Storyline 360 on a high DPI monitor

Jan 05, 2017

Andy Jones
By Andy Jones

Hello lovely people!  

I've run into an interesting problem with Storyline 360 (that I am currently trying out).  On a Windows 10 laptop with Custom Scaling set to 150% Storyline 2 looks just fine, looks crisp and clean and lovely.

But with Storyline 360 on the same laptop, with the same settings, it is blurry.  This is only fixed by dropping the Windows custom scaling down to 100% for Storyline 360 (and leaving it for the rest of the apps on the laptop).  

Of course, this means that Storyline 360 is now very small on the screen.  It is crisp and clean but very small and almost unusable.  

I have looked around for some threads and found that you only recommend that Storyline runs at 96dpi (which is what custom scaling deals with) but what I don't understand is how can Storyline 2 look perfect but Storyline 360 (with the same code base) doesn't cope with custom scaling in the same way.

Please help

38 Replies
Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard
over 7 years ago01/05/17 at 5:20 pm (UTC)

Hi Andy, 

Thanks for reaching out here! We've seen and heard from users the exact reverse - that the Storyline 360 set up is looking crisper and easier to see on a high definition monitor over Storyline 2, and we did implement some changes within Storyline 360 based on a lot of feedback we heard in Storyline 2.

I'd like to get some screenshots from you so that we could look at what you're seeing and any settings you're using on our own systems. Would you be able to share them here with us in the ELH discussion or send along to our team here? 

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard
over 7 years ago01/06/17 at 9:21 pm (UTC)

Hi Andy,

Just coming back to this as I wanted to share the update from Angelo here in case anyone else was looking at this forum discussion:

I've tried the same settings that you have on your Laptop and Storyline 360 appears to be a bit blurry at 150%. 

http://drops.articulate.com/hPPL 

I played around with the DPI and Resolution settings and found that Storyline 360 does look better with high DPI settings. Please see screenshot below with the display settings indicated: 

http://drops.articulate.com/Z6ND 

Storyline 360 is normal in size on high DPI displays - it doesn't have the tiny issue that Storyline 2 did. The UI is a little blurry, and the intermediate fix we have in place now is to balance the resolution with the DPI setting of the display (eg. high DPI = high resolution). 

Please try the settings I have on the 2nd screenshot and let me know if the UI or display now is much better or if it's still blurry/fuzzy. 

Feel free to let Angelo or I know how things are behaving with that additional information.

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard
over 7 years ago01/09/17 at 2:16 pm (UTC)

Hi Andy, 

Based on the changes we made to work with the high resolution monitors that we were hearing a lot about within Storyline 2, the new set up as Angelo described will cause it to get a bit blurry if you're scaling the screen up which seems to match what you're seeing. 

I know our team was looking for additional feedback about how the changes within Storyline 360 were working for users with the display issue previously experienced in Storyline 2, so sharing your feedback here in the forums is helpful - and you can also always share here in the form of a feature request.

Nardiah Higgins
over 6 years ago10/16/17 at 12:19 am (UTC)

Hi, I am having the same issue where I had to increase the resolution to make SL2 work and now I am trialing SL 360 and it is blurry and larger than the actual screen size itself.  I tried to click on the image links you provided in the response above, but they are no longer available.  Can you please provide the solution?

Thanks so much.

Crystal Horn
over 6 years ago10/16/17 at 8:52 pm (UTC)

Hey there, Nardiah.  With Storyline 360, we improved scaling on high resolution displays so that the interface wouldn't appear so small like it did in Storyline 2.  We noticed that if your display scaling is set to anything above 100%, however, Storyline's interface became blurry again.

Can you let me know what your resolution and scaling settings are?  Generally, you'll want to keep scaling at 100%.

Ellen Cousins
6 years ago02/27/18 at 3:15 am (UTC)

Hi there,

I'm experiencing this same issue.  When my machine was set to view larger text (150%), Storyline 360 was so large and blurry I could not use it. Now after reading this forum I have adjusted my display settings as described and EVERYTHING is sharp, but so small to the point where I strain to see other items on my computer!  The DPI is now set to 96 and general display at 100%.  My resolution is set to 1680 X 1050 (recommended).

It would be great if Storyline 360 could work with my need to see everything else a bit bigger.

Any further advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Ellen

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard
6 years ago02/28/18 at 10:15 pm (UTC)

Hi Ellen and Dong,

Thanks for sharing that here, and our team is still looking into the issues with high definition monitors and how Storyline displays. We did implement a change to this in Storyline 3 and Storyline 360, but know that there was still work to be done. We'll keep you posted here with future updates and information! 

Dong Liang
6 years ago03/05/18 at 6:18 pm (UTC)

Storyline is not the only application on windows platform that has this dpi issue.

While waiting for a fix (might be a significant rewriting), here is what you can do to get an acceptable working environment.

1. go to the actual location of your storyline app: program files (x86)/articulate/360/storyline


2. right click on storyline.exe and go to the tab properties/compatibility and check "disable scaling in high dpi"
This will grant all other apps scaling while asking SL to maintain its own dpi.
The result is that your slides will look right, most of the UI will look right, but your menus are not---they now have a huge padding on top and bottom.

3. If you have the more recent windows 10 creator update applied, you have a different checkbox called "override high DPI scaling behavior".

Instead of simply "disable" scaling you have three options (as the following image indicates):

- Using the application option will let this app remain in its native 96 dpi, equal to the previous "disable" option. But the paddings have disappeared. The fonts are crisp but too small to work with.

- The "system" option is to use the system scaling, where everything will be blurred. Your slides might look wrong (before the update, it definitely will) as it is working in a DPI other than 96 now. 

If you don't see anything wrong, then congratulations! Until an official fix, this is by far the best option you have.

- Finally, the system enhanced option will give you a bigger splash window, blurry fonts and some hiding of the menu items. otherwise looking okay. 

 In summary, the lesson is this: unlike other windows updates, this one is critical to storyline users who work on a high DPI monitor. After update you can see the app is already working good under scaling. But if spot something wrong, you have the option to try the "system enhancement" way or stick to the native dpi.

Ellen Cousins
6 years ago03/05/18 at 9:27 pm (UTC)

Thanks so much Dong Liang!

I took the option to disable scaling in high dpi under storyline properties/compatibility, as I do not have Windows 10. This has indeed restored an acceptable working environment outside of Articulate Storyline and Storyline remains nice and crisp also.

Many thanks,

Ellen

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Content Developer
6 years ago03/10/18 at 6:11 pm (UTC)

On W10 - 1920*1080 - resolution, this issue is still impacting SL360. I see the interface is too small (not unreadable, but it can strain the eyes a bit), even after doing the adjustments proposed by our hero Dong :). The strange thing is that this seems to have changed after an update - windows or SL I don't know. Previously, it was working good. Can you confirm Articulate is working to improve this? Very critical to me, users need to be comfortable with the interface!

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard
6 years ago03/12/18 at 2:57 pm (UTC)

Hi Dario,

We haven't implemented any recent changes for this in Storyline 360, so it could be a Windows update that reset or changed things for you. Have you looked into when the most recent Windows update occurred? 

Our team is aware that there are still some issue with high-resolution monitors and displaying of Storyline - it's something we're still looking into additional fixes for, but it's also not a minor adjustment. The changes we made from Storyline 2 to Storyline 3/360 encompassed a full rewrite of our UI, so any fixes or changes to this are a bit further in the future.

Jack Schofield
over 5 years ago10/02/18 at 3:29 pm (UTC)

Any update on this issue with high-res monitors and storyline 360. Was going to get a 4k monitor but with a monitor with Native Resolution QHD 2560 x 1440 at 60 Hz  and still having blurry interface and images.  Will there be an update soon to support really high resolution monitors.

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