Widescreen monitors

[eLus1ve]

I don't know why but I've always had a bad impression on widescreen monitors. I'm hoping to upgrade a 24" in the near future but I can't decide if I want a widescreen, which will mostly be used for gaming and movie watching.

A small question I have is what happens when you run a game that doesn't have a widescreen resolution option? Do you get 2 big black bars on the side?

 

[Oooska]

The vast majority of games that have come out in the past few years either support widescreen natively or can be changed with a simple ini edit or similar trick. For those that don't, you can either have the image stretched or you can play with black bars on the side. For both gaming and movies there's simply no comparison. I can't stand going back to 4:3 or 5:4 monitors once I've used widescreen.

 

[Tamlin_WSGF]

Several years ago, I was in the same boat. What made me change to widescreen was this. Check for yourself how games look best, widescreen or 4:3

 

[Scyles]

Several years ago, I was in the same boat. What made me change to widescreen was this. Check for yourself how games look best, widescreen or 4:3

That is a really good resource.

Rainbow Six Vegas and Half Life 2, show a very good example of the usefulness of widescreen when its implemented properly by game developers.

Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and Battlefield 1942, show the awful distortion of stretching.

Need For Speed: Carbon and Thief: Deadly Shadows, show your typical widescreen hack, where you actually lose some of the top and bottom of your field of view and gain nothing on the sides. The game is zoomed in, with the top and bottom chopped off and the HUD is stretched.