6 ms·

This happens with eyeballs as well as ears. Witness people who don't notice screen tearing in X11, or people who don't mind (or even prefer!) Windows font rend

This happens with eyeballs as well as ears. Witness people who don't notice screen tearing in X11, or people who don't mind (or even prefer!) Windows font rendering.

Macha 4y ago
The people who prefer Apple's or Window's font rendering are able to observe it so that's much more subjective preference compared to people who are literally unable to hear e.g. an x570 chipset fan and claim their system is silent
jgillich 4y ago
True, I have never in my life noticed screen tearing, X11 or otherwise.
joshspankit 4y ago
Or people who argued that “the eye can’t see more than 60fps”
- favadi 4y ago
  Or people who argued that "4k is pointless, you can't see the different with 2k anw".
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    For gaming or videos I actually can’t tell the difference between 4K and 1440p. For text rendering I absolutely can.
    - glowingly 4y ago
      As an aside, many 4k/1440p videos are not really 4k or 1440p, vs how we would classify a 4k/1440p monitor. Video is mostly 4k/1440p light levels, but less than that w.r.t. color information. A common video subsampling setup is 4:2:0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chroma_subsampling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chroma_subsampling In addition, common video compression techniques (at least the simple ones that I could still understand) basically reconstruct blocks of pixels. Reconstruction is lossy, at best. If I had to guess, something similar could be done in games as part of their optimizations.
      - joshspankit 4y ago
        Something similar is done in video games through two technologies (in addition to colourspace trickery): DLSS and “dynamic resolution”
  - jeroenhd 4y ago
    This really depends on the size of the screen. For most laptops, I'd argue that 4k is useless; 1440p is high-res enough that you get perfect clarity anyway. For 83" TVs you obviously need more pixels to get a good viewing experience because you don't position yourself several meters in front of the screen to make the pixels unnoticable.
  - LoveMortuus 4y ago
    I think even for phones anything above 1080p, is kinda pointless. Just a drain on the battery.
  - t-3 4y ago
    For me, there's only a difference for the text console. For GUIs I have to halve the resolution to make things usable so it doesn't really help anything.
kriops 4y ago
Windows font rendering is fine as long as you don't use scaling, right?
- jrootabega 4y ago
  Maybe my perceptions are out of date, but cleartype, while technically allowing higher font dpi, had a rainbow/screen door effect that stood out like a sore thumb for many of us.
  - jeroenhd 4y ago
    The effect depends on the screen technology you use. Windows guesses the pixel layout, but you can tweak ClearType to fit your screen better. You can open a wizard that takes you through six steps and asks you to select the rectangle with the best text (out of six rectangles) to tweak it to your liking. When the subpixels don't align, ClearType can be ugly as hell, but for me the default guesses always worked out.
    - jrootabega 4y ago
      On displays with high enough resolution/dpi, maybe. But isn't it just inevitable that if there are red subpixels on one side of your text, and blue on the other, that it would be noticeable? OK, I played around with it and I was able to make it more and less noticeable depending on which boxes I picked. Guess I'll never know if that was possible when I first started noticing it 20 years ago, with worse monitors and better eyeballs :(
    - vel0city 4y ago
      I wonder if virtualization software messing with how ClearType assumes subpixel layouts could cause a lot of the dislike for ClearType in the Mac crowd, as many Mac users possibly predominately handled Windows in things like Parallels? I don't have any knowledge about how ClearType behaves in software like Parallels so I could be entirely off-base with that idea. The only time I had dislike for ClearType was when I'd rotate a monitor from landscape to portrait. This makes sense, since the subpixel layout is then wrong. So, I'd usually just redo the ClearType settings when rotated and use the monitor in that orientation for a while instead of constantly switching.
otikik 4y ago
I confess I am somewhat impervious to bad kerning myself. I thought about fixing that (there's online exercises that one can take) but then I realized that there's potentially so much bad kerning out there I would be making my life more miserable for no reason.
- phonepostingsux 4y ago
  https://xkcd.com/1015/ https://xkcd.com/1015/
  - otikik 4y ago
    Thanks, I didn’t know this one :)
Firther 4y ago
Screen tearing in X11 is a tricky one since there's a dozen ways to deal with it and 10 times more ways for it to go wrong, which is just enough uncertainty that you can never be sure if it's supposed to be that way. I know I've spent hours trying to deal with screen tearing by fiddling with desktop compositors that are supposed to prevent tearing out of the box only to fall back to the trusty AMDGPU/Radeon TearFree setting which has always just worked for me.
hedora 4y ago
There are driver options to remove screen tearing in X11. (At least for Intel, Nvidia and AMD cards). Also, font rendering has gotten worse under Linux in recent years (due to fractional scaling). I should probably just switch to a BSD that doesn't include Wayland support before it is too late. That'd fix my desktop's incessant pulseaudio and systemd screwups too...
weberer 4y ago
>Witness people who don't notice screen tearing in X11 Most people are using a compositor that came with their DE, so screen tearing never happens.

This happens with eyeballs as well as ears. Witness people who don't notice screen tearing in X11, or people who don't mind (or even prefer!) Windows font rendering.

Macha 4y ago

The people who prefer Apple's or Window's font rendering are able to observe it so that's much more subjective preference compared to people who are literally unable to hear e.g. an x570 chipset fan and claim their system is silent

jgillich 4y ago

True, I have never in my life noticed screen tearing, X11 or otherwise.

joshspankit 4y ago

Or people who argued that “the eye can’t see more than 60fps”

favadi 4y ago
Or people who argued that "4k is pointless, you can't see the different with 2k anw".
- Gigachad 4y ago
  For gaming or videos I actually can’t tell the difference between 4K and 1440p. For text rendering I absolutely can.
  - glowingly 4y ago
    As an aside, many 4k/1440p videos are not really 4k or 1440p, vs how we would classify a 4k/1440p monitor. Video is mostly 4k/1440p light levels, but less than that w.r.t. color information. A common video subsampling setup is 4:2:0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chroma_subsampling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chroma_subsampling In addition, common video compression techniques (at least the simple ones that I could still understand) basically reconstruct blocks of pixels. Reconstruction is lossy, at best. If I had to guess, something similar could be done in games as part of their optimizations.
    - joshspankit 4y ago
      Something similar is done in video games through two technologies (in addition to colourspace trickery): DLSS and “dynamic resolution”
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  This really depends on the size of the screen. For most laptops, I'd argue that 4k is useless; 1440p is high-res enough that you get perfect clarity anyway. For 83" TVs you obviously need more pixels to get a good viewing experience because you don't position yourself several meters in front of the screen to make the pixels unnoticable.
- LoveMortuus 4y ago
  I think even for phones anything above 1080p, is kinda pointless. Just a drain on the battery.
- t-3 4y ago
  For me, there's only a difference for the text console. For GUIs I have to halve the resolution to make things usable so it doesn't really help anything.

kriops 4y ago

Windows font rendering is fine as long as you don't use scaling, right?

jrootabega 4y ago
Maybe my perceptions are out of date, but cleartype, while technically allowing higher font dpi, had a rainbow/screen door effect that stood out like a sore thumb for many of us.
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  The effect depends on the screen technology you use. Windows guesses the pixel layout, but you can tweak ClearType to fit your screen better. You can open a wizard that takes you through six steps and asks you to select the rectangle with the best text (out of six rectangles) to tweak it to your liking. When the subpixels don't align, ClearType can be ugly as hell, but for me the default guesses always worked out.
  - jrootabega 4y ago
    On displays with high enough resolution/dpi, maybe. But isn't it just inevitable that if there are red subpixels on one side of your text, and blue on the other, that it would be noticeable? OK, I played around with it and I was able to make it more and less noticeable depending on which boxes I picked. Guess I'll never know if that was possible when I first started noticing it 20 years ago, with worse monitors and better eyeballs :(
  - vel0city 4y ago
    I wonder if virtualization software messing with how ClearType assumes subpixel layouts could cause a lot of the dislike for ClearType in the Mac crowd, as many Mac users possibly predominately handled Windows in things like Parallels? I don't have any knowledge about how ClearType behaves in software like Parallels so I could be entirely off-base with that idea. The only time I had dislike for ClearType was when I'd rotate a monitor from landscape to portrait. This makes sense, since the subpixel layout is then wrong. So, I'd usually just redo the ClearType settings when rotated and use the monitor in that orientation for a while instead of constantly switching.

otikik 4y ago

I confess I am somewhat impervious to bad kerning myself. I thought about fixing that (there's online exercises that one can take) but then I realized that there's potentially so much bad kerning out there I would be making my life more miserable for no reason.

phonepostingsux 4y ago
https://xkcd.com/1015/ https://xkcd.com/1015/
- otikik 4y ago
  Thanks, I didn’t know this one :)

Firther 4y ago

Screen tearing in X11 is a tricky one since there's a dozen ways to deal with it and 10 times more ways for it to go wrong, which is just enough uncertainty that you can never be sure if it's supposed to be that way. I know I've spent hours trying to deal with screen tearing by fiddling with desktop compositors that are supposed to prevent tearing out of the box only to fall back to the trusty AMDGPU/Radeon TearFree setting which has always just worked for me.

hedora 4y ago

There are driver options to remove screen tearing in X11. (At least for Intel, Nvidia and AMD cards). Also, font rendering has gotten worse under Linux in recent years (due to fractional scaling). I should probably just switch to a BSD that doesn't include Wayland support before it is too late. That'd fix my desktop's incessant pulseaudio and systemd screwups too...

weberer 4y ago

>Witness people who don't notice screen tearing in X11 Most people are using a compositor that came with their DE, so screen tearing never happens.