Text scale in World Space is really awkward (4.6.0.f1)

Unity Engine
1

Overlay text seems to be easy to do, but put a canvas in the world, and the numbers seem really weird.

I have a small graphic 3 units wide, and I made the canvas match it in size. But when I add text, I can basically only fit about 1 letter per unit, with the font size set to 1!

It seems like the only answer is to change the scale of the Text’s RectTransform, but that is not very convenient because instead of changing font size (as you’d normally expect) I’m having to scale everything AND take account of the font size.

On top of this, I couldn’t even see the text for ages - turns out that the Canvas Scaler can set the ‘Dynamic Pixels Per Unit’ to a default of zero. Changing that to a positive number made it visible.

It seems like there should be a much more intuitive way to set the font size, especially since we have to balance 3 different values (dynamic pixels per unit, text scale, font size) against each other and against the camera distance.

I think what I’d prefer to see is a floating point value saying how large an ‘Em’ unit should be, in Unity units. The dynamic pixels per unit value would probably still have to exist, but font size would become proportional to that and no scaling would be needed.

2

You have to remember Text is still rendered using the old system, with all its quirks.

The best answer with Text is to make your components larger to allow later text, then scale the GO down to fit on the screen where you want it. Trial and error until the text system is replaced.

The other option is to use an asset like TextMeshPro which uses other methods to handle text better :smile:

3

Well, I suppose it’s good to know that there’s no real ‘solution’! Hopefully they’ll think about this when they create the new system because right now it’s too complex.

I guess the easiest thing is to use trial-and-error to get one piece of text looking ok, then duplicate that and edit it as necessary…

The UI scale issue is pretty weird across the board really, not just when it comes to text. If I have a full-screen UI it appears massive compared to anything else that will be on the screen which makes editing awkward.