Secondary Monitor scaling

[surfdock]

For me, making sure that the external monitor was set as the primary resulted in more consistency with the fuzzy text/fuzzy window problem. Basically, the external monitor always looks great with the settings I chose and sometimes the Surface screen doesn't look quite as good as it should when docked, but still looks decent.

Because of the reasons mentioned in my blog post, there is no way to completely avoid the scaling issues no matter what settings you choose. Some users are clearly more sensitive to this than others. One thing to keep in mind is that it is really difficult to have a one-size-fits-all solution. Someone using Photoshop on a 32" 4K monitor with the surface screen off to the side may want to have different settings than someone using a the same monitor for Visual Studio with the Surface screen right next to it. My post and the comments below the post cover this pretty comprehensively. If there is a scenario that you can't get working, take some photos or something and I'll try to reproduce it here and add to the blog post with a solution.

 

[zhenya]

In my experience I have not found much difference to which monitor I set as primary but I very well could have missed this as a contributing factor. I have one of my desktop monitors set as primary when docked, but I still get the situation as above which seems to be triggered by which screen is primary when you first log in to the device.

Had they chose a resolution that could be equally divided to something that was appropriately sized for the screen, you could have two options for a very sharp screen - either very small or somewhat normally sized, and anyone who wanted to use scaling to hit some size in between could do so just as they are today. The choice of resolution on this device seems somewhat arbitrary to me.

 

[ynohtna]

I was just trying to understand what display scaling issue means to people. Some programs are not coded properly for scaling I guess? it's funny I find IE11 doesn't quite do it as nicely as say Firefox.

hyper-v I rarely use the VM console and RDP to the machine instead cause I can specify the desired size much better like that (I like 1280x1024 for my RDPs)

I have recommended settings on for 2x Dell U2413's (1920x1200) daisy chained on mdp and fine with the result.

 

[dstrauss]

Guess I'm just a simpleton then. With all the latest updates, I set the slider one notch above dead center, and text is crisp, readable, and icons/screen elements are good across the SPro3 and two display port 27" WQHD monitors (daisychain). Guess it helps to have old eyes that are not sensitive to the screen elements...

PS - I keep the SPro 3 as "Primary" in all my setups...

 

[agt499]

Yep, the setting of the SP3 to a non-native resolution is the best of a bad bunch of solutions in my experience.
To me the holy grail is very simple: let me independently set the scaling level per display: If I find the SP3 screen suits me best at 'Larger' or 150% or whatever, just freaking keep that display that way, regardless of whether there is a 4k display or an old VGA monitor somewhere else.
Just let me set each monitor, and don't mess with them when I attach or detach anything else.
Is W10 moving to independent setting? Anything else is lipstick on a pig.

Edit: for ynohtna, 'what display scaling issue means to people' is that I just want to be able to set the SP3 screen scaling, and have icons and text stay the same size on it when I dock. It just won't do this, as the scaling slider works across some weird aggregated DPI calculaiton once you plug something else in.

 

[zhenya]

That's ultimately what I want as well, but I suspect it's more complex than that as if you set monitors to different scaling levels, it has to dynamically re-scale on the fly as it does now if you use the automatic settings. Doing this means you will still have some of the fuzziness inherent in this rescaling.

I think the only way around this is to do what Apple does and upscale to some absurdly large resolution in the display buffer and from that create the resolution needed for the monitor. This takes some extra graphics power, but my impression is it gives better results.

 

[ynohtna]

Edit: for ynohtna, 'what display scaling issue means to people' is that I just want to be able to set the SP3 screen scaling, and have icons and text stay the same size on it when I dock. It just won't do this, as the scaling slider works across some weird aggregated DPI calculaiton once you plug something else in.

Thanks, so when you say "same size on it" you mean the SP3? Cause I undock, goto the office, then back home and the SP3 is always the same setting I had before on it.

It even remembers all the different monitors I plugged in and the orientation I prefer them in. Ie: some desks have external monitor on left, some on right. At home, I have it oriented so the 2x 24" are side by side and the SP3 below in the middle.

I don't have the icons/text on the SP3 changing as I plug into different monitors.

 

[agt499]

Thanks, so when you say "same size on it" you mean the SP3? Cause I undock, goto the office, then back home and the SP3 is always the same setting I had before on it.

It even remembers all the different monitors I plugged in and the orientation I prefer them in. Ie: some desks have external monitor on left, some on right. At home, I have it oriented so the 2x 24" are side by side and the SP3 below in the middle.

I don't have the icons/text on the SP3 changing as I plug into different monitors.

Hey there ynohtna.
Yes, I do mean on the SP3 internal display. Like you, it does remember for me the monitors and resolutions when I re-dock (for me presently this mean the layout with 2x24 inch, and the SP3 in the middle below them) -that much is quite good!
But what I found, which may be to do with how windows magically detects the display density, is that once docked, the 'Change the Size of all items' slider goes from having 4 settings (corresponding to 100/125/150/200%) , to having about six or seven.
I think it does also remember separately the position of this slider docked and undocked.

My problem is that if I set the slider to one of the larger settings to keep the SP3 at the 150% size, everything on my external monitors is HUGE.
If I select to get the external monitors how I like (native 100% @ 1920x1080), the SP3 is tiny.
If I leave the slider at the larger end the SP3 icons/text do stay the same as when undocked, but the external monitors display equivalent to 1280x720.

Note that I'm referring to the percentage because they're easier to describe than the slider slots - I don't use the 'let me choose one scaling level for all' option.

I think that the I7 with Iris graphics behaves differently to my I5, as I quickly tested a colleague's with different results,
This could be why your experience is different, plus I suspect that different monitors report their DPI differently to Windows.

...Which is why I'd like a size slider for each monitor, just like we can select resolution and orientation for each.

 

[SteveMac]

"Which is why I'd like a size slider for each monitor, just like we can select resolution and orientation for each."

Yep that is exactly what we all want, sadly not present in Windows 8, Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 (as of build 10.0.9962).

For me, only a few apps actually highlight this issue, oddly the main two are Microsoft apps.
Skype, blury on my SP3, however if I disable High DPI it's too small to read comfortably (modern Skype just isn't quite right)
Internet Explorer, is fine on my Surface Pro 3, however when I move it or open on external 1920x1080 monitor the screen elements are just massive

I hope that Microsoft are planning to resolve this type of issue, as non technical folks won't understand and will complain as we all move to high DPI futures.

 

[jnjroach]

"Which is why I'd like a size slider for each monitor, just like we can select resolution and orientation for each."

Yep that is exactly what we all want, sadly not present in Windows 8, Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 (as of build 10.0.9962).

For me, only a few apps actually highlight this issue, oddly the main two are Microsoft apps.
Skype, blury on my SP3, however if I disable High DPI it's too small to read comfortably (modern Skype just isn't quite right)
Internet Explorer, is fine on my Surface Pro 3, however when I move it or open on external 1920x1080 monitor the screen elements are just massive

I hope that Microsoft are planning to resolve this type of issue, as non technical folks won't understand and will complain as we all move to high DPI futures.

It is in Build 9926 but not in the Win32 Display Control Panel but in the WinRT Display Control Panel:

 

[agt499]

It is in Build 9926 but not in the Win32 Display Control Panel but in the WinRT Display Control Panel:
View attachment 5388
View attachment 5389

Wow, just wow.
On one hand, it seemed obvious to a lot of us posting here. On the other hand, I had wholly expected us to still be hitting this thread in 2025. I'm quietly stoked.

Slightly unrelated: I've got the preview in a VM on my linux box as I'm too chicken to put it on the SP3 yet. With everything going into the WinRT setting App, is there any way to pin or shortcut specific items? Having a single control panel is awesome, but losing the jump lists seems like a regression.

 

[ynohtna]

Ok thanks for explaining... I've using the recommended setting with no issue. I'll watch for the huge text issue when I go back to the office one day