Apsect Ratio

[MichaelM]

I was wondering what the population of compsci.ca has to say about computer screen resolution.

Which do you use? What would you recommend? Is widescreen the aspect ratio of the future?

I recently got a laptop which is widescreen, although I am much more used to fullscreen.
It works great and everthing, and movies are great, but I've been a bit disappointed by the change
in quality of many of the games I usually play on fullscreen. My laptops new so I could bring it back,
but should I...?

[Dan]

I am a bit confused by what you mean by the change in quality of your games.

Most games that i play have support for wide screen and acomidate it fine and games thay don't either have black bars on the sides or strech the image a bit.

Widescreen montors noramly have higher resultion then the same normal version of the montor (tho this is not allwas the case) witch means there is more work for your video card and montor to due to support the natural resoution. However most games have options to cahnge what resoultion you are playing at so you can make it run faster at a lower resoultion or run at the same resoultion of a fullscreen.

Another thing to note is that LCDs look a bit ugly when you are not running them at there natrual resoultion (noramly the max resultion it supports) so it could also be a problem if you are trying to run your games on a 4:3 resoultion when your montour is 16:9 or you are using a reoulstion lower then the max reosultion your monitor supports.

Persoanly i have widescreen and have not noticed any lower qaulity compared to full screen. If it is worth it is another questions tho, i personaly like a wide screen and high resoultion so i can have muptial windows up on the same screen easly and cleary.

[Insectoid]

I have a 22 inch widescreen, and it is the best thing to happen to me since my new ATI video card! Nearly all my games support the 1680x1050 resolution, and the others have black bars. Movies are amazing on it, and the DVI support is wonderful. The only issue I've had is that it burnt out the stock video card I had before...then I burnt out the new video card...then it got upgraded for free due to warrranty

[MichaelM]

What I mean by the game quality is that for many of them, even those with widescreen settings, are a little stretched, or have stuff cut off at the top and bottom.
Mine is 16 inch with 1366x768 max resolution, which is a little short for some games I think.

[andrew.]

That is an odd resolution and I can see how many games don't support it. However, those games probably support 1280x768, which is a pretty standard 16:10 resolution. It will be a bit blurry because it is scaling to fit your screen, but at least the aspect ratio is correct.

[Unforgiven]

I have a fullscreen desktop (20" LCD, 1600x1200), and my laptop is a widescreen (1280x800 or whatever it is). I'm not sure what I prefer, to be honest.

[apomb]

Widescreen Computer Monitor ratios arent 16:9 they're usually in the range of 16:10 - 16:12. I prefer widescreen since thats how my eyes are oriented (with peripheral vision to the right and left, not up and down)

[Vermette]

I'm running with a Dell 2407WFP (which is a 16:10) @ 1920x1200 native. I bought this screen primarily for PC and xbox360 gaming and it's beautiful for that (though I wish the component input supported 1080p instead of a max 720p or 1080i... too lazy to buy a hdmi/dvi dongle to truly enjoy the 360 on this thing.)

For gaming it is awesome, but for coding I'd feel more productive with a second screen instead of a wider single screen of equal total width. Single display means extra work fussing with window layout.

[DemonWasp]

I have three screens (three different computers, not all on one box). The first was a Samsung 955DF CRT19" @ 1600x1200, and it was awesome...I first thought that widescreen was just silliness, and that 4:3 was ideal.

My new desktop uses a Benq FP241WZ LCD24" @ 1920x1200, and it's gorgeous. Widescreen definitely has huge advantages, not the least of which being that it fits what our eyes can see a lot better. Excellent for gaming, and for coding, the extra screen space is brilliant. I'd rather have this than additional screens - the black bars would annoy me endlessly, as would having to physically turn my head. Also, if you just use Linux, you can easily get multiple desktops, so you can just use Ctrl-Alt-<Arrow Key> and shift through three bonus monitors.

(I also have a Dell laptop with a screen resolution of 1680x1050, and it's quite delicious too. Not as nice as the Benq, but it was a lot cheaper, too)

[andrew.]

Vermette @ Mon Jul 21, 2008 9:18 am wrote:

I'm running with a Dell 2407WFP (which is a 16:10) @ 1920x1200 native. I bought this screen primarily for PC and xbox360 gaming and it's beautiful for that (though I wish the component input supported 1080p instead of a max 720p or 1080i... too lazy to buy a hdmi/dvi dongle to truly enjoy the 360 on this thing.)

For gaming it is awesome, but for coding I'd feel more productive with a second screen instead of a wider single screen of equal total width. Single display means extra work fussing with window layout.

No point buying an HDMI cable or anything because the 360 only has like 3 games in native 1080p. Everything else is upscaled, so whether you watch it in 720p or 1080p it's the same. Plus, most of the 360's games are rendered in "sub-HD" (below 720p).

[Vermette]

Ok, most games may not have output support for 1080p (though my library is mostly limited to the graphical heavy hitters like Mass Effect), but at 720p my screen is interpolating the signal to fit; you're going to get some degradation when scaling on an LCD. Piping 1080p into the monitor should improve visual quality since it can then be displayed natively, upconverted or not.

Buying a hdmi cable and hdmi/dvi dongle is not a big deal anyways... less than $20 total on monoprice. It's just laziness on my part