Resolution Hell - Rant

jjames

So I'm looking at the resolutions of the new & existing panels, and here's what we have:

MXx-2000XL: 1920x800
MXx-1900L: 1920x530
MXT-1000: 1280x800
MXT-700: 1024x600
MXD-430: Unknown (Cannot find on website)

NXT-CA7 / MVP-9000i / MVP-5200 / MVP-51x0 / NXD-500i / NXV-300: 800 x 480
MVP-8400i / NXx-1200: 800x600
NXx-1500: 1024 x 768
NXD-430: 480 x 272

AMX has done a great job over the years with keeping the resolutions pretty much the same, but what bothers me is look at the top five new panels. Four out of the five (only because we don't know what the MXD-430's resolution is) new panels' resolution are different. Seriously?

Auser

Anybody noticed this?



Hmm, no 430 - but there is a 500? (The link's broken though...)

jjames

Left hand, meet right hand.

Right hand, meet left hand.

(I'm not saying, I'm just sayin')

the8thst

jjames wrote: »

So I'm looking at the resolutions of the new & existing panels, and here's what we have:

MXx-2000XL: 1920x800
MXx-1900L: 1920x530
MXT-1000: 1280x800
MXT-700: 1024x600
MXD-430: Unknown (Cannot find on website)

NXT-CA7 / MVP-9000i / MVP-5200 / MVP-51x0 / NXD-500i / NXV-300: 800 x 480
MVP-8400i / NXx-1200: 800x600
NXx-1500: 1024 x 768
NXD-430: 480 x 272

AMX has done a great job over the years with keeping the resolutions pretty much the same, but what bothers me is look at the top five new panels. Four out of the five (only because we don't know what the MXD-430's resolution is) new panels' resolution are different. Seriously?

AMX just wanted to give you a little taste of what the C world has to offer you.

a_riot42

the8thst wrote: »

AMX just wanted to give you a little taste of what the C world has to offer you.

With panels this size, its not as critical as it once was. Going from 800x600 to 800x480 was a bigger deal due to the loss of real estate and the need to keep button sizes at a minimum size. Once panels get larger, minimum button size isn't an issue and so there is usually more than enough real estate. I'm guessing the panels will look better so that may be worth it.
Paul

vining

Keep in mind with that the panaramic panels are intended to display 2 to 3 pages side by side and the extra height would allow for your existing 600 or 480 height pages to fit the 800 or 530 height of the panaramic panels with room for fixed or changeable border buttons.

jjames

I guess I'm just used to being able to use one file and send it to multiple device types without any editing. Not being able to do that is aggravating to me.

vining

Agreed and what kind of code re-writing will it take to make full use of the panoramic displays? They're cool but I don't know if I'd want to go through that kind of aggravation and being strcitly resi I don't know that it's worth it. I could see the war room, board room or lecture hall but not so much the kitchen or bedroom. I think I'd actually be afraid to show a customer a picture of it for the fear they might want one and then I'd have to deal with programming it. Of course they way customers have been lately I should be so lucky.

a_riot42

vining wrote: »

Agreed and what kind of code re-writing will it take to make full use of the panoramic displays? They're cool but I don't know if I'd want to go through that kind of aggravation and being strcitly resi I don't know that it's worth it. I could see the war room, board room or lecture hall but not so much the kitchen or bedroom. I think I'd actually be afraid to show a customer a picture of it for the fear they might want one and then I'd have to deal with programming it. Of course they way customers have been lately I should be so lucky.

I don't see how a bigger tool set can be a bad thing. You don't need to use every tool in the box just to use it, only when needed. You may find that some clever programming with these panels solves some long term issues regarding page flips and real estate. We shall see...
Paul

John Nagy

Seems sometimes that folks complain about how things are, until they get a chance to complain that they changed.

vining

a_riot42 wrote: »

I don't see how a bigger tool set can be a bad thing. You don't need to use every tool in the box just to use it, only when needed. You may find that some clever programming with these panels solves some long term issues regarding page flips and real estate. We shall see...
Paul

I think having the real estate would be great but in a job with mostly standard screens with the code already written to handlle the majority of flips in the code, then including one of these to the mix and then trying to display multiple pop ups/pages at once could be a pain. Also could you display multiple pages or do they need to get converted to pop ups?

I would definitely be into the other x series panels but the panoramic seem like alot of extra work for a resi installaion.

ericmedley

What would really be a nice feature would be multiple resolution options on each panel that is derived from the TP file. That way they could have some kind of consistent aspect ratio when going from one panel or not. That way you could easily design a "1 file" TP file plan for multiple panels. Some panels already allow this. I'm not sure why they cannot make this more of an universal feature.

John Nagy

ericmedley wrote: »

What would really be a nice feature would be multiple resolution options on each panel that is derived from the TP file.

How is this significantly different in end result than TPD4's ability to scale, stretch, or copy panel projects to other resolutions with independent control of font, bitmap, pages, and aspect?

Doing it in the authoring tool gives you the opportunity to tweak or replace parts that you would NOT have if the panel did it.

TPControl very nicely stretches or scales any project to fit any screen, yet there are often advantages to making a native project for some resolutions.

I do have to say that TPD4 does not do ideal bitmap resizing. The results are blockier and much higher file size than they need to be. When it's bad enough to do something about, I fix this by exporting them before resizing the panel, batch resizing the images in photoshop or similar, and importing to the new sized panel to replace the ones that TPD4 did. Only takes a few minutes if you know how to batch.

ericmedley

John Nagy wrote: »

I do have to say that TPD4 does not do ideal bitmap resizing. The results are blockier and much higher file size than they need to be. When it's bad enough to do something about, I fix this by exporting them before resizing the panel, batch resizing the images in photoshop or similar, and importing to the new sized panel to replace the ones that TPD4 did. Only takes a few minutes if you know how to batch.

I love it when the poster answer their own questions...

John Nagy

My point was and is that what you ask can be accomplished without in-panel scaling, and that in-panel scaling has it's own downside, as does scaling in the authoring tool. But you are powerless to make any changes or corrections if it happens inside the panel, unlike when you do it in the tool. So which is better? Let me answer that... having both. Which, by the way, you get with TPControl where you can stretch or scale at runtime, albeit with some performance hit.

ericmedley

John Nagy wrote: »

My point was and is that what you ask can be accomplished without in-panel scaling, and that in-panel scaling has it's own downside, as does scaling in the authoring tool. But you are powerless to make any changes or corrections if it happens inside the panel, unlike when you do it in the tool. So which is better? Let me answer that... having both. Which, by the way, you get with TPControl where you can stretch or scale at runtime, albeit with some performance hit.

My point is not for in-panel scaling. It's for more than one resolution. I don't mind making more than one file.

mush

John Nagy wrote: »

Seems sometimes that folks complain about how things are, until they get a chance to complain that they changed.

Tee hee
;-)

DHawthorne

It's not like keeping the resolution the same in various sized panels is the answer either. I'm working on a job right now that has a 9000, a 700, and a bunch of 500's. They are all 800x480, but I can't reasonably expect that buttons that are useable on the 9000 will be useful at all on the 500 (well, not without a magnifying glass and stylus).

Yes, it's a pain, but it's also the nature of the beast. I just need to get the salesmen to realize they can't estimate the job out like it was the same panel all around. It's a lot of work tweaking panels to be "just right" in various sizes.

a_riot42

DHawthorne wrote: »

It's not like keeping the resolution the same in various sized panels is the answer either. I'm working on a job right now that has a 9000, a 700, and a bunch of 500's. They are all 800x480, but I can't reasonably expect that buttons that are useable on the 9000 will be useful at all on the 500 (well, not without a magnifying glass and stylus).

Yes, it's a pain, but it's also the nature of the beast. I just need to get the salesmen to realize they can't estimate the job out like it was the same panel all around. It's a lot of work tweaking panels to be "just right" in various sizes.

I agree its a lot of work for the different resolutions and sizes. Both make a difference to the usability. You need a minimum button size before it gets annoying, but on large panels, large buttons start to look Fisher Price like. If we didn't have to use these damn eyes and fingers to control things, it would be a lot easier.
Paul