The online racing simulator
Is it worth geting a 22" wide screen LCD monitor?
hi all,

as my title says, it is worth it? Would i get a "stretched" display? Otherwise it looks crap and i dont wanna get one. Wheels and dials will look oval instead of round...
Quote from drift_apprentice :as my title says, it is worth it?

Depends on what you want to do. Generally yes - even for gaming they're good. In all modern 3d games you'll get more "peripheral vision". Some older titles might have problems with 16:10 ratios but drivers usually have modes to compensate for that by chopping bits off instead of stretching.

Quote :Would i get a "stretched" display? Otherwise it looks crap and i dont wanna get one. Wheels and dials will look oval instead of round...

If you mean specifically in LFS then: no, you don't get a stretched display - LFS has one of the best screen configuration systems seen in a game. You just get more screen real-estate on the sides so you can run a more informative/realistic FOV without sacrificing screen space.
They'll only look oval if you set it to a "square" resolution. Obviously if you use 1024x768 on a widescreen, those 1024 pixels will (probably) end up being stretched to fill the screen, so anything on the horizontal will be a bit longer. But if you use something like 1280x960 there are no extra pixels to fill so circles will remain circlular (although that explanation soudned better in my head)

Older games which don't support widescreen modes may end up looking a little squashed though, so if you play a lot of them you'll want to be careful.
Is it worth it?, HELL YES.
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#5 - Jakg
Since when did Dan have a FREX? 1337!

Oh, and btw it looks fecking ace on 22" - it's like having an ultra high-res TV in front of you

1680*105 ftw

(I'll post a picture of my 22" compared to my old 17" later, it feels wierd even THINKING i played on such a small screen )
Had the FREX for about a year and a half now, bloody good piece of kit.

And yeah, I agree, 1680x1050 FTW
What monitor is that, Mundai Hyuandai something? Sounds cheap, is it any good? :P
Don't buy a TFT monitor if having accurate colour reproduction is at all important to you.
Quote from Blackout :What monitor is that, Mundai Hyuandai something? Sounds cheap, is it any good? :P

Hyuandai of course , and yeah, it was cheap, bloody cheap infact, £149!!!!
#10 - Jakg
Quote from Jakg :(I'll post a picture of my 22" compared to my old 17" later, it feels wierd even THINKING i played on such a small screen )

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Ferrari mints?
Quote from thisnameistaken :Don't buy a TFT monitor if having accurate colour reproduction is at all important to you.

espeically not a 22" one which is utterly unable to diplay a single colour accurately across the whole screen
Quote from Shotglass :espeically not a 22" one which is utterly unable to diplay a single colour accurately across the whole screen

Mine's alright horizontally, but vertically it's pathetic. Luckily I don't do any design work any more (I was never any good at it anyway).
Quote from thisnameistaken :Mine's alright horizontally, but vertically it's pathetic. Luckily I don't do any design work any more (I was never any good at it anyway).

jupp good ol tn panels and their usless verical range of round about 0.00001°
you might be allright it you set the monitor up some 10 meters away from you but for the price of the binoculars you could probably afford a proper panel
#16 - J.B.
22" screens and aspect ratios. Don't get me started. Or I guess you already did.

But I'll keep it short:

1) if you want a 22" WS that doesn't mindlessly stretch every signal to 16:10, the hp w2207 is the only one that exists. (hard to believe, I know)

2) If you want the GPU driver to take care of scaling: don't get an ATI card.

3) If you want one that will connect to PS3, HD-DVD player, HDTV decoder etc. without distorting the image: there is none in existance! (the AR scaling setting of the w2207 doesn't work at 720p for some reason)

Apart from that the others are right, TN panels are really bad vertically. The image at the top looks quite different to the image in the middle because of the vertical distance from your eyes. And font rendering is also very bad on some screens. On w2207 for example cleartype is unuseable.

My recommendation: get a Dell 24" or 20". They're not TN and everything works as it should. Shame they don't make a 22".
Quote from danowat :Had the FREX for about a year and a half now, bloody good piece of kit.

And yeah, I agree, 1680x1050 FTW

Nice FREX. Have you had any troubles with it at all? Friend wants to get that exact kit.

I disagree, 2560 x 1600 Dell ftw
Nope, no troubles at all with it, top piece of kit.
Quote from Tweaker :Nice FREX. Have you had any troubles with it at all? Friend wants to get that exact kit.

I disagree, 2560 x 1600 Dell ftw

wooo! +1
#21 - J.B.
Quote from geeman1 :I don't believe that. Cleartype is mostly software based, you just have to tune it for your monitor if it looks bad. http://www.microsoft.com/typog ... leartype/tuner/Step1.aspx

Already tried it. Helps, but doesn't solve the problem.

And another thing I learned since my last post: the Dell 20" doesn't accept 50 Hz HDTV input (as in european DVB), only 60 Hz. So in summary: if you want a PC monitor that can display HDTV content: forget it! Nobody cares about it, even prad.de won't tell you about the problems.
Thanx for all ur input guys! very much appriciated! Looks like i will get one very soon then!
From what I understand, 22" LCD's in general tend to be pretty crappy. That mostly comes down to the fact that they tend to use a TN panel and have a rather large pixel pitch. What you want is an IPS panel (not TN or PVA/MVA) or more specifically, S-IPS, AS-IPS, or even H-IPS (this is the most recent and expensive one as far as I can tell). It seems there are no 22" models that have this panel type, so you're stuck deciding between 20" or 23/24".

http://www.widescreengamingfor ... .php/Master_Monitors_List
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articl ... er/display/lcd-guide.html

Why did I do all this research when I hate LCD's? My beloved CRT died...
Quote from Forbin :...Why did I do all this research when I hate LCD's? My beloved CRT died...

I feel your pain. My good 'ole Trinitron finally gave up the ghost and I'm stuck on an ancient 15" Gateway LCD as backup. I'd kill to have Sony's 24" WS CRT but that one's just not gonna happen. I'm thinking of going with a Samsung 20" WS. Anybody have any objections to this one?

http://www.tigerdirect.com/app ... 2881201&Sku=S203-2002

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