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No more blurry texts on Win10 with high resolution screens!

Posted: Sat May 16, 2020 2:54 pm
by remcos
Hi,

I started using Playground sessions a few months ago and I am quite happy with it, although we can all agree that the software seems to be pretty much abandoned from a technical point of view. I tried the iPad app but it is just too buggy and has some annoying quirks like jumping back to the rookie tour top of the list that could litterally be solved by a developer in just a few hours! And I am a developer myself with 25 years of experience on a wide range of platforms including windows, mobile and web, so I know what I am talking about.

Anyway, I also had this annoying problem that on my Surface Pro the Windows version would just not look very crisp. All fonts got a bit blurry. You could decide to disable the autoscaling but that will result in very small buttons for me. And if I change the zoom factor this will affect my whole windows environment</t>

So, I did some experimenting and I found out that Playground Sessions is using Adobe AIR and a pretty old version of it! If you are up for it, try the following: Download the latest version of the Adobe AIR runtime. Copy the Adobe AIR runtime files from C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files on top of the version that is part of the installed Playground Sessions (C:\Program Files (x86)\Playground). Make sure you have adminstrator rights.

If you restart Playground Sessions, voila! Things will look better than ever before! The window dimensions might be a bit odd though. You can fix this by editing the application.xml file in C:\Program Files (x86)\Playground\META-INF\AIR and add the line <maxSize>1368 912</max> (or any other dimensions that are reasonable for your setup) inside the <application> tag. Make sure to make a backup of this file first!

Just a quick hack that works great for me on my Surface Pro. It greatly improved my experience. Hope it works for you too! For me this is another example that just one day of serious development effort to bring things up to date could already improve a lot! Such a shame that this does not seem to be happening...

Good luck!

Remco

Re: No more blurry texts on Win10 with high resolution screens!

Posted: Tue Sep 01, 2020 3:33 am
by St8kout
Yeah, the ipad Pro is really not ideal for Playground unless you have excellent eyesight. Never had a connection problem though.

I use my Dell Alienware 34" ultrawide gaming monitor to practice and don't have any problems with blurry notes or texts. It's on a mobile stand that I simply roll up to my keyboard stand to practice. A cheapo wireless trackball mouse lets me control the screen.

Update:
I solved the problem of using my ipad pro, by buying an ipad tripod mount, and using just two legs of my tripod I let it lean towards me so the ipad is much closer to my face. (I pulled my piano about a foot away from the wall so the tripod leans up against the back of my piano, and the two tripod legs prevent side to side movement. The bottom of the two tripod legs is up against the wall.

I should mention that I have two piano keyboards, so my 2nd one is set up with the ipad in my bedroom. I use it get a few short practice sessions in. My main keyboard using my computer monitor is for longer practice sessions, and I have to change some cables around for that.

As for connection issues, I found that I have to first turn off the ipad, connect the ipad cable to the piano, turn on the piano, THEN lastly turn on the ipad. Otherwise it messes up the sound to where it sounds like two pianos playing out of tune from each other, (I imagine it's because they are not synced).

Re: No more blurry texts on Win10 with high resolution screens!

Posted: Tue Sep 01, 2020 10:02 pm
by sw1tch73ch
I'm using a Microsoft Surface Pro. I haven't had trouble with Blurriness. Unless I forget my glasses ;-)

There might be a Windows setting your need to use for making the text clear.

Re: No more blurry texts on Win10 with high resolution screens!

Posted: Wed Dec 23, 2020 11:45 pm
by chrismunar
This is exactly what I was looking for! Thanks so much. How did you figure out that level of detail to resolve it? Was that you troubleshooting based on your developer skills? Also, is that Adobe Air software free? I'll try all of that now and let you know how it goes. Thank you again.

Re: No more blurry texts on Win10 with high resolution screens!

Posted: Thu Dec 24, 2020 12:57 am
by chrismunar
Remco, I opened the application.xml file using notepad, but I don't know exactly where to add the line <maxSize>1368 912</max> inside the <application> tag. If using notepad, what should I do? Thank you.

Re: No more blurry texts on Win10 with high resolution screens!

Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2020 12:14 am
by sw1tch73ch
On Windows, the way to get clear text is to search in the settings for Cleartype - run the tool search reveals and follow the prompts

Re: No more blurry texts on Win10 with high resolution screens!

Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2020 11:20 am
by Galm
Great! I've been using PG on my Windows 10-running computer and just dealt with the blurriness, but if there's a way to fix it, then it's great.

Re: No more blurry texts on Win10 with high resolution screens!

Posted: Sat Jan 16, 2021 7:54 am
by smorgan
Excellent tip, thank you!

For anyone trying this now, it appears Adobe has stopped supporting Air and handed it over to Harman (part of Samsung), so you now have to go to https://airsdk.harman.com/download to get it. From there, I downloaded the Full Air SDK for Windows. Open the zip and copy the contents of runtimes\air-captive\win\Adobe AIR over C:\Program Files (x86)\Playground\Adobe AIR. Then edit the application.xml as described in the original post (although there is a typo - it should be <maxSize>1368 912</maxSize>.

And obviously, make a backup of the Playground folder before you start fiddling with it.

Thanks again remcos!

Re: No more blurry texts on Win10 with high resolution screens!

Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2022 11:10 am
by chrismunar
Where do you put the line - <maxSize>1368 912</maxSize>?

Will the Beta version fix this? Can someone verify that the Beta version addressed/solved it? I'm still pending access to the FB PGS Group for Beta Testers.

Re: No more blurry texts on Win10 with high resolution screens!

Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2022 8:41 pm
by chrismunar
when I try to save the changes to the application, I get the following error: (see attachment)