3D views blurry on Retina/HiDPI screens?

ragulka · April 4, 2018

Hi there, I upgraded to Home Designer Pro 2018 and installed it on my Macbook Pro 2017 with Retina display. I opened up a plan that I had been working on in Home Designer Suite 2017 previously and wanted to check out the 3D views. When I clicked on the Perspective Doll House view, I immediately noticed that the 3D view is very blurry and not at all sharp. This is different from Home Designer Suite, where the image is sharp.

Here's a quick video demonstrating the difference: http://cloud.skyver.ge/1s1U330h1b1O - note that I switch between the two programs in the video.

I ran a quick test by switching my monitor from HiDPI to 4K (I am using an external 4K display), and the 3D view was sharp as expected. This seems to confirm there is an issue with how Home Designer handles HiDPI modes.

It seems that instead of rendering the 3D view at 4K resolution, it is rendered at HD resolution and the scaled 2X, making the image blurry. Here's an article that describes the same issue, but from a web page image perspective: http://amyandjordanblog.com/2015/education/blurry-apple-retina-display-images/

FWIW, I also noticed that while most of the UI elements seem to be scaled for HiDPI screens, some of them are not - notably the Close buttons (black round circle with X in it). Attached is a screenshot. To be fair, this also appears to be the case for Home Designer Suite 2017, not just Pro 2018.

I have contacted support 3 months ago, but they claim that nobody else has reported a similar issue and even after I submitted thorough comparisons, system status reports, videos, etc, the development team has not made any progress on this during these 3 months. Their latest suggestion was to try with HD Pro 2019 Trial, but the issue persists

Is anybody else experiencing a similar issue? I wonder if HD Pro on Windows HiDPI is acting any different?

Screenshots below - not that they're all taken on the same screen on the same Mac!

1. HD Suite 2017 on Retina (sharp image)