Microsoft Small Mouse
Stayce Cawthorn
The start of what eventually would lead to the development of the Microsoft Ocean Plastic Mouse, which is now available for pre-order, sprang from a series of questions asked by a dedicated group of individuals across several teams determined to crack a difficult challenge.
Synthetic plastics contain polymers as a backbone ingredient. Polymers consist of repeating covalent bonded units known as monomer residues. These polymers have specific characteristics that are utilized in applications like water bottles, caps, packages and other everyday plastic materials. Polymer resins in pellet or bead form are then put into molds to create products.
The collected ocean plastic presented a challenge for the engineering team attempting to create the resin because the material has already started to degrade due to heat, ultraviolet light, moisture and salt exposure. Water bottles are made from a resin known as polyethylene terephthalate (PET), more commonly known as polyester when used in fibers or fabrics.
Making the mouse from 100 percent recycled PET plastic was impossible from a chemical composition standpoint because it would not meet mechanical and reliability specifications, so creating a resin blend that combined PET and polycarbonate (PC) plastic was targeted as a solution.
As the project started in late 2019, Microsoft reached out to several of its suppliers to explore recycling options and technical solutions for creating the resin to be used in the mouse. Due to the complexity of the project, which required not only the development of the proprietary ocean plastic but also a complex supply chain to collect, clean and safely transport this ocean waste for upcycling, it was tough to find a supplier willing to take on the challenge. But SABIC, a global leader in the chemical industry, continued to move forward throughout the process, providing invaluable assistance to the creation of the mouse.
The original goal for the Ocean Plastic Mouse was to use 10 percent recycled ocean plastic. But after all the trials and the development of the resin, the exterior shell of the mouse contains 20 percent recycled ocean plastic by weight, or the equivalent of half of a 16-ounce water bottle.
All parties involved in the development of the Ocean Plastic Mouse insist this is just one small step on the road to creating more sustainable products and developing a product lifecycle that eventually will lead to the better recycling of plastic materials.
The ocean plastic resin represents a significant development investment, which is usually made to create something exclusively for Microsoft use. In this case, however, Microsoft hopes other companies will use the resin in the creation of their own eco-friendly devices. The goal is pushing the innovation beyond mice and into larger devices. The spirit of competition can be a driving force for good as organizations around the globe seek additional environmentally friendly breakthroughs.
Top image: A resin made from recycled plastic water bottles was developed by Microsoft and SABIC and used in the creation of the Ocean Plastic Mouse, which contains 20 percent recycled ocean plastic. Image by Microsoft.
The various icons and buttons in the Eclipse (Kepler) interface are very, very small on a laptop with a 3200x1800px screen. The red error decoration that appears to indicate errors on files is difficult to see unless my nose a few cm from the screen.
I've played around with adjusting the screen resolution and other settings in the operating system (Windows 8.1), which helps, but results in other applications appearing too large, and even then the Eclipse icons are uncomfortably small. Enlarging the fonts in the Eclipse preferences (window>preferences>Dialog Font) doesn't affect the icon size.
Is there any easy way to force larger icons? Any work arounds (I've used the Magnifier but that's a rather clunky solution)? Should I just buy a magnifying glass and keep it next to my mouse? Maybe someone should make a mouse with a magnifying glass embedded? :)
I struggled with this issue for a little bit too. I noticed a lot of you posted really complicated resolutions but there is a much easier way to do this! Its just a program and you shouldn't have to modify scripts, or install third party tools. The issue is related to High DPI scaling as mentioned above but what I think a lot of you are missing is that you can't directly modify compatibility settings on the launcher itself. The launcher and eclipse are two different programs! You need to browse to the Eclipse.exe and override the High DPI scaling option there. Once set, you can use the launcher as normal. The launcher will hit the executable, launch the eclipse.exe and since you set the compatibility settings on the .exe it will run using those settings. I spent like 10 minutes tracking down where the exe was so if its any help mine was located in: C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Yatta\Launcher\installations\eclipse-ide-for-java-developers\eclipse.exe
And yes, the icons were super small before adjusting this setting. I tried setting compatibility settings on the launcher itself but it obviously didn't fix the issue. But after setting the override High DPI setting for the eclipse.exe icons are now normal size. Let me know if this works for others!
I figured that one solution would be to run a batch operation on the Eclipse JAR's which contain the icons and double their size. After a bit of tinkering, it worked. Results are pretty good - there's still a few "stubborn" icons which are tiny but most look good.
Had same problem, to resolve it, create a shortcut of the launcher, right click > properties > compatibility > tick on 'Override high DPI scaling behaviour' and select System Enhanced from the dropdown as shown on pic below. Relaunch eclipse after changes.
For completion I thought I'd add that this issue is solved in Eclipse 4.6 Neon -developer.php (the current developer version). The icons look a bit sad (low resolution) but at least they are scaled correctly on my 4k screen.
I found the easiest way was to create a manifest file which forces Windows to scale the application. It is blurry and non-ideal but better than an almost invisible UI! It seems this technique is applicable to any application too.
I also use an outdated version of Visual Studio. That has not been updated for HiDPI (obviously MS wants me to use a newer version of VS), but it still works kind of ok with HiDPI screens since it just scales things up twice -- the sizes of icons and letters are normal but they look lower-resolution.
After I saw how VS works, I began looking up a way to launch Eclipse in the same mode since it would not be technically very hard to just scale things up like how VS does. I thought there would be an option I could set to launch Eclipse in that mode. I couldn't find it though.
After all, I ended up lowering the screen resolution to 1/4 (from 2560x1600 to 1280x800) with no magnification (from 200% to 100%) and not taking advantage of the high-resolution screen until Eclipse gets updated to support it since I had to do some work, but I am desparately waiting for an answer to this issue.
SWT now automatically scales images on high-DPI monitors on Windows and Linux, similar to the Mac's Retina support on OS X. In the absence of high-resolution images, SWT will auto-scale the available images to ensure that SWT-based applications like Eclipse are scaled proportionately to the resolution of the monitor.
Caveats: We're aware that some scaled images look bad at scale factors less than 200%. This will be improved in M7. Furthermore, we're working on support for high-DPI images in Platform UI, so that plug-in providers can add high-DPI icons without doing any code changes.
New APIs have been added to provide support for rendering high-resolution images on high-DPI monitors. Two constructors have been added to the Image class. They accept image-provider callbacks that allow clients to supply resolution-dependent versions of images:
Depending on the user's monitor configuration, SWT will request images with the corresponding zoom level. Here's an example that displays 3 original images, followed by variants whose resolution changes depending your monitor's resolution: Snippet367.java.
Note that this is just the first step to support high-resolution images in SWT and Eclipse-based applications. Work is underway to adopt the new APIs in the platform. Futhermore, more work in SWT is required to properly support drawing into high-resolution images via GC.
The compatibility mode for Windows Xp, it's only available for the Eclipse 32 bit version and after running in this compatibility mode the icons and text will be the right size, but blurry because they are scaled from their native resolution to the screen resolution and doing so the quality is lost.
I fixed @Sigh's solution by creating a (Linux) shellscript (.sh) to do something similar. This is very crude, brutal, and requires adoption for your specific system. Use at your own risk. It might break your entire installation. Make backups of the folders before you run this script. Script can be improved.
One last comment is I recommend running this before opening Eclipse for the first time (ie, fresh install). There are icons that get automatically unpacked from jars and saved in eclipse/configuration/org.eclips.osgi/... (potentially among other folders) and editing the .jar file prevents the icon from being resized. You might be able to delete this folder and it might autoextract again, but I can't confirm.
1st thing i checked has the windows config. Its all as it should. There is no acceleration anywere else in my desktop apps or even the sim, except when using the RMB to look around. Outside view also has it but it doesnt bother me, but the in cockpit it is really obnoxious. I have the sensitivity for the mouse at 100% this apparently was the default setting as i dont remember changing it. I will set it 50 and see.
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