Getting the panels to look just as good no matter what font and font size the user choose is close to impossible. As you say NI does not look like they have payed it much attention either; even the startup menu of LV get's cluttered if the font size or type is "wrong".
The best option if you want to optimize things for all resolutions without having different VIs is probably to not use the application font. Use a specific font and size and design everything to function relatively well on both low and high resolution (in other words; a bit too big on low, a bit small on high...). By setting the default font to something else in the LV options you can avoid having to change the font during development. Personally I use the application fonts, but fix the font and font size using the appFont,dialogFont and systemFont keys in the .ini file of the applications. The following keys in the .ini file e.g. will fix the font to Tahoma at size 13: appFont=""Tahoma" 13" dialogFont=""Tahoma" 13" systemFont=""Tahoma" 13"
