VMware Horizon View client and high DPI screens

[diode]

Hello,

I am wondering if anyone has a solution to getting the View client to play nice with high DPI screens, such as those with 3200x1800 screen resolution, or Apple's 2880x1800 screen resolution on the Macbook Retina 15". The View client doesn't seem to scale properly, and the only fix seems to be changing the desktop screen resolution and then logging into view. I don't think this is a very graceful fix, and my user's aren't too happy about it either.

Thanks,

Ryan

[blabarbera]

I am also having a problem with this. I am hoping for some feedback or a fix. Something. This is only going to become more prevalent as high-DPI screens become more common.

[masofegr]

We're in the same boat here with an individual using the X1 Carbon Touch. Thus fare we haven't found any elegant solutions.

[Jorgie]

We have seen this problem on multiple machines. The only work around we have is to enable the DPI compatibility setting on the EXE and then lower the local screen resolution.

On our system that use the MS RDP client, we just enable 'Smart Sizing' and it lets you scale the window. Window the View client had that option.

[blabarbera]

I'm not sure I follow what you mean here:

Jorgie wrote:

The only work around we have is to enable the DPI compatibility setting on the EXE and then lower the local screen resolution.

Can you explain in a little more detail?

[Jorgie]

When using the View client to connect to a Windows 7 session from a high-dpi device like a Surface Pro 3, the fonts and icons in the remote session are so tiny that the session is nearly unusable. If you attempt to resize the screen, the View agent just changes the remote sessions resolution to match.

In Microsoft's RPD client if I enable Smart Sizing, (on by default on high-dpi devices) and then resize the screen, it scales everything up. Much more useful on high-dpi screens.

To give you an idea of how bad it, my desktop icons in a Windows 7 session are less than 1/3 of an inch tall, and the font is about 1/10th of an inch.

I attempted to change the font scaling in the VM, but when connected via View, those settings are grayed out.

[Popol31 · Accepted solution]

Hi there

Horizon Client 3.4 has an experimental support for High-DPI. It worked just great for me!

Per KevinK: http://www.kevink.org/?p=195

JP

[Bleeder]

VMware should really add this information to the release notes..  It would have been great to know this when the 3.4 client was released 3 months ago.

[grossag]

I'm the one who implemented this feature and yeah I agree, it's a difficult line.  It's not officially supported so it can't really go in the documentation.  It's an experimental feature that we are hoping to clean up and officially support in the future.  I first put it in the Q1 2015 release (I think it was 3.3?).

[Bleeder]

Well, hmm..  there are certainly several precedents for experimental View features being mentioned in VMware documentation, be it release notes or even a KB article (which get nicely summarized in the VMware KB digest blog).  I still remember experimental offline desktop support from many View releases ago (and it worked great!).  More recently there was experimental USB 2.0 support for devices in USB 3.0 ports and experimental Android runtime support for the Android View client.

[TexRob]

So the problem with this isn't it isn't UI scaling, contrary to what the registry value is named.  I tested it, and while it appears to work, I noticed that the resolution seemed off.  It's just using a lower resolution and then fitting it to the screen.  On a MacBook Pro running Windows 10, View client 3.4, I run at 2880x1800 and UI scalling in Windows 10 at 200%.  When I connect to the View it displays at 1440x900 and is extremely blurry as a result.

Are there plans for true UI scaling in the works at VMware?  I am a bit shocked that you guys tried to push off forced resolution as UI scaling, especially in an incredibly pixel conscience world that we live in these days.  I should note that it works fine in OSX with the current Horizon client.

[larsonm]

A few good notes here at the bottom of this article regarding what additional support Horizon 6.2 will provide:  What’s New in VMware Horizon 6.2–3D Graphics | Sean's IT Blog

[TexRob]

Doesn't really say anything about DPI scaling, and that 4K bit at the end is unclear.

[TonyHuynh201110]

In Horizon 6.2, we support 4k resolution inside the VM.  High DPI scaling is currently not supported with the Horizon Windows client. 

[grossag]

I think we just have different definitions for "DPI scaling".  I think what you are asking for is what I tend to define as "DPI syncing", which is making the remote desktop resolution and DPI settings match those on the client.  We are investigating this but do not have a committed release for the solution.  Currently the approach is making the remote desktop resolution smaller than the client resolution and then scaling the framebuffer up.

This is the same way that the Mac client does it if you select "Scale".  My colleague just confirmed that from a 15" Retina MacBook Pro, the remote desktop resolution is 1440x900.

I definitely agree that this isn't as good as syncing the DPI and setting it to be the full client resolution, but unfortunately this is the only option we offer now.

[Mnemonic]

Does anyone know how this could be done in the Linux Horizon View Client?