New LCD monitor? Wide screen or not?

[SuperFudd]

Hi all,

I intend to get my first LCD monitor. It seems most are now wide screen. Wide screen TVs make sense to me but computer monitors? Do I want wide screen? why?
I am thinking of getting a Samsung wide screen 19" to replace my still fine 20" ~80 lb 11 year old Sun Micro Systems CRT.

 

[jdenm8]

It depends on preference. Trainz is not compatible for widescreen (it is a little bit stretched) but it looks a little better. Few games are capable of showing things in widescreen (the only ones I know of are the GTA series) but it looks (I cannot spell it) absolutley phonominal for DVDs and games that can do Widescreen (For a computer as you don't have the ugly strips of black).

 

[johnwhelan]

Hi all,

I intend to get my first LCD monitor. It sems most are now wide screen. Wide screen TVs make sense to me but computer monitors? Do I want wide screen? why?
I am thinking of getting a Samsung wide screen 19" to replace my still fine 20" ~80lb 11 year old Sun Micro Systems CRT.

I run a Samsung 906BW with 2ms it's fine for Trainz. These things run best in native resolution so 1440 by 900, and put the width etc in Trainzoptions.txt. Depends a bit what you ran your old monitor at resolution wise as to how much extra load you put on the system. Because they only run at 60 hz the video card has a much easier time so overall I think the 1440 by 900 has a 16% extra load compared on the 1024 by 768 on the old monitor at 85 hz. Because your eyes are wide screen shaped you get better resolution but don't pay the overhead of the top or bottom strip that your eyes don't care about much.

Cheerio John

 

[llebrez]

Go for it. I use a 19" Apple flat scren and is as sweet as the best. Then, you should go to the config editor (trainzoptions) and change the lines:
-Width=1670 and -Height=1020 (Make sure the resolutions in the Windows settings display panel are changed to what your monitor is best). Another setting for the trainzoptions is -Cainfov=75, -Driverfov=90 and if you don't have it add this line: -freeintcam Now you can start to enjoy Cinemascope in your world. Let us know your experience!

 

[Magicland]

If you're using a 20" monitor now, You'll want to get at least a 22" widescreen monitor. Because of their compressed format, a 19" widescreen monitor actually is smaller in area than a 19" NTSC format monitor. To get the same visual height you're used to on a 20" monitor, you'll need to go to at least a 22" widescreen (24" is better, but much more expensive, a decent 22" can be had for a little over $200).

 

[Ferngren]

On one brand of displays the 19" 4:3 has 1,310,720 pixels, the 22" wide has 1,764,000 pixels and the 24" wide has 2,304,000 pixels on their native resolution. Unless you have a high-end computer I guess the 24" wide will make performance suffer alot in Trainz.

 

[johnwhelan]

If you're using a 20" monitor now, You'll want to get at least a 22" widescreen monitor. Because of their compressed format, a 19" widescreen monitor actually is smaller in area than a 19" NTSC format monitor. To get the same visual height you're used to on a 20" monitor, you'll need to go to at least a 22" widescreen (24" is better, but much more expensive, a decent 22" can be had for a little over $200).

On the other hand you could just sit 3 inches closer to the screen and use a 19 inch wide screen monitor.

I have a Dell 24 inch monitor at work 2560 by 1600, fine for watching HD DVDs but the typeface is far too small for me at that resolution and at 4,096,000 it would probably push an 8800GTX card in Trainz.

Cheerio John

 

[happyj]

I have a new Dell 22" wide screen monitor that looks pretty good. I left it at 1078 x768 resulution because in Surveyor it makes it easy to read all the controls etc.

In Driver things look a little distorted (wider), but not overly so. When running in "cab view" everything looks great.

Everything is new to me so further experimentation will be undertaken.

Cheers.

 

[VinnyBarb]

I use a 26 inch widescreen LCD TV with PC input which shows me anything cristal clear. Admittedly TRS is streched a bit on the screen but one soon gets used to it, as its aspect viewing ratio of height versus width is 16:9. I also can change its aspect ratio among others to 4:3 which gets me back the normal viewing format I was used to on my old 20 inch tube monitor with small black stripes on either side.

It is also teriffic for content creating as everything looks so much bigger without losing details. Although I can run in a bigger resolution I found 1024x768 is still the best viewing for me on it. One would think viewing a larger screen means sitting back further but as the LCD screen is so much thinner, it sits where the rear of my old tube monitor used to be. Hence this is just perfect and I will never go back to the smaller viewing format again.

Gaming is a whole new experience as one does not need to zoom in so much on most games to see things clearly and gives me much pleasure in playing games.

Widescreen 16:9

Normal 4:3

Cheers

VinnyBarb

 

[jdenm8]

I would LOVE to do that with our TV! I already have S-Video on both and I have the 19mm plug to stereo AV plug. This post is not on topic. I know.

 

[WileeCoyote]

My laptop (or should I say slaptop?) has a 17 inch screen and a native resolution of 1920X1080, I run it at that resolution with Trainz and the picture is phenomenal to say the least. If you have a computer that can run it in HD, then go HD. You will never want to to go back

WileeCoyote

 

[samrec]

I have an LG 22" widescreen and even if TRS and TC look a bit stretched I would not go back to standard format LCDs. And you will gain the added bonus of watching DVD's just great on it if you ever happen to find yourself deprived of the main TV .

cheers

 

[johnwhelan]

I have an LG 22" widescreen and even if TRS and TC look a bit stretched I would not go back to standard format LCDs. And you will gain the added bonus of watching DVD's just great on it if you ever happen to find yourself deprived of the main TV .

cheers

Do you have the width line etc. in trainzoptions.txt?

Cheerio John

 

[samrec]

Do you have the width line etc. in trainzoptions.txt?

Cheerio John

My .txt file is virgin/unmodified.

 

[johnwhelan]

My .txt file is virgin/unmodified.

It does look better if you add in the appropiate lines.

Something like

-width=1024
-height=768

Cheerio John

 

[jimmy277]

NOW RUNNING 2 flat-screens (stretch mode) as 1 cinemascope+ display!

:wave:

I follwed LLebrez `s comments (8 or 9 entries below) exactly, then set my dual-monitor graphics card`s 2-monitor driver-settings to give me "stretch-mode" (1 windows window is streched across both monitors), and I set the desired graphics (for my 2 hi-res 19." displays combined) to 2580 x 1024.

This is actually a bit lower vertical size than real HD cinemascope (which is 2580x1080), but I`m getting a nice even and centered image for all the 3-d graphics, maps, menus, etc, the films play (normal-size but centered), and it works fine with raildriver, etc, with huge cinemascope-like 3d views, etc.

I`m working on cutting off the extreme right and extreme l. plastic (1/2 " of these 2 monitors (clamped down, with a power-hacksaw & plastic blade. (I took thes dell flatscreens apart first, to see where I could cut without damage , and marked them carefully... I `ll let you know: my goal is to get a seamless cinemascope surface from these 2, so i`ll have additional comments after (& perhaps a photo...)

 

[omber]

I've had a 20 inch Acer that runs at 1680x1050 resolution for almost year and a half now and I have no complaints

 

[psycho_aussie]

I have a widescreen 19" LG L194WT monitor, and in all honesty, I would not go back to a CRT and a standard LCD. I run Trainz windowed though, but it looks great on my system.

Chris
(psycho_aussie)

 

[samrec]

Anyone got shots of TRS or TC running on their widescreens?

 

[Compudoc]

Well here is one. Taken on a 19" widescreen.

Having a wide screen is nice, but if you are used to a standard display monitor it will get some use to it as you will loose the height that you once enjoyed. I myself have not decided as yet what I will actually use to run Trainz with.

Compudoc