How does 125%/175% scaling work in Windows?

[Noirgheos]

Shouldn't scaling to an odd factor of 25% or 75% create blurry text?

[Bombastinator]

43 minutes ago, Noirgheos said:

Shouldn't scaling to an odd factor of 25% or 75% create blurry text?

Depends.  There is bitmap text and vector text.  With vector text (the most common these days) the outlines of the text are vectors and then color is painted inside of the line.  Possibly with some dithering if stuff is really small in comparison to the pixel ratio of the monitor.   With bitmap text the letters are bitmaps and if you try to change their size they just make different size boxes.  This stuff can become blurry.  There’s not a whole lot of it around any more.  Vector type text was pioneered by Adobe in the 80’s and first put on macs which is one reason the entire graphics community went Apple. 

[Glenwing]

No, for the same reason that changing the font size in a word document from 12 pt to 15 pt doesn't cause blur. Windows scaling changes the resolution that things are rendered at, it doesn't render at a lower resolution and then scale the image up to to a higher resolution.

[Stahlmann]

For the most part scaling won't affect clarity. But there are some applications that will become a bit blurry. But that's very rare.

[Noirgheos]

11 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

Depends.  There is bitmap text and vector text.  With vector text (the most common these days) the outlines of the text are vectors and then color is painted inside of the line.  Possibly with some dithering if stuff is really small in comparison to the pixel ratio of the monitor.   With bitmap text the letters are bitmaps and if you try to change their size they just make different size boxes.  This stuff can become blurry.  There’s not a whole lot of it around any more.  Vector type text was pioneered by Adobe in the 80’s and first put on macs which is one reason the entire graphics community went Apple. 

 

10 hours ago, Glenwing said:

No, for the same reason that changing the font size in a word document from 12 pt to 15 pt doesn't cause blur. Windows scaling changes the resolution that things are rendered at, it doesn't render at a lower resolution and then scale the image up to to a higher resolution.

So for a game that presumably has UI assets designed around 1080p (and aren't vectors), would they look aliased or blurry playing at 1440p?

[Bombastinator]

Going bigger will produce some sort of dithering probably with bitmap type. Would depend on how it is done. A game will likely have its own systems there’s no real way to know. It will likely change from game to game.  Could see chunkier type with blurred edges on the boxes though.  There were some special bitmap typefaces for amigas that were quite small and for those things could get rather odd.

[Noirgheos]

1 minute ago, Bombastinator said:

Going bigger will produce some sort of dithering probably with bitmap type. Would depend on how it is done. A game will likely have its own systems there’s no real way to know. It will likely change from game to game.  Could see chunkier type with blurred edges on the boxes though.  There were some special bitmap typefaces for amigas that were quite small and for those things could get rather odd.

So if I'm truly worried about that my best bet would be to get 4K, so everything scales perfectly?

[Bombastinator]

4k goes 4 to 1 from 1080p but 1440p goes 4 to 1 from 720p. Still depends on the game.  I personally would more likely to go 4k over 1440p because of DLSS/dsp/that microsoft thing, and because there are more 4k things than 1440p things.