Skip to content

VFO Flag text appears blurry when not hovered by mouse cursor #3777

Description

@chibondking

Report preparation

  • I used the AI-assisted bug report tool (Help → Support → File an Issue)
  • I have attached a support bundle or log file

What happened?

When the mouse cursor is moved away from a VFO Flag, the displayed text (such as the frequency readout, antenna configuration, mode, and filter settings) becomes noticeably blurry and lacks sharp definition. When hovering the mouse cursor over the VFO Flag widget, the text rendering corrects itself instantly, becoming perfectly crisp and legible.

This visual degradation is particularly prominent on the 7-segment frequency readout font (DSEG Modern) and secondary text blocks (ANT1, 1.8K, DSP, LSB, etc.).

Steps to reproduce

What did you expect?

The text within the VFO Flag should maintain full anti-aliasing sharpness and clarity regardless of whether the mouse cursor is hovering over the widget.

Steps to reproduce

Launch AetherSDR on Windows (with Qt 6.8.3).

Connect to a transceiver (e.g., FLEX-6600) so that the VFO Flag populates with active stream data.

Observe the text clarity inside the VFO Flag while the mouse cursor is outside its boundaries (text will appear blurry).

Hover the mouse cursor over any element inside the VFO Flag overlay (text will snap to a crisp, sharp state).

Move the cursor away again and observe the text reverting to a blurry rendering state.

Developer Notes
Potential Root Cause:
The issue likely stems from a discrepancy in how QPainter or QGraphicsItem caching triggers device-pixel-ratio scaling during specific paint events under Windows high-DPI handling.

When the item is not hovered, it may be rendered from an unscaled/low-resolution QPixmap backing store cache (QGraphicsItem::DeviceCoordinateCache or an explicit buffer paint).

When the mouse hovers over the item, the hover event forces a full widget repaint cycle or switches the internal state to dynamic updates, querying the correct system pixel ratio and drawing the vector fonts smoothly.

Suggested Files and Code Sections to Inspect:

src/gui/VfoFlag.cpp or src/gui/VfoFlagWidget.cpp (specifically inside the paintEvent(QPaintEvent*) implementation or custom paint() routine if handled via a graphics scene).

Look for conditional logic checking underMouse() or QEvent::HoverEnter / QEvent::HoverLeave that changes how textures or paths are drawn.

Inspect if font caching metrics or QPainter::setRenderHint(QPainter::TextAntialiasing) / QPainter::Antialiasing are omitted or disabled during non-hovered redraw sequences.

AetherSDR version

26.6.4

Radio model & firmware

FLEX-6600 v4.2.20.41343

Operating system

Windows

OS version and hardware

Windows 10 (Qt 6.8.3 backend)

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

Labels

GUIUser interfaceWindowsWindows-specific issuebugSomething isn't workingmaintainer-reviewRequires maintainer review before any action is takenpriority: highHigh priorityspectrumPanadapter and waterfall

Type

No type

Fields

No fields configured for issues without a type.

Projects

No projects

Milestone

No milestone

Relationships

None yet

Development

No branches or pull requests

Issue actions