Fascinating - shape consistency is definitely the top priority as the intended use case for the typeface here is headline/titling rather than extended text.
I seem to still have a lot of inconsistency in letter spacing at small sizes and assumed it was a lack of vertical hinting that was allowing the characters to “slide” back and forth. For example, there are instances where the space between letter pairs is different enough that the pair begins crashing into one another in one case while a clean separation is preserved in other cases. (Screenshot below - this is from InDesign 10pt type viewed from 125% then zoomed in to show differences)
I also find letters like Y and T, which should be symmetrical, are rendered differently where the stem is offset to the right or left in a noticeable and undesirable way.
Some/all of these issues may be the result of screen resolution (again, this is not on a Mac retina display), but is there any way to reduce the severity of these issues or make the modifications applied in the rendering process more consistent? From your responses, it seems like removing as many hints as possible may actually help?
My theory was that applying hints manually would at least make the modifications more consistent but maybe it causes more problems than it helps… The main goal is consistency, if the letters begin to crash into one another or are altered significantly at a certain size that’s OK, I’d just prefer those changes to be the same for the shape/outlines of the same letter or spacing between the same pair of letters.
Thanks again for your help!