15104 still completely fails to support retina display

R

ReubenR

Bit poster
I excitedly installed the update that was pitched as giving access to every single pixel of the retina display only to find that this is patently false.

It's still scaled and completely useless.

I was patiently waiting for an update that supports retina and completely understand that it was a huge undertaking with zero notice for the Parellels team, but lying about it kind of diminishes the good will.
 
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It does sound like a false marketing statement. What do they mean by retina support? Does it mean parallels UI supports retina or hosted VM can take advantage of retina? To me it's former. Windows 7 still runs with double pixels. I am unable to change display resolution or adjust DPI to make it look better. It is sad to see IT company running by marketing team. They can bull inexperienced users but people who actually use the software will quickly figure out they'd been BS'd by such statements. This marketing strategy is much closely aligned to a used car dealership and has no place in IT in my opinion.
 
Sadly, Sergey, you are 100% right. I mean from a technical point of view Parallels have done nothing wrong. None of us would imagine that it is a trivial matter to fully support Apple's new display, but it's misrepresenting the feature to makes sales that disrespects customers both old and new.
 
Screenshots

For those of you who are wondering of how bad the scaling still looks, I have posted screenshots of windows set to 2880x1800 with different mac resolutions.

It's scaled down and scaled up again. Super ugly!

Parallels, inc.: Instead of deceiving marketing statements, here is what we really need:

1. Not touch the mac resolution setting and keep it at Best for Retina display

2. Have Windows (and hopefully other OSes too) map their pixels to a 2880x1800 buffer and NOT to a Mac resolution buffer! If Safari can do it when rendering web pages, why cant you do it when rendering an OS screen? (Yes I know it may not be that easy, but you get the idea)

3. Optionally: have your Windows tools automatically increase the dpi setting of Windows so the menus and text dont look so small
 
It's worth noting that Windows 7 does not have a HiDPI mode like OSX Lion, Windows 8 will have a HiDPI mode.
So for Windows 7 and below it really has to be scaled.
 
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HiDPI

It's nice to know that Windows 8 will have a HiDPI mode and maybe is designed to support Hi DPI displays like the Retina is a very optimized fashion.

That doesn't change the fact that right now, we have a screen which has 2880 x 1800 physical pixels and that Windows 7 can handle a resolution of 2880 x 1800 without problems (except for the fact that the text looks small by default).

Given that, why does there have to be downscaling and upscaling involved ?

When Adobe says they are making Photoshop Retina display compatible, they mean that a 2880 x 1800 pixels photo will be displayed with a 1:1 pixel mapping with NO downscaling + upscaling involved ... And NO need to change the Mac setting from "Best for Retina display".

So when Parallels say they let us "take full advantage of the retina display" we expect the same thing: A 2880 x 1800 Windows desktop should be displayed without any scaling involved.

HiDPI mode is just icing on the cake to adjust the size of the UI elements.
 
Specimen, that's not actually true ("So for Windows 7 ... it really has to be scaled".) You can see this by using FreeRez or a similar hack to set the mac resolution to pure 2800x1800 and run Windows 7 fullscreen at the same resolution. Turn up the DPI scaling (175% works great for me) and you have a 100% usable system, except if you switch back to OS X.

I completely understand that there are technical limitations. No one expects the devs to magic out a version overnight, but when the marketing ramps up telling existing and potential customers that Parallels 100% supports the retina display in Windows guest OS it is going to annoy people. Trying to blow a smokescreen of jargon about how it is not possible isn't helping either, especially when you can easily demonstrate the opposite.

Congrats to the devs for getting "nearly there" with the retina support. It's a shame that your marketing department are misrepresenting your hard work and antagonizing your customers.
 
Ideally, I just want Parallels to not scale the guest OS at all. I used the hack to make OS X native 2880x1800 (making it too small to be useful), and then set Windows 7's DPI scaling to 150%, and it's "there" and works as I would hope. That's what I really want... for Parallels to not do any scaling to the guest OS.
 
It would be nice if someone could acknowledge that Parallels is aware of the issue. If this is how Parallels intends to "support" the retina display, at least have the curtesy to tell us so. I would hate for a fix to appear after I've made the switch to another solution.

Should we stick with Parallels? I don't mind waiting, but that becomes futile if there is no acknowledged issue.
 
Guys, can anyone of you kindly send a Problem report from Help menu --> Report a problem.
Please post the report ID here afterwards.
 
I've been through a support call with it. The engineer I spoke to confirmed that the current version does not support retina display without the rez hack. It's a known issue and is being worked on.

The engineers at Parallels are great - awesome product and they're working hard to make it better.

The marketing department that openly lie about the product just to trap a few more customers into a purchase are really letting down the operation.
 
VMs cannot utilise Retina Display

As said before, ONLY the UI has retina support. The VM's are still stuck with the Macs Upscaled resolution so all VMs are running at 1:4 VM:Retina Pixel mapping, instead of 1:1.

This is not Full Retina Support, but more like Partial Retina Support.

Even the Parallels website isn't Retina ready! Just look at the Parallels logo
 
Parallels could be excused for not supporting Retina mode. Availability for the Retina hardware has been non existent for developers prior to the release to consumers. Parallels are in good company with ISVs such as Adobe also lacking retina support.

The difference between Parallels and Adobe is that Adobe acknowledges that it lacks Retina support. Parallels, having the same pixel doubling as Adobe, has broadcasted news about full retina support through their press release channels and the story has been picked up by the unsuspecting media.

That is outrageous and inexcusable and is simply false marketing.
 
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Parallels is an impressive piece of technology and is a very advanced product that deserves our love, but their marketing and community policies does not match up with the engineering effort. The state of how they run their business brings my rating down from fantastic to annoying. I'd be happy to pay three times the price of Parallels Desktop if buyers were treated with due openness and respect. Even if this is a peer-to-peer forum, the involvement from Parallels is well below par.
 
Does anybody actually even NEED it?
You Apple fanboys just hear "Retina" and get drooling...
Who the hell needs retina resolution in a VM that probably runs Windows? Well I don't...

The marketing of full retina support is wrong, no discussion about that. But come on this is not the end of the world...
 
I personally would like the desktop space, so would prefer the Windows to run at full native mode, and then I can make it readable by putting up the font DPI to 150%.

I can achieve that using SetResX, to put the Mac OS in to native mode, however, this means every time I switch Mac OS, everything is too small there. So its either:

Clear Mac OS Desktop, poor quality Windows Desktop (scaled down/up)
Huge Mac OS Desktop thats not usable, great Windows Desktop with Fonts scaled up
 
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