Yeah. I don't get it. If you've got a 3840x2160 display, intended use on macOS as a 1920x1080@2x display, what is the advantage of using a 7680x4320 buffer? Everything is drawn at twice the width and height - and then gets scaled down to half the width and height. Is there actually a good reason to do this?

(I use my M4 Mac with 4K displays, and 5120x2880 (2560x1440@2x) buffers. That sort of thing does work, though if you sit closer than I do then you can see the non-integer scaling. Last time I tried a 3840x2160 buffer (1920x1080@2x), that worked. I am still on macOS Sequoia though.)

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kalleboo 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> what is the advantage of using a 7680x4320 buffer? Everything is drawn at twice the width and height - and then gets scaled down to half the width and height. Is there actually a good reason to do this?

Text rendering looks noticeably better rendered at 2x and scaled down. Apple's 1x font antialiasing is not ideal.

Especially in Catalyst/SwiftUI apps that often don't bother to align drawing to round points, Apple's HiDPI downscaling has some magic in it that their regular text rendering doesn't.

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halapro 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Feels like a huge power loss just to get slightly better text. You slow rendering down 4x for this

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wpm 2 days ago | parent [-]

Yes but Apple got to drop subpixel anti-aliasing support because this workaround is "good enough" for all of their built-in displays and overpriced mediocre external ones, so we all get to suffer having to render 4x the pixels than we need.

	▲	2 days ago \| parent [-]
		[deleted]

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metabagel 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

So, how do I actually set this for my Mac, or is this something which each application may or may not do?

	▲	kalleboo a day ago \| parent [-]
		There are third party tools like BetterDisplay that unlock it as an option https://github.com/waydabber/BetterDisplay

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tonyedgecombe 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Apple’s 1x font antialiasing is not ideal because it no longer exists.

	▲	kalleboo a day ago \| parent [-]
		They still use antialiasing, just not sub-pixel antialiasing.

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TheTon 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Yes 1920x1080@2x absolutely works on M4. I use this mode all day every day.

	▲	smcleod 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah that would work, that's just 2k HiDPI, not 4k HiDPI.