144hz monitor - an good for Trainz?

Paulsw2

Ambling on the slow line
Following my laptop woes with pre-installed Norton (see http://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthread.php?103011-Antivirus/page2), yesterday my PC monitor when kaput (black screen with power light flashing on and off, so I suspect power supply issues at the monitor end). Unable to survive by going back to my old (square) monitor, I rushed out today and bought an AOC G2460P which supposedly features 1ms response time and 144hz refresh rate. I've changed my settings in Windows for that refresh rate and it appears to be recognised by my ATI card.

Things do seem to look somewhat smoother on the display compared to the standard 60hz, especially movies. But my obvious question is: what implications does working in 144hz have for Trainz? Does the GPU have to work harder? Does it affect framerates? Do any of the settings needs to be changed to get the best out of this refresh rate? Or should I reset the rate to 60hz when I'm running Trainz?

I've taken a quick look and, after some initial jerkiness, it seemed to settle down and the framerates looked unaffected. Anyway, I'd welcome advice.

Paul
 
An opinion only. Film is 24 frames per second which doesn't divide into 60 hz nicely. It does divide into 120 hz five times. So Trainz is creating a given number of frames per second then these are transferred to the display so the closer the display matches the rate of production or frames per second or a multiple of it the better the image with smoother frame to frame changes.

So in this sense a 144hz monitor should be better. Even with a 60 hz display on many machines Trainz frame rates are not 30 or 60 frames per second so what you get is a slight judder as you move from frame to frame and as far as I'm aware the refersh rate shouldn't have any impact on the frame rates other than 24 frames per second should look a lot better on a 120 or 144 than on a 60 hz display.

Cheerio John
 
The actual refresh rate of the display has nothing to do with the images that are sent to it. Trainz, or any other application for that matter, shouldn't work any harder to drive the display. The refresh affects how quickly the monitor can switch between the two parts of the image quickly. At 50 HZ this is pretty noticeable. At 60 HZ this just about disappears, although there is still a flicker which can be seen when there is fast motion, and when sitting under florescent lighting. At 100 HZ and up, the refresh is quick enough so that there is little display flicker and stutter which is common on LCD displays. With the higher refresh rates, motion blurring will disappear which is a common issue too with LCD TVs and monitors. This can be seen when a video is played back of ball players running around a field, or other vehicles move quickly on the screen.


John
 
Thanks for the advice chaps. Sounds like I should just sit back and enjoy 144kh then!

Paul
 
Thanks for the advice chaps. Sounds like I should just sit back and enjoy 144kh then!

Paul

Or you could drop it in the mail to me and I could do some extended testing with for a year or tow and let you know how I get on.

Cheerio Hopefully John
 
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