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According to Longman Dictionary, painfully means :
1- very – used to emphasize a bad or harmful quality that someone or something has
2- needing a lot of effort
This is the text:
"...and his college basketball days are far enough behind him that his chest muscles have turned into saggy manboobs that were painfully obvious through his freebie dot-com polo shirts." - Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
Is it "very obvious to find out" or "it needs a lot effort to find it out"?
The term painfully here takes on the meaning of very as you have it in your definition 1, except that the 'harm' is usually one of embarrassment.
If a problem is painfully clear/obvious, etc, it is embarrassing because it is so clear/obvious, etc: It was painfully obvious that she didn't like him. - Cambridge Dictionary
In that context "painfully" means the same as "painful" in "painful to see" although "obvious" implies it is difficult to avoid seeing.
