morphyWile is right in this case. This is almost like 1st year logic where the proof is given and even fine but the wrong conclusions were derived.
Here's an easy exercise:
You have 2 different ratio sized cutouts. In each case, one can be trimmed, stretched/shrinked while the other is completely fixed.

Case 1:
Take a 16"x9" cutout and a 16"x10" cutout. The 16x10 is the fixed one and can't be changed. Lay the 16x9 over the 16x10 centered. You'll find the top and bottom on the 16x10 showing. You can still see the entirety of the 16x9 cutout without altering both. If you have to alter the 16x9 in order to show it on the fixed 16x10 you're doing it wrong because it's completely unnecessary. Unnecessary because the alterations done to the 16x9 cutout will involve trimming and/or stretching resulting in lost pieces and/or a warped cutout. This wrong way of doing it is the example in Tavix's ss.

Case 2:
Now do the opposite and lay the 16x10 over 16x9, the 16x9 being fixed. It covers it entirely. The only way to fit it is with cropping or stretching which either way results in lost pieces or warped result. There is no right way of fitting the entire 16x10 within a 16x9 space without trimming or warping the 16:10 aspect. This is illustrated by East's ss. Ideally you want the 16x10 cutout to maintain the same aspect but that is physically impossible here. There is no wrong way because there is no right way of doing it.

Now I haven't brought up widescreenfixer for good reason. It can only fix something if it was broken in the first place and by broken I mean the cropping/zooming. In case 1 (with the fixed 16x10) it can certainly help because it merely undo what the dev's did. It doesn't change the fact that it was mucked up by the devs in the first place. But how can widescreenfixer help in case 2? To put it succinctly, nothing really. It may help in cases were there's over cropping or over warping but there'll still be lost detail or wrong aspect as a result.

On the issue of black bars I can understand Mussel's position in wanting as few black bars as possible. He at least realizes that no matter what you're going to have black bars. A 2:35:1 movie on a 1:78 screen will have very pronounced black bars, more-so with 2:35:1 on 1:6 screens but the point is it's still bad on both cases. Even if one gets one of those super wide TVs to watch blurays, there'll still be black bars on the side when watching 1:85 movies, sports or cable TV. Watching Entourage or Dexter with thick black bars on either side? no thanks. Or invest in a hi-end projection system.

My attitude towards black bars has always been such that if I'm going to be bothered by black bars I certainly am going to be bothered enough to want to watch it on my 52" in a comfy chair and not on my desk on the piddly 24" monitor before I get bothered by some black bars.

But there are those who are vehemently opposed to black bars whatsoever. I even know people I've met that will zoom and stretch their TVs in order to eliminate the black bar monster. The fact that they're actually seeing less matters not to them as long as they can feel like they are watching more. I feel somehow game makers are catering to this crowd. Economics are involved too. So they'll crop, zoom, anything to beat back those dreaded black bars. Even cable networks are doing it by taking an OAR (original aspect ratio) movie in 2:35:1 or 2:40:1 and showing it in non-OAR or people will complain about the black bars. "There's black bars on my brand new 52" widescreen tv..wtf!!". Unfortunate really.

edit: I wanted to edit my post to include a link to Newegg that explains about why widescreen is better than non widecreen!!!! That should sway the masses!! :rolleyes: But I can't seem to find it anymore. :cry:

I completely fail to understand how my examples(the Dragon Age or NFS screens) are wrong!!! How come is it wrong to have more details on a 16:9 screen that on a 16:10???!! Forgive me, but you guys are ridiculous naive or something!!! What is so hard to understand that the wider the monitor, the more details you have in the games??????????? What happens when you play a game on a 2 monitor setup or 3 monitor setup???? Don't you gain extra details on left/right side of the screen?????? The video card renders the image just like you have an ultra-wide screen monitor!!!!!!!!! Sure, the resolution can be 5970x1080 or 1920x400 IT WONT MATTER!!!!!! The only difference between those 2 resolution is that the later gives a more pixelated image!!!! That's it!! With the 1920x400 I have 3 times the details of a monitor displaying 1920x1200!!!



People, start using your brains, this topic is becoming ridiculous!

alright, we've breached the limit of sane use of ! and ? in a single post.

lettuce all calm down now. both sides think the other are morons for not seeing the light, lets leave it at that.

Hilarious.

"You're wrong!"
"NO U!11!"

Wile EYou have it backwards. Properly coded games render the same amount side to side on both 1920x1080 and 1920x1200, but they render more up and down on the 1920x1200 monitor. What they render depends strictly on the resolution, not the aspect ratio. 1920 pixels across should be rendered the same on every display, the up and down resolution should not matter. That's the way it always was, since the dawn of computer games. The consoles changed it to what you are talking about.

So you can bang your head all you want, but the examples you gave are not properly coded games.

Here is a visual aid of what Wile E is saying.

wow now we're venturing into the realm of circular logic. This is wonderful. How is 3x1920x1080 relevant to your argument when it can be debunked using the same premise ie 3x1920x1200? Therefore your example of 3x1920x1080 is totally irrelevant.

Sure if you increase the width, you get more details on the side but that's not what this whole issue is about and everyone from wile, east,gt has been trying to say from the beginning for 4+ pages and yet you're debating on something completely different and missing the point completely. But this is the real gem here :

TAViXWith the 1920x400 I have 3 times the details

of a monitor displaying 1920x1200!!!

I feel myself losing brain cells already just reading that. Has elementary math degraded that bad in schools?

Wile ENo, a 1200p monitor does not decrease the size of a 1080p image AT ALL. It is 100% identically rendered on either a 1080p or 1200p monitor. This is what I can't seem to make people understand. The only thing a 1080p screen might have as a benefit, is less black bars, but guess what, even 1080p displays black bars in most movies, as movies aren't generally encoded in 16:9 to begin with. Not to mention, those black bars do absolutely nothing to hurt image quality. It's completely superficial.

I spend more time watching 16:9 youtube videos than I do these newer 21:9 movies. So with two similar sized 16:9 and 16:10 screens I often get a larger image out of my 16:9. Again, many many modern games poorly handle 16:10. My real world media enjoyment currently favors 16:9, in a perfect world it would favor 16:10 but it doesn't.

Also worth noting I use it for my 360 as well, all those games are obviously 16:9 so that experience is entirely free of bar related shrinkage. I'd imagine a number of people console game with their monitors.

This is a long post and is mainly directed towards Mussels (initially) and TAViX (the rest).

Mussels,
Although I don't agree, I do understand that for what you are looking for in a monitor then a 1080 is a better choice in your opinion. It is difficult for me (and apparently a lot of others here) to understand since black bars do not bother me that much. But if black bars are something you absolutely abhor then it makes sense to buy a 1080 to avoid them as much as possible. Some things are more important to certain people than others, and if black bars are your nemesis then I can respect that and I think others should as well. I mean… I once chose one brand truck over another only because the buttons on the steering wheel weren’t illuminated on the one I didn’t buy. Sometimes little things matter. Choosing 1080 over 1200 only because of bigger black bars seems trivial considering the loss of viewing space in other applications… but it is your prerogative and it is a choice you seem to have made completely understanding what you would be gaining/losing compared to a 1200. I think you kind of got wrapped up in a lot of the back-and-forth “debating” with TAViX… which has only gone from frustrating to maddening. I have a lot of respect for how patient and composed you have remained through most of this thread. Cheers to you.

TAViX,
You started off on very negative ground way back in the beginning with your comment of “the joke is actually on you”. Since that comment you have argued by means of yelling with punctuation, comments focused specifically on challenging people’s intelligence, and an all around abrasive tone. I’m not saying others haven’t also taken an abrasive tone at times, but none to the degree that you have. It should be of no real surprise that you are having a hard time getting anyone to really listen to you. I think a big difference here is that you are coming off as argumentative whereas the rest of us are trying to keep it as a debate. Now, that said… I do have to admit that you gained a lot of ground in your post with the Dragon Age screenshots. Yes I noticed and comprehended exactly what you were showing with those screenshots… and I was surprised by what I saw.

Now… all things considered (hey TAViX, you can interpret this as me “using my brain”)… I have actually learned quite a bit in this entire thread. Until this thread I was unaware of the bad practices of game coders. Until this thread I was unaware that my 1200 monitor was actually losing viewable space in certain games when the resolution is set to 1920x1200, and as such… I was unaware of third party programs that can fix the viewable space of certain games at 1920x1200. Unfortunately there is not a fix for every game, only a select few. HOWEVER, (TAViX, this is the part where you need heed your own advice and use YOUR brain) there are games that do not have this problem and display 1200 resolution without cropping the image. If a game is properly coded to truly display the image at 1920x1200 then what advantage does a 1080 monitor have? The way I see it, it is better to have a monitor that can take advantage of proper coding in some games and use a work-around for bad coding in other games (whether that work-around be using a third party program OR setting the game resolution to 1080 and having black bars at top and bottom). To me it is better to have a 1920x1200 monitor with more available viewing space when it can be utilized as opposed to a 1920x1080 monitor that is incapable of ever displaying the additional 10% of viewable space a 1920x1200 can. To me it is better to have a 1920x1200 monitor for a computer because an additional 120 pixels from top to bottom is very useful for most of the other things you can do on a computer. 120 pixels means I can see a few more lines of text in a document, webpage, spreadsheet, etc. without having to scroll as much.

TAViX, you have been driving me nuts with is this misconception that a 1920x1080 monitor is somehow wider than a 1920x1200. I am completely cool with people having their preference one way or another for whatever reasons… but to have what appears to be a flawed concept of actual screen resolution and then try to argue while throwing this flawed concept out as some sort of proof is just maddening.

Do you or do you not agree that a 1920x1200 resolution monitor offers 10% more viewable screen space than a 1920x1080 resolution monitor of EQUAL WIDTH? I say “equal width” because the diagonal dimension is dynamic between the two ratios. My point here is that width needs to remain equal in this debate because both screens are offering 1920 pixels of horizontal resolution. If width is kept equal then the 1080 is 10% shorter that the 1200… which translates to a 10% reduction of viewable area.

Some of the arguments that have been attempted here are that you get to upsize the 1080 a couple of inches to fairly compete with a 1200… but this is a flawed concept because you have increased the viewable width without adding horizontal resolution. Making pixels bigger does not equate to higher resolution and therefore does not equal more usable screen area. This is why some have tried to bring PPI into the argument, because it is a way of forcing common ground between the two resolutions. I guess another way of putting it is to try sizing up the two resolutions while keeping pixel size equal. PPI is where pixel size comes into the debate.

You clamored earlier about us only caring about resolution and pixels. Well yes, you are right because as you increase screen size without increasing resolution you lose sharpness and clarity. Hook your computer up to a 52” HDTV and try sitting as close to it as you do your 24” monitor. The pixels are huge and the picture looks horrible up close. That is an extreme example, but the exact same thing is happening when you try to pit a ~24” 1080 against a ~22” 1200. The 1080 has bigger pixels (or lower PPI) and does not offer the same level of clarity and definition as the smaller 1200.

Neh, this is the last time I bother. You people don't have even the basic knowledge of what's the difference between monitor size, resolution, image quality and aspect ratio. You are keep failing to understand that the resolution, number of pixels, etc are irrelevant. The only difference in games, for example, between 1920x1400 and 640x480 is the later gives a more pixelated or blurry image (depending on the monitor type), but I still have the same details.
I can also watch a blu-ray movie, another example, on my old monitor at 1280x1024 resolution without any problems. Only difference is the quality of the image.
Guess what? I have home an old lcd tv (16:9) with the resolution of 1280x720, and I have more details in games than on my monitor running them at 1920x1200. It's only logical because the TV has extra horizontal space. Resolution only matters for image sharpening not for amount of details in a game, this is what all of you fail so badly to understand.

Regarding the 2D space, like Windows desktop for example, it's still irrelevant, because if I have 3 monitors with 4:3, 16:10 and 16:9 aspect ratio, but THE SAME VERTICAL SIZE, I will always prefer the wider one because of extra horizontal space.

@Murphy

Loosing brain cells, hm? Well loose some more:

1920x1200:



1920x400:

And now he's confusing FOV with "image details".

Google this: Fisheye Quake

For those who are intelligent enough, by increasing FOV, you can have ridiculously more "image details" than his 1920x400 screenshot.

LAN_deRf_HAI spend more time watching 16:9 youtube videos than I do these newer 21:9 movies. So with two similar sized 16:9 and 16:10 screens I often get a larger image out of my 16:9. Again, many many modern games poorly handle 16:10. My real world media enjoyment currently favors 16:9, in a perfect world it would favor 16:10 but it doesn't.

Also worth noting I use it for my 360 as well, all those games are obviously 16:9 so that experience is entirely free of bar related shrinkage. I'd imagine a number of people console game with their monitors.

Yeah, but 1920x1200 16:10 monitors can do 1920x1080 16:9 if you set the resolution to 1920x1080. So now you have a monitor that can do both. The only way this is a bad thing is if you are like mussels, and absolutely despise black bars for some reason.

Wile EYeah, but 1920x1200 16:10 monitors can do 1920x1080 16:9 if you set the resolution to 1920x1080. So now you have a monitor that can do both. The only way this is a bad thing is if you are like mussels, and absolutely despise black bars for some reason.

a perfect summary!

indeed perfect

pr0n InspectorAnd now he's confusing FOV with "image details".

Google this: Fisheye Quake

For those who are intelligent enough, by increasing FOV, you can have ridiculously more "image details" than his 1920x400 screenshot.

I think you've watched to much pr0n buddy!:laugh: That's a screenshot from a 3 monitor setup, but who cares right? Let's just flame some guy because he has different opinion than ours...

TAViXI think you've watched to much pr0n buddy!:laugh: That's a screenshot from a 3 monitor setup, but who cares right? Let's just flame some guy because he has different opinion than ours...

I see you don't understand this issue at all.

What happens is simply this: keep thee vertical FOV at 73.74°(the old "standard" 90° of horizontal FOV at 4:3 resolution gives this), then increases the horizontal FOV to match the aspect ratio. The reverse can be done. Intermediate compromises can also be make separately for different ARs. There is no "proper" way of doing this.

For example, when I stack 2 16:10 monitors vertically, if the vertical FOV is kept at 73.71°, the horizontal FOV would be an inhuman 61.56°.
Another one, 16:9 at 73.74 vFOV gives a hFOV of 106.26°. At 4:3 resolutions, increases the hFOV to the same 106.26° would yield a vFOV of 79.695°.

boring math formulas here