How practical is 21:9?

[Davidff1991]

I understand from a production standp point 21:9 is a god send. But I'm a gamer. How many game are even compatible with 21:9 and is it really worth getting a monitor for it?

[BenestoTech]

I understand from a production standp point 21:9 is a god send. But I'm a gamer. How many game are even compatible with 21:9 and is it really worth getting a monitor for it?

I think most games just fit your resolution. You can get a wider field of view, and more space when working in windows. I don't think it will be a problem for gaming, I think it will actually be better than 16:9 or something more conventional.

 

Hope this helps!

 

BenestoTech

[_ASSASSIN_]

lots of indie games and some triple A games like most ubisoft games don't support 21:9. I personally say it's not practical until it becomes more widely adopted but it's great for doing multitasking and if you want an alternative to 2 monitors.

[Benjamin G]

I understand from a production standp point 21:9 is a god send. But I'm a gamer. How many game are even compatible with 21:9 and is it really worth getting a monitor for it?

Well.... not really IMO theres far better conventional options 21:9 is a bit of an aquired taste for gaming

 

yes i quoted the OP #dealwithit

[Sauron]

I understand from a production standp point 21:9 is a god send. But I'm a gamer. How many game are even compatible with 21:9 and is it really worth getting a monitor for it?

No, get a 4k monitor. With samsung and asus rolling out "cheap" 4k panels it's not that expensive, especially compared to good 21:9 monitors. If you want something even cheaper get a 1440p monitor. 21:9 is just a random standard that is supposed to be better for movies, but instead has a weird resolution (like 2560x1080) which means movies get scaled and look worse than they should. 4k at least is a perfect multiple of both 720p and 1080p which means scaling should be barely noticeable.

[JW_Weingarten]

No, get a 4k monitor. With samsung and asus rolling out "cheap" 4k panels it's not that expensive, especially compared to good 21:9 monitors. If you want something even cheaper get a 1440p monitor. 21:9 is just a random standard that is supposed to be better for movies, but instead has a weird resolution (like 2560x1080) which means movies get scaled and look worse than they should. 4k at least is a perfect multiple of both 720p and 1080p which means scaling should be barely noticeable.

uhmmm 21:9 owner here. My movies don't get scaled and look great. Also there is no point in getting a 4k monitor right now unless you have the hardware to back it up. I have yet to see any setups run 4k games with a solid 60 fps.

[Sauron]

uhmmm 21:9 owner here. My movies don't get scaled and look great. Also there is no point in getting a 4k monitor right now unless you have the hardware to back it up. I have yet to see any setups run 4k games with a solid 60 fps.

If you have a 21:9 monitor your movies did get scaled, unless you have a sub 1080p resolution. Maybe you didn't notice it much, but there is a difference, and since those monitors are pretty expensive if they can't give you the best quality it's a bit of a waste I think...

as for 4k, the big advantage of it is that it is a perfect multiple of 720p and 1080p, so that if you watch movies or play games at those resolutions your experience is not worse than what you get on a native 1080p or 720p screen, whereas you have all that real estate for work and all those other things. plus you can run older games at full 4k no problem and have a great experience. Also bare in mind that resolution counts more than quality filters, especially in modern games: a modern game will look better at 4k medium settings than it would at 1080p ultra. All those 4k benchmarks you see are usually run with aa on and all settings cranked up to maximum, while on a real use case for a 4k display the user would not notice a big difference and would still enjoy it more than a 1080p or 1440p experience.

[JW_Weingarten]

If you have a 21:9 monitor your movies did get scaled, unless you have a sub 1080p resolution. Maybe you didn't notice it much, but there is a difference, and since those monitors are pretty expensive if they can't give you the best quality it's a bit of a waste I think...

as for 4k, the big advantage of it is that it is a perfect multiple of 720p and 1080p, so that if you watch movies or play games at those resolutions your experience is not worse than what you get on a native 1080p or 720p screen, whereas you have all that real estate for work and all those other things. plus you can run older games at full 4k no problem and have a great experience. Also bare in mind that resolution counts more than quality filters, especially in modern games: a modern game will look better at 4k medium settings than it would at 1080p ultra. All those 4k benchmarks you see are usually run with aa on and all settings cranked up to maximum, while on a real use case for a 4k display the user would not notice a big difference and would still enjoy it more than a 1080p or 1440p experience.

In what way are the movies scaled? Please provide more information and proof for all your points. I find it very hard to believe

[Sauron]

In what way are the movies scaled? Please provide more information and proof for all your points. I find it very hard to believe

When you play a 1080p movie, that movie has a fixed resolution. I am sure we can agree on that, right? Now, if you play that movie on a screen that has a higher than 1080p resolution (in fullscreen of course), the image gets stretched. If the new resolution is not a perfect square multiple of 1080p (4x, 9x, 16x...) the process of stretching the image generates artifacts or degrades the overall visual quality, as a non-integer amount of physical pixels is assigned to each pixel in the video. While on a 4k monitor each pixel of the movie gets exactly 4 physical pixels that show the same colour, a 1440p monitor (for example) will have to decide which virtual pixels get more real pixels than the others and which get less. 

Hopefully this image makes the difference clearer. There are algorithms than monitors use to make this effect less noticeable, but they cannot solve it completely. So to not have this effect your monitor should have a resolution of 1920 by 823, as a 1080p 16:9 movie actually contains a 21:9 movie with that resolution and black bands on top and on the bottom.

So you see, I can be pretty sure of what I am saying since I doubt your monitor has that precise resolution, and if it does, then it's not an improvement for gaming and productivity.

 

"Proof for all of my points" do these include the points in favour of 4k for gaming too?  If so, as I said medium settings at 4k look better than ultra settings at 1080p or 1440p, but this can't really be proven unless you have actually seen how a game looks at 4k. This thread asked for our opinion and experience on what would be best, and from my experience the case has been that 4k almost always looks better even at lower settings.

[jameshumphries47]

i would say get a 16:9 as there more practical than 21:9 

[taylorpro]

When you play a 1080p movie, that movie has a fixed resolution. I am sure we can agree on that, right? Now, if you play that movie on a screen that has a higher than 1080p resolution (in fullscreen of course), the image gets stretched. If the new resolution is not a perfect square multiple of 1080p (4x, 9x, 16x...) the process of stretching the image generates artifacts or degrades the overall visual quality, as a non-integer amount of physical pixels is assigned to each pixel in the video. While on a 4k monitor each pixel of the movie gets exactly 4 physical pixels that show the same colour, a 1440p monitor (for example) will have to decide which virtual pixels get more real pixels than the others and which get less. 

scaling_m.gif

Hopefully this image makes the difference clearer. There are algorithms than monitors use to make this effect less noticeable, but they cannot solve it completely. So to not have this effect your monitor should have a resolution of 1920 by 823, as a 1080p 16:9 movie actually contains a 21:9 movie with that resolution and black bands on top and on the bottom.

So you see, I can be pretty sure of what I am saying since I doubt your monitor has that precise resolution, and if it does, then it's not an improvement for gaming and productivity.

 

"Proof for all of my points" do these include the points in favour of 4k for gaming too?  If so, as I said medium settings at 4k look better than ultra settings at 1080p or 1440p, but this can't really be proven unless you have actually seen how a game looks at 4k. This thread asked for our opinion and experience on what would be best, and from my experience the case has been that 4k almost always looks better even at lower settings.

 

 

Solid points here that are very true. Good stuff.

[Tacitus]

If you have a 21:9 monitor your movies did get scaled, unless you have a sub 1080p resolution. Maybe you didn't notice it much, but there is a difference, and since those monitors are pretty expensive if they can't give you the best quality it's a bit of a waste I think...

as for 4k, the big advantage of it is that it is a perfect multiple of 720p and 1080p, so that if you watch movies or play games at those resolutions your experience is not worse than what you get on a native 1080p or 720p screen, whereas you have all that real estate for work and all those other things. plus you can run older games at full 4k no problem and have a great experience. Also bare in mind that resolution counts more than quality filters, especially in modern games: a modern game will look better at 4k medium settings than it would at 1080p ultra. All those 4k benchmarks you see are usually run with aa on and all settings cranked up to maximum, while on a real use case for a 4k display the user would not notice a big difference and would still enjoy it more than a 1080p or 1440p experience.

 

 

In what way are the movies scaled? Please provide more information and proof for all your points. I find it very hard to believe

 

They're not scaled, 21:9 allows films shot in that aspect ratio to make full use of the 1080 vertical pixels, instead of having black bars as in the case of 1920x1080p

[Sauron]

They're not scaled, 21:9 allows films shot in that aspect ratio to make full use of the 1080 vertical pixels, instead of having black bars as in the case of 1920x1080p

You don't know how video files work do you? When you have a 1080p mkv file, that file has either a) a 1920x823 resolution with no black bars or b-) a 1920x1080 resolution with black bars. there are no movies with a resolution of 2560x1080. I have made a very thorough post on how scaling works in this very thread, so do me and you a favour and go read that. 16:9 1080p monitors DO NOT bottleneck 1080p movies.

[Falcon]

I can absolutely recommend 21:9 displays. I love mine.

 

Basically, all games that support TH2G/Vision Surround/Eyefinity, support 21:9 displays. (The only exception I know is/are AC3 and AC4) And for the few games, that don't support these resolutions by default, there are fixes for them.

 

I always recommend checking the game on the PC Gaming Wiki or the WideScreen Gaming Forum.

 

 

You don't know how video files work do you? When you have a 1080p mkv file, that file has either a) a 1920x823 resolution with no black bars or b-) a 1920x1080 resolution with black bars. there are no movies with a resolution of 2560x1080. I have made a very thorough post on how scaling works in this very thread, so do me and you a favour and go read that. 16:9 1080p monitors DO NOT bottleneck 1080p movies.

 

There are mor than just those two options. Not every movie was recorded in Cinemascope or Panavision. There are tons of different formats out there, including 16:9 or close-to 16:9 aspect ratios (1.79:1 e.g.)

[Falcon]

-

[Sauron]

There are more than just those two options. Not every movie was recorded in Cinemascope or Panavision. There are tons of different formats out there, including 16:9 or close-to 16:9 aspect ratios (1.79:1 e.g.)

And none of those options is 21:9 2560x1080 (at least not a relevant number), which was my point. All of those formats can be viewed by a 16:9 1080p screen with no scaling, not so for a 21:9.

[Falcon]

That's true. But 1080p movies will always look crappy on a monitor compared to a good TV, due to missing image filters etc. It actually doesn't matter if you are upscaling (or rather: plainly zoom) the video to 21:9 with no borders, even without a good software scaler.

 

If one is going to watch movies regularly on a monitor or via an HTPC, I strongly recommend PowerDVD, which has an excellent software scaler built in, as well as some very good video filters.

[GeekySole9354]

I got a AOC 21:9 monitor and it's actually great! All of the games i have tried works in 2560x1080 and it's great for doing other things too, so go buy one right now!

[Tacitus]

You don't know how video files work do you? When you have a 1080p mkv file, that file has either a) a 1920x823 resolution with no black bars or b-) a 1920x1080 resolution with black bars. there are no movies with a resolution of 2560x1080. I have made a very thorough post on how scaling works in this very thread, so do me and you a favour and go read that. 16:9 1080p monitors DO NOT bottleneck 1080p movies.

 

So here you're saying the lower resolution (1920x823) is the format displayed with no black bars (i.e. when I watch Game of Thrones on Monday, and there are no black bars anywhere) yet 1920x1080p does have black bars. The reality is that I watch GoT at 1920x1080p and have no black bars, and that 1920x823p is almost exactly 21:9. Please forgive me if I'm wrong, but do you mean to say that when I view a fullscreen film on a 21:9 monitor it displays at that resolution to fill the entire screen?

 

If so, I'm not that fussed, most 21:9 monitors have great colour palets and other qualities that make for a great display, and I tend not to stop to count the pixels during a film.

 

I do apologise if I am overlooking something. I've only had 10 pints

[Sauron]

do you mean to say that when I view a fullscreen film on a 21:9 monitor it displays at that resolution to fill the entire screen?

Yes. When you watch a fullscreen got episode you are actually seeing stretched 1920x823.

[JW_Weingarten]

Yes. When you watch a fullscreen got episode you are actually seeing stretched 1920x823.

 

This is how my GoT looks.

 

http://i.imgur.com/U2T5DKI.jpg

[Sauron]

This is how my GoT looks.

 

http://i.imgur.com/U2T5DKI.jpg

Ok, then that's not scaled, but you're still not noticing any difference compared to a smaller 16:9 screen. You're just wasting the extra space and you wouldn't be on a 16:9 with your same diagonal. I was referring to movies in this format http://www.highdefdigest.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/shia-lbx.jpg

when you enlarge them to only see the image and not the borders on a 21:9 scaling occurs.

[Nunny]

Sorry to revive this but making a random new thread in stead of this one, which is still searched by people looking about 21:9, would be a misnomer which leaves misinformation.

 

so the main thing I wanted to add to this would be that 4k bluray has now become a standard. Movies viewed on a 4k display waste the vertical space at 16:9, whereas a 1440p ultrawide only misses out on a 400px width either side which is scaled down slightly with the 1440 height. Yes pixel density is a thing but seeing both side-by-side really shows that pixel density is not everything.

 

Now I must say. In 10 years or so when 4k ultrawide is applicable, I'll upgrade in a heartbeat. But until then, being the owner of both a 4k display and 1440p ultrawide: ultrawide is the way forward right now.

 

The amazing horizontal field of view in gaming, without 'fish lensing' also adds a lot more than just a crisper image; which at this time, cannot run at a constant 60fps with dual 980tis.