not substantially higher PPI than what was normal 20 years ago. PCPartPicker currently shows 1333 monitors in-stock across the stores it tracks. Of those, only 216 have a vertical resolution of at least 2160 pixels (the height of a 4k display). Zero of those 4k monitors are smaller than 27", so none of them are getting close to 200 PPI. On the low-PPI side of things, there are 255 models with a resolution of 2560x1440 and a diagonal size of at least 27". One standard size and resolution combination that was common over a decade ago still outnumbers the entirety of the high-PPI market segment. If you look at the Steam Hardware Survey results, their statistics indicate an even worse situation, with over half of gaming users still stuck at 1920x1080. If subpixel antialiasing made sense during the first decade after LCDs replaced CRT, then it still matters today.
  - vlovich123 2y ago
    > If you look at the Steam Hardware Survey results, their statistics indicate an even worse situation, with over half of gaming users still stuck at 1920x1080. Are these the natural resolution of the monitor or just what people play games at? I suspect the latter because the most popular gards are more mid level / entry level cards. The 1650 is still at #4.
    - wtallis 2y ago
      The Steam Hardware Survey samples the system when Steam is launched, not while a game is playing. For most users, Steam starts when they log in to the computer. I think the unfortunate reality is that a very large number of gamers are still using 1920x1080 as their everyday ordinary screen resolution for their primary display, though a few percent at least are probably on laptops small enough that 1920x1080 is somewhat reasonable.
      - gruez 2y ago
        >The Steam Hardware Survey samples the system when Steam is launched, not while a game is playing Who's installing steam on their non-gaming computer?
        dragonwriter 2y ago
        I still have Steam installed on the laptop that was long ago replaced as my gaming computer but which is occasionally used for other purposes, because I have no particular reason to remove it.
        wtallis 2y ago
        Not all gamers have a computer entirely dedicated to that purpose. Even among those that do, it's not uncommon to also play games or run Steam on another machine.
        ycombinatrix 2y ago
        I have it installed on a non-gaming laptop. There are lots of lightweight games that I might play when traveling.
- perching_aix 2y ago
  Yes it does matter.
- magicalhippo 2y ago
  I have a 1440p 27" monitor. On my monitor, ClearType vs greyscale AA is the difference between acceptable text and stabbing your eyes out with a rusty spoon. From what I can gather, 4k at 32", which is the typical size you get 4k panels at, is just 30% more pixel-dense. I have strong doubts just 30% more density will somehow magically make grayscale AA acceptable. If you know any good 27" 4k mixed-use (ie >= 144Hz, HDR) monitors I'm all ears.
  - TingPing 2y ago
    I think they didn’t exist until recently: https://rog.asus.com/monitors/27-to-31-5-inches/rog-swift-oled-pg27ucdm/ https://rog.asus.com/monitors/27-to-31-5-inches/rog-swift-ol...
nolok 2y ago
> At the present moment OLED screens are the superior display technology Until the lighting condition move away from "99% perfect" and then it falls way below QLED.
- jayd16 2y ago
  Are you just saying they're not as bright or is there something more there?
  - wtallis 2y ago
    On OLEDs, high levels of ambient light hitting the monitor tends to wash out blacks, making them appear dark gray, thereby subverting one of the most clear-cut advantages of OLED.
    - gruez 2y ago
      And it's not an issue for other display technologies? Why not? Do the OLED cells have high reflectivity or something?
      - wtallis 2y ago
        I don't know the mechanism behind it, but I've done side by side comparisons and it's clear to the untrained eye that the impressive contrast ratio of OLEDs is easily weakened by ambient lighting conditions.
    - perching_aix 2y ago
      I don't see this on any of my phones or wearables. I'm aware QD-OLED in particular has this weakness, but haven't heard of or experienced any other OLEDs having this issue.
      - wtallis 2y ago
        I wonder if it's actually due to the quantum dots, or if it's more broadly a thing for large OLED panels. I haven't spent any significant time using an OLED TV, and I think most of the OLED computer monitors I've seen in person were QD-OLED.
BearOso 2y ago
It's not that easy. With the stripe layouts, all you have to do is increase the horizontal or vertical resolution when rasterizing, then map that to subpixels. There's no current methodology or algorithms to deal with triangular layouts, etc. And OLED's subpixel layouts have been moving around yearly with both LG and Samsung. Those two even have RGB stripe layouts forecast for the future.
- mananaysiempre 2y ago
  Once upon a time I owned a LCD monitor with diagonal subpixels[1], and subpixel antialiasing absolutely didn’t work on that either. It’s just that it was very niche and I’m not sure if there were even any follow-up products that used the same arrangement. [1] Samsung SyncMaster 173P (released 2004, bought IIRC 2006)
- Tadpole9181 2y ago
  LG used WRGB striping. Also, this isn't true? The blur busters founder (Mark Rejhon) has worked a lot on this exact issue and already has defined shaders and approaches to arbitrary subpixel geometry text shaders in the PowerToys repos (no thanks to Microsoft). His approach is based on the Freestyle HarmonyLCD subpixel rendering approach which has supported non-striped layouts for over 6 years. We're currently blocked by Microsoft, who continue to ignore everyone on this issue despite Mark's best efforts. Core Windows shaders need to be modified and he can't really proceed without cooperation, without injecting a security risk for anyone who uses his solution.
  - BearOso 2y ago
    LG was RWBG, but newer panels use RGWB, which works better with subpixel. I wasn't aware of the FreeType harmony approach, but it looks like there's some problems, like no FIR filtering. The rapidly changing subpixel arrangements would also be difficult to accommodate. They'd have to have a new DDC command or something to poll the panel's subpixel matrix. I imagine by the time they got that through the standards bodies that RGB OLED would be ready.
    - 2y ago
mananaysiempre 2y ago
> The subpixel layout of OLED screens is different than the the traditional layout, so text ends up looking pretty bad. Patching ClearType would be the first step to fixing this issue. Patching ClearType is unfortunately not as straightforward as it should have been. In an ideal world, you just change the sampling kernel your rasterizer uses to match the subpixel layout (with perceptual corrections) and you’re done. In our world, it takes hackery of Lovecraftian levels of horrifying to display crisp text using a vector font on a monitor with a resolution so pitiful a typographer from centuries ago would have been embarrassed to touch it. Unfortunately, that ( < 100 dpi when 300 dpi is considered barely acceptable for a print magazine) is the only thing that was available on personal computers for decades. And if you try avoid hacks, you get more or less Adobe Reader’s famously “blurry” text. One of the parts of that hackery is distorting outlines via hinting. That distortion is conventionally hand-tuned by font designers on the kind of display they envision their users having, so in a homogeneous landscape it ends up tied to the specifics of both ClearType’s subpixel grid (that has been fixed since 2001) and Microsoft’s rasterizer (which is even older). Your sampling kernel is now part of your compatibility promise. The Raster Tragedy website[1] goes into much more detail with much more authority than I ever could lay claim to, except it primarily views the aforementioned hackery as a heroic technical achievement whereas I am more concerned with how it has propagated the misery of 96 dpi and sustained inadequate displays for so long we’re still struggling to be rid of said displays and still dealing with the sequelae of said misery. [1] http://rastertragedy.com/ http://rastertragedy.com/
- perching_aix 2y ago
  > Unfortunately, that ( < 100 dpi when 300 dpi is considered barely acceptable for a print magazine) I find this fascinating, because I recall school textbooks having visible dots, but I'm yet to experience what people refer to as "oh my god I'm seeing the pixel!". It further doesn't help that when seated at a typical distance (30° hfov) from a ~23" 16:9 FHD display (96 ppi), you get a match (60 ppd) for the visual acuity you're measured for when an optometrist tells you that you have a 20/20 eyesight. It's been of course demonstrated that eyesight better than 20/20 is most certainly real, that the density of the cones in one's eye also indicates a much finer top resolution, etc., but characterizing 96 ppi as so utterly inadequate will never not strike me as quite the overstatement.
babypuncher 2y ago
I don't think it's a big issue on Microsoft's radar because a lot of OLED screens have a high enough pixel density that the problem isn't really noticeable. The subpixel arrangements themselves have also improved in recent years, further mitigating the issue. I have a 27" 1440p 3rd gen QD-OLED panel and while I can make out some fringing if I pay real close attention to black-on-white text, it's not noticeable in general usage. The 4k panels have such a high DPI that I can't see the fringing at all without a magnifying glass.
- wtallis 2y ago
  If you know that your monitor is a 3rd-generation QD-OLED panel, then you probably know that text rendering was the main complaint about earlier generations of QD-OLED, and there are probably still more of those in the wild than ones as recent as yours.
  - babypuncher 2y ago
    This is also a very valid point. The improvement in text clarity on this panel was one of the key reasons why I decided to pull the trigger on this $1,000 monitor, while I had passed on previous models.
- denkmoon 2y ago
  We're definitely going to get >200dpi oleds before they ever fix sub pixel font rendering.
juancn 2y ago
It's probably easier to change the OLEDs to use a more traditional pattern than changing the rasterizer.
perching_aix 2y ago
> Patching ClearType would be the first step to fixing this issue. And what would be the others? The hopelessly huge number of screenshots for example will forever have the regular smoothing baked in.
SebastianKra 2y ago
The built-in ClearType Text Tuner [^1]. Fixed most of my issues with OLED rendering on Windows. However, some applications do their own subpixel-AA. Even on MacOS, where they supposedly removed all subpixel-AA, I still see the occasional shimmering edge. > OLED screens are the superior display technology With all the hassle to apparently keep my OLED from burning in [^2], I'd disagree. Apples Displays acheive the same contrast levels with backlight dimming. The only cost is a slight halo around tiny bright spots. It's only really noticeable when your white cursor is on a pitch-black screen. [^1]: https://www.elevenforum.com/t/use-cleartype-text-tuner-to-improve-text-readability-in-windows-11.8486/ https://www.elevenforum.com/t/use-cleartype-text-tuner-to-im... [^2]: The edges of the picture are cut off because of pixel orbiting. I have to take a 5-min break every 4 hours for pixel refresh. I have to hide the menubar and other permanently visible UI-elements.

by calebh 2y ago

kevin_thibedeau 2y ago

They should just ditch ClearType and use grayscale AA like Acrobat used to have. PPI is high enough on modern displays that the reduction in resolution won't matter.

kevingadd 2y ago
The linked issue points out that grayscale AA has color fringing on some of the subpixel layouts. It's not obvious to me how one would fix it though, it seems like a deficiency built-in to panels with weird subpixel layouts and the subpixel layouts are a compromise chosen to achieve (fake?) higher PPI
wtallis 2y ago
> PPI is high enough on modern displays that the reduction in resolution won't matter. Have you looked at the desktop monitor market recently? There are still a lot of models that are not substantially higher PPI than what was normal 20 years ago. PCPartPicker currently shows 1333 monitors in-stock across the stores it tracks. Of those, only 216 have a vertical resolution of at least 2160 pixels (the height of a 4k display). Zero of those 4k monitors are smaller than 27", so none of them are getting close to 200 PPI. On the low-PPI side of things, there are 255 models with a resolution of 2560x1440 and a diagonal size of at least 27". One standard size and resolution combination that was common over a decade ago still outnumbers the entirety of the high-PPI market segment. If you look at the Steam Hardware Survey results, their statistics indicate an even worse situation, with over half of gaming users still stuck at 1920x1080. If subpixel antialiasing made sense during the first decade after LCDs replaced CRT, then it still matters today.
- vlovich123 2y ago
  > If you look at the Steam Hardware Survey results, their statistics indicate an even worse situation, with over half of gaming users still stuck at 1920x1080. Are these the natural resolution of the monitor or just what people play games at? I suspect the latter because the most popular gards are more mid level / entry level cards. The 1650 is still at #4.
  - wtallis 2y ago
    The Steam Hardware Survey samples the system when Steam is launched, not while a game is playing. For most users, Steam starts when they log in to the computer. I think the unfortunate reality is that a very large number of gamers are still using 1920x1080 as their everyday ordinary screen resolution for their primary display, though a few percent at least are probably on laptops small enough that 1920x1080 is somewhat reasonable.
    - gruez 2y ago
      >The Steam Hardware Survey samples the system when Steam is launched, not while a game is playing Who's installing steam on their non-gaming computer?
      - dragonwriter 2y ago
        I still have Steam installed on the laptop that was long ago replaced as my gaming computer but which is occasionally used for other purposes, because I have no particular reason to remove it.
      - wtallis 2y ago
        Not all gamers have a computer entirely dedicated to that purpose. Even among those that do, it's not uncommon to also play games or run Steam on another machine.
      - ycombinatrix 2y ago
        I have it installed on a non-gaming laptop. There are lots of lightweight games that I might play when traveling.
perching_aix 2y ago
Yes it does matter.
magicalhippo 2y ago
I have a 1440p 27" monitor. On my monitor, ClearType vs greyscale AA is the difference between acceptable text and stabbing your eyes out with a rusty spoon. From what I can gather, 4k at 32", which is the typical size you get 4k panels at, is just 30% more pixel-dense. I have strong doubts just 30% more density will somehow magically make grayscale AA acceptable. If you know any good 27" 4k mixed-use (ie >= 144Hz, HDR) monitors I'm all ears.
- TingPing 2y ago
  I think they didn’t exist until recently: https://rog.asus.com/monitors/27-to-31-5-inches/rog-swift-oled-pg27ucdm/ https://rog.asus.com/monitors/27-to-31-5-inches/rog-swift-ol...

nolok 2y ago

> At the present moment OLED screens are the superior display technology Until the lighting condition move away from "99% perfect" and then it falls way below QLED.

jayd16 2y ago
Are you just saying they're not as bright or is there something more there?
- wtallis 2y ago
  On OLEDs, high levels of ambient light hitting the monitor tends to wash out blacks, making them appear dark gray, thereby subverting one of the most clear-cut advantages of OLED.
  - gruez 2y ago
    And it's not an issue for other display technologies? Why not? Do the OLED cells have high reflectivity or something?
    - wtallis 2y ago
      I don't know the mechanism behind it, but I've done side by side comparisons and it's clear to the untrained eye that the impressive contrast ratio of OLEDs is easily weakened by ambient lighting conditions.
  - perching_aix 2y ago
    I don't see this on any of my phones or wearables. I'm aware QD-OLED in particular has this weakness, but haven't heard of or experienced any other OLEDs having this issue.
    - wtallis 2y ago
      I wonder if it's actually due to the quantum dots, or if it's more broadly a thing for large OLED panels. I haven't spent any significant time using an OLED TV, and I think most of the OLED computer monitors I've seen in person were QD-OLED.

BearOso 2y ago

It's not that easy. With the stripe layouts, all you have to do is increase the horizontal or vertical resolution when rasterizing, then map that to subpixels. There's no current methodology or algorithms to deal with triangular layouts, etc. And OLED's subpixel layouts have been moving around yearly with both LG and Samsung. Those two even have RGB stripe layouts forecast for the future.

mananaysiempre 2y ago
Once upon a time I owned a LCD monitor with diagonal subpixels[1], and subpixel antialiasing absolutely didn’t work on that either. It’s just that it was very niche and I’m not sure if there were even any follow-up products that used the same arrangement. [1] Samsung SyncMaster 173P (released 2004, bought IIRC 2006)
Tadpole9181 2y ago
LG used WRGB striping. Also, this isn't true? The blur busters founder (Mark Rejhon) has worked a lot on this exact issue and already has defined shaders and approaches to arbitrary subpixel geometry text shaders in the PowerToys repos (no thanks to Microsoft). His approach is based on the Freestyle HarmonyLCD subpixel rendering approach which has supported non-striped layouts for over 6 years. We're currently blocked by Microsoft, who continue to ignore everyone on this issue despite Mark's best efforts. Core Windows shaders need to be modified and he can't really proceed without cooperation, without injecting a security risk for anyone who uses his solution.
- BearOso 2y ago
  LG was RWBG, but newer panels use RGWB, which works better with subpixel. I wasn't aware of the FreeType harmony approach, but it looks like there's some problems, like no FIR filtering. The rapidly changing subpixel arrangements would also be difficult to accommodate. They'd have to have a new DDC command or something to poll the panel's subpixel matrix. I imagine by the time they got that through the standards bodies that RGB OLED would be ready.
  - 2y ago

mananaysiempre 2y ago

> The subpixel layout of OLED screens is different than the the traditional layout, so text ends up looking pretty bad. Patching ClearType would be the first step to fixing this issue. Patching ClearType is unfortunately not as straightforward as it should have been. In an ideal world, you just change the sampling kernel your rasterizer uses to match the subpixel layout (with perceptual corrections) and you’re done. In our world, it takes hackery of Lovecraftian levels of horrifying to display crisp text using a vector font on a monitor with a resolution so pitiful a typographer from centuries ago would have been embarrassed to touch it. Unfortunately, that ( < 100 dpi when 300 dpi is considered barely acceptable for a print magazine) is the only thing that was available on personal computers for decades. And if you try avoid hacks, you get more or less Adobe Reader’s famously “blurry” text. One of the parts of that hackery is distorting outlines via hinting. That distortion is conventionally hand-tuned by font designers on the kind of display they envision their users having, so in a homogeneous landscape it ends up tied to the specifics of both ClearType’s subpixel grid (that has been fixed since 2001) and Microsoft’s rasterizer (which is even older). Your sampling kernel is now part of your compatibility promise. The Raster Tragedy website[1] goes into much more detail with much more authority than I ever could lay claim to, except it primarily views the aforementioned hackery as a heroic technical achievement whereas I am more concerned with how it has propagated the misery of 96 dpi and sustained inadequate displays for so long we’re still struggling to be rid of said displays and still dealing with the sequelae of said misery. [1] http://rastertragedy.com/ http://rastertragedy.com/

perching_aix 2y ago
> Unfortunately, that ( < 100 dpi when 300 dpi is considered barely acceptable for a print magazine) I find this fascinating, because I recall school textbooks having visible dots, but I'm yet to experience what people refer to as "oh my god I'm seeing the pixel!". It further doesn't help that when seated at a typical distance (30° hfov) from a ~23" 16:9 FHD display (96 ppi), you get a match (60 ppd) for the visual acuity you're measured for when an optometrist tells you that you have a 20/20 eyesight. It's been of course demonstrated that eyesight better than 20/20 is most certainly real, that the density of the cones in one's eye also indicates a much finer top resolution, etc., but characterizing 96 ppi as so utterly inadequate will never not strike me as quite the overstatement.

babypuncher 2y ago

I don't think it's a big issue on Microsoft's radar because a lot of OLED screens have a high enough pixel density that the problem isn't really noticeable. The subpixel arrangements themselves have also improved in recent years, further mitigating the issue. I have a 27" 1440p 3rd gen QD-OLED panel and while I can make out some fringing if I pay real close attention to black-on-white text, it's not noticeable in general usage. The 4k panels have such a high DPI that I can't see the fringing at all without a magnifying glass.

wtallis 2y ago
If you know that your monitor is a 3rd-generation QD-OLED panel, then you probably know that text rendering was the main complaint about earlier generations of QD-OLED, and there are probably still more of those in the wild than ones as recent as yours.
- babypuncher 2y ago
  This is also a very valid point. The improvement in text clarity on this panel was one of the key reasons why I decided to pull the trigger on this $1,000 monitor, while I had passed on previous models.
denkmoon 2y ago
We're definitely going to get >200dpi oleds before they ever fix sub pixel font rendering.

juancn 2y ago

It's probably easier to change the OLEDs to use a more traditional pattern than changing the rasterizer.

perching_aix 2y ago

> Patching ClearType would be the first step to fixing this issue. And what would be the others? The hopelessly huge number of screenshots for example will forever have the regular smoothing baked in.

SebastianKra 2y ago

The built-in ClearType Text Tuner [^1]. Fixed most of my issues with OLED rendering on Windows. However, some applications do their own subpixel-AA. Even on MacOS, where they supposedly removed all subpixel-AA, I still see the occasional shimmering edge. > OLED screens are the superior display technology With all the hassle to apparently keep my OLED from burning in [^2], I'd disagree. Apples Displays acheive the same contrast levels with backlight dimming. The only cost is a slight halo around tiny bright spots. It's only really noticeable when your white cursor is on a pitch-black screen. [^1]: https://www.elevenforum.com/t/use-cleartype-text-tuner-to-improve-text-readability-in-windows-11.8486/ https://www.elevenforum.com/t/use-cleartype-text-tuner-to-im... [^2]: The edges of the picture are cut off because of pixel orbiting. I have to take a 5-min break every 4 hours for pixel refresh. I have to hide the menubar and other permanently visible UI-elements.