Well everyone, here is my followup to my earlier CRT vs. LCD post after a week of fairly exhaustive tests focusing on UT2004 with airjrdn's special UT2004 settings:
At first I couldn't get the air's exact user.ini settings files going so I did some manual adjustments via the GUI mouse settings:
I went in and set the mouse via UT2004's menus from the default of 3.00 to 1.25 and I agree the slower response does help tremendously with precision aiming. Will take awhile to get used to though.
For good measure, I hooked up the CRT and gamed again to have a reference point.
Man for 2 hours I went back and forth and back and forth. (and back and forth and back and forth)
I will have to admit that the experience of the CRT feels 'smoother' than the LCD. But I can't in fairness call the effect blurring. Sure, there is a little more 'blur' on the LCD but I honestly think the 'strobing' of the CRT is causing me to perceive more distinct frames.
This makes sense now that I think about it. It's something I studied in film school called 'persistence of vision'. Basically, it works like this. You could have a reel of film running through a projector with all black frames but one of them is a picture of something. Almost anyone watching it will recognize what was in that frame and be able to answer questions about it later. Now, take a regular movie scene, and replace one random frame with the same image. Almost none of the test subjects could remember what was in that frame. A few didn't even notice or remember the 'flash frame' of picture change as it went by.
The concept of persistence of vision is this:
The brain remembers what it last saw until something else replaces it. In the case of a movie or even more so, a high frame rate game, this is a very fast process. But persistence of vision is why you have stories of soldiers in combat who can still vividly see a grenade or an rpg, frozen in mid-air, the moment before it exploded and they lost conciousness. Something that seemingly happened too fast to perceive, and yet there it is, like a snapshot, in their memory, clear as a bell.
So what does this have to do with monitors? Well, I think the 'strobing' of the CRT is serving like a 'blanking' for the eye, causing the brain to only remember what it has last seen, whereas in the case of the LCD, there is no strobe and the eye actually sees the transition between frames.
However, the LCD is so much brighter, crisper and has much richer color saturation and that is ultimately where I have decided to rest. Tough call though. For now I've got the dual-head thing going with both the CRT and the LCD (CRT left and LCD right) but ultimately I'm going to get another 2001FP next time they a) go on sale and b) I have about $800 burning a hole in my pocket. I honestly believe the more time you spend on an LCD the 'better' it gets. At this point I can't bring myself to tolerate the substantially darker, softer and 'anemic' color of the CRT. Weird huh?
Later I got a detailed e-mail from airjrdn with how to edit my own user.ini file with his settings (since his ini file somehow would crash UT when installed in my game directory--must have been a machine-specific thing that was different between us).
1. Completely removed the user.ini file from my ut 2004 system folder 2. Launch the game and let it get re-created 3. Exit the game and look for the Engine.PlayerInput section in the user.ini file 4. Finding none, I simply pasted air's settings into it.
Launched game and it came up with the proper (airjrdn) settings.
Played them. Really like them!
Went back and forth on LCD and CRT. Solidly agree that the CRT is 'smoother/cleaner' on this game with these settings, and that these settings bring out a greater difference between the two monitors.
My game improved with these settings. But I tried to see if I actually scored better with the CRT vs. the LCD and it was too close to call.
However, I now have a much better understanding of why you air is so strongly in the CRT camp. Having said that, I still love the LCD. I also feel that UT2004, much more than any other games including FarCry and Battlefield 1942/Vietnam, Call of Duty, MOH and others brings out the biggest discrepancy due to it's breakneck speed of running/jumping/flipping/shooting etc. If you play these games you should be very happy on an LCD. Heck, I manage to be happy even playing UT2004 on an LCD but what I'm saying is, it brings out the differences and the combination of this very fast multi-dimensional hyperactive game and air's special settings (which actually slow the movement/aiming and therefore exacerbate the 'blurring'), I can perceive a CRT benefit.
On another gaming front: I decided to try Ground Control II, which is more of a tactical RTS than anything, normally I like shooters.... I Run it at 1600x1200 on the Dell and MAN!!! This game is so pretty to look at! It's a really interesting game...I'm playing through the campaign this week. Graphically, I'm not sure I've seen a prettier game. Most of the time you stay zoomed out looking at the whole battlefield but man, you can zoom/fly down to the individual troop/vehicle level and take in all this lush detail, surround sound, even tire tracks and footprints immaculately textured, lit and otherwise incredibly designed. It's really amazing.
Anyway, this has been a really interesting exercise...and for the record, I do agree with you that the CRT provides the 'smoothest' gaming experience. Whether that really makes a big difference in gaming performance is probably more a matter of conditioning than anything though.
Airjrdn swears it makes a difference in his game, and I believe him, for where he is at with the whole display thing. For someone like me, I seem to be able to rock on with the LCD even though I can appreciate the differences. The CRT will remain here, in dual-head config side-by-side with my Dell 2001FP LCD for the time being...at least until the 2001FP goes on sale again and it happens to coincide with some extra dough.
So there you have it!
All the best,
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Carey Dissmore
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