I was excited by VMware Workstation Pro 12's claim to be ready for high DPI screens, but the claim was very vague.
I found this thread:
Is that correct, and still correct?
If so, this is completely useless, and the claim VMware Workstation Pro 12 is ready for high DPI is not really true.
People with high DPI screens need to be able to run guests at their standard, low DPI and have them scaled up (preferably pixel-doubled, at least in my case of 200% DPI / 4k) so that the virtual machines are usable, without everything being 1/4 the size.
I use VMware to do compatibility testing with other machine configurations and older versions of Windows. Running the guest OS in a high DPI mode is not what I want at all. I need the guest OS to think it is running on a standard DPI screen, and for VMware to scale up the display for my high DPI screen.
VMware Workstation already seems to have the ability to scale the screen in real time, but the Windows version only allows this to happen in full-screen mode, which I have found inexplicable for years now. Lots of threads about that on the forum over the years, too. Apparently the OS X version has had this feature for years.
That has been an minor, spare-time annoyance when trying to use VMware to provide compatibility with old games designed for 640x480 and similar. But now that I have high DPI screens for work, the minor annoyance with games has become something that is gets in the way of my actual work.
I am disappointed that the DPI support in VMware is still so poor. Yes, DPI support isn't great in the Windows ecosystem, and Windows itself still has a myriad of problems and bugs, but VMware costs so much money and is one of the professional tools where DPI support is not just a nice-to-have but vital to making the tool actually usable to people with high DPI screens. Worse, VMware tells the OS it is DPI aware which prevents the OS from scaling its windows, when that is actually exactly what most people want, and when there is no way around the issue (other than changing a system-wide setting and overriding the program manifest, which is unacceptable due to potential problems with other software).
Please tell me there is a way to make this work, or that it will be added soon. I will not be purchasing any more upgrades until this is fixed, because VMware is essentially unusable to me at the moment.