Related
Like a lot of people here I had been waiting rather impatiently for the real VGA hack for my Jasjar. Now that it's here and I've been using it for a week or so, I'm definitely beginning to see why MS didn't make this an option from the beginning, and I'm also beginning to wonder how much it's really worth.
Real VGA has two big benefits for me... it allows me to shrink the size of the bars on the top and bottom of the screen so I get more usable screen space, and it allows Pocket IE to run without it's stupid pixel doubling 'feature'... that's a big one for me.
Unfortunately it's got a lot of disadvangages too... it makes the bars on the top and bottom of the screen so small that they're difficult to use normally, and all but impossible to use while driving. Like I said above, making them smaller would be an advantage, but it's simply way too small. A lot of applications don't work well in real VGA mode... including the phone dialer, the calculator and others. The font size can't be changed for a lot of things... the start bar, the caller ID info screen, and others. This makes a lot of the information displayed quite difficult to read... again, especially while in a car.
As I've been thinking about it more and more, I realized that the only thing that I really need is for PocketIE to work without pixel doubling... then I'd be quite happy in non-VGA mode. While I doubt that will ever happen hopefully we'll get some third party browsers that will work nicely in non-VGA mode. Until then I think I'm going to be using non-vga most of the time and I'll just switch to VGA mode when I need to do a lot of browsing.
Anyone have any other thoughts on this?
Brett
I think that makes sense. We need dynamically switching VGA really. For day to day use, the thumb is just too fat for VGA. It's barely ok to use for QVGA driving/walking etc.
But for browsing, VGA is great. But it's too much and too tiring all the time I think.
V
yea...we need a button like the screen rotate button that lets us change the res whenever we want
I think I would also agree. There are only two advantages to using the o2vga fix. 1) The only app that it improves is the browser, But as Brett stated, in the car it is too small. It works well for some sites very well and others it is too small. 2) the best advantage is that after I applied o2vga, ms voice command now shows the contact info when i say show "contact".
I also am beta testing the wm5 thunderhawk browser. It allows 640 x 480 and 800 x 600, and 640 x 320(?). The font that is used in thunderhawk is hard to read and the app is very slow. Due to the slow speed and font, I'm not sure the thunderhawk browser on wm5 universal is worth it. ALL in all, the original IE browser with zoom to small or medium seem to look the best.
Brett: Couldn't agree more. It was great to see what the device can do, and how the screen really is, tiny! But in truth, the eyestrain was no joke, and finger operation became impossible. I did a lot of toggling between the two, and ultimately decided that what I was is the standard resolution, but with some hacks for:
- Smaller scroll bars (VJ mentions this somewhere)
- Shrunk edge bits in XL
- Smaller edges for Terminal Services (altho central area surprisingly gives same res)
- and of course a hack for PIE.
Now, surely the latter is manageable? It's simply how IE is rendering. Perhaps MS will fix this soon, or maybe someone can intercept the rendering engine. I even don't care if my images lose every second pixel in order to come to the right size at half the res.
Real time Resolution Switching
See the attached link to a bit of software, which once released for WM5 may solve the VGA issue. It allows switching between resolutions on the fly.
I tried it on my Blue Angel, and it worked great, albeit a little unstable.
Note the site says they've been working on WM5 compatibility since Feb, so this may be wishful thinking.
http://www.nyditot.com/Products.asp
It's certainly not ideal, but besides web browsing I would add that word processing is nicer in VGA. Fortunately I don't have to do that much, but when I did need to for a meeting, I appreciated the VGA. With the keyboard and VGA, the term Pocket PC is more than just wishful thinking.
It's certainly not ideal, but besides web browsing I would add that word processing is nicer in VGA. Fortunately I don't have to do that much, but when I did need to for a meeting, I appreciated the VGA. With the keyboard and VGA, the term Pocket PC is more than just wishful thinking.
I agree it is to much hassle to work smoothly in everyday conditions, personally I think its down to programmers to make font options more accessable, take the new version of pocket breeze, in qvga or vga it stays the same size on screen, and gives the user total control over all font sizes.
This is the sort of programming we need to utilise such a great display!!!
lol
kinda bull---- lol
i remember when whe had 640 resolution on the pc.. everyone hated it when we started to use 800 res.. and lets not speak about 1024 haha..
i see loads of people using 1600 res nowedays.. higher res means better image quality!!
It also means better games better everything. So 640 res on the exec is SUPER, we only need adjust (like the pc) font size and get larger better resolution icons for those people who like to nagg (just like on real pc's)
VGA resolution is the future, and i am sure we get 800 res soon also and maybe even higher.. better looking programs etc etc..
and if your fingers are to thick for dialpad then you must have problems with any normal gsm LMAO
Just get a skin where the ok button close button are larger and nicer..
but that is just my penny worth :twisted:
Hi,
My request will surprise many of you, but here is what I want. I am a developer of Flash based programs and I live a nightmare with all those VGA devices out there.
As they have to deal with 4 times the amount of pixels as their QVGA friends, they generally perform much slower in graphics.
While this is ok for office programs and other phone tools, they are totally unusable with Flash Graphics.
With my Toshiba e800, using SE_VGA, I managed to get back to true QVGA mode. This has brought back the graphic performance of the device.
SE_VGA won't work on WM5 (it could not even reverse back to QVGA on the e830 under WM2003SE), but can OZVGA do that ?
If not, does someone know how to hack the system, so it can work that way.
Many thanks for your help.
Sorry, I forgot to explain the "real QVGA mode".
Right now, the VGA devices like the Universal show a QVGA screen. They only use the VGA mode for smaller fonts and a few other things.
This screen mode is neither a real VGA nor a real QVGA. It is actually set as VGA in the OS, but it makes sure all the interface reamains as visible as in a QVGA mode.
Now, most of you want to access the Real VGA mode as it displays more stuff, but I want the RealQVGA mode for the reasons I explained above.
The reason why those devises are so slow, is that the OS must quadruple each pixels as it displays content. This is an enormous task and there no chance that it could achieve acceptable Flash animations this way.
So I am looking for a great hacker that could do this.
Thanks
minimac: although the devices are slow, I don't think it's just pixel doubling that's the cause. I'm sure it's more memory issues then screen interface - my alpha app VJSihaya uses quite a lot of relatively extreme video processing compared to normal use of GWES, but it works at a perfectly good speed.
However, I agree with you, a non pixel doubled display would be faster for you, cutting out the extra processing. However, isn't that the problem? The Universal's VGA screen is 640x480, so the hardware wants to show 640x480. If you want QVGA, the info must either be quadrupled, or just sit in 1/4 of the screen.
I think options may be either playing with the DPI settings as was hacked with OZVGA etc, to force a qvga resolution, or alternatively write a hacked display driver to provide native QVGA (equivalent to Nydiot's software). But as I said, I think that will just force the display to sit in one corner of the 640x480 screen.
V
Thanks Vijay for this answer.
This is not reassuring. I am going to try different things. I just wish this was set into the display settings, letting the users decide what they want:
- Real VGA,
- Real QVGA
- or Improved QVGA as it is now.
I mean the universal performs 225 at the benchmarks graphics index where we have seen devices reach 4500 points.
This is just too slow.
Very true. But as I said, VJSihaya windows move around with almost no lag or screendraw issues, (they're slightly slower on the Magician, but the processor is also slower I guess). So I think the graphics processor isn't bad, but certainly not great. I'd kill for an Axim 51v with a phone built in. I was >this< close to going for the Axim and sidestepping the HTCs altogether. No XDA Devs for me then, eh?
I wonder if running flash in a VJSihaya window at QVGA size would improve matters for you... that way, you get the benefits of VGA - ie big screen, plus your flash running at QVGA size. However, I don't know whether the flash issue is crippled by the pixel doubling or the infrastructure of the Universal. But if the flash app is well written to resize appropriately, it'll run lovely jubbly in VJSihaya. What flash app are you running? PM me some links and a demo flash and I'll test it out if you want.
V
Funy VJ, that you mention the X51v, because I got hold of one once and tried Flash Apps with Videos on them. It turned out that despite its graphic chip, the X51v was very slow. Barelly usable, in fact. This was confirmed by the graphic benchmarks from PPC review sites.
I have a very basic Flash Movie that I run on devices to compare their performances.
http://brunorousseau.free.fr/bench.zip
Right-click "Save Target as"
Eventhough it is not very sofisticated, it is a real life test.
So, this is a rather large video file of exactly 2 minutes and 3 secondes. I made it, so Flash is obliged to play every single frame of the movie without skipping any and obviously, this takes more time on certain systems than others. So here are a few benches.
- 2 min 12 secs on a 3GHZ intel P4 PC
- 3 min 08 secs On a 520MHZ HP H2490 with WM5
- 3 min 26 secs on a 624MHZ AXIM X30 with WM2003SE
- 4 min 24 secs on a 416MHZ AXIM X51 with WM5
As you can see, the HP is working really well compared to the Axim X30, eventhough the AXIM has a 624MHZ processor and uses WM2003SE which is supposed to be faster than WM5.
I would be very interested to know the benchmark on the Universal without VJSIHAYA and then with it.
Thanks VJ
minimac: send me the flash over, and a link to, or the flashplayer used, and I'll give it a go in VJSihaya. Does screen size make a difference you think?
Yup, 51v is a beauty internally, but obviously there are only about 3 apps that use the hardware acceleration. But those three, wow. Made my mouth water to see them. Reminds me of kkrieger.
V
Hi VJ,
Either you live in New Zealand, or you are working late like me.
I changed the link, so now it works.
Try it again.
The app contains the Flash Player installer, so just follow the steps.
I'm dying to know how well it performs.
I am going to bed now.
Today was a 16 hours working day.
Time to get some sleep.
I'll see your post tomorrow
Thank you again VJ
I'm a very very late sleeper. Only way I can get any programming done!
Installing now.
V
Same here vijay. Although I'm falling asleep at my desk right now...
minimac: interesting results. I didn't use all of VJSihaya, just a simple non skinned VJSihaya to capture the benchmarker. I hope I did this right, but using a 320x240 window, I got 2mins 30 seconds on a landscape normal clocked Universal. It runs very smoothly the smaller you resize obviously, and at fullscreen it's horrible! But 320x240, seemed ok...
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
V
PS time for bed for everyone, surely!
4h45 in the morning and still univers...ing !
Thank you Vijay for your time. I am really impressed.
Now, 2'30" is an impressive achievment. I need to get hold of this VJSihaya software and get a Universal ASAP.
How do I get your software VJ ?
Question: When you mention "using a 320x240 window", does this means that the actual movie was showing up in 1/4 of the screen (VGA mode), or you managed to make it run on a full screen at 320x240 (QVGA) ?
How did it perform without VJSihaya ?
If there is no way to play it full screen at normal speed, would you be able to alter the driver Vijay ?
I tried before to change the registry values of the screen on a HP Hx4700, but it wouldn't work. I am not a real programmer, so I did not want to investigate further, but this whole performance issue is really getting me frustrated as I cannot take full advantage of these new devices.
Really, we need to make something that works.
Thank you again Vijay for your time to answer my questions.
Minimac, without VJSihaya, the flash player obviously tries to fill the whole screen, and is hideous, you can see every frame render. This took 6mins 30 seconds!
Obviously as you know, the Uni is VGA, so when I'm playing it at VGA, as you can see in the screenshot, it's taking up one quarter of the screen. As I said, you can actively resize the player with VJSihaya, so I can choose any screen size. As I go smaller, it plays smoother.
I have just retested it, because I was worried that perhaps I'd gone digitally dyslexic and miscounted, but 2 mins 32 seconds on second go. It's worth noting this is without being on power, since I believe that the Uni only runs at it's full speed when on power or overclocked.
VJSihaya is unforunately unreleased, and is likely to stay that way for quite a while due to the development still to go into it. Remember, VJSihaya is basically a hack I'm making to re-implement windows into the OS, to drag windows around, resize them etc. This isn't at a driver level!
However, you could make a new screen driver if you wish, but I think, as discussed above, that displaying QVGA on a VGA screen will always either require pixel doubling or running in a quarter (VGA) screen. I believe that VJSihaya and related techniques are only likely to be a convenient hack, rather than a solution, since you will be running your flash in a quarter screen (as in the screenshot!). However, if this is what you need, i can probably knock together a stand alone hack to achieve this (giving you selectable sizes for the flash player).
I would imagine that the flash player already provides some capability to specify playback size? If not, I'm sure you can knock together a few lines of html to play the flash in a webpage, and you can of course specify the player's size there. This may be the most convenient solution, although obviously there you're carrying the overhead of a browser as well.
Unfortunately I'm not a real programmer either, so developing a driver etc is not really my field. But as I said above, I think running QVGA on VGA hardware is always going to either require pixel doubling, or running at a quarter of the screen, as in my screenshot. I'm not in a position to test benchmark on the Uni at QVGA, since I don't like switching between VGA <> QVGA, because it's so hard to get the VGA hack right in the first place!
Can someone else please play the benchmark app at QVGA, on a landscape non charging Uni?
Minimac - why do you want a Uni if you know that the VGA/QVGA implementation is slow?
What exactly did you do to your Toshiba to get back true QVGA? That would be interesting to see, and might be a good solution if we can get it to work on WM5.
V
I want a universal because it is gorgeous, and because it is very business orientated.
It also has a 3.6" screen, slightly larger than the 3.5" screens you find anywhere else.
When you say "standalone" hack, does this means that by pressing an .exe icon in the program menu under the factory QVGA mode, I could start VJSihaya and run my Flash App resized into 640x480, so it would actually be transparent to the user who would beleive this is a full screen app ? But then, running at 640x480, like you said, I would get back to slow motion mode.
Please let me know because I'm interested in a hack that could play my Flash Apps at normal speed in full screen.
minimac: Hmm, that's the big problem of course.
No, I don't know how you're going to play fullscreen at 640x480 smoothly. It's terrible right now. Has anyone else benchmarked at QVGA yet?
You might want to write to Nydiot and a couple of others. On Wm2003 they had software to change resolution on the fly. I don't know if they're updating to Wm5, but it'd be useful to you.
PM or post about what you did to your Tosh to get QVGA and we'll see why it's not possible for WM5.
Re Uni - have you seen the new Acer? Man, I'd sell my body to get one of those. I'd have to sell it many times I'd imagine.
V
Well, the story on the e800 is really specific. This was the first ever PPC to sport a VGA screen. At the time (WM2003), the OS did not support such resolutions, so Toshiba developped an application that made the switch. Unfortunetely, you found yourself with more or less 2 Pocket PC in one as the VGA mode did not actually display your today screen and preferences as they were in QVGA. However, when you reversed back to QVGA, you got a normal PPC. Not the fastest, but good enough.
So then came SE_VGA. This was an app that let you switch very easilly (just a soft reset at each switch) between the 3 modes (VGA, QVGA and FalseQVGA).
Finally came WM2003SE that supported the VGA screens. Toshiba released its e830, a PXA270 520MHZ device with the same FalseQVGA/FalseVGA crap mode from Microsoft used in all the other new VGA devices.
To make matters worst, SE_VGA does not allow on these devices the "reverse back to real QVGA" mode it had in the previous OS.
As for the new Acer, I agree, it is gorgeous, but for me, the same problem remains.
So I am stuck.
Who is Nydiot ?
Do you think I should start a new post on "Could someone get me a hack to reverse to real QVGA ?"
Thanks Vijay again
Sorry, I never get their name correct:
http://www.nyditot.com/NVDPage.asp
You can try posting again, or hopefully anyone reading this thread will follow, yes, you need to get proper QVGA back.
You might find it useful to read this article:
http://pocketpcmag.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=18237
I'll keep experimenting.
V
minimac: I've had a thought. You might want to investigate the hires_aware hack. Not sure if it will have any effect, but it might.
V
What is that ?
Can someone please explain the easiest way to get VGA resolution on my XDA Exec? Am I right in assuming that although the screen has a 640x480 resolution, they use pixel doubling to negate it and it actually runs at the same resolution as my Dell Axim X5 (320x240)?
Is there a simple registry hack that disables this, or do I have to botch around installing a hack and then trying to botch all my apps to run in the new resoluition? Does anyone know if TomTom5 works in VGA mode?
I'm sure this has been covered already, but some of the topics are 13+ pages and date back quite a bit, and the site is a tad slow to trawl through lots of postings and searching for VGA brings up hundreds of topics.
Thanks in advance for your helps folks.
This is the best thread - there is a ZIP file on page one that I dobwloaded and it contains all the instructions to get things working
http://forum.xda-developers.com/viewtopic.php?t=32217
this is the post I didn't particularly want to have to trawl through, as it's 13 pages long and really slow to switch pages.
TheFair - as noted above, there is a zip containing instructions. You don't have to read all 13 pages, although it's useful background reading - we didn't write all 13 pages just for fun .
I had to do VGA again yesterday, for the first time in a long time, and it's very simple. Basically:
Unzip, copy files to windows, click ozvga, reset.
V
OK, thanks Vijay. Will I need to install your Bigphone application and replace other system apps once done? Also, any idea if TTN5 works in VGA mode? As my XDA is used primarily as a SatNav, I'll stick with QXGA if it's not going to work properly.
Thanks
thefair1973: VJBigPhone can be used to make the phone app usable again, (I don't use my Uni as a phone, so I don't use it ) Replacing system apps etc is optional, but obviously helpful if you use the apps effected.
No idea about TTN5, but it's basically one click to revert to QVGA, so I'd do a backup and just give it a go if I were you!
V
great, thanks very much for your help Vijay.
I use TTN5 and VGA. TTN appears to drive the screen directly, so you don't get any extra resolution, but it works fine
I use TTN5 and VGA. TTN appears to drive the screen directly, so you don't get any extra resolution, but it works fine
Is VGA in Universal already perfected? Which applications are still not showing right upon application of this hack?
Just finished reading the VGA thread. I have a headache now. One important question though, I am using the latest JASJAR ROM, would OZVGA work on this new ROM?
Yes, I did it yesterday with no probs.
V
vijay555 said:
Yes, I did it yesterday with no probs.
V
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks Vijay! I just performed a hard reset, so I am ready to try something new. I downloaded the file compliled by Khashim I believe, I'll check if I got his name right. Which one did you use? Is it the file from Carnivor or Khashim? (Yes it is Khashim.)
I think originally I used Carnivor's, but frankly, I had an old set of files that had been sitting on my SD card for some time (I've posted the zip in that thread as well, towards the end).
However, I don't think there's a big difference. Use the one that sounds positive. It's easy to copy over new files if required. But you should only need to fiddle with it if you see problems in some of your apps. I don't use many apps, but I don't see any problems.
V
I tried. It does look wonderful for browsing using PIE. But I do agree that the font are too small. I also tried VJBigPhone and it did made the buttons larger, but the bottom part has a different color. Did I miss something about the skin?
Comm Manager has the same problem about the skin on the bottom part.
I love how ozVGA changes PIE, but weighing the benefits on other applications I use, I decided it is not for me at the moment. I hope someday someone can implement an application to run a specific application on VGA mode selectively and not implement it on the whole device. Thanks for the responses.
cktlcmd said:
I love how ozVGA changes PIE, but weighing the benefits on other applications I use, I decided it is not for me at the moment. I hope someday someone can implement an application to run a specific application on VGA mode selectively and not implement it on the whole device. Thanks for the responses.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
try tweaks 2k2 vga brute force
cktlcmd: there is a background fix for the phone on my webpage and in the VJBigPhone thread. I haven't looked at the comm manager fix yet.
Waiting for a more selective pixel doubling patch may take a while or be futile. I think it's possible but I've not had time to implement my own hack yet.
V
I've done the VGA hack & overall its a major improvement.
The size of toolbars & the fact that some fonts are too small is a nause, same as the programs that don't display properly. But its SOOO good to see so much text on the screen.
To be honest, if it doesn't really run at 640x480, is it not a case of false advertisment? Just a thought.
xyon: it is running at VGA (640x480), but just making everything sharper and emulating 320x240. I asked an Orange spokesman once and he said they were going for "quality over quantity". I suspect they just didn't know how bloody persistent haxxors could be
I prefer 640x480, but it does make day to day usage inconvenient. Perhaps all apps will eventually have native 640x480 support. But given how many years it took to go back to square screen support, I'm not very hopeful!
V
Hi frens, I would like to know is there anyway to change our device from VGA to QVGA? I mean maybe using some certain software we can toggle between using QVGA or VGA..something like that
Because VGA can't enjoy many cool interface things like Cube, Ifonts, etc
pliz help
did you find a solution ?
i am looking for the same soultion ? did someone find ?
i need it ASAP ?
thx
Not looking likely
Hi Guys
It seems fairly certain to be a no go see my previous threads
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=350157
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=347532
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=351589
Sorry they are all a bit short but you will get the general idea, basically it comes down to there being no apparent way to hotswitch the dpi on a per app basis. The closest thing to any chance of it working would be to have a patch or layer that can emulate a lower res screen which GAPI for HPC's http://www.wincesoft.de/html/gapi_for_hpc_s.html is capable of doing for WinCE boxes that have widescreen resolutions but want to run an older 320x240 game or app so any potential solution would likely have to work along the same lines.
However the main issue is that the gx.dll method would not work in most cases as they are now quite heavily tied into the roms (certainly on my Athena) so I could never test it out fully, a generic or emulation layer based gx.dll would most likely 'break' the newer phones if it was forced into the windows directory and from some basic testing before simply placing the HPC gx.dll in the app directory does not enable you to make use of it as the base gx.dll is already resident in ram when the phones are started. I also tried reshacking a couple of apps and changing it to look for xg.dll and renaming the HPC one to match but that just broke everything as you have to re-sign the app which I managed but it just plain refuses to run and either brings up an error message or just does nothing when you run it.
Wow a bit long winded sorry about that but it may help anyone who wants to take up the challenge
Has anyone used this, is it any good?
Take a look at it at let me know what your opinion is.
http://simpleos.iroot.ca/
seems rather nice
but it is not free
seem to be an alternate OS as the name said
have you made a try ???
i bet it's sluggish it's .net and .net is always slower then native wm code
so making a gui replacement in pure .net is a slow thing
Nice progie
I will try later...
Ik looks nice, but its very, very slow.
I installed the demo just a few minutes ago... and I almost immediately deleted it after starting the program.
There seemed to be no way to close it. The start-menu didn't show as it should, so I had to soft-reset to het back to my normal interface. Clicking icons didn't work most of the time, you need to press them for a longer time, without moving them across te screen.
I would't recomend using it.
Looks like they have ported a version of Gnome?
Doesn't work on Kaiser...mhhh
it's not a real port of gnome, its a skin meant to look like gnome (apparently there is also an OSX version). It's very nice looking, but doesnt perform very well. Not worth the money. Perhaps on something like a kaiser with lots more ram it would be more feasible, but with our meager 64MB, it's almost totally worth it (though, you can psych people out with a "i've got linux dual boot", which is good for a few laughs).
i've tried it before and its crap
thanks for the opinions, im not going to try it ou t, it would seem like a waste of time.
ill try it out when its more stable.
you may have to wait for a pda with more cpu power as .net is interpted like java
they could make it more stable but it's unlikely they will ever get it really snappy