Windows text/etc. scaling option

[Shocked]

I just upgraded to a 1440p monitor from 1080p, and now stuff is smaller than I'm really comfortable with (even with vision correction). Don't get me wrong, I was expecting this, but I also figured I could use the "Make text and other items larger or smaller" option in the screen resolution window.

Problem is, any scale larger than the default makes anything affected by this change look blurry, kind of like the monitor is running in a lower-than-native resolution.

Are there any good resolutions to this? I figure there has to be else people with 4K displays would practically have to use a magnifying glass, right?

EDIT: Using Win 8.1.

 

[heatlesssun]

Programs written to scale properly do so, however many aren't and just don't so unfortunately there are going to some apps that look blurry. Most major apps seem to handle it pretty well these days, Office, Chrome, etc. Some things just don't scale period like the Origin client.

Windows 10 is supposed to improve on desktop scaling, I'd love to see who it will deal with apps that just don't deal with properly.

 

[SuperSubZero]

The underpinnings of Windows goes back well before DPI scaling was a thing anyone cared about. The problem is even in current times apps tend to get thrown together using old-school thinking, and welp, DPI scaling is broken for those apps. When you make things larger, you're trying to fit one pixel into 1.25 or 1.5 pixels. The result of this is the blurry. With the 4K monitors now it's an even more pronounced problem, as 4K @ 100% DPI at 28 or 32" is not "smaller than I'm comfortable with", it's totally unusable. So at that size and res scaling is crucial, and people are just stuck with blurry apps. You can try contacting whoever writes the apps you use and ask for HiDPI support, cuz ya know that's bound to get anywhere. Some apps that are HiDPI aware are like IE (in Win8.1), Chrome, Firefox, Office 2013, uh.. uh..

You shouldn't have any issue with ModernUI-style apps, as they are DPI-aware and designed from the ground up to scale properly.