Display Devices

Desktop Resolution  |  Integrated Graphics Devices  |  High-DPI/Retina Displays  

Desktop resolution

If your monitor supports a resolution of at least 1920x1080 but your desktop scaling factor is set to provide an actual resolution less than this, you may need to change your desktop scaling to provide at least 1920x1080 effective resolution.

Changing desktop resolution on macOS

On macOS, the desktop resolution can be set as follows:

1. Open System Settings and then Displays
2. Ctrl + mouse click on the More Space option and choose Show List from the popup menu.
3. Enable the Show all resolutions option
4. Click on a resolution that is at least 1920x1080

Changing desktop resolution on Windows

On Windows, the desktop resolution can be set as follows:

1. Right-click on your desktop and choose Display settings from the popup menu
2. Scroll down to Scale and layout
3. In the Display resolution menu, pick a resolution at least 1920x1080

Integrated Graphics Devices

If you are running PFTrack on a laptop or computer with both integrated graphics and a discrete graphics card (for example, an NVIDIA or AMD card), ensure you are using the discrete GPU to get the best performance.

On Windows, you may need to associate the PFTrack executable with your discrete GPU to ensure it is always used in preference to the integrated graphics. You can do this from Window's Graphics Setting panel by changing the setting from "Let Windows Decide" to your discrete GPU card.

High-DPI/Retina Displays

PFTrack supports High-DPI/Retina displays to provide high resolution media without compromising on the readability of UI elements.

MacOS and Windows

High-DPI display support on macOS and Windows is enabled by default. If you wish to disable this feature, the following environment variables can be used:

- PIXELFARM_DISABLE_HIGHDPI_SCALING: setting this environment variable to any value before launching PFTrack will disable High-DPI/Retina support.

- PIXELFARM_FORCE_DEVICE_PIXEL_RATIO: setting this environment variable to a floating-point number will override the device pixel ratio for your display.

Linux

High-DPI display support on Linux is disabled by default. If you wish to enable this feature, the following environment variables can be used:

- PIXELFARM_ENABLE_HIGHDPI_SCALING: setting this environment variable to any value before launching PFTrack will enable High-DPI/Retina support.

- PIXELFARM_FORCE_DEVICE_PIXEL_RATIO: setting this environment variable to a floating-point number will override the device pixel ratio for your display.

Font scaling

If High-DPI support is disabled, the font that PFTrack uses can be changed if required to improve readability. To do this, use the environmnet variable:

- PIXELFARM_FONT_SIZE: setting this environment variable to a value such as 12px will set the font size used in the application.

Environment variables

To set environment variables using your operating system tools, please consult your system administrator.

Environment variables can be difficult to set on some systems, so to help with this PFTrack will also read from a file called environment.txt located either in the directory where the application is installed (so that it applies to all users) or in a user's Documents directory:

environment.txt

For example the contents of this file could be set as follows to disable High-DPI scaling and set a 10 pixel font:

PIXELFARM_DISABLE_HIGHDPI_SCALING=1
PIXELFARM_FONT_SIZE=10px

After setting environment variables, you can check to see if High-DPI scaling is correctly enabled or disabled, the PFTrack log file can be examined for the following entries:

High-DPI scaling: [Y]
Device pixel ratio: 2