Scale UI, why is this still a issue?

Rectro33

Hi

I have The Komplete Ultimate 14 package, I cant use most of them due to scale of the UI. Trying to use the RC24 reverb today, cant use it because its the size of a postage stamp?

For such a high end and very expensive plugin set I would have thought instead of making another release v15 that if anything would have got fixed its this. Im now using other plugins when I have access to all these cool sounds and effects. Why on earth hasnt this been fixed yet? As you can see in the screen shot below, Arturia plugins are what NI should be.

Vocalpoint

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/37733/scale-ui-why-is-this-still-a-issue

It is only an issue you choose to not use the system required 1920x1080 resolution.

Anything beyond this will not display correctly - regardless of what display you have.

And the RC24 is a Softube product - you might consider asking them why they (correctly) adhere to the worldwide HD resolution standard.

VP

PK The DJ

You must have some pretty large postage stamps in your part of the world then!

I've just sized your image up to fit my screen, and the RC24 is a lot bigger than a stamp.

For that to be the size of a stamp, you must be running Studio One on a 7" screen. 😁

In Maschine here it looks like this:

Rectro33

In my case Im using a 4k monitor, 1080p for modern day plugins is not on par in what I would expect. Look at Arturia plugins, they work a charm as they take full advantage of VST 3 and are fine on a 4k screen. It dont help that my screen is a 15", yes its a rather extreme combination but thats what a modern day content creation laptop has.

Rectro33

I have shown a softube product created for Native Instruments in this case, however this spans across all Native Instruments products such as Battery. It seems they are not updating their older plugins to keep up with todays needs for higher resolution screens. I like what they did with Kontact 8, cudos to them on that one.

Vocalpoint

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/189804#Comment_189804

99.9% of all software out there is still designed to run (and display) correctly in Standard HD (1920x1080)

Trying to use specific older plugins in a resolution they were never designed for (regardless of what some other guys plugins look like - like Arturia) - is going to be disappointing.

Until the entire plugin world rewrites every plugin UI to conform specifically to 4K - best practice is to always find the oldest plugin you use and set your laptop to the resolution that makes it display correctly.

Which I will bet will always be 1920 x 1080.

That is your baseline and everything else will fall in line.

VP

iNate

Bitmap assets don't scale. They just become blurry when you scale them up. A lot of old software uses bitmap assets. Until they add higher resolution bitmap assets to allow choosing a larger UI size or switch to vector assets, scaling will be an issue.

Some older application frameworks used to build older software are also not HiDPI-aware, which creates a more fundamental issue (but can be worked around with bigger bitmap assetes and different UI size presets).

Gus84HFR

Vocalpoint, I can't read any more of your 1920x1080 ******.

We are in 2024, and we are talking about a 1799$ software, this is not a DOS program. And yes, this is a shame for such a big company.

At the very least, they could make an upgrade to double the pixels.
I'm not asking for an HD interface, just the possibility of doubling the size of the window, even if it means it's a bit blurry.

And they are asking me 499$ to go from ultimate 14 to ultimate 15? Ok, lol, without me guys.

Vocalpoint

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/192350#Comment_192350

Comment noted. And understood.

Look I get it. Cool display. In a perfect world every app you buy would scale beautifully. But the software world (at large) does not care.

There is zero appetite for almost any vendor to waste any time, talent or resource by having to rewrite ALL their existing software UIs just to appease the 5-10% of users who own a fancy display.

There is no money to be made from this and no sizzle to be sold.

The unfortunate reality is that if it works in 1920x1080 - it’s good enough. Especially if it is older than say the last 2 years. Those apps will never be updated.

Could be years for everyone to get onboard. Or maybe not at all.

VP

BIF

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/192350#Comment_192350

I get you too. I've been on NI's case since about 2004, complaining about the tiny UI fonts on my 10" laptop monitor of the time. So welcome to my world. Glad to have others helping me give hell to vendors for making invisible UIs!

But VP was just telling how it is. He was not excusing NI or any other vendor. It's not ****** to speak the truth, and we probably shouldn't be fighting about this.

Welcome to the movement.

iNate

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/192350#Comment_192350

Komplete is a $1,799 bundle, not a $1,799 software application.

There is a big difference between the the two.

The "this software is so expensive" argument is a lot weaker when the price is the result of massive bundling of hundreds of discrete products - rather than the MSRP of a single product (e.g. Pro Tools Flex, Sequoia Pro, Pyramix Pro+, etc.).

RC24 is a $50 plug-in for anyone too impatient to wait for a sale, and there are better versions of that reverb available for as cheap or cheaper on the open market (with a scalable UI).

1. I do think the lack of scaling is problematic for these plug-ins (and other NI Software).
2. People are incredibly biased to what they have invested in. Telling them to use FHD displays or run at FHD resolution is just going to trigger them.
   1. I still think 2x FHD displays is superior to 1x UHD display for music production, personally ;-)
3. Some DAWs do allow you to force scale plug-in UIs. Logic Pro, for example, can do this.
4. If you have Arturia FX Collection (or T-RackS 5/6MAX), then complaining about some Softube Plug-ins from Komplete that you really have very little reason to care about seems like you're searching for something to be outraged about.

iNate

In 2004 my Sony Vaio notebook had a 14" 1400x900 display (higher than the 768p displays that dominated the entire 2010s) and wouldn't have had any issues with these plug-ins. It would be as usable as my 14" MacBook Pro, which Apple doesn't allow you to scale larger than the equivalent of 1080p on that display size. I also have a G14 with a 1080p display.

Display size juxtaposed against screen resolution has a huge impact on how these things turn out.

I am struggling to think of a 10" Laptop that was being used for high performance work back in 2004. Lol. Maybe my Compaq laptop from 2001 had a screen that size… maybe.

PK The DJ

Yes we're in 2024 - and in 2024, the standard resolution for a computer screen is 1920x1080.

Higher resolution screens exist - but they're not standard. Apple and their "Retina" screens occupy less than 15% of the computer OS market share.

You've also got to bear in mind that cramming a huge amount of pixels onto a small screen is not going to end well. The only way you'll be able to read anything is to scale the GUI up with your OS.

IMO it makes far more sense to use a resolution that's suited to your screen size (or vice versa) so there's no need to scale.