Will curved monitors ever be a reality?

S

Stupid_Newbie

Gawd
Joined
Dec 4, 2005
Messages
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I think about 3 years ago curved monitors were popping up. But we're low res and expensive (6-7k).

I like the look of high res wide screen shots but triple monitor doesn't excite me at all. Bezels in the fov. Gross. Do you think a single, curved monitor at high res with a good refresh rate will ever come to be or be reasonable to own?
 
Never thought of that. How would it be for gaming? Love to play something like skyrim on a big curved display, with large fov
 
For gaming it should be great, assuming low input lag. You can get projectors that do 120hz..

I've been holding off though due to bulb prices.. cost of replacements in both my older projectors make buying a whole new projector more sensible. So I will probably next get one when LED driven DLP projectors that do 1080p are reasonably priced.. I've not looked for a while so it could have already happened.

Pretty sure there's some companies out there that make custom screens for this sort of thing..
 
We're on the same page sir. For the past day I have been obsessing over ways to make this happen. Now, I've been aware of and watching the curved screen space for years now, but Skyrim reinvigorated my search! The bezels and planar nature of multimonitor setups is not for me. My biggest hangup for some time has been A) Price and B) My custom requirements. I think I've finally got most of B taken care of... =P

Here's a list of resources I've gathered over time.

Software:

Hardware:
  • I don't have any specific resources to share here yet, but I can tell you that the things to consider are the projectors themselves, screen material/dimensions, and the frame. 1080p? 2, 3 of them? Front, rear projection? Short, long throw? And so on. The material will largely be influenced by front or rear projection with rear projection being tougher to solve. Then the frame... custom, I suppose.
  • Also, you'll notice that you can do a flat or spherical surface. Spherical has a very appealing look to me, but also looks more difficult to master.

OLED:


So far on the software front I find Fly Elise's Immersive Desktop to be the winner. It does warping of the Windows 7 desktop, blending, and masks to focus the projector light only where you want it. Also, it's considerably cheaper than the alternatives... some of which are hard to price as their markets are commercial. What I don't know yet is if there's any performance/quality differences that would justify the larger costs.

For the hardware, I'm thinking 2 1080p projectors, but I worry that the edge blending wouldn't be perfect and I'd be bothered by a center line. Rear projection would be ideal as I could hide the guts and there'd be no chance of obstructing the image's line of sight... but the material search is proving difficult.

For more deep diving on the subject I suggest these forums:

If anyone has anything to add, please do. I want to know as much about this as possible before I take the plunge.
 
A large curved screen would be amazing. Like imax! I think projectors are the only reality at the moment other than the aforementioned Alienware monitor.
 
Oled said:
Yes, of course.
Oled monitors will be easy to curve.
Click to expand...

Yes, OLED may still need 3-5 years to become affordable to the average consumer. Also currently they are having technical problems with the reliability on specific colors, especially blue. Different colors will have inconsistent lifespans. For example, Red will last 30,000 hours, while blue will only last 7000 hours (just an example, I forgot the exact figures).

Also OLED are extremely sensitive to water so they need better sealing techniques for commercial use.
 
OLED will be king for curved screens if they ever figure out how to bring them to market.

Projectors on curved screens are "blah". They are blurry as they can only focus at one depth. A curved screen creates an image of slightly changing depth/distance from the projector. Not to mention projectors other huge pitfalls.
 
I really hope so. I just can't get past the bezels and all the other headaches associated with eyefinity.
 
I can't wait till the days of Minority report. I still remember that scene on the train or bus and you see all these people reading e-newspapers. AWESOME! And you'd be able to roll them up and do whatever you like with them!
 
Yeah, I wasnt sure about projectors and focus across changing distance. Perhaps a matched lense to curve is needed. I have some emails off.
 
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