How Wide is too Wide?

DoubleTap said:
Poorly designed or not, most games are Hor+ and don't let you control the vertical FOV at all.

The large 4k monitor (43-55") seems to work for some people, but for me, it's too vertical and having to look up is hard on my neck. I've been thinking I may have made a mistake by adding a top monitor because anything above my 3 main 24" monitors (top of the screens are eye level) is hard on my neck. I have a very high amount of correction in my glasses and small lenses, so I can't really look up with just my eyes, I have to lift my head so for me, too much vertical is bad bad bad.

I almost went with a single 34" ultrawide for simplicity and I probably would have except using 3 1440P monitors really helps me in my work.
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Stacking 2 24" monitors versus just using a 48" 4K display would actually be worse on your neck you have added bezel space. There is also no such thing as a too much vertical you can scale the resolution however you like it's not complicated. If you set the monitors back a little further you won't need to crane your neck as much either. It's also worth noting a 4K display can run 2.76:1 aspect ratio at 4096x1484 or 4080x1478 in place of it's standard resolution and aspect ratio for either improved performance or simply because it looks way more cinematic I mean ultra panavision 70 sure why not!? Seems legit!

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/Filmaspectratios_svg.svg
 
you guys must be sitting on the floor if you're getting neck cramps. If I sit up straight with good posture, I have no issues looking at a 43" 4k all day
 
BSmith said:
I know Aces High III does, but then it was designed to support any aspect ratio or resolution combination.
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Oh, hey, that's how PC games used to be programmed! Any resolution and refresh rate you want, as long as your graphics card and monitor can handle it! Quake or Unreal at 8K 240 Hz, when the hardware exists in the future? No problem!

Funny how we've only regressed since then, to the point that people have to ask developers to consider non-16:9 ratios and refresh rates higher than 60 Hz, isn't it? (And don't get me started on what happened on the audio side of things over the years, either...)

pendragon1 said:
and DARIUSBURST CS, this would be perfect for that.

View attachment 74662
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This very game is the exact reason I even want 32:9 monitors to exist. It was designed for that in the arcades, though they had to resort to a pair of 16:9 monitors and mirror trickery to present a bezel-less screen space, much like the original DARIUS I/II and The Ninja Warriors did with three CRTs for a 4:1 ratio (yes, even wider than DARIUSBURST, funnily enough).


However, this thing costs upwards of $1K by itself, and here's the thing: if I were to get a 65" display or so, I'd still have the physical width, but also additional height for everything else. I can live with a bit of letterboxing if the screen's physical size is large enough.

And, yes, I would totally use a 65" display as a PC monitor, as long as it's closer to one of those touted NVIDIA BFGDs instead of an HDTV with godawful input lag. Oh, and a 65" display is more likely to be flat, again like the actual arcade cabinet.
 
Comixbooks said:
When your eyes start to stretch I would say anything over 27" is too big. It's harder to focus on stuff on big screen mentally visually and spatially.
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Evidence? I'm going to call this nonsense right out of the gate. That's the shorter version of my thoughts on the matter. I have zero problem focusing on a display that's far larger than that and seeing all points on that display clearly. Secondly, I think a lot of this ultra-wide display stuff is nonsense and is less than ideal than a larger format display with a more conventional aspect ratio and really isn't the best option for immersive gaming or anything else for that matter.

I've been using wide displays or display arrays for the better part of the last 10 years. I started with a single 30" display, then 3x30", and later then 3x27". Seeing these on a horizontal plane is not an issue and never has been. The 3xXX" arrays were excessively wide, and far wider than the display in question is. I didn't really need to turn my head to see all of the display very much and focus isn't a problem. Spatial acuity is something that varies from person to person, but I never had trouble with this even though my vision is lesss than stellar. Furthermore, there are many problems with aspect ratios that are that wide. This creates a fisheye effect which people hated when using NVSurround and Eyefinity. There would be some benefit to the extra peripheral vision just as there was when using a multi-monitor technology. However, this advantage is arguably outweighed by the other problems that go with it. Namely, the distortion, (due to insufficient support in games) and the lack of vertical screen real estate.

People often believe that 21:9 is more immersive than say 16:9 in gaming. I have tried this as my monitor can display an equally large 21:9 image. What you get is simply a smaller display. It is certainly wider, but smaller overall. It doesn't fill all your peripheral vision and in my opinion lacks the immersive characteristic people attribute to it. What counts for immersive is somewhat relative as 3x30" displays at 7680x1600 was far more immersive than a single 30" display. By the same reasoning, 3x27" monitors in portrait were more immersive as fisheye was eliminated and I had both a wide horizontal and vertical field of view. Although comparatively I had less horizontal view compared to the previous display configuration. This was a decent trade off in that case as I gained vertical screen real estate while maintaining a wider display field than I felt I needed. The end result of 3x27" monitors in portrait mode was roughly a 48" 16:9 display. This was what felt the most immersive to me. However, that particular set of monitors was lacking because the viewing angles were too poor to make this work very well for anything. I had to sit at a very specific position with specific lighting conditions to use this display. I grabbed a 48" Samsung TV and that was about the same size with a lower resolution as 3840x2160 is less than 4320x2560 or whatever it works out to.

If you want to define what constitutes too wide, I think its going to vary from person to person as spatial awareness is going to be variable on an individual basis. Any display where you don't have to turn your head left or right at the preferred distance away from the display would or could be defined as the limit for this. I can tell you that 7680x1600 was so wide it was probably over the line for nearly anyone at normal viewing distances. While the extra space was useful for some games, it would require turning your head to see all of it clearly or to focus on it at normal viewing distances. Many people would probably agree that this is a bad thing or at least less than ideal. I refute turning your head to look at the full display as being a bad thing depending on how that display is used. If we are talking about anything trying to simulate driving, flying etc. I don't think that its bad at all. We turn our heads to see things while driving a car or flying a plane. However, I wouldn't want to do that while simply doing work. If we are going to say a monitor should be viewable at all points without doing that, then that configuration is too wide.

Its true that our vision is wider than it is tall. A quick check via Google reveals that humans have approximately a 210 degree horizontal field of view and 150 degrees of vertical view. That is quite a difference, but I'm fairly certain it isn't this:

DSC04915.jpg


I'm all for widescreen displays, but not at the complete expense of vertical screen space. Reading articles or doing any work on something that narrow isn't fun. I've had to do this on 1920x1080 and 2560x1440 (or 7680x1440) displays after having 1600 or 2160 vertical pixels to work with and it feels very limiting. Proponents of UW displays and saying its more immersive are saying this is better than using your full peripheral vision:

002_2-03_lrg_so.jpg


Our field of view and eyesight would probably have to be built more like this for such a display to make sense:

admiral-ackbar-star-wars-episode-vi-return-of-the-jedi-0.42.jpg


If your name isn't Admiral "It's a Trap" Ackbar, then this type of display doesn't work all that well. Humans simply aren't built this way. While human spatial awareness and other factors are somewhat variable, I think the notion that displays should keep getting wider at the expense of vertical space is bullshit. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I think a display roughly 43-50" wide with an aspect ratio of 16:9 is probably going to provide the most immersive experience as it fills the peripheral vision best. This is really what your looking for when looking for an immersive experience. You want to see very little if anything outside the gaming world, which is what VR and large format displays try to achieve. Of course some people might start talking about having to sit 8 feet back from a display of that size or whatever, but this is nonsense as well. Text scaling issues aside, when you are farther away from an object, that object appears smaller. If you have a 50" wide TV and you sit a given distance from it and then double that distance its half as large. What's the point in that? Its equal and therefore is no practical difference.

I believe this thinking comes from advice on display sizes that originated from the home theater "experts". There is a conventional "wisdom" said "experts" have been using for years regarding ideal size of a TV in a room. Some websites on this topic even have math for determining the ideal TV size for a given room. It goes something like "x viewing distance in y sized room = this size TV". All the numbers I've seen on this basically tell you that you need to be so far from a given TV that you might as well use a display about half the size and sit closer to it. You would accomplish the same thing. Its basically flat Earth math that has little to no basis in reality. It's also "wisdom" that works even worse when applied to a computer monitor, even if the display is technically a TV. I agree there is a balance to achieve between size and distance in a given area for immersion, but that the numbers which are optimal aren't what people generally think they should be.

The bottom line is that this display may not be too wide but its certainly too narrow.
 
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cageymaru said:
I wrote many articles for the [H]ardocp front page and never got a cramp in my neck. The only thing that annoyed me was the Steam notification that announced that a friend has signed into the service. It used to be really tiny on my screen but I would always catch it in the corner of my eye. Steam fixed that in a Beta version of Steam awhile ago.

I play BF4, Warframe, Civilization, Black Desert Online, etc on this thing and never had an issue. Well sometimes I run it in 1440p mode because I don't want to turn down the visuals. 1440p on these Samsung TVs looks great! 1080p although "big" looking is just fine also.

Here is my desktop right now. I use 125% scaling in Display Settings. Warning 4K jpeg.

View attachment 74660
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Yea I love my 43" for gaming, I could EASILY game on a 49" but was worried about the desktop everyday stuff. Good feedback thanks!
 
Seventyfive said:
Yea I love my 43" for gaming, I could EASILY game on a 49" but was worried about the desktop everyday stuff. Good feedback thanks!
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For desktop stuff, I find 49" is fine but at that size you have to be seated in a position that's high enough to do so comfortably. At least, this is the case with my relatively crappy eyesight.
 
heh running triple 40's in my bedroom rig.. side monitors aren't that big a deal if they are for peripheral duties.
 
knowom said:
Stacking 2 24" monitors versus just using a 48" 4K display would actually be worse on your neck you have added bezel space. There is also no such thing as a too much vertical you can scale the resolution however you like it's not complicated. If you set the monitors back a little further you won't need to crane your neck as much either. It's also worth noting a 4K display can run 2.76:1 aspect ratio at 4096x1484 or 4080x1478 in place of it's standard resolution and aspect ratio for either improved performance or simply because it looks way more cinematic I mean ultra panavision 70 sure why not!? Seems legit!

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/Filmaspectratios_svg.svg
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I think you're completely missing the point. Any display above eye level is too high for me and for a lot of people. telling someone to get a bigger display but put it farther away is often impractical or impossible and at a certain distance, the 48" monitor is the same size as a close up 24.

I'm glad the giant TV / vertical pixel religion works for you, but I reject it outright and I blaspheme it and all it stands for. :)

Edit: To clarify, I do have a 27" MVA panel above my 3x 24 inch G-Sync monitors. It exists primarily to make my AVR easier to live with - most of the time it's either blank or used for things like a playlist. It does drop down to eye level if I decide I want to watch TV. Even in it's highly underutilized state, I think it's hazardous to my neck and probably not going to work long term. If I'd gone with a 24", I could keep it tucked behind the main screens when I'm not using it.
 

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"our new widescreen ... do YOU think it's too wide?"

would you really care if I told you?

Comixbooks said:
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the commercial in that video: IMHO Thermaltake does have the best looking cases (I'm referring to the Core P series)
 
I just bought one off ebay from BuyDig (wish me luck) for $820 with a free google home mini. I use a 34" Dell U3415 ultrawide 3440x1440 for my main monitor, don't plan on switching. This is going on a sim rig for racing games, even at 4' wide its still a smaller footprint than a NV surround of triple 24"'s and should offer a decent FOV without bezels. Freesync sucks, although most racing games don't need massive performance and if I ever catch a fury at a good price I may "downgrade" the 1080 in the sim rig and move it to my general duty rig. Overall I'm excited, HDR, even if it's not perfect, is being introduced in iRacing and claims to really enhance nighttime racing, 144hz is a must for racing, giant FOV, should fit my use case well.
 
I miss 4:3 for monitors, in fact for a long time I had a 5:4 monitor. 16:9 is for movie format and people who have OCD against black bars. For some reason I like games that use the vertical dimension more than most, I guess.
 
jpm100 said:
I miss 4:3 for monitors, in fact for a long time I had a 5:4 monitor. 16:9 is for movie format and people who have OCD against black bars. For some reason I like games that use the vertical dimension more than most, I guess.
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Some games (mostly strategy games in my experience) do seem to work really well with extra vertical space. It's why I've been unable to move from 16:10, although I do think 5:4 is a little too narrow. Ideal is from 16:10 to 4:3
 
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Dan_D said:
I don't think the width of the monitor is a problem. However, the aspect ratio and the lack of vertical screen real estate is. I wouldn't buy this on that basis before I even took a look at the price or HDR performance and other specs. As far as I am concerned, this is another monitor that proves that monitor makers have very little idea on how to deliver what the market wants as it relates to higher end displays.
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Pretty much that and this one also doesn't have good panel nor resolution. In particular resolution given the size. For some things ultrawide is okay but it's not good for all around use and most game won't even work right on it. IMO it's too wide given its size but 34-38" ultrawide are quite nice (and most have better resolution than this).
 
zkostik said:
Pretty much that and this one also doesn't have good panel nor resolution. In particular resolution given the size. For some things ultrawide is okay but it's not good for all around use and most game won't even work right on it. IMO it's too wide given its size but 34-38" ultrawide are quite nice (and most have better resolution than this).
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My issue with all current ultra wide monitors is their lack of vertical space. However, they do work well for gaming if games support the resolution.
 
Dan_D said:
My issue with all current ultra wide monitors is their lack of vertical space. However, they do work well for gaming if games support the resolution.
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It all about perspective. If I have a 27" 1440p and a 34" UW 1440p, they have the same vertical space, the 34" just has more on the sides.
 
Zepher said:
It all about perspective. If I have a 27" 1440p and a 34" UW 1440p, they have the same vertical space, the 34" just has more on the sides.
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Well yes. But again the problem is that 1440 of pixel height is insufficient. I came from 2560x1600 and 7680x1600. What I was used to for years was already greater than 1440. So going to 2560x1440 was insufficient and 3440x1440 isn't any better. That's just my opinion, but as I've said before, I don't think that 1440 height monitors provide an immersive experience unless you came from something worse.
 
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Dan_D said:
Well yes. But again the problem is that 1440 of pixel height is insufficient. I came from 2560x1600 and 7680x1600. What I was used to for years was already greater than 1440. So going to 2560x1440 was insufficient and 3440x1440 isn't any better. That's just my opinion, but as I've said before, I don't think that 1440 height monitors provide an immersive experience unless you came from something worse.
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they do have the 38" 3840x1600 UW monitors, so that would fit between your two setups, resolution-wise.
It's slightly taller than a 30" 16:9 and an inch shorter than a 30" 16:10.

I personally love the 21:9 aspect ratio, it's like having 2 screens without a bezel.
 
Zepher said:
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they do have the 38" 3840x1600 UW monitors, so that would fit between your two setups, resolution-wise.
It's slightly taller than a 30" 16:9 and an inch shorter than a 30" 16:10.
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That's an interesting size, and better than a 1440 type setup, but still less than a 40+ monitor with a resolution of 3840x2180. Less vertical real estate doesn't make any sense to me from an immersion standpoint.
 
Dan_D said:
That's an interesting size, and better than a 1440 type setup, but still less than a 40+ monitor with a resolution of 3840x2180. Less vertical real estate doesn't make any sense to me from an immersion standpoint.
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the thing with 4K though is the pixels are really small, I have a 42" 4K and when I have a PC attached to it I have to scale up the image so that I can read what's on the screen, so that is basically defeating the purpose of have 2160 vertical pixels.

I think this was at 150% scaling in Windows 10
IMG_0409.JPG
 
I use no scaling on my 49" 4K monitor. At smaller sizes, perhaps I might. In any case, I don't think it defeats the purpose as you are using more pixels to make up the same image. You get less aliasing and a better picture quality. This is why a 27" monitor with a resolution of 2560x1440 looks better than a 27" monitor at 1920x1080.
 
I don't see it as too wide, I see it as my desk not being deep enough. Don't find a gun to strap to your plane, find a plane to strap to your gun.
 
I can see using this at a desk where I want a "single desktop" rather than jump across monitors and have a need for a fairly large amount of screen space, but going higher either won't work or won't work well. I can think of a lot of medical/office/security desk jobs facing the public that could use this sort of thing. Would I use it for gaming? I too dream of 16:10 coming to a 4k monitor with wide color gamut and 120Hz refresh rates in something larger than 27" and less than $2k. :)
 
Dan_D said:
My issue with all current ultra wide monitors is their lack of vertical space. However, they do work well for gaming if games support the resolution.
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Yeah, that is indeed my concern as well. Though at work we've been getting more of the dell Ultrasharp 34 and 38 curved ultrawides and folks have been really happy. That 38" is not bad at all and has 1600 vertical resolution so it probably work well for both work and gaming.
 
For that amount of money you can buy a great 50" 4k TV and enjoy a more immersive gaming experience.
No space is not an excuse, unless you live in a cave.
 
In the year 25...25
the widest monitorr had to arriveeee'
it was 3k per 5
Which is way to wideeee

For the youngster on the forum
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Personally I prefer to not play my games like this:

View attachment 74616

I'd argue that the ideal aspect ratio is 16:10.

I can live with the 16:9 that is so popular these days, but I wouldn't go wider than that, even with multiple screens.
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I agree. 1920x1200 is perfect for the PC, because it can be scaled to a high-res 4:3 1600x1200 that so many legacy programs and games could be set to, but not current widescreen resolutions.

With 16:9 1080p, the highest scaled "classic" resolution that most of those older legacy programs and games can be set to is 1280x960/1024 (or 1400x1050 in very rare instances), which really detracts from image quality over 1600x1200, imo.
 
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