Blurry/Fuzzy Display

[Kieran Breen]

I have two Chromebooks using Citrix Receiver.

On one Chromebook my Windows desktop and fonts appear sharp.

On the second Chromebook (which has a 1080 HD display), the Windows desktop and fonts appear fuzzy/blurry.

Any suggestions to fix this?

Thanks.

 

[Damien Law1709157448]

On 10/12/2017 at 9:41 PM, Kieran Breen said:

I have two Chromebooks using Citrix Receiver.

On one Chromebook my Windows desktop and fonts appear sharp.

On the second Chromebook (which has a 1080 HD display), the Windows desktop and fonts appear fuzzy/blurry.

Any suggestions to fix this?

Thanks.

 

 

Hi misterbreen,

 

You're not alone in seeing this issue, my company is currently evaluating Chromebooks (& Chromebits) but have run into this issue which has caused some testers to complain of headaches and eye strain - not great from a personal health standpoint.

 

I have an open support call with Citrix Technical Support which has now reached escalation stage (had to make a visit to a Citrix office to demonstrate the fault, and luckily it could be reproduced using Citrix's own infrastructure and sessions).

 

I've attached a PDF of the analysis I've undertaken and shared with Citrix Tech Support as well as working with the engineers to gather traces and receiver logs.

 

I'll post back any details I can share, and if you have a support agreement with Citrix i'd suggest opening a call.

Chromebook-Citrix-comparison.pdf

[Damien Law1709157448]

Update:

 

- Citrix Tech Support are still investigating the issue and it has been escalated to the Receiver for Chrome product and development teams. 

- I have also been advised that other Citrix customers have raised the blurry display as an issue.

 

 

[Kieran Breen]

Thanks for the update Damien.

Yes, the issue (when it occurs on some Chromebooks) does cause eyestrain and headaches. 

Unfortunately I don't have a support agreement with Citrix

It's great they were able to reproduce it.

 

Any further updates? :)

[Kieran Breen]

Would anyone have an update on this?

Thanks.

[Damien Law1709157448]

27 minutes ago, Kieran Breen said:

Would anyone have an update on this?

Thanks.

 

Hi Sorry for the lack of reply.

 

My case is still open with Citrix and I have sent through further information that was requested.  I also opened a support call with Google (we have g-suite licenses) and am hitting the same issue where getting the problem understood is the hardest part.

 

The more I look into this issue the more it seems like that ChromeOS does not handle external screens / high resolutions very well.  If you compare the two screenshots attached you can see the blurry / fuzzy issue quite clearly - and these are captures are of a native ChromeOS dialog and not within a Citrix session.  However although the internal Chromebook display appears fine for native applications, once a Citrix session is launched it looks like someone has smeared vaseline on the display - happens for both internal and external displays.

 

I have yet more screen captures and information to pass on to Citrix today, hopefully get a proper answer on why this issue is happening soon.

 

External Display:

 

Internal Display:

Edited November 24, 2017 by Damien Law

[Kieran Breen]

Thanks for the update and taking this forward (with Google).

My original Acer Flip chrombook does not suffer from the issue (it doesn't have an HD display).

I have a new Acer with an HD display (it has the issue).

I also had a Samsung with an HD display (it has the issue).

 

You might think that if this was an underlying issue with ChromeOS that other apps would suffer from the issue?

You would also think that the chromebook development team at Citrix would have some HD displays and would have noticed this issue themselves. :(

 

I'm on the ChromeOS beta channel. I might try a different channel to see if that helps.

 

[Damien Law1709157448]

That is interesting about the HD displays, i'll test with a low-end chromebook I have access to.  I do see the issue on an Asus ChromeBit plugged into the HDMI port directly and see the same issue.

 

As for why has no one from Citrix / Google noticed this?  Head in sand maybe, once pointed out to Citrix they agreed there was an issue though still waiting on a proper answer as to why this is happening.  My ticket with Google is progressing quite slowly, now on to my 2nd support engineer.

 

From my testing and analysis it looks more like a driver / graphics handling fault with the ChromeOS, if you install linux on the chromebook you dont get the blurry issue but then you don't get a supported resolution other than the native with is 3200 x 1800 which is way too small on a laptop screen.

[Kieran Breen]

Would you have any experience of using an Amazon AWS Workspace? I know Amazon provide their own client, but is that essentially a wrapper to a Citrix client?

If it's essentially Citrix it could be worth a test of running that on a Chromebook to see if the same blurry issue exists.

Just a thought.

[Kieran Breen]

OK. I did a further test on this (On my Acer with a 1080HD display).

By default my Chromebook resolution is '1536x864'.

If I change this resolution to '1920 x 1080 (Best)', the fuzzy characters appear to have gone on my Citrix desktop. (However) the text now is much smaller and I wouldnt want to work at this resolution, but the text looks 'sharp'. (However) There is also a chance the Im just kidding myself into the thinking it has been 'fixed' as the text is much smaller.

 

Id be interested to see if changing your Chromebook resolution has any benefit.

[Kieran Breen]

Would anyone have an update on this?

Thanks.

[Kieran Breen]

I see other people are reporting this on the Chrome Web Store (e.g. Jonathan W. A.Modified Dec 8, 2017).

 

[Chris Nadon]

Has anyone gotten anywhere with this issue? We're getting it with our Chromebooks too (rolling out near 4,000 of them). It's annoyingly intermittent and when I try to catch it in action at the moment for support it eludes me.

[Andrew Meek]

We found a setting within the browser config which does appear to improve resolution on some units we're evaluating for ChromeOS rollout.

 

chrome://flags/#disable-accelerated-video-decode

 

Check native resolution is set to optimal before relaunching the receiver application (obviously). 

 

Cheers

 

[Sona Somarao Kulkarni]

Can you check if ClearType (Windows display) policy is enabled on the VDA. One customer had similar problem they enabled ClearType and the issue was resolved.

Let us know if this issue is still observed

[Kieran Breen]

So, ClearType isn't on, but I turn it on, and it doesnt make any noticable difference.

 

Also, it is the same Citrix desktop that I am using in all my testing my chromebook. It is my Asus C302 with the HD1080 display that has the issue.

Its a shame, as I then don't use Citrix from this nice Chromebook with the large display.

[Grace Glover]

On 11/27/2017 at 5:27 AM, Kieran Breen said:

Thanks for the update and taking this forward (with Google).

My original Acer Flip chrombook does not suffer from the issue (it doesn't have an HD display).

I have a new Acer with an HD display (it has the issue).

I also had a Samsung with an HD display (it has the issue).

 

You might think that if this was an underlying issue with ChromeOS that other apps would suffer from the issue?

You would also think that the chromebook development team at Citrix would have some HD displays and would have noticed this issue themselves. :(

 

I'm on the ChromeOS beta channel. I might try a different channel to see if that helps.

 

 

Hiya - Im having the same issues with my new Dell Inspiron 15. Its a full HD 15.6'' display and when i log into citrix it is blurry - but when i project on to a second screen, it is fine. And obviously fine when im not in citrix workspace! I will follow these and see what solutions we can find! :)