So what does a curved monitor actually do?

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Marketing gimmick? Just looks nice because it wraps around your vision?
IS this just LCD trying to emulate OLED curved displays?
Would a 27" curved monitor be a waste of time because of the lack of curve?
 
I am guessing a curve would be useless / worse than flat, on anything except 40"+ monitors or superwide.
 
Curved displays have worse geometry than flat ones. There's a reason that people buy flat CRTs and are willing to calibrate them (which is much harder on flat vs curved tubes). Making curved LCDs is stupid and a huge waste of money.
 
I want to be on the bandwagon of "it does nothing" but I've had several friends who absolutely love the immersion that a curve screen creates for gaming. When we are already spending hundreds if not thousands to get more in depth into our games it makes sense to me why people like curved monitors.
 
They envelope you if you sit close enough and in the centre.
Can be more immersive, similar to running 3 screens with less distortion but not as wide.
 
The purpose for a curved monitor is it tends to be easier on the eyes. The eye doesn't have to move and adjust as much to a curved screen as it does for a flat screen. The curved screen offers a more natural progression in the image for the eye.

That being said, I can also see it being hard to fully calibrate a curved screen compared to a flat screen. If you are one of the people that likes to fully calibrate the screen to work perfectly for you, you might find a curved screen isn't to your liking. But if you just want immersion and easier viewing and don't plan to fully calibrate the screen to the nth degree, a curved screen may be a decent option.
 
People that want surround can buy a fresel lense to put in front of three CRTs which blends the picture. The lens can be removed when not gaming and put in place when playing.
 
rabidz7 said:
People that want surround can buy a fresel lense to put in front of three CRTs which blends the picture. The lens can be removed when not gaming and put in place when playing.
Click to expand...

That is really not the same thing at all and in fact would make it worse for many people. Also its a Fresnel lense.
 
At the right size screen and at the right viewing distance/angle, curved screens remove distortion, they don't create it. Curved TVs are useless to anyone except someone sitting at the optimal distance and in the center. Curved monitors are useful to one person sitting at the optimal distance in the center. I think 34" curved is the perfect size for non-VR gaming. All of them are still too niche and expensive. The average user won't really care.
 
>what does a curved screen do

it helps to sell new tv's to the tech illiterate people
 
rabidz7 said:
Curved displays have worse geometry than flat ones. There's a reason that people buy flat CRTs and are willing to calibrate them (which is much harder on flat vs curved tubes). Making curved LCDs is stupid and a huge waste of money.
Click to expand...

I wonder why we have curved eyeballs instead of flat ones?

They eye’s anatomy also plays a part. Our retinas contain two types of photoreceptors called cones and rods. In simplest terms, cones are responsible for our color sensitivity and are concentrated at the center of the retina; rods, both more sensitive and numerous, perceive motion and are denser on the periphery. A curved screen's wider field of view is said to better stimulate the rods in our eyes, “activating our senses to perceive amazing panoramas rivaled only by the natural vistas of our great outdoors,” according to Samsung.

To get maximum benefit from a curved screen, you need one that's at least 70 inches wide (measured diagonally).

The upshot of this biology lesson is you will perceive greater depth (because the image exists on multiple planes), richer contrast, (because the curve focuses the light toward the viewer rather than dispersing it over a wide area), and sharper images at the edges of the screen (because the curve tracks the shape of your eye).

Absolutely none of this is revolutionary. Many movie theaters have been using curved screens for years for all the same reasons. But as you’ll see, that doesn’t necessarily mean a similarly designed TV will deliver a more cinematic experience in your living room.
Click to expand...
got that from a random article I found real quick. He is talking about TV's not monitors hence the 70" or wider screen.
http://www.techhive.com/article/2890396/curved-tvs-gobsmackingly-great-or-goldbrick-gimmick.html
 
Curved monitor absolutely makes sense by improving visibility at edges when the display size is big. Specifically, I have a 32"@4K BenQ which is fantastic P/Q wise. It has optimal and maximal height for me (mostly used for work) when lowered down to the desk level, more height would be detrimental for my neck. The width of the 32" is also very good, more width would be resulting in too big angle of view near the edges. Thus, the 32" is overall an ultimate monitor for me and I never ever may need another one... well, almost ....:D. I realize that a 21:9 curved monitor with the same height as my 32" would provide a bit more space with sufficient visibility at edges due to the curvature. A flat 21:9 is excluded due to the visibility issue. If in some future a 21:9 curved monitor with the height of a 32" 16:9 appears then I can consider buying it, otherwise I already have my Holy Grail monitor :).
 
Curved monitors are nice in the sense that the edges of your screen are more visible because they are closer to you. For productivity, that's great. Why not?

For games, however, curved monitors can be problematic. Part of the rendering process for a typical 3D game engine is to transform object data from a 3-dimensional "world space" onto a 2-dimensional "screen-space", usually via perspective projection (as opposed to isometric projection, etc). So long as the user then views this 2D representation at the correct distance and Field-of-view, it should appear somewhat like looking through a window into the game world.

Traditionally, this transformation has always assumed that screen-space should be a 2D plane (ie not curved). However, using a curved monitor breaks that assumption and most game engines have absolutely zero support for rendering to a curved surface. Viewing games on curved monitors results in objects looking stretched or enlarged the closer they are to the edges of your screen - because the game engine expected those pixels to be further from your eyes.

In a similar vein, watching TV/movies on a curved monitor will look distorted too, because the camera lenses are designed for flat screens.

So long as your curved monitor has a fairly mild radius, the effect is subtle. But if you're picky about this kind of thing, (e.g. you can't stand the look of 4:3 TV stretched into 16:9) you might want to think twice before buying a curved TV/monitor.
 
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