Topic: Got a 22'' widescreen

[Pugnate]

And it kicks so much ass it isn't even funny. The problem is the lack of game support at 1680x1050. Stuff like Titan Quest, NWN2, Oblivion etc looks gorgeous but games like Rainbow Six Vegas, F.E.A.R., Fifa 07 don't support.

[Cobra951]

Psychonauts looks great at that res too.  The odd thing about PC widesceen is that it does not match HDTV proportions.  It's 16:10 rather than 16:9.  What monitor did you get?  I've been generally unhappy with the quality of 22" LCD monitors.

[scottws]

The problem is the lack of game support at 1680x1050. Stuff like Titan Quest, NWN2, Oblivion etc looks gorgeous but games like Rainbow Six Vegas, F.E.A.R., Fifa 07 don't support.

That worries me with my new monitor.  What can I expect when I play these games?  Is the image going to be stretched?  Are there going to be horizontal bars?  Is the image going to be blurry?

[Cobra951]

Not on the games which support the resolutions properly.  Oblivion seems to handle it perfectly.  The aspect is correct (e.g., the moon is a circle, not an ellipse) at 1024x768 (4:3), at 1680x1050 (16:10) and at 1360x768 (16:9).  I've tried it these 3 different ways on 3 different displays.  Psychonauts also handles it correctly.  Doom 3 does not.  4:3 only.  I imagine the console could be brought to bear here, though.  id usually allows lots of user modifications that way.  Tomb Raider: Legend has an aspect switch, either normal (4:3) or widescreen (16:9).  Neither is correct for your monitor, although 16:9 is close.

You'll have to try out each game to see how it handles things.  I'm sure all new games will be aspect-ratio aware.

Edit:  Blurriness.  LCD is fixed resolution, so any res other than native is a stretch performed by the monitor.  It's a notch down in quality.  How far depends on how well the monitor can perform the stretch.  I found it interesting that my video card offers the option to perform the stretch rather than letting the monitor do it.  But when I tried it, it didn't work.  Looked like an old TV out of H-sync.

[Pugnate]

That worries me with my new monitor.  What can I expect when I play these games?  Is the image going to be stretched?  Are there going to be horizontal bars?  Is the image going to be blurry?

This is where the advantage of an Nvidia card comes in. When you want to play a game that doesn't support widescreen just set nvidia to control the aspect ratio. So basically you will get black bars instead of stretching. So say you want to play at 1024x768. You can do that with black bars.

But it would be far more ideal to have games support widescreen. It is unbelievable how the big developers just don't give a damn about their buyers. Developers like EA and Ubi are really ticking me off.

[iPPi]

You can force FEAR to be widescreen... and I actually think they implemented widescreen support in one of their latest patches.

If they haven't, you can modify a settings.cfg file and make the game into 1650x1080.  That's what I played the entire game at.

It's amazing to play games in widescreen.  I love my 21" LCD.

Edit:  There are generally ways to make the game work in widescreen.  If I remember, Prey didn't support widescreen resolutions, but again, through a setting file, you can force the game to the widescreen resolution.

And yea, if it isn't the native resolution, than the image will be stretched and not look very good.  It's a shame, but in all honesty, more and more games are now supporting widescreen resolutions, so it shouldn't generally be a problem.

[iPPi]

What LCD did you get pug?

[Pugnate]

http://www.viewsonic.com.au/products/productspecs.php?id=264

The owner of lcd resource told me it is one of the best 22'' monitors out there. I really love it so far... the colors are just amazing. I should take some digi cam shots of Oblivion.

http://www.widescreengamingforum.com was recommended by PCG among others. I think Cobra may have mentioned it as well? Anyway I am giving it a shot.

I am slightly worried about something though, and need some advise.

Firstly the monitor would randomly turn off for a second and turn back on and the display message would suggest it was looking for the DVI connection.

This happened a lot, so I turned the system off, and while the cables were tight, I pushed them in further and screwed it even tighter. This was two hours ago and since then it hasn't done anything like that. Should I not be worried or should I take it back tomorrow?

Then there is another issue.

There are lots of preset options aside from standard like movies, gaming, text, etc.

Now when I have it set to standard, no worries, but when I switch to anything else the display flickers with fast scrolling or mouse motion. The flicker is basically the brightness going up and down with the cursor!

But when I leave it to standard, no problems! In fact when I manually copy the preset settings in standard I don't get any flickering.

The place I bought it from is nearly an hour away, so should I be worried about any of this?

edit:

Well when I set to gaming the brightness is at max and contrast is at 7/10, and the monitor flickers with any fast motion. So I went to standard and just copied those settings and absolutely no flickering.

Basically it is the same with all the presets. I have no freakin' clue why it is happening. But I am sure it is a software thing and not an actual problem with the monitor.

Should I go change it?

[iPPi]

Hmm I don't know about those presets.  That's very strange and I don't think it's normal.

My monitor (HP f2105), didn't have those presets (well maybe it did, but the standard was fine for everything).

Regarding the sudden loss of the signal, make sure that the connectors are clean and stuff.  Otherwise, I'm not too sure.

[Pugnate]

Yea I don't think it is normal at all. I don't really care to use them either, and the fact that it doesn't happen at standard even when the settings are copied suggest the monitor is OK. But I don't want this to be something small I ignored and to become a massive issue later.

God surfing on 22'' is just fantastic. This baby has great view angles and a fantastic response time. I just watched a bit of Farscape Season 4 and it looked gorgeous.

Also I tried the Vegas hack from that website and it displays the resolution seamlessly. That is quite awesome!

edit:

I have to mention how awesome it is to surf with such real estate. I had a few fears about the whole thing being too big, but it is just great. 22'' is the most you can go with the native rez being at 1680x1050. I'd love to go 24'' with something like the Dell 2407, but that features a native rez that would really require SLI.

Oblivion looks so beautiful, but even my 8800GTX is getting 30-50 fps with everything at full, unless I drop the rez. I think you really need SLI to game at a resolution higher than this, which is sad considering how inefficient SLI is.

What is interesting is how R6:Vegas is running like a dream at 1680x1050.

[iPPi]

I played Oblivion at 1680x1050 without much problems.  It did slow down a bit here and there, but I made sure to turn off "shadows on grass" and then Oblivion ran smoothly at that resolution.

[Pugnate]

I'll do that. Good idea.

[Cobra951]

This is where the advantage of an Nvidia card comes in. When you want to play a game that doesn't support widescreen just set nvidia to control the aspect ratio. So basically you will get black bars instead of stretching. So say you want to play at 1024x768. You can do that with black bars.

But it would be far more ideal to have games support widescreen. It is unbelievable how the big developers just don't give a damn about their buyers. Developers like EA and Ubi are really ticking me off.

My 23" Samsung TV allows setting 4:3 mode from the remote control.  I hate to have to use it, though.  But the fact is that I'm not using the PC to play games.  Demanding new games are out of the question, and old games are a mixed bag (plus I've already played them to death).

I can't believe that new PC games won't support what's quickly becoming the new mainstream aspect and resolution.  Are you saying EA and Ubisoft still cling to 4:3 only?

[Pugnate]

Yes because they could really give a rat's ass about their buyers. From that website I posted above it just takes very simple steps to implement the patch. Why the hell can't don't they do that in the game?

While I love R6:Vegas, it has many flaws and needs lots of work. Currently there are about 8 guys playing multiplayer because there are so many damn problems. It really upsets me. You should see the R6:Vegas forums... it is like a ghost town. People have stopped complaining and stopped playing.

edit:

BTW one of the first games ever to adopt widescreen was Need for Speed. If you remember my long post on the demise of the series, I talked about how the series back then had a classy look. The menus looked nice, the music was very European, the cars were showcased in the game museum by people who loved the exotics, and the game had everything including widescreen options.

This was back when Electronic Arts gave a damn about its buyers.

It is almost funny how the NFS series has gone from James Bond to XxX. Also it is amazing how so many years ago NFS was the innovator by introducing widescreen options back when the idea was fresh, and now when it is more of a standard they can't even give a damn.

[scottws]

This is where the advantage of an Nvidia card comes in. When you want to play a game that doesn't support widescreen just set nvidia to control the aspect ratio. So basically you will get black bars instead of stretching. So say you want to play at 1024x768. You can do that with black bars.

Yeah, I've heard that some monitors support aspect ratio scaling and some videocards do too.  If you have your videocard do it, does it impact performance in any significant way, or is it fairly negligible?

What is interesting is how R6:Vegas is running like a dream at 1680x1050.

Yeah, it seems that the Unreal 3 engine - while amazing looking - isn't really the resource beast that you'd think it would be.

[Pugnate]

I have a question about movies. Everything I've tried to watch has black bars up and below... so wtf? I thought the advantage of a widescreen monitor was that I could watch a widescreen move in its full glory. Some help please. 

[scottws]

Because industries are fucking retarded, that's why.  First of all, widescreen monitors are almost always 16:10 aspect ratio, not 16:9 like widescreen TVs (this means they are taller and narrower than their TV counterparts).  Secondly, I think the only widescreen movies I've ever heard of that were released in 16:9 aspect ratio format are porns movies.

I never understood how 16:9 became the norm for TVs.  From Jennie's DVD collection:

The Sixth Sense:  1.85:1
The One:  2.40:1
Brokedown Palace:  2.35:1

That is from the first five I looked at.  The other two - Batman Begins and The Matrix: Revolutions - did not list the aspect ratio.

Edit:  Some others:

Men of Honor: 2.35:1
Evolution:  1.85:1
The Illusionist:  1.78:1

I found several more where the aspect ratio wasn't shown.

[Cobra951]

I thought I explained that above.  PC widescreen means 16:10 aspect ratio.  HDTV is 16:9, which means all programming intended for HDTV or 16:9 DVD display needs those black bars (though they should be much slimmer than on 4:3 screens).

Edit:  Scott beat me to it, and did a better job explaining too.

Edit 2:  For comparison to Scott's numbers, 16:9 = 1.778:1

Edit 3:  At some point, making screens slimmer gets counterproductive.  You lose more and more area for a given width (or even diagonal).  Plus it may have something to do with widescreen CRTs, where the move to HDTV began.  Bet you can't make those Panavision spec very easily.

[iPPi]

Yea, the widescreen aspect is not a standardized format, so you get a mess of different aspect ratios that are used by the industry, while the PC monitor is 16:10, so you're gonna get black bars no matter what you do.  Same goes with a 16:9 TV, you'll still get black bars.

Edit:  On the other hand, Rainbow Six: Vegas works fine on the 360, and has a pretty big community there.  It's too bad that there are so many problems on the PC version.

[Pugnate]

Well first the good news. I swapped he DVIs on the video card and suddenly I am not getting those weird flicker issues on the presets. It doesn't make sense why, and I wonder if I should still take it back.

Secondly I understand the whole 16:9 and 16:10 thing, but I just tried to watch Phantom Menace. Now the black bars up and below are pretty huge, unless I let it pan and scan, but then it gets really ugly.

But a difference between 16:9 and 16:10 shouldn't be that huge right? It should be a slight difference, but with PowerDVD 6 I am getting massive black bars.

[scottws]

Depends on the movie, I guess.  Some old movies have really, really wide aspect ratios.  I realize that The Phantom Menace is not one of them, but it is possible it is a movie with a wide aspect.

[iPPi]

You must understand that while monitors and TVs are 16:10 and 16:9 respectively, the movie is not. 

Scott posted it above, most movies are like 1.85:1, 2.35:1, etc... and those do not fit the monitor screen perfectly, and will have black bars.  16:10 = 1.6 ratio.  Star Wars, is filmed in 2.35:1, which is a 2.35 ratio.  You're gonna get massive black bars.  No way around it.

[scottws]

When I was thinking "old movies," the one that came to mind is Ben Hur.  Well I looked.  It has a massively wide 2.76:1 aspect ratio.  Wow.

[Pugnate]

Yea you are right about the Star Wars. I just tried Spider-Man 2 and it looks gorgeous. I just don't mean the aspect, but the colors look gorgeous and the picture is sharp. Other DVDs look weird and grainy. I don't get.

[scottws]

Some of it is mastering, some of it is the film (or lack therof).  In Star Wars' case, I think it was filmed using digital cameras.  At the time (and maybe even persisting today), digital movie cameras didn't come anywhere close to the "resolution" (film doesn't have a true resolution) of standard optical film.

[iPPi]

Episode I wasn't filmed digitally.

II and III were, and then they were digitally mastered and stuff... made it look beautiful.

[Pugnate]

I tried Batman and again I have the black bars, so I guess there isn't much of a point in having a widescreen monitor for movies? For pictures and games this thing is gorgeous though.

[Ghandi]

Sexy. 

[Pugnate]

It is. I paid $130 to go up from the VX922 to this. They took the VX922 back and stuff. Made me happy.

[Pugnate]

Are you at 1680x1050?

http://www.endeffect.com/tEEmp/fracture(ws)_1680.jpg

[Cobra951]

Yea you are right about the Star Wars. I just tried Spider-Man 2 and it looks gorgeous. I just don't mean the aspect, but the colors look gorgeous and the picture is sharp. Other DVDs look weird and grainy. I don't get.

Welcome to the ups and downs of LCDs.  You'll discover some artifacts and colorations which will feel unnatural to you.  CRTs have over 80 years of R&D behind them.  You view CRT pixels directly, rather than looking at a light shining from behind them.  CRTs have the best black levels of any display tech, and LCDs have the worst.  Bad blacks means bad dark colors as well.  There will be a tendency to color band or exaggerate digital-compression artifacts in dark areas.  CRTs respond much quicker than the best LCDs.  If the software refreshes in sync with the hardware frame rate, you get perfectly fluid motion, with everything in sharp focus as it moves across the screen.  LCDs will always give you some blur on motion, regardless of how good the frame rate is.  (60 is the usual limit, since there is no need for an overly high refresh rate to prevent flicker.  LCDs wouldn't flicker even with a 1-Hz refresh rate.)  Conversely, you will never have a problem with focus, convergence or geometry on LCDs.  These are the only advantages to discrete-pixel displays, really.

Sure there's a good reason to use widescreen monitors for even wider movies.  That minimizes the size of the black bars, and maximizes the area of the screen dedicated to the picture.  Imagine the full Ben Hur frame on a 4:3 TV.  It's ribbon-vision.  (The good old 70mm film.)

[Pugnate]

That's why I wanted Scottws's LCD. Unfortunately they didn't have that here.

Good point on the widescreen movies Cobry. Can I call you that?

edit:

Just looking at images is amazing. I was on a VX922 before this that had a 2ms response time, but was average for multimedia. This makes images look like they are under water.

[iPPi]

Yea while you still see the black bars in a widescreen monitor, you still get to see less black bars than compared to a 4:3 TV.  I used to have a 4:3 48" projection, and watching movies ... the screen was like over 2/3 black bars unless I force the image to anamorphic, but then people were skinnier (marginally).

Now, with a 16:9 or 16:10 screen, you can watch the video from its source without feel like watching a 'ribbon' as cobra says.

[Cobra951]

I got a bunch of wallpapers here when I first got my 22" monitor.  I think they're all 16:10.  A lot of them are 1920x1200, but Photoshop does a fine job of scaling them down to 1680x1050.

Don't let the girlies scare you.  There's plenty of more neutral ones.   

[iPPi]

I got my 1680x1050 wallpapers from DeviantArt.  Just type 1680x1050 into the search pane.

[scottws]

I just searched for "widescreen wallpaper."  I think the first link that came up was 100% free and almost everything was available in 1680x1050 as well as other resolutions.  I downloaded 31MB of JPGs for potential use on the new system.

[Pugnate]

Cobra good link. Also I don't see how anyone could be scared of girlies haha. I downloaded this instantly:

http://wallpapers.jurko.net/widescreen/pic/190/

Here is something for you lot:

http://cc.1asphost.com/Pugnate/wallpaper_blood_magic_01_1680x1050.jpg

http://cc.1asphost.com/Pugnate/wallpaper_cgwallpaperscom_09_1680x1050.jpg

[Pugnate]

I just searched for "widescreen wallpaper."  I think the first link that came up was 100% free and almost everything was available in 1680x1050 as well as other resolutions.  I downloaded 31MB of JPGs for potential use on the new system.

I followed your search on google and the first site was this:

http://interfacelift.com/wallpaper/index.php?sort=date&w=1680&h=1050

That's pretty good as well. The one Cobra posted came second, and first if you type wallpapers.

I've always been weary of wallpapers on search engines because of spyware, but these sites seem quite legit.