X11 GUI low quality display when using server

Question

Why is Emacs X11's display such bad quality, and how do I fix it?

When I use Emacs Cocoa locally, I get a good visuals. But when I use the X11 forwarding on my department's server, the quality is horrendous. How do I fix the X11 version?

I'm doing this all on Mac OSX (El Capitan). Here are some screenshots of the difference between the local, cocoa version and the X11 version:

Emacs Cocoa locally:

Emacs X11 server version:

Answer 1

It seems that X defaults to a font that looks bad, or at least just has bad size. Try customizing fonts to make them look good (Options > Set Default font... from menu bar.)

You add something like this in your config file to change fonts only when you're using X:

(when (eq window-system 'x)
  ;; your custom font settings here
  )