I’ve been hit with a few UI sizing issues on my game recently, and this whole 10 foot rule keeps getting thrown back at me as a rule of thumb.
So whats the actual deal with the 10 foot rule? Should I be standing 10 feet away from a 20 inch screen, 30 inch , 60 inch? Is it even realistic to assume people would be sitting 10 feet away from a 20 inch display? This rule doesn’t help me if I don’t know what size of screen it’s being compared to by the QA testers.
The TV I’ve been using to test in my bedroom is a 32 inch 1080p screen, and I can get a solid 12 feet away before things start becoming too small. At 12 feet away the screen is also impractically small, and at this distance it’s a user that at fault for straining their eyes at a distance, not the developer.
The TV in my basement is a 61 inch 1080p screen, and I sit 13 feet away from it and everything on my screen as as expected, fully readable and fine.
I looked up desirable distances for different sized screens, and found some interesting results.
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So if the 10 foot rule is ment to be scaled with desirable screen size, we should be testing on 50 to 75 inch screens, testing on my 32 inch TV I should be fine with sitting between 4 to 6 feet away from my TV. It’s a bit of an ignorant assumption on my part, but I really don’t know what this 10 foot rule of thumb is supposed to mean.
I’d really really like it if this were cleared up, I know I’m not the only one who’s been a little taken back by the rule and the countless UI sizing issues that keep getting brought up during each review.