Blurry Cursors

About SheepShaver, a PPC Mac emulator for Windows, MacOS X, and Linux that can run System 7.5.3 to MacOS 9.0.4.

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frozentoast
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Blurry Cursors

Post by frozentoast »

I’d love to keep hardware cursor enabled for performance, but the cursor itself (in all its forms) appears blurry with artefacts when doing so. Is there a fix for this?

Running a retina Mac with ‘scale_nearest true’ and ‘scale_integer true’. Thank you to all the contributors of this project. SheepShaver is a dream!
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Ronald P. Regensburg
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Re: Blurry Cursors

Post by Ronald P. Regensburg »

The hardware cursor will move smoother than the software cursor, although the difference is small on fast host machines. Even with the hardware cursor enabled, when software-specific cursor images are asked for SheepShaver automatically switches to the software cursor to display these cursor images.

I do not see a "blurry" cursor on my retina screen. Inside SheepShaver both hardware cursor and software cursor look jaggy as they would on a low resolution screen. What kind of artefacts do you see?
frozentoast
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Re: Blurry Cursors

Post by frozentoast »

Image
Image

The artefacts are subtle but noticeable, and yes I would love the same sharp jaggy cursors but so far this is what I get.
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Ronald P. Regensburg
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Re: Blurry Cursors

Post by Ronald P. Regensburg »

I do not see artefacts. These are the low resolution cursor images I would expect, with their equally low resolution smoothing.
frozentoast
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Re: Blurry Cursors

Post by frozentoast »

Thanks for your response. I've created a GIF animation showing the differences between the crispy (jaggy) software cursor and the blurry hardware cursor. Hopefully this illustrates better as to what I'm seeing. Does anyone have any suggestions for this? Cheers!

The difference is subtle shown at these sizes but is even more apparent in regular use.

Image
Image
Last edited by frozentoast on Mon Apr 04, 2022 10:26 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Ronald P. Regensburg
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Re: Blurry Cursors

Post by Ronald P. Regensburg »

The images look different because the software cursor uses the classic MacOS cursor and the hardware cursor uses the host's OSX/macOS cursor (if available). The software cursor is the 'normal' behaviour in SheepShaver. Some prefer the hardware cursor because it moves smoother. The hardware cursor used to work only in window mode. With the scaling algorithm settings the hardware cursor became available in full screen mode also.

I do not see how the display of the cursor images can be changed.
almeath
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Re: Blurry Cursors

Post by almeath »

Is it possible to use the hardware cursor option in the Windows version of SheepShaver? There is an option in Windows to make the cursor black, so it might not be as jarring as it sounds.
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