Apple Vision Pro - Ultrawide HiDPI

[dmkpoznan]

Hi,

another "Vision Pro - Ultrawide" observation. When I add virtual display with mirror / stream option I get crystal clear resolution with possibility of full screen zooming, and having high resolution even, when zoomed-in. This allows me to use 2x4K (7000+ width resolution) and zoom in to part of screen if necessary.

BUT

I found, that performance of stream to Vision Pro is poor (every few seconds screen is chopping, watching YouTube is terrible etc.). But I found solution - you just need to use system full-screen zoom and zoom in a little bit (like 1%), and it's working completely smoothly.

I found also, that enabling software display adjustments with metal and decreasing brightness by 1% do almost similar job (chopping is much less visible).

I don't know if this problem existed before latest macOS beta's and whole ultra-wide condition, but it looks like system zoom is doing something with stream / rendering (disabling some optimization?).

If you have any idea how to address it, and/or solve I would love to hear that. I can exclusively help you with testing features for Vision Pro streaming, if you need. Thank you!

[waydabber]

Interesting observation. Accessibility zooming indeed changes the way desktop composition works - there were some specific macOS bugs in the past (like excessive HDR darkness with OpenGL rendering etc) that required the zoom slightly to fix the issue. This seems to be something like this. I am not sure whether Apple will fix this particular issue - virtual screen mirroring in general is broken for Apple Silicon (mouse cursor disappears randomly, sleep broken etc) and the way you use this with Vision Pro is probably a super-niche way to do things and it's probably not on Apple's radar. But since this is a new/developing feature and the team working on it is probably super keen to look into any feedbacks from AVP users, you might want to point out this issue to them and they might try to dig deeper into these problems.

[dmkpoznan]

You are 100% right, that things that I'm doing are not "regular user" things, but let's be honest: this product is not for regular users (I'm talking about both: Vision Pro AND BetterDisplay). I'm connecting two super-power tools. But why am I doing it (4K * 2 * 2 - HiDPI)?

Two things: at first using full-screen-zoom you can focus on some part of the screen without changing resolution, window placement etc.. And second: making screenshots in HiDPI vs LoDPI makes sooooo much difference.

To conclude: should I describe this "problem" to apple in macOS feedback? Or this is something that you have idea to look at (from code/API/SDK perspective)?

[waydabber]

You are right of course. :)

If the problem is accessibility zooming related and happens with virtual screen mirroring as well, you should try to add a feedback. Both are actually system features, so Apple should have full authority in trying to fix any issues.

[dmkpoznan]

But the problem only exists when I add virtual screen with custom (16K) resolution. So simple answer from apple will be: we do not support HiDPI mode form 2x 4K screens on ultrawide mode, case closed. This is why I'm trying to understand why in "zoom mode" it's working great, and without zoom no, and if there is possibility to switch normal display mode to "zoom mode" without zooming screen in, or seeting zoom to 1.000001 level :-)

[waydabber]

But Apple's 8K ultrawide should already be HiDPI so the width should be 16K. Or I might have the wrong idea? I remember seeing 8K+ resolutions in the mode list for the AVP + Apple specifically fixed the Catalyst bugs now to support 8K+ desktops with the AVP.

[dmkpoznan]

It's not. They advertised it as 2x4K, but in fact it's 5120 HiDPI or 10240. You can set up 2x4K as resolution, but it's not HiDPI.

[waydabber]

Oh ok - I saw the 5120 HiDPI variant and assumed 8K works the same. Still, 5120 HiDPI is still beyond the earlier 4K HiDPI limit (above which some Catalyst apps started to crash).