topic Re: Retina Display Issue: Fuzzy Symbology and Tile Imagery in ArcGIS Runtime SDK for iOS Questions

Retina Display Issue: Fuzzy Symbology and Tile Imagery

AaronConnolly — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 18:26:32 GMT

Dev Team,

The symbology and tile imagery in our iOS application appear blurred on the iPhone 4???s Retina Display and we're not sure why. We've created the necessary images in both resolutions to support older versions of the iPhone, but we're not sure what we've done wrong. There don't appear to be any articles or resources on the current SDK's support for the Retina Display. I???ve attached a screen shot for reference. Notice how all the other graphics are nice and crisp and how it contrasts with the fuzziness of the tile imagery and symbology. A few questions:

- What might be causing the fuzziness and how can it be resolved? Is it something with the map? Is it something with the AGSPictureMarkerSymbol?
- What if we wanted to use Bing maps tile imagery, would those tiles be fuzzy as well when accessed through the ESRI iOS map View?

Thanks for your time,
- Aaron

Re: Retina Display Issue: Fuzzy Symbology and Tile Imagery

AaronConnolly — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 19:37:08 GMT

Dev Team,

The symbology and tile imagery in our iOS application appear blurred on the iPhone 4�??s Retina Display and we're not sure why. We've created the necessary images in both resolutions to support older versions of the iPhone, but we're not sure what we've done wrong. There don't appear to be any articles or resources on the current SDK's support for the Retina Display. I�??ve attached a screen shot for reference. Notice how all the other graphics are nice and crisp and how it contrasts with the fuzziness of the tile imagery and symbology. A few questions:

- What might be causing the fuzziness and how can it be resolved? Is it something with the map? Is it something with the AGSPictureMarkerSymbol?
- What if we wanted to use Bing maps tile imagery, would those tiles be fuzzy as well when accessed through the ESRI iOS map View?

Thanks for your time,
- Aaron

Just found out through ESRI support that this is a known issue with the Retina Display. No time table was given for a fix.

Re: Retina Display Issue: Fuzzy Symbology and Tile Imagery

MuratDzhusupov — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 04:58:03 GMT

I had same trouble with our project (my app code don't use ArcGIS API for iOS).

My problem was resolved when I see difference between screen size in points and screen size in pixels (in old devices display 1 point is 1 pixel, but in Retina 1 point is 2 pixels).

Re: Retina Display Issue: Fuzzy Symbology and Tile Imagery

DiveshGoyal — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 16:51:49 GMT

This will be fixed in the next release.

Re: Retina Display Issue: Fuzzy Symbology and Tile Imagery

JamesSchlafley — Thu, 29 Aug 2013 19:27:51 GMT

This will be fixed in the next release.

FYI, basemaps on retina displays still look really bad. This is still not fixed. Status update??

Thank you

Re: Retina Display Issue: Fuzzy Symbology and Tile Imagery

AlanKing1 — Tue, 10 Sep 2013 10:58:09 GMT

in lieu of a fix at the moment, how are people getting around this issue? We have integrated this and are not happy with the results to release the app. With no date that I can see for a fix, we need to look at alternatives.

What have others done? 🙂

Re: Retina Display Issue: Fuzzy Symbology and Tile Imagery

RickJones — Tue, 10 Sep 2013 11:46:00 GMT

Is the fuzziness at all zoom levels, or just the ones between basemap scale boundaries.

ie. if the basemap has scale levels of 1:50000, 1:25000, 1:10000, 1:1000. When at 1:1100 it would be pixelly, then at 1:900 it would appear sharp

Re: Retina Display Issue: Fuzzy Symbology and Tile Imagery

HussainFakhruddin — Tue, 10 Sep 2013 23:38:49 GMT

I'm having the same issue. I have tried to run the sample app given in the document exactly as is and in that also its got the same problem.

For example, if we search for "Sydney Opera House" We just cannot zoom it to street level view. It gets totally blurred - I've attached an image, please do take a look.

The other part I've observed is that the app on the Appstore runs absolutely fine. So I think there is a problem with the library which is not loading the tiles after zooming.

Photo(27) is the sample app from the documentation.
Photo(28) is the App from the Appstore.

Re: Retina Display Issue: Fuzzy Symbology and Tile Imagery

Nicholas-Furness — Fri, 13 Sep 2013 23:24:47 GMT

Hi Hussein. Note that in your screenshot the drop-pin symbology is not blurry, it's just the map tiles.

This is because the Geocode sample is using a basemap tile service (http://services.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/ESRI_StreetMap_World_2D/MapServer) which is no longer updated and which doesn't have global coverage for all zoom levels. If you were to zoom in to that level in the US, you would not see the blurring.

Really the sample (and you) should be using http://services.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/World_Street_Map/MapServer. That tile service is the same as used by the basemap picker at ArcGIS Online and by the ArcGIS iOS App. Incidentally, in your screenshot of the app, it's using the Topographic Basemap, not the Streets Basemap.

It's a multi-step process to look at an ArcGIS Online basemap and work out the URL to use, so I have created this reference page which may help: https://github.com/nixta/arcgis/wiki/Basemap-URLs

Please let me know whether this resolves your issue.

Nick.

P.S. I have asked that the sample be updated to use the current tile sets.

Re: Retina Display Issue: Fuzzy Symbology and Tile Imagery

JamesSchlafley — Thu, 19 Sep 2013 19:15:11 GMT

I'm having the same issue. I have tried to run the sample app given in the document exactly as is and in that also its got the same problem.

For example, if we search for "Sydney Opera House" We just cannot zoom it to street level view. It gets totally blurred - I've attached an image, please do take a look.

The other part I've observed is that the app on the Appstore runs absolutely fine. So I think there is a problem with the library which is not loading the tiles after zooming.

Photo(27) is the sample app from the documentation.
Photo(28) is the App from the Appstore.

This is a seperate issue that you are experiencing. The original problem is that the tiled map service layers in the iOS api are displayed with fuzzy, low resolution. Compare to android, which displays tiled layers correctly.

Re: Retina Display Issue: Fuzzy Symbology and Tile Imagery

Nicholas-Furness — Thu, 19 Sep 2013 20:46:36 GMT

The original problem is that the tiled map service layers in the iOS api are displayed with fuzzy, low resolution. Compare to android, which displays tiled layers correctly.

The tile imagery looks as expected to me. In the original post, it's only the symbols overlaid on the map which are fuzzy and that has been fixed.

In the case of tiles, the global ArcGIS Online tiles have not been generated to retina display dpi. For that reason, the SDKs will render them at the generated tile resolution by default.

You can opt to render the tiles at native display resolution by making use of AGSTiledLayer's renderNativeResolution property (which I think is what the Android app does), but it can make label text very small (see screenshots). It essentially gets the next zoom level of tiles and renders them smaller.

Tile Resolution:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]27608[/ATTACH]

Native Resolution:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]27609[/ATTACH]

Also attached is a project that allows you to switch between native and non-native resolutions to see the difference.

Hope this helps,

Nick.