Thirith on 1/4/2019 at 15:24
Any TTLGers that have an ultrawide screen, possibly a curved one? In general, do you consider them worth it for gaming? How broadly are 21:9 aspect ratios supported by games from the last half-dozen years, and how easy is it either to tweak unsupported games or to display at 16:9 in the centre of the display?
heywood on 1/4/2019 at 17:09
Yes! There is another thread about this topic that SubJeff started last year. In the context of that thread, I went out and got an LG 38UC99-W. He got a Samsung C34F791.
I love my 38" LG for productivity. It has more total screen real estate than a dual 1920x1200 monitor setup and with no break in the middle you can really use all of it for a single application when you need to. I find it very handy when working with large spreadsheets. It also has a picture by picture mode, where I can display my home computer's desktop at 1920x1600 on one half of the screen and my work computer's desktop at 1920x1600 on the other half of the screen. I use that a lot when working from home.
It's also great for gaming, but with two caveats. First, a minor one; the radius of curvature could be a little smaller for more of a wrap-around effect. My LG has a 2.3m radius, which means it's on the flatter end of curved monitors. That's good for productivity work, but for gaming I think a tighter radius would allow me to use a wider FOV setting without it looking distorted. That's just a minor complaint though. The bigger caveat is that you will need an expensive card to run modern games at native resolution. The 34" screens are 3440x1440, and a GTX 1080 (if you can find one) or an RTX 2070 should handle anything current. The 38" screens are 3840x1600, and you may need an RTX 2080 or Radeon VII depending on how smooth a frame rate you want. If you plan on running at lower resolution, you might want to check out how each monitor renders some of the common resolutions. My LG uses a combination of scaling and letterboxing depending on input resolution, and some resolutions are letterboxed only, which means you have a lot of dead screen area.
Thirith on 2/4/2019 at 09:25
Thanks, those are useful pointers. I dimly remember SubJeff's thread a while ago, but only now that you've mentioned it.
I've just upgraded to a new PC and think that the resolution issue shouldn't be much of a problem, doubly so if I were to go for a G-Sync or Freesync monitor (I hear that Nvidia cards have started being able to support the latter). The scaling/letterboxing issue is definitely one I should look out for, though.
I won't be buying a screen right now, but I think I'll keep an eye open for special offers around here, especially towards the end of the year.
heywood on 2/4/2019 at 16:51
I guess I never answered your first question. In my experience so far, 21:9 resolutions are well supported out of the box in modern games, and in older games that have been fan patched. I think you'll find very few games that require you to use 16:9.
Pyrian on 2/4/2019 at 20:26
What's the best practice for placing UI elements in an ultrawide? Is it still okay to stick stuff in a corner?
Gryzemuis on 3/4/2019 at 23:07
Quote Posted by Thirith
Any TTLGers that have an ultrawide screen, possibly a curved one?
Yes. I bought an Acer Z35 in January 2016.
It is a 35", 2560x1080, VA-panel monitor. It has G-sync and ULMB. It is curved.
(
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/acer-predator-z35-35-inch-g-sync-curved-monitor,4473.html)
I like it.
Quote:
In general, do you consider them worth it for gaming?
I like it.
I don't know if it's worth it. It was expensive (over a 1000 euros). The price has dropped since (it is 750 euros now). A new model (3440x1440) has been released over a year ago. That one is now 850 euros. At the time I had a new job, I hadn't bought anything expensive for myself in years. So I bought the Z35, and a GTX1080. Since then I have hardly played games (relative to the years before). More than half my gaming time has gone into the Dark Souls games.
I wanted a G-sync monitor. Possibly with G-sync. I bought an Acer IPS 27" 2560x1440 monitor. But it had terrible yellow glow when playing dark games in the dark. Which I do a lot. So I sent the IPS monitor back. My next experiment was the Z35. The VA-screen is much nicer when playing dark games. The resolution is a bit low. But it's acceptable. The DPI is almost the same as a regular 27" 1920x1080 monitor (which I had before). I didn't mind not having a higher resolution screen because: 1) you can enable more eyecandy and have the same fps, and 2) higher resolution screens mess up your regular desktop. (I didn't want to jump through lots of hoops to fix that). When playing Dark Souls games, which all run at 60 fps without any hiccups, I use ULMB. For other games I use G-Sync.
My next monitor will definitely be a G-Sync monitor again. Maybe with ULMB. I hope there will be IPS screen with better blacks. I will probably buy a 3440x1440 resolution now (not that I regret buying my current monitor). Later this year, Acer and Asus will release new 35" VA monitors, 3440x1440 with G-Sync, 144-200 Hz, HDR, local-dimming, 10bits color, etc. Not sure I'll buy one, but they look interesting.
I never wanted a curved monitor. But I must say, I got used to it very quickly. I think curved is necessary for ultra-wide screen, because the angles at the edges of the screen start to stray away from 90 degrees.
Something I didn't expect is that I also love this screen for non-gaming. So much real estate is nice. I've worked as a progammer during the last few years, working mostly from home. Having a huge screen is very useful. (I also have my old 27", 90 degrees tilted, next to my Z35. When programming I use the vertical screen for my editor window (emacs)). If I ever need another screen for work, I'll buy a (cheap) 40" 4k monitor. The ultra-wide itself doesn't help, but the size is really convenient. A 35" ultra-wide is the next best thing after a 40" monitor, I think.
Quote:
How broadly are 21:9 aspect ratios supported by games from the last half-dozen years, and how easy is it either to tweak unsupported games or to display at 16:9 in the centre of the display?
It's depressing. I can't remember all the games I tried, or played (briefly). But too many do not support 21:9. Maybe only two third run smooth out of the box. The Dark Souls games do not support 21:9. I was able to tweak DS1 and DS3 to do ultra-wide. But I was not successful running DS2 ultra-wide. When games support 21:9, it's really nice. Imagine driving in a car in GTAV, with an ultra-wide screen. Very nice. But e.g. Skyrim doesn't support it. Original Pathologic and the recent beta didn't support it. And so on. If you really wanna know, I can test all the games I still have installed, and count them.
In some games that support ultra-wide screen, the perspective (view angle) is really weird. Some games look good by themselves. Some games need tweaking. Some games are impossible to fix. It's weird. I had expected that in 2016 all developers would support ultra-wide screens. Especially when they use an engine they bought. Unfortunately that was not true.
Reading back my post, I don't know if is helpful to you.
All I can say is: I like it. My next monitor might be another curved ultra-wide. One thing I know for sure is: I will never buy a monitor under 35" again.
Pyrian on 4/4/2019 at 00:06
Unity doesn't list 21:9 in their standard aspect ratios. You can set it to that...
Thirith on 4/4/2019 at 08:02
Gryzemuis: Thanks, your reply was definitely helpful, not least since you talked about the things that don't work all that well but how it's still worth it for you. From what I've read so far, it seems there's a tradeoff, but it's good to know what I'd be trading against what if I were to get an ultrawide screen sooner or later.
Gryzemuis on 4/4/2019 at 10:33
I think the most important thing to realize is: no matter how much money you are willing to spend, there is no perfect monitor. That's a bit sad. That means you will always have to make trade-offs.
*) LCD monitors will always be a bit blurry when there is movement on the screen. Even with 1ms response-times. Even with 200Hz refresh-rate. Even with ULMB. I don't think any LCD monitor can beat old CRTs when it comes to blurriness.
*) ULMB makes it a bit better. But when you use ULMB, you can't use g-sync/free-sync/VRR.
*) VA-panels have nice black colors. But the response-time for grey colors is bad. (At least in my monitor). In The Witness when there are black dots in the mazes, and I moved the camera, it became very noticable. The black dots would "ghost". I haven't noticed any other ghosting on my monitor. But those little black/grey dots on white background really jumped out.
*) IPS-panels have the best viewing angles. VA-panels follow shortly. TN-panels are the worst. I don't move my head a lot when playing games, so I don't care much for viewing angles.
*) IPS panels have lovely colors. But the dark/black colors do lack a bit. And the current generation of g-sync/free-synce/VRR IPS-panels (from AUO) have this nasty yellow glow when you play dark games. Very noticable when you play at night in a room that is not heavily lit. And unfortunately I play mostly dark games. (Thief, Dark Souls, sneaking in dungeons in Skyrim, in The Ashen, in WoW, The Old City: Leviathan, Dishonored, The Witcher, etc). If it wasn't for this, my first choice would have been an IPS-monitor.
*) High resolution is nicer. No doubt. But it'll mean you get lower fps. Which might mean you'll have to turn off some eyecandy. Or a lot of eyecandy. Maybe it would be ideal to have a very high resolution, but play games at half the native resolution. Like having a 4K monitor, but play heavy games in 1080p. Using any resolution in-between will cause the resulting image to be extra blurry. (I tried playing The Witcher at 1920x1080 on a 2560x1440 monitor. It didn't look pretty imho).
*) OLED monitors seem to be a long way off.
*) The better monitors can be pretty expensive.
So I think no matter what you buy, no matter how much research you do: after you bought one you will probably often wonder: "wouldn't that other monitor have been a better choice" ?
heywood on 4/4/2019 at 12:08
Quote Posted by Gryzemuis
It's depressing. I can't remember all the games I tried, or played (briefly). But too many do not support 21:9. Maybe only two third run smooth out of the box. The Dark Souls games do not support 21:9. I was able to tweak DS1 and DS3 to do ultra-wide. But I was not successful running DS2 ultra-wide. When games support 21:9, it's really nice. Imagine driving in a car in GTAV, with an ultra-wide screen. Very nice. But e.g. Skyrim doesn't support it. Original Pathologic and the recent beta didn't support it. And so on. If you really wanna know, I can test all the games I still have installed, and count them.
DS2 supports 21:9 with Flawless Widescreen.
Skyrim supports 21:9 with a mod.
The widescreen gaming forum ((
http://www.wsgf.org/) http://www.wsgf.org/) maintains a database of (mostly) older games with the state of widescreen and ultra-wide support. That's the first place I check. If a game is not listed there, then a Google search answers the question.