Widescreen

Just bought myself a 22" widescreen monitor.

Makes a difference doesn't it ;-) I can see why people want widescreen support in games now.

Yeah, I love the wide aspect, really handy for visual studio dev work too as you don't have to have all the side windows flying in and out and you still have a decent amout of room for typing code in!

All the stuff I do now forces wide screen 16:10 ratio, I just letterbox 4:3 now.

sometimes I would like the extra 'height' that a 4:3 gave you. Mainly in 3D animating packages.

boomboom, I am sure that the hardware industry recommends buying a bigger screen to get that extra height. ;-)

I also bought 24" widescreen about week ago.

You might find this site interesting. http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

some of the images on their gallery didnt give extra to the sides but took from the top and bottom

kinda like how my nan argued with my dad about her old movies in pan and scan vs the new to vhs widescreen editions
she thought they cut the tops and bottoms off but dad said they didnt and wanted to show the magnificent seven at a certain point in each film and see that you got more of em on screen than the tv version

and iir return of the jedi zoomed in on the frog thing outside jabba's palace cos iir on the widescreen edition hes barely visible

Those really hi-res widescreens are good as they have the Y-Res to be comfortable. However standard laptop widescreen sucks and is horrible for programming and any kind of document creation.

On (standard) laptops the usual optimum screen sizes are 1280x800(WS) and 1280x1024(Non WS).
In other words you are missing out on a whopping 1280x224 pixels of screen!

Bring back proper square laptops i say!, e-nuf of these annoying oblongs and save WS for the tellies & "high-enough-res" monitors/laptops only. :(

Mine's 1680 x 1050

Nice :)

Anything less than X*1024 for a computer screen is just rubbish (especially with GUIs getting 'chunkier' and all)

I like widescreen for gaming, but for work, I'm with BoomBoom. In fact, I even prefer the old 5:4 AR's because I do a lot less scrolling when reading, writing and coding, which are the three things I do most of. Plus it's good for 3D modelling, which I also do quite a bit of. I prefer my windows flying in and out though. If I liked them fixed, I could see the attraction of a widescreen for coding.

Some months ago I bought 2 22" screens, to place next to eachother, having a wide desktop of 3360 x 1080. It's mainly for music purposes, like having your composing section on the right screen, the mixer and some instruments on the left screen. Out of the box they both got dead pixels, swapped them for undead models the next day, no questions asked..

While buying, I did look at a 24" model tho, I had a hard time to choose between 1 24" or 2 22" as the 24" looked significantly bigger, but alas.. it'd have the same res as 1 22" screen, so eventually I've twice the space now..

I have a 19" widescreen with my Vista, and a 17" 3:4 for my XP, and I definitely like the widescreen a lot better. Except for a couple games that stretch sideways for the big screen.

The only real drawback I've run into is trying to use sprites as menu items when programming. It's annoying to try to align the sprites to work on both types of monitor.

I've got a 22" 1680x1050 widescreen, love it.

My GF has a 17" 4:3 screen, it looks so small compared to mine.

My only problem is getting games to run smoothly at full resolution, but I find 1280x720 also looks good in order to increase the frame rate.

If you've once worked with a two monitor widescreen solution, you'll never want to give it back.

While my XP was down for a while I used that monitor with my widescreen. The desktop background was really annoying, because the monitors didn't support the same resolutions, and they weren't even the same shape, but it was awesome. The only reason I put it back on the XP once it was fixed is because I didn't have any monitors newer than Windows 95 that I could use.

The horizontal resolution of the monitors doesn't matter but what's important is the that they share the same vertical resolution and the same dot size, then it's a pure joy to work with.

24" is nice...1920x1200.

I'm using a 32" Samsung telly with 16:9 with a max res of 1360x768 as monitor. The resolution might be a bit on the low side, but it's great for gaming, don't need a higher resolution for that anyway.

The biggest advantage I have with it is drawing pixelperfect without the need to use the zoom option. XD

I've got a 24" monitor linked to my laptop for 3840 x 1200 resolution.
Tonnes of screen real-estate!!

Widescreen is yummy and perhaps better suited to the human field of vision, but as I've said before some time is going to come where everyone us used to using widescreen and all of a sudden a 4:3 or 5:4 screen is going to look very attractive - wow, look at all that extra vertical screen space!

>I've got a 24" monitor linked to my laptop for 3840 x 1200 resolution.

Wowza, that's a high resolution!

I use 2 4:3 monitors; a 21" CRT (that I got for £10 off eBay) and a 17" TFT.

My laptop is widescreen though.

Yeah 24 Inch Samsun at 1920x1200, nice to rotate 90degress also for extra height when needed.

I miss the good old days with a 19" CRT running at 1024x768. Much easier on my old man eyes.

On the subject of widescreen monitors, anyone got a particular model/brand they'd recommend?

I'm in the store for purchasing one that sports 1920x1200 after having played with one (a 24" wide-screen LG display) at college and wondering why the hell I'm still stuck with a 5:4 display on my gaming rig that doesn't even have HDCP support.

I've a viewsonic fan. I bought a 21" CRT (G810) about 9 years ago and it's still going strong. I can't justify buying an LCD because I don't have a problem with this one. Although I'm sure I'll get one eventually.

I wonder whether there's much technical difference between brands. A difference may be how well they've been tested for dead pixels, and how will your warranty is, and the looks of the casing, etc.

Well this topic took off a bit!

Was testing my new (Samsung) toy last night - DVD's are fantastic - Return of the King (for example) looks like the movies (but without the idiot audience members rustling chip bags) and Silent Hunter4 looks like a new game - the extra screen is really immersive and I guess, mimics natural vision in being naturally wider than tall.

Downside is that I now have to reconfigure Tank Universal so that it can handle the 16:9 ratio properly and that means tinkering with the GUI code. It breaks the radar quite badly for example.

I also note that with a widescreen, the temptation is to always go for 1680 x 1050 and this makes some games chug (e.g. Mass Effect). I'm also a little concerned for example, at how Tank Universal might chug at the typically higher resolutions of widescreen during the big battles. Hopefully, most people who have widescreen also have the systems to properly support them.

And one last drawback is, the sheer extra screen real estate to navigate in just moving the mouse from one side of the screen to the other.

Genexi:
I'd reccomend LG, but the model they have in the stores now isn't the same as the mode I have, so I don't know if the screen quality is the same, but I know the styling is completely different, and less appealing to me.

This is the one I have:


And this is the one they're currently selling at that size:


It says the newer one has a 10,000:1 contrast ratio whereas mine has a 2000:1 contrast ratio, but those numbers are often fudged with "dynamic brightnes adjustment" and the like. But it also says the max luminance ) is 400cd/m² which is the same as my model. So if they are playing with the brightness to increase the contrast ratio then it sounds like the backlight can get darker than my model. Which I could believe, since my model the backlight only gets so dark and then you can't make it any darker which would be nice to be able to do for night viewing where I want the blackest blacks.

The other specs like viewing angle look the same. So if you like the lok of the monitor that might be the one to get. Make sure you put your head to the sides and above and below whatever monitor you pick though, cause Samsungs might look pretty straight on, but they have horrible view angles on the models I saw when I was shopping. Plus they sharpen the screen by default which looks nice from a distance but doesn't look so great in games and when you turn it off they're blurrier than the LG screen.

Madjack:
16:10. PC monitors are 16:10. Unless you're using a TV as a monitor. Then it's 16:9.

CS:
There are significant differences between the brands. When I bought mine, I examined all the ones that were for sale locally very carefully. I checked view angles, how sharp the text was without being oversharpened, how accurate the colors were, if there was any ghosting due to poor response times (posted response times are always a lie), and if there was any dithering going on. (Samsungs have less ghosting, but dither, and by default have lots of sharpening and oversaturate colors, and have horrible view angles.)

In the end after looking at them all the decision came down to either an LG or a Samsung. I couldn't live with the screen getting darker when I moved my head a little, and the LG had a respectable response time, good color reproduction, and slightly blacker blacks. So I went with that, and I have been really happy with it. The only game I see blurring in is my space shooter with black backgrounds and very fast moving enemies. No issues with TF2 or any other 3D games I play. I run the monitor in sRGB mode and calibrated it with a Huey though. If I didn't calibrate it or run in sRGB the black level wouldn't be quite as black, and the contrast on bright stuff wouldn't be as good. I can't say if the Samsung would be better without calibration in those areas.

Coincidentally Sswift, your monitor is the exact same model as the one I played with in college.....
('played with' meaning I looked at some 1080p movie trailers, and holy crap they were gorgeous on the display)

I recommend the Dell 24" 1920x1200 desktop screen. Had it for 18 months now and it is perfect. Love the range of input sources and PIP.

Current model is better on colour range and I think contrast. There is a low end version with a bit lower quality and fewer input sources but I'd go again for the top of the line. It is only 2/3 the price now that I paid for it. As always with Dell wait for a 'special' price.

And I got a Dell laptop with 17" screen providing the same resolution - 1920x1200. Would not go back to anything less.

YAY!

Although if you're doing that, don't forget 16:10 as well. ;o) (oh, like what sswift said)

Also, worry not about using the higher resolutions. My shiny new computer runs almost everything at 1920 x 1200, and very purdy it is too.

In other words, support as much as you can (or could be bothered with).

Which is exactly the reason why I make everything wide now and just letterbox for anyone who isn't is 16:10 ratio.

One other thing that does annoy me about WS is fullscreen mode for non wide modes. Why cant they just render with a black border, scaled up to the Y resolution? Some graphics drivers support this but not all.
It would be nice to have a monitor based "scale Y to maximum with propotionate X" option in the monitor menu as a common standard feature.

I'm considering an upgrade from a Dell 24" 1920x1200 to a 30" 2560x1600. Working with four virtual 1024x768 screens on one monitor, with space for apps at the side, would be a boon.

for the price of a dell 30 you could buy yourself 4 actual 1024x768, 2 graphics cards, with money left over for a car

Like a Samsung LN46A750 46" LCD HDTV? :D

> for the price of a dell 30 you could buy yourself 4 actual 1024x768, 2 graphics cards, with money left over for a car

Trying to sit 4 monitors in a 2x2 grid on my desk would hardly be practical. Also, it wouldn't really be useful. My 24" gets used for watching DVD's quite a lot.

I wanted to keep my current Dell until such time as 24" OLED displays became available. Sadly, that's not going to happen for at least 2 years (at a reasonable price point) so I need an upgrade for the meantime.

I could go with a new 2008 24" model, but if I'm upgrading, I may as well make get a 30". The Dell 3008WFP has even more inputs than my old 2004FPW (adds Displayport and also HDCP capability). I use pretty much every input possible already.

2560x1600 really does appeal to me. I can watch/preview full-HD content in a window, stack lots of editor/debugger windows... and of course, MAME ;)

I won't buy Samsung products :)

is there reliable detection code for widescreen based on desktop width/height ratios in blitzmax? could help if a small module was made to detect it.

Poor you, I have a Samsung 19" wide screen 1440 x 900 px monitor, and it works perfectly.



I don't know how to detect desktop width/height in blitzmax, I don't use it, but the ratio for a reg monitor is 3:4 and for a widescreen is 10:16, unless someone's using a widescreen TV for a monitor, then it's 9:16. Hope that helps.

I guess I could just check if its wider by a % fudge.

Instead of attempting to detect whether the screen is wide or not, my sprite system, if you want it to, will assume the pixels are square, and calculate what sort of letterboxing is needed to make the visible region have the same height to width ratio as whatever resolution you input as your desired virtual resolution.

This is the code that sets that up:

	' -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	' This function initializes the letterbox.
	'
	' Call it with the virtual resolution you want to use for your game after you have set the graphics mode, and then DrawLetterBox() every frame just before you flip.
	'
	' These functions will automatically handle both letterboxing on screens which are too tall, and pillarboxing on screens which are too wide.  So if you design your game for 800x600,
	' then InitLetterbox() will squash things horizontally to maintain the proper aspect ratio, and DrawLetterbox() will add black bars to the sides of the display for you.
	'
	' 
	' -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
		
		Function SetLetterbox(Width%, Height%)	

			Local NewWidth#, NewHeight#
						
			NewWidth#  = Width
			NewHeight# = Float(GraphicsHeight()) / (Float(GraphicsWidth()) / Float(Width))
		
			' If screen is wider than the desired apsect ratio...

				If NewHeight# < Height
				
					' Use pillarboxing instead of letterboxing.
										
						NewHeight# = Height
						NewWidth#  = Float(GraphicsWidth()) / (Float(GraphicsHeight())/Float(Height)) 	' Commenting this out will squash the game vertically on screens which are too wide.
																										' But without additional changes, black bars will still be drawn.						
				EndIf
			
			' Adjust the scale of the projection matrix to achieve the desired result.
				ProjectionMatrix.SetScale(NewWidth#, NewHeight#)
		
			' Store the size of the visible game region.
				_VirtualWidth  = Width
				_VirtualHeight = Height
	
		End Function 

I decided to do things this way because I realised simply detecting whether the screen was wide or not wasn't good enough. There's too many standards out there... First you've got 16:10, 16:9, 4:3, and 5:4, and then you've got those people who have rotatated their monitor, and people who have some kind of virtual resolution setup.

The only common factor among all these is that pixels are generally square on modern displays. So using that to make the determination is the best way of going aobut things. You could ask the user, but most users won't have a clue.

I figured much the same. It's impossible to 100% know for sure what the aspect of the display is. You can get it right some of the time but not always. Ideally the user would have to get a tape measure out and measure the physical dimensions of the physical area, and then compare that with the number of pixels in order to figure out the aspect ratio to scale your graphics. You have to account not only for different display resolutions and aspect ratios but also users with CRT's sometimes stretch their displays to their preferences, and there can be modes where the pixels are not square, like 1280x256 on the Amiga. Lots of variables to take into account. There is no o/s call that will tell you exactly how the monitor is displaying the image, based on on-screen controls and all that.

I suppose an alternative is to have the widescreen tickbox option and let the users decide.

Aha - thanks for that tip.

Aw crap - much of my past GUI coding (which assumed 4:3) is broken. Bit of an object lesson in not cutting corners!

Out of curiosity, if you set the screen res to a widescreen mode does a 3d scene stretch in B3d or do you get a more panoramic view?

You get a more panoramic view. Either that or it cuts off the top and bottom. Haven't figured for sure yet.



Yeah, you could do that. What most games I've played do is in the options, where you use the dropdown to select the resolution. They put both 3:4 and 16:10 resolutions. Sometimes in separate categories to make it easier.

You have to resize the camera to get square pixels, else the view is elongated - or at least I did.

Damn - its broken my glow system as well.