[calebh]

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

[mananaysiempre]

> 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/

[perching_aix]

> 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.

[donatj]

> 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

Can you explain why that is? Is it a bed Microsoft made or something more intrinsic to font rendering generally?

[mschuster91]

> 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.

Well, Apple found a solution that works with web and print - and the font( file)s are the same. What's the secret stopping Microsoft from going the Apple route, other than maybe backwards compatibility?

[TheRealPomax]

Raster Tragedy should have been called the Raster Disaster. Mostly because I keep calling it that and looking for the wrong thing every single time I want to link to it.

[kevin_thibedeau]

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.

[wtallis]

> 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.

[kevingadd]

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

[magicalhippo]

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.

[perching_aix]

Yes it does matter.

[BearOso]

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.

[Tadpole9181]

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.

[mananaysiempre]

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)

[mananaysiempre]

> There's no current methodology or algorithms to deal with triangular layouts, etc.

I believe there are rasterization algorithms that can sample the ideal infinite-resolution picture according to any sampling kernel (i.e. shape or distribution of light) you desire. They may not be cheap, but then computer graphics is to a great extent the discipline of finding acceptable levels of cheating in situations like this. So this is definitely solvable. Incompatibility with manual hinting tuned to one specific sampling grid and rasterization algorithm is the greater problem.

[SebastianKra]

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-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.

[babypuncher]

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]

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.

[denkmoon]

We're definitely going to get >200dpi oleds before they ever fix sub pixel font rendering.

[nolok]

> 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]

Are you just saying they're not as bright or is there something more there?

[juancn]

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

[perching_aix]

> 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.