Widescreen LCD questions

[thecoffeeguy]

Was looking at some of the 20" widescreen monitors available right now and they are interesting.

How are they for gaming? Any good? Bad?

Just curious.

tcg

 

[darXoul]

In games that do support widescreen properly (+ horizontal FoV), wide monitors rock. You see more, you have a broader perspective, so to speak. Many games have to be forced to use wide aspect resolutions though, and even then no one can guarantee that a) it will work, b) it will work properly, i.e. + horizontal and not stretched or - vertical. If the game doesn't support ws, you're way better off with a 1920*1200 monitor (23/24") since in such a case, you can simply go down to 1600*1200 without image scaling and play with black vertical bars. On 20" widescreens, the resolution is 1680*1050 so you can either choose the squarish 5:4 1280*1024 resolution and play with narrow horizontal bars beside the vertical ones, or (if available), switch to 1280*960 and play with much wider horizontal bars. The problem is that a 20" wide aspect monitor is already pretty small vertically (about the size of a 19" CRT) so sacrificing some vertical size means a rather unimpressive image size. IMHO - if widescreen, then 23-24" and 1920*1200. OTOH, the NEC W(M)GX2 is a great gaming monitor, despite its lack of height adjustment, size/resolution and the glossy coating.

 

[thepd7]

Originally posted by: darXoul
In games that do support widescreen properly (+ horizontal FoV), wide monitors rock. You see more, you have a broader perspective, so to speak. Many games have to be forced to use wide aspect resolutions though, and even then no one can guarantee that a) it will work, b) it will work properly, i.e. + horizontal and not stretched or - vertical. If the game doesn't support ws, you're way better off with a 1920*1200 monitor (23/24") since in such a case, you can simply go down to 1600*1200 without image scaling and play with black vertical bars. On 20" widescreens, the resolution is 1680*1050 so you can either choose the squarish 5:4 1280*1024 resolution and play with narrow horizontal bars beside the vertical ones, or (if available), switch to 1280*960 and play with much wider horizontal bars. The problem is that a 20" wide aspect monitor is already pretty small vertically (about the size of a 19" CRT) so sacrificing some vertical size means a rather unimpressive image size. IMHO - if widescreen, then 23-24" and 1920*1200. OTOH, the NEC W(M)GX2 is a great gaming monitor, despite its lack of height adjustment, size/resolution and the glossy coating.

Good advice, thanks I have been wondering the same thing but I never asked cause I don't have the cash to upgrade yet.

 

[thecoffeeguy]

Thanks for the tips.

Are moer and more games being developed to support widescreen?
I'm assuming older games don'ts upport widescreen?

 

[Navid]

Even if an old game does not support wide screen, you can go here and see how it can be forced to support it.

I have a 21" wide screen now and am playing Halo, which is an old game. It is great after setting it up right.

My monitor vertically is smaller than a regular 19" LCD. So, as mentioned before, a 20" wide screen LCD would be extremely small.

 

[darXoul]

Originally posted by: thecoffeeguy
Are moer and more games being developed to support widescreen?
I'm assuming older games don'ts upport widescreen?

No rules here. There are some old games (like the ancient MDK 2) with great native ws support. There are also new, top games (e.g. 3 last year's best shooters except for CoD2) without native ws support. There are also games that do have native support but it sucks, e.g. GTA: SA.

We can expect that more and more games (primarily FPS and [MMO]RPG) will support ws but right now, even if the widescreengamingforum.com is a great source of "solutions", just have a look at the master game list - rather unimpressive. Widescreen should be the future though.


BTW, I wouldn't say that a 20" ws monitor is "extremely small". It's about the size of a 19" CRT vertically. Yes, it's smaller than 19" LCDs but these buggers are almost square (5:4 aspect) so they are very "tall" with their huge pixel pitch of 0.294 mm and 1024 pixels vertically.

http://www.prad.de/board/attachment.php?attachmentid=4602

Here you have a direct 20" 16:10 vs. 19" 5:4 comparison.

 

[Fistandantilis]

I thought I played the demo for COD2 in 1680x1050?, Thats what I thought...

 

[darXoul]

Originally posted by: Fistandantilis
I thought I played the demo for COD2 in 1680x1050?, Thats what I thought...

I said "top 3 shooters, except for CoD2, do not support widescreen natively". In other words, CoD2 is the only 2005 shooter that does support ws. I thought it was pretty clear what I wrote...

 

[pulsedrive]

I don't know WHY everyone keeps complaining about how "small" 20" WS LCDs are... I just don't get it. Yes, they are about a half inch shorter than a 19" LCD, but they actually have MORE pixels. They are also a good deal wider than the 19" So you end up with a LOT more real estate on the monitor. I personally have the Dell 2005 and LOVE it. Never had one complaint about it really. I moved up from an 19" LG and have never looked back. Most newer games are WS supported, and even if they don't have the options in the video menu, some of them do support it natively, but just have to make manual adjustments to the config file, such as Quake 4.

 

[jlbenedict]

Originally posted by: pulsedrive
I don't know WHY everyone keeps complaining about how "small" 20" WS LCDs are... I just don't get it. Yes, they are about a half inch shorter than a 19" LCD, but they actually have MORE pixels. They are also a good deal wider than the 19" So you end up with a LOT more real estate on the monitor. I personally have the Dell 2005 and LOVE it. Never had one complaint about it really. I moved up from an 19" LG and have never looked back. Most newer games are WS supported, and even if they don't have the options in the video menu, some of them do support it natively, but just have to make manual adjustments to the config file, such as Quake 4.

I just got my 2005FPW setup last week. I'm a LCD convert.. just coming from a 19" Mitsubishi CRT. Vertically, it might be 1/2" difference.... I do not notice it. Other than that, it seems like this 2005FPW is huge compared to a 19" CRT. I love it.. I'm glad I made the switch (no screwed up pixels helps!)

 

[Navid]

Originally posted by: pulsedrive
I don't know WHY everyone keeps complaining about how "small" 20" WS LCDs are...

I have a 21" WS Gateway (not a 20"). Its height is about 1" less than a regular 19" LCD. 20" will be even smaller. I use it for reading emails and web pages too. I don't just play games on it. If it was any shorter, I wouldn't like it since I would have to keep scrolling. I also don't want to make the fonts any smaller in order to fit more on the page since the fonts are already small. So, for me, a 20" wide screen would be too small.
For someone else, it may not be. I drink tea, you drink coffee! Not a big deal.

 

[Stumben2]

Originally posted by: pulsedrive
I don't know WHY everyone keeps complaining about how "small" 20" WS LCDs are... I just don't get it. Yes, they are about a half inch shorter than a 19" LCD, but they actually have MORE pixels. They are also a good deal wider than the 19" So you end up with a LOT more real estate on the monitor. I personally have the Dell 2005 and LOVE it. Never had one complaint about it really. I moved up from an 19" LG and have never looked back. Most newer games are WS supported, and even if they don't have the options in the video menu, some of them do support it natively, but just have to make manual adjustments to the config file, such as Quake 4.

Heheh I agree totally man. To think I have seen people refere to 20'' widescreen as small? Man... I think they are friggin sweet and MY old crt is 21''. I feel like 20'' ws is actually much bigger - and looks much better. And thats before even getting my new NEC 20''.. that might be arriving today

In my opinion if I want to look at a big screen, I will sit on my couch and watch my HDTV.

Sitting 2 feet away from a monitor? I think 20'' or 21'' is where its at. Any larger and well now you better take out a mortgage to afford hardware to support those resolutions.

19'', 20'' widescreen, 21'' is friggin sweet. Any bigger, In my humble opinion is just overkill. For gaming. If your into some serious professional graphic/3d design... well then I can see it.

Im not saying that one of those huge Widescreens doesnt look sweet when you have the hardware to run a game like F.E.A.R in that res. Im saying 5 months from now, when the next wave of games hit, youll have fun taking out a loan to spend $1500 on upgrading your computer over and over to run games on it....UNLESS You want to crank down the res which defeats the purpose of a monitor that big anyway.

 

[darXoul]

Originally posted by: pulsedrive
I don't know WHY everyone keeps complaining about how "small" 20" WS LCDs are...

OK, 20" widescreen users - if a game doesn't support ws properly (there are tons of such games that I like and play, like EA Sports games, for instance), what do you do? You go down to 1280*1024 and play with thin horizontal black bars, right? OK, if the game doesn't support this resolution (some games only support 4:3 aspect resolutions, like e.g. Freelancer - a game I still occasionally play), what do you do? Play in 1280*960, correct? Well then, in this case you have black horizontal bars that are 45 pixels wide (each). This means ca. 12 mm shorter screen both top and bottom. Almost one inch total vertical image size reduction.

At this point, the vertical image size is just 247.7 mm, compared to around 274 mm on a 19" CRT. This is small in my book.

See what I mean?

In its native resolution, a 20" widescreen is far from being small, of course.

 

[Whitedog]

My opinion would be Wide Screen Resolution for Games would suck (or for a more appropriate term, be "less desirable").

You may think 1600x1050 (or whatever) is cool... but how much cooler is 1600x1200? Lots!

Most of the time, you have your utility's in either the upper or lower portion of your screen. When you chop that off, you have to have them more in your "FOV".

I think when it comes to gaming, pixel count rules, aspect ration does not.

Wide-Screen and Movies is a different ball park..

 

[Whitedog]

Originally posted by: Stumben2
19'', 20'' widescreen, 21'' is friggin sweet. Any bigger, In my humble opinion is just overkill. For gaming.

Sometimes I play on my 120" screen (video projector). The res may be less than desirable (XGA), but the effect us AWESOME!

There is no such thing as overkill when it comes to screen size. The bigger, the better.

 

[darXoul]

I think it intrigues me so much that I'll open a separate thread for 20" ws users telling how they cope with no widescreen support.