Windows 11: Same or Worse?

Sunspark

Eventually, yes you are correct, but if it's bad on a VM, it's almost certainly going to be bad on bare metal. If it's good on a VM, thats an encouraging start and then the next step would be a bare metal test. But not everyone has a spare PC laying around or the know how/desire to start partitioning things.

Sunspark VM just uses the VM's driver which in turn is running inside another driver, perhaps on W7

If I run Windows 10 in a VM on my known good Win7 host, I get migraines. A host being good does not neccesarily mean the guest will be artificially good either.

And not for nothing, but if someone found that a Win7 host running a Windows 11 VM worked for them, they could just do that forever. If I ever get to the point where my hardware dies and I can't get Windows 7 to run on the hardware of the day, my plan is to install Linux on my PC, install VirtualBox, and run a Virtual Win 7 instance as my primary PC.

Runing Win11 in a VM also bypasses the TPM/SecureBoot nonsense and makes it an option for anyone who doesn't have supported hardware and isn't comfortable doing a wim swap or DISM install

So I tried Windows 11 (the latest build as of writing, .100). I thought since it's technically Windows 10 21H2, which I tried the preview build before and wasn't impressed, that this would basically be the same but with the Windows 11 branding.

But I was wrong. They actually completely changed the rendering compared to earlier versions of 21H2, presumably when they plopped in the new UI.

Not yet saying if it's better or worse. That will take quite a bit of testing on different setups. But since I feel that the rendering is very different, it will have to be better or worse. I don't think it will be the same, whatever the outcome.

I would also recommend to spend a good amount of time just browsing the Windows interface during your testing. The browsers are adding extra layers of dithering / strain which confuse the issue.

Windows 11 is not agreeing with me. Familiar feeling of tension around my eyes which I know will progress to nasty muscle pain and headache if I persist through it. An odd feeling like what I’m looking at is not entirely flat, and as if I were looking at the text from a slightly diagonal angle. Hard to describe. Eyes readjusting frequently and effortfully to maintain focus.

For me it’s not the solution.

Now and again MS comes and fiddles around the edges with the rendering, but the core is fundamentally broken since 1607. At this point, with HDR, complex display driver models (always with more being added), and the desire to have ever more eye popping and higher bit colour, and visual effects. I don’t see how they backpedal on that. I am getting really pessimistic on the software angle of eyestrain.

The highly processed and flickery image is a feature, not a bug. Why would they fix it? it’s not broken, not even secretly, to them. I think what happened is I was wrong about the rendering. It didn’t change that much. What happened is that there is finally a UI which can take advantage of all the groundwork 1607 lay years ago, and so being designed for that technology it is less jarringly bad, especially as the new fonts they are using are more robust and stand up to their rendering better, but under the hood I think it’s pretty similar. Using it on a larger, modest PPI screen as compared to my small high PPI laptop really highlights that some of the same visual artifacts which have been present since 1607; like flickery squirmy text (especially where it is more thin) which defies focus, is STILL present all these years later.

Windows 10 2015 LTSB is (barely) passable for me, but to see how far things have changed for the negative, you have to go back to Windows XP. Now that is real stillness and flatness in an image and true relaxation for the eyes and brain. It blows Windows 7 out of the water for comfort, even though many of us would call that a safe OS. For sure XP isn’t the answer (unless you keep it offline), but the progression over time is illustrative.

Hello everyone,

I am running the following for 2 days now:

Edition Windows 11 Pro

Version 21H2

OS build 22000.556

Experience Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.22000.556.0

I am either getting used to the monitor I just bought (Gigabyte M32Q) or this is working way better than Win10.
My experience is that it's a lot better on the eyes and I am even running the monitor at 50 Brightness!

Try it out if you're eligible for an update through Windows Update.

Still some very minor strain and veeery slight tension in the forehead but nothing like before.

Mind you this is after ~10 hours in front of the screen.

Definitely worse for me, going from windows 10 2004 to windows 11, everything kept the same aside.