'Identify this display' feature in the menu to quickly identify which display is which

[meanaverage]

I'm finding it difficult to figure out what display I'm modifying resolution / settings for because of the 'lazy manufacturer serial' issue. My monitor's swap position constantly and even the custom names are wrong when using custom EDID. I think it would really help if the monitor being 'worked on' had a border similar to the way Mac OS highlights a border when you click a monitor representation icon while on their arrange screen.

[waydabber]

Right, I could add an "Identify display" feature, it would be useful indeed! Thanks for the suggestion!

[waydabber]

(until that time a quick way to test is to go to Image Adjustments menu and briefly change something temporarily or adjust the brightness slightly).

[meanaverage]

This is what I've been doing actually, but it's not ideal because it doesn't work reliably with my PBP monitors. Sometimes the brightness DDC adjusts the brightness on BOTH sides of my monitor, and sometimes only on the targeted PBP 'inner' monitor it should. This also complicates matters as now my monitors brightnesses are set to the same as far as DDC is concerned but one is brighter than the other and I have no way to rectify it through the internal monitor settings even. Lol. There's so much going on here.

I can't easily rectify the DDC brightness issue on the PBP enabled monitor because if I reset the monitor back to factory settings I'll lose the custom color calibration I use to get my two monitors to be calibrated to a visually equal color space that I spent days on. DDC are all at 100% but the difference is stark.

I can't even begin to tell you how much time I spent using this app since I just downloaded it last night. Probably a full 15 hours trying to get my settings to stick and I've still had no luck.

This is probably for another bug/entry, but the app is basically unusable for me except for a time suck / angst-creator, I love/hate this app!!! It's amazing and also impossible to use all at once. I blame all of this on the manufacturer's EDID=NON-UNIQUE issue.

Any time I use the dummy 'set resolution' function, it destroys my extended desktop and mirrors them all together (INCLUDING THE DUMMY) and I have to start all over again and receive the dreaded 'Dummy as mirror target??!!' warning -- while simultaneously ruining my display resolution on the PBP by resetting it back to the wrong aspect ratio. And I can't set a resolution that's usable from the point/click dummy menu because they don't coincide with my actual aspect ratio in PBP despite the ratio being set properly in the dummy config. There are so many issues. I want to cry, but I keep trying to make this work because I undoubtedly believe you're creating one of the best apps to ever exist and I'm loving the challenge as a user at this juncture. :)

I'm also dying for an aspect ratio filter in the resolutions selection list. Scrolling through 3000 resolutions to find the 2 or 3 that are in the correct aspect ratio is infuriating. I know, I'm asking for a lot here, but I think these things are all really needed, at least until unique EDID is somehow implemented.

PS. I've also had to learn not to use my scroll wheel in the menus, because I inadvertently adjust the brightness while scrolling down. It took me a while to figure out I just need to hover on the bottom arrow to scroll down the menu instead so not to futz the settings. Very smart of you to include the hover arrow scroll feature.

Sorry for the novella.

[meanaverage]

Right, I could add an "Identify display" feature, it would be useful indeed! Thanks for the suggestion!

Yes, I was thinking it would be great if while hovering in that region of the menu, it would just auto-highlight the border instantly and continuously until you move off of that section of the menu/onto another section. It could be a root option to enable/disable in the settings.

[waydabber]

Huhh. :)

De difference in brightness might be due to color adjustments or colortable dimming - this is independent of DDC brightness.

I understand that mirroring a dummy can be a pain. The problem is unfortunately macOS related - the app uses all the right APIs and tries to set things up as intended, but the OS simply has trouble creating mirror sets for anything that is more complicated than a very basic situation - especially for dummies it likes to simply do the opposite/reverse of what it is instructed. Btw - what are you using the dummy mirroring for?

The aspect ratio filter is a legit idea, it should be covered in #1205 when it gets implemented. I know the resolution menu needs some further improvement. :)

Yeah, the accidental scrolling over the brightness slider is an issue - but when I did not have scroll working with the slider, it was a concern for others who really wanted the scroll to work with the slider. I can't have it both ways. What I did was at least did not allow inadvertent scroll over the brightness slider fully dim the display, as that was super fun! :)

Thanks for bearing with the app despite its shortcomings. :)

[meanaverage]

RE: the brightness issue > it didn't exist prior to the DDC issue today where DDC started adjusting the brightness inexplicably over the entire monitor instead of just one side. I'm not exactly sure what happened, but it's as if the true 100% factor is masked for one side or something, not allowing me to get them back to even. I'm sure I'll figure something out to fix it without resetting the display. Maybe. :)

RE: dummy use > I didn't know if I had a use for it but I was so intrigued I started playing around with them. For these Lenovo/Thinkvisions monitors, it appears it's terribly difficult to get them to avoid black barring the screen in PBP mode. Out of hundreds of 8:9 (left/right) resolutions (and same for 32:9 when doing top/bottom), only a few actually use all of the screen real estate. Why? No idea, but they are exceedingly picky.

Creating an 8:9 dummy or 32:9 dummy allows me to quickly (relatively) locate workable black barless resolutions through mirroring and implement them as a workaround for not being able to set unique native resolutions per monitor (which would be required but is not possible) since I'm running one of these in non-PBP mode. [It's only when I set a custom dummy resolution AFTER initial creation vs. a simplistic ratio upon creation that the dummy sometimes freaks out and loses my preferred ratio resolutions.]

To put it simply: I'm using dummies to allow uniquely different ratio resolutions across OS observably non-unique monitors.

RE: bearing with you > I live for tinkering and wasting my time. :) You are making an amazing product, seriously. Incredibly impressed. This is your cash cow, surely. You are going to conquer this market entirely. I can't believe I just heard about this yesterday (found someone mention it on reddit while researching my SwitchResX non-unique ID issue).

I'm grateful you are so active here and dedicating your time to implement all of everyone's requests as time permits and I wish you all the best. I'll be here in the corner trying to hack my EDID firmware. Will create a GitHub repo for it once I accomplish it.

Very funny about the OS not obliging. That's part of the fun though.

Edit: A lot of the shortcomings are also just learning the apps limitations currently. Eventually through revisions there won't need to be such a specific order things are done in to achieve the end result. I'm learning the exact steps and order to do them in to achieve my resolution goals and I'm getting there. I'm really fighting the OS more than your app.

More on PBP mode resolutions

I thought I was onto something while testing. For a moment it looked like only non-EXACT ratio resolutions created black bars, but I did some further testing and discovered this is not the case. :( Maybe if I compile a large list of resolutions and settings that work vs. those that don't work we can see if it's something to do with timing settings in order to create a PBP friendly dummy monitor definition.

[waydabber]

[waydabber]

Also: #3775, #3769, #3747