Expanding Your Horizons: Nyditot Vitual Display v3.01 Review

[Peter Traugot]

For those who want to take full advantage of screen real estate or simply want the flexibility to view, write, or navigate on their PDA in something other than the standard orientation, Nyditot’s Virtual Display has always been a good choice. Question is, does version 3.01's enhancements bring anything notable to the party? Keep reading to find out.<br /><br /> <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/Petert-jan03-NVD-0.jpg" /><br /><!> <br /><i>The current version of Virtual Display is 3.01 and brings many enhancements to the previous version. For those familiar with Virtual Display, I’ll talk about the changes down the page. For those not familiar, here’s what the program is all about...</i><br /><br /><b><span>Pick a size, any size</span></b><br /><br /> <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/Petert-jan03-NVD-1.jpg" /> <br /><i>Figure 1: Above are the programs placed into the NVD folder when the program installs.</i><br /><br />Virtual Display, hence fourth referred to as VD, has four applications. The primary application is called “VD Settings”. This is the core of the program. This is where you set the size of your display. Now we all know that the “physical” resolution of the Pocket PC display is 240x320, however, what VD does is create a larger, “virtual” screen that you can scroll around in. What this amounts to is a larger screen for typing, drawing, viewing spreadsheets, etc. There really is no limit to the size of the display; however, the author does suggest not going beyond 1024x1024. Now that’s a LOT of real estate!<br /><br /> <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/Petert-jan03-NVD-2.jpg" /> <br /><i>Figure 1: Above is the main interface for NVD. The presets are at the top, followed by orientation and additional settings.</i><br /><br />The program supplies a number of preset configurations, or, you can type in your own numbers for both horizontal and vertical sizes. Beneath the presets is the default orientation radio buttons. With these, you can set the default orientation of the screen. Below the buttons are the two fields to enter a custom screen size and below these are a number of check boxes. The first box, called “Fit to Display”, forces the display to scale to the set resolution. For example, if you have your screen set to 480x640, the resulting screen will be scaled to allow a full 480x640 worth of information to be viewable on the screen all at once. This is a great feature if you’re working on a spreadsheet and want to be able to see more information without having to scroll around the screen. Second is the “Resize Desktop” box. This is a new feature in 3.2 and is invaluable! However, I’ll hold off on discussing this feature until I talk about all the new features. Next is “Pan with Arrows”. This allows you to use the directional pad on your device to scroll the display. This is a handy feature as long as you’re not using it for another application as conflicts can occur. Next is “Hide Onscreen Control”. This basically hides the navigation and menu cluster from the display. And lastly, “Preserve After Reset”. This feature should ONLY be used once you’ve fully tested your settings and are FULLY confident that the system won’t get whacked because of conflicts, poor resolution settings, etc. Once this is set, even a soft reset won’t disable the program (as is the default behavior.). One last item in the screen is the “Darken Text” entry. This allows you to darken the screen text by some percentage. This is handy if you find that the scaling feature of the application lightens your text and you find it hard to read. I’ve discovered that this is a fairly device dependant adjustment.<br /><br />Once you have set up your preferences, the unit will likely need to be reset in order to change the display buffer size. This is required on all devices because the Pocket PC hardware can only adjust the physical display size at boot up.<br /><br /><b><span>Getting Around</span></b><br />When your system comes back up, you’ll notice a small orange button on your desktop. This is the settings control for VD. Around this button are eight arrows. The four arrows closest to the orange button are “scroll” arrows. Pressing and holding one of these down will scroll the display in that direction. The arrows pointing to the four corners of the display are “jump” arrows. Pressing one of these buttons immediately pops the screen to the far edge of the direction pressed; great for quick hops around a large display. Pressing the orange button brings up a menu of additional operations. On the top of the menu are the orientation icons. Clicking on one of these icons immediately rotates the display. Below these are three options; “Fit to Display”, “Resize Desktop”, and “Hide control”. These are the same functions as found in the setup. Lastly are the menu options for the VD Settings program and help.<br /><br />Three other stand-alone programs reside within the Virtual Display folder. They are; “VD Menu” (forces the on-screen menu to appear if you have disabled it, “VD Power” (Toggles the units power off), and “VD Zoom (Toggles the “fit to screen” option back and forth.).<br /><br /><b><span>What's New?</span></b><br /><br /> <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/Petert-jan03-NVD-3.jpg" /> <br /><i>Figure 3: The new features include tha ability to set custom color schemes.</i><br /><br />One of the biggest requests from users of previous versions of VD was the ability to rotate the display from portrait to landscape without having to reset the device, yet have the information on the screen not bleed off the edge of the screen. In other words, when you set the screen to 320x320 (square) and set the display to portrait, the additional 80 pixels worth of information would bleed of the edge and you would have to either scale or scroll to get to the additional screen real estate. What “Fit to display” does, is fool the display buffer into thinking the screen resolution is still 240x320. That means that the screen will look correct in both portrait and landscape. The trick isn’t foolproof however. If the application doesn’t test for resolution changes, it won’t work on the fly. However, generally speaking, if you quick the application in question and re-launch it, it will recognize the setting and format appropriately. I have found this one feature to be completely worth the upgrade price!<br /><br />In addition to this nifty feature is the ability to customize the system colors of the desktop. Other stand-alone programs exist to do this, but VD incorporates it into the settings application so that you can have multiple setups with different color schemes.<br /><br /><b><span>Gotchas</span></b><br />Is VD 100% foolproof? No. However, this has nothing to do with this superbly implemented suite of tools, but rather, limitations of the Pocket PC OS. Nyditot has done an excellent job of building a display system that was never meant to exist in the Pocket PC hardware. In my opinion, they have exceeded expectations. <br /><br /><b><span>Where to Buy</span></b><br />Nyditot Virtual Display ver. 3.01 can be <a href="http://www.handango.com/PlatformProductDetail.jsp?siteId=311&platformId=2&productType=2&catalog=0§ionId=0&productId=16346">downloaded from Handango</a> as a free trial version, or purchased for $19.95 (affiliate).<br /><br /><b><span>Final Thoughts</span></b><br />If you’re looking to flex the visual capabilities of your Windows CE hardware, look no further: Nyditot’s Virtual Display v3.01 is it!

[pschultz]

Have many people had good luck with this software? When I tried the previous version on my iPAQ 3835, it didn't work very well. What are your thoughts?

[R K]

One of the biggest requests from users of previous versions of VD was the ability to rotate the display from portrait to landscape without having to reset the device, yet have the information on the screen not bleed off the edge of the screen. In other words, when you set the screen to 320x320 (square) and set the display to portrait, the additional 80 pixels worth of information would bleed of the edge and you would have to either scale or scroll to get to the additional screen real estate. What “Fit to display” does, is fool the display buffer into thinking the screen resolution is still 240x320. That means that the screen will look correct in both portrait and landscape. The trick isn’t foolproof however. If the application doesn’t test for resolution changes, it won’t work on the fly. However, generally speaking, if you quick the application in question and re-launch it, it will recognize the setting and format appropriately. I have found this one feature to be completely worth the upgrade price!

If you're saying what I think you're saying, then I think this alone would be worth the price of NVD. I'm not sure I fully understand this though. Are you saying that with this feature, I can rotate the screen from 240x320 to 320x240 without having to soft-reset, and have the programs still act like the screen was set to their respective resolutions?
If so, that's amazing.

I wonder how open the author would be to customizing the program to run faster on the different new video chipsets. I'm sure the Toshiba e740, Toshiba e310/e330/e335, and the iPAQ H5450/H5455 would gain quite a bit of speed in the rotated resolution if the program was using their own video chips to handle the extra workload.

[Peter Traugot]

Yeeeup. That's what I mean. Neat feature, though some programs, due to the way they are written, don't conform 100%. Sometimes you need to "refresh" the display by deselecting this feature in the NVD on-screen menu and then turn it back on. It's a minor nuisance and only takes two clicks, but a whole lot better than nothing at all.

I will occationally run across a program that will not resize, but theyt are few and far between.

[Pony99CA]

Thanks for the review, but there were a couple of things missing. First, how big is the program? Any software review, especially for memory-constrained Pocket PCs, should mention this.

Second, you said it wasn't 100% fool-proof (but what is :-)), but didn't really mention what problems you had. Even if they aren't the fault of the software, knowing what they are would be useful.

Finally, I won't get too picky about the various typos, but I have to comment on the following:


Virtual Display, hence fourth referred to as VD, has four applications.

Did you really think "VD" was the best abbreviation? There's a reason Nyditot calls it NVD. :lol:

Steve

[pocketpcdude1024]

Thanks for the review! Whenever someone posted about "changing the resolution" on their Pocket PC, I was somewhat confused as to how a 320x240 pixel screen could display 640x480 resolution or higher. Now I know - it doesn't change the resolution on the screen; rather it creates a scrollable screen! :D

[Peter Traugot]

Actually NVD (acronym noted) can scale the virtual display to fit the physical display. Of course, the higher the res. of the virtual display, the more difficult it is to read the scaled screen.

[Rirath]

Few issues... first off, it doesn't work properly with the Axim yet. See this thread... http://www.pocketnow.com/forums/showthread.php?s=9a7e5707518d22c4b20614f695eee6fe&threadid=12024 There is talk of a working patch, but it feels like we're never going to get any actual news about it. A simple few words every now and then to the people waiting would go a long way. I've waited a month now.

Also, about the resetless-rotate... you have to realize this stretches the screen. It seems to me you're literally taking a 240x320 display for example and stretching it to 320x240. It doesn't look very good at all, as one would imagine. The trick would probably be to pick a resolution that could be used either way without much give. Unless I'm missing something?

And PPCdude, you're still confused. It does make a pannable screen, but it also can fit that whole 640x480, 800x600, etc screen onto the normal size screen so that everything is small. Download the trial and look at it.

[Doug Raeburn]

Peter...

Great review... I have the latest version of NVD prior to 3.0, but I haven't been motivated to upgrade. Guess I'll have to check it out again.

I was going to tease you about the VD acronym, but Pony99CA beat me to it. Don't feel bad... I got similar teasing after one of my first reviews on pocketnow.com, when I abbreviated Pocket On-Schedule as POS... 8O

Anyway, I'm looking forward to more reviews from you in the future.

Doug R.

[Peter Traugot]

Thanks for the kind words.

Rirath, you said:

Also, about the resetless-rotate... you have to realize this stretches the screen. It seems to me you're literally taking a 240x320 display for example and stretching it to 320x240. It doesn't look very good at all, as one would imagine. The trick would probably be to pick a resolution that could be used either way without much give. Unless I'm missing something?

When you set NVD to 320x320, and then set "resize to desktop", the screen retains it's correct size ratio in both rotations. You physically have the same number of "pixels". If you're refering to the fact that the information is "cropped" on the bottom when in landscape, yes, you are correct. there's not much you can do about that. If the application on the screen is written correctly however, everything SHOULD change with the landscape layout. Alot of programs aren't written to check for that and most programs are designed, visually, for portait display.

The nice thing about NVD is that if you need to get to something at the bottom that didn't re-layout, you can simply turn off "Resize Desktop" and scroll down.

It's not a slam dunk, but it removes most of the problems.

Hope that helps clarify.

See ya all Monday : )

[Rirath]

Ah, I was confusing it with fit to screen. Sadly NVD just won't work with the axim without using fit, until that patch is finally released. I'll certainly give that a shot, thanks for the tip.

[nyditot]

Thanks for the review Peter.

Regarding the Dell Axim, please visit the Nyditot Support Page (http://www.nyditot.com/support.asp). There you will find a link for downloading the beta that fixes the touch screen issue on the Axim. You're NVD 3.x registration code will work on this beta as well.

[PeteTh]

I upgraded my NVD to 3.01 after reading about the new 'Resize Desktop' and option to use 320 x 320 + Resize Desktop.

It seems to work great using 320x320 + 'Resize desktop' (to current orientation) which allows switching between portrait and landscape without ressetting. BUT there's one big problem when in Portrait with Resize Desktop enabled the darn OK button and anything else on the top bar goes right off the page. Using icbar or wisbar doesn't help, all of them appear to think that the width of the screen is 320, whereas the rest of the screen has been desktop 'Resized' to the size of the desktop 240x320.

There must be a solution for this otherwise this wonderful Resize Desktop is great up until the point you need to hit ok/Cancel or task switcher.

Ideas ?

[spinedoc]

I just purchased this program and think its fabulous. Of particular note (and you cant do this in JSlandscape) all the hardware directional buttons are remapped to move correctly, and you can use transcriber correctly, as well as the keyboard etc.

For me landscape mode is a no brainer, they should have designed pocket pcs this way from the beginning.

One problem I have is having my background image tiled. Is there anyway to load in a non-standard resolution background image such as 320X240 or larger? All the theme generators I have seen automatically crop the image to the standard 240X320. Is there a way to manually specify an image as the background?

Great program, worththe 20 bones.

[tony bond]

Re previous correspondence and Peter's helpful advices, would be grateful if someone can comment on the following:

I will use my PDA mainly for viewing pictures & videos rather business applications. Would changing the orientation to Landscape crop off the bottom of videos or would I see the full picture without distortion?

Is it possible to set this software so that, when using Media Player only, the screen is in Landscape mode but defaults to Portrait mode for all other applications? Or would I have to re-set it every time?

Should one expect Nyditot to work with GPS Navigation and mapping software, e.g. Tom Tom, allowing me to see maps and run the navigation software in Landscape mode if I wish, or are there any known issues?

Is this software likely to work as well with the Toshiba e 740 as it does with the Loox with which it is bundled, or are there any known issues?

Thanks for any advices you are able to offer.

Tony

[Pony99CA]

Is it possible to set this software so that, when using Media Player only, the screen is in Landscape mode but defaults to Portrait mode for all other applications? Or would I have to re-set it every time?
You might not need NYDITOT for this. Windows Media Player allows you to automatically rotate video when in fullscreen mode. Here's how:

Tap Tools.
Tap Settings.
Tap Audio & Video.
Ensure the Rotate 180 degrees in full screen box is checked.

Does that help?

Steve

[tony bond]

:D Steve,
That's very helpful indeed. Thank you for such an elegant solution, one that's not been mentioned in any technical articles I've read about Pocket PC. My compliments on your exceptionally helpful web page. A most useful resource I shall, no doubt, be dipping into regularly in future.
Cheers.
Tony