Request for Anandtech staff

[NurseMSIC]

As a widescreen gamer myself, i wondered what your thoughts are on making widescreen gaming more of a focus when doing system reviews.
It is increasingly common for systems / games to be tested at higher and higher 4:3 resolutions, which I applaud, but i believe that widescreen is the future (see HDTVs for example, more and more people will be using these).

Any thoughts??

 

[xit2nowhere]

Would be somewhat useless since this is not what the majority of users have atm, imho.

 

[Czar]

its what majority of users will have

widescreen lcd's from dell are extremely popular

 

[Drakkon]

but its like developing a web page at 1600x1200...sure its the wave of the future but its not what people really use. Why develope things at a resolution where your user base, and thus your sales, would be signifigantly be reduced?

 

[Schadenfroh]

Many games do not run at widescreen resolutions, maybe that is the reason AT does not test at those resolutions.

Look at EA.

 

[Czar]

Originally posted by: Drakkon
but its like developing a web page at 1600x1200...sure its the wave of the future but its not what people really use. Why develope things at a resolution where your user base, and thus your sales, would be signifigantly be reduced?

same that many games now are designed for high end and very expensive graphics cards and cpu's, not many people have those

yet the really fast gpu's and cpu's are the standard, same should apply for the displays

 

[NurseMSIC]

Just to disclose an interest, I am posting the same topic on Hexus.net, and have also suggested there that just because most people don't have a widescreen based system now, doesnt mean that it's not of interest nor that people are not considering it for the future.
Hence why i suggest making it a bit more of a focus (not the ONLY thing by any means) in reviews.
Cheers

PS The other point, about 'developing for a non-existant user base', is also that
a) people are interested
b) there is a developing user base
c) you don't need to develop JUST for widescreen, i want games developers to be thinking about all resolutions when making games, not just traditional ones.

 

[Anubis]

i dont think i will ever own a widescreen monitor, mainily because i see no point is spending $$$ on them when you can get nice big CRTs for like 1/3 of the price

 

[homercles337]

Personally, i would like to see widescreen included. Especially since i just picked up the new 21" gateway (running at 1680x1050. ).

 

[TheUnk]

Widescreen is the future. Embrace it.

I game more on my 360 now cause it supports my big widescreen HDTV, which even though I can hook my PC up to it via DVI, it sucks cause very few PC games run 16:9 resolutions.

 

[Fingolfin269]

Originally posted by: TheUnk
Widescreen is the future. Embrace it.

I game more on my 360 now cause it supports my big widescreen HDTV, which even though I can hook my PC up to it via DVI, it sucks cause very few PC games run 16:9 resolutions.

It sucks because you don't want to be an even bigger nerd by hooking up a PC in your living room.

At least that's my reason for saying 360 > PC when it come to hdtv gaming.

 

[Kyteland]

I've been told that this is a good site for all things widescreen gaming related: http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/

 

[notfred]

Widescreen for the average PC is stupid. 90% of average PC use is for webpages and word documents, which are laid out vertically. The average PC should have a tall, skinny monitor, shaped like a peice of 8.5x11" paper.

 

[DefRef]

My 2405 was just delivered (and I'm at work) so between its 1920x1200 rez and my widesceen laptop's 1680x1050 rez, I'm all about teh widz0rsr33nZ action, yo!

 

[TheUnk]

Originally posted by: notfred
Widescreen for the average PC is stupid. 90% of average PC use is for webpages and word documents, which are laid out vertically. The average PC should have a tall, skinny monitor, shaped like a peice of 8.5x11" paper.

Exactly! Because as humans we have peripheral vision, and making use of that, would just be insane! Plus, nobody in their right mind would ever want to open 2 documents at once and - get this insanity - view them both at the same time! It's crazy I tells ya!

 

[Kyteland]

Originally posted by: notfred
Widescreen for the average PC is stupid. 90% of average PC use is for webpages and word documents, which are laid out vertically. The average PC should have a tall, skinny monitor, shaped like a peice of 8.5x11" paper.

I have dual 2001FPs on my development machine. They are both rotated 90 degrees. It's the best coding setup I've ever used. I love it.

Originally posted by: TheUnk
Exactly! Because as humans we have peripheral vision, and making use of that, would just be insane! Plus, nobody in their right mind would ever want to open 2 documents at once and - get this insanity - view them both at the same time! It's crazy I tells ya!

That's what dual monitors are for, silly.

 

[TheUnk]

Originally posted by: Kyteland
That's what dual monitors are for, silly.

oh, of course, much more practical. I am silly.

 

[xtknight]

I'm definitely fine with that as long as they don't remove any 4:3/5:4 resolution tests.

 

[homercles337]

Originally posted by: notfred
Widescreen for the average PC is stupid. 90% of average PC use is for webpages and word documents, which are laid out vertically. The average PC should have a tall, skinny monitor, shaped like a peice of 8.5x11" paper.

Youre an idiot. Why cant one have TWO pages next to one another?!

 

[SynthDude2001]

Maybe they should run a poll for a while to get a concrete idea of what resolutions/aspect ratios that their readers are using...I'm sure that there are a ton of us who are using widescreen LCD's at this point, most commonly the Dell 2005FPW (what I have) and 2405FPW.

As it is now I just look at the 1600x1200 results and assume my resolution's results will be near that, but it still would be nice to include widescreen resolutions since the number of users thereof is clearly growing.

 

[NurseMSIC]

Originally posted by: SynthDude2001
Maybe they should run a poll for a while to get a concrete idea of what resolutions/aspect ratios that their readers are using...I'm sure that there are a ton of us who are using widescreen LCD's at this point, most commonly the Dell 2005FPW (what I have) and 2405FPW.

As it is now I just look at the 1600x1200 results and assume my resolution's results will be near that, but it still would be nice to include widescreen resolutions since the number of users thereof is clearly growing.

Exactly my point, for future reviews to be inclusive, not excuding anyone (even the 4:3 and 5:4 dinosaurs )

 

[Busithoth]

Originally posted by: notfred
Widescreen for the average PC is stupid. 90% of average PC use is for webpages and word documents, which are laid out vertically. The average PC should have a tall, skinny monitor, shaped like a peice of 8.5x11" paper.

rotate your 2405 (2005) and you'd stop such arguments, realizing you're advocating getting a widescreen monitor. I love rotating while looking at portrait docs, esp. on the 2405.

 

[Anubis]

Originally posted by: NurseMSIC

Originally posted by: SynthDude2001
Maybe they should run a poll for a while to get a concrete idea of what resolutions/aspect ratios that their readers are using...I'm sure that there are a ton of us who are using widescreen LCD's at this point, most commonly the Dell 2005FPW (what I have) and 2405FPW.

As it is now I just look at the 1600x1200 results and assume my resolution's results will be near that, but it still would be nice to include widescreen resolutions since the number of users thereof is clearly growing.

Exactly my point, for future reviews to be inclusive, not excuding anyone (even the 4:3 and 5:4 dinosaurs )

dinosaurs????
dmn near all LCDs under 20in have a navite res 1280*1024 which is 5:4

 

[Looney]

Originally posted by: NurseMSIC
As a widescreen gamer myself, i wondered what your thoughts are on making widescreen gaming more of a focus when doing system reviews.
It is increasingly common for systems / games to be tested at higher and higher 4:3 resolutions, which I applaud, but i believe that widescreen is the future (see HDTVs for example, more and more people will be using these).

Any thoughts??

I don't see what the big deal is... it's easy to extrapolate how performance will be from the articles as long as they also test in 1600x1200.

 

[cKGunslinger]

Originally posted by: Anubis

Originally posted by: NurseMSIC

Originally posted by: SynthDude2001
Maybe they should run a poll for a while to get a concrete idea of what resolutions/aspect ratios that their readers are using...I'm sure that there are a ton of us who are using widescreen LCD's at this point, most commonly the Dell 2005FPW (what I have) and 2405FPW.

As it is now I just look at the 1600x1200 results and assume my resolution's results will be near that, but it still would be nice to include widescreen resolutions since the number of users thereof is clearly growing.

Exactly my point, for future reviews to be inclusive, not excuding anyone (even the 4:3 and 5:4 dinosaurs )

dinosaurs????
dmn near all LCDs under 20in have a navite res 1280*960 which is 5:4

1280x960 is 4:3. Most 17" & 19" LCS have a res of 1280x1024, which is 5:4.