Ultrawide for gaming? Thoughts and experiences?

[mapegl]

I have a Dell U2419H and want something better for gaming. 

I am considering either an LG29UM69 with 75Hz or one of the AOC 1080p 24inch 144/165Hz. I don't care too much about high refresh...too old and slow anyway.

Both could be had new for what I can sell my old display for. What would you do and why? 

 

AND if you have an ultrawide, which I am leaning towards: what issues du you have in games?

[Stahlmann]

I'd personally go for the AOC if it's the 24G2 you're talking about.

 

Ultrawide does come with some downsides, but over the years i found workarounds for pretty much any game that i personally play. No major compatibility issues, just some scenes having black bars at the sides of the screen during content that is made for 16:9. It's worth it for the immersion but i wouldn't take it before a high refresh rate monitor.

[Dedayog]

26 minutes ago, mapegl said:

I have a Dell U2419H and want something better for gaming. 

I am considering either an LG29UM69 with 75Hz or one of the AOC 1080p 24inch 144/165Hz. I don't care too much about high refresh...too old and slow anyway.

Both could be had new for what I can sell my old display for. What would you do and why? 

 

AND if you have an ultrawide, which I am leaning towards: what issues du you have in games?

I've had a 1440p UW for over 3 years now and love it, the only caveats I run into:

 

1.  Sometimes UI elements are at the very far edges and it can take a bit of neck turning to see what you need.

2.  Some games SUCK TOTAL ASS at stretching to fill the screen, as most games are 16:9 and stretched. Primarily fps games, so people can't get an advantage of seeing more.

3.  Lack of a 2nd monitor, since my 35" is so large I don't use another monitor like I would if it was a regular 16:9 screen.  Alt tabbing to do stuff can be annoying at times.

 

These are completely outweighed by the field of view the UW provides.  It fills my vision basically fully and #1 above is not much of an issue since having UI elements outside the main area is awesome.

 

Just make sure you can drive the pixels.  A 1440p UW is a good bit more pixels than 1440p, for example.

 

TLDR:  I love UW and probably won't go back to regular 16:9 ever.

 

 

[jones177]

I have 2 ultrawide monitors.

One is a 3440 X 1440 34" 60hz that I bought in 2015.

It was used in my main gaming rig until 2019 when it was replaces with a 38" 3840 X 1600 75hz ultrawide.

 

For your setup I would go with a 34" 3440 x 1440 100hz monitor. If you are not going for high refresh rate get more resolution. 

 

[aflyinghotpocket]

43 minutes ago, mapegl said:

AND if you have an ultrawide, which I am leaning towards: what issues du you have in games?

I've been daily driving an UW for about 6 years now and have had a mix bag of experiences. 85% Great! 10% Terrible! and 5% confusing.... let me explain. 

 

Gaming on an UW comes with its own set of challenges, like if the game you are playing even supports UW resolutions. I tend to check https://www.wsgf.org/mgl to see if a game supports UW natively, with the modification of a config file, or mods. 

 

I'm going to be honest, if you want to tinker, you can get just able any game to play without issues on UW monitors. part of that 10% mentioned above for me has been a few of my favorite games just breaking or not working correctly in UW. For example, Fallout 4 is a hot mess of an example. The game does not support UW out of the box, and the mods that I have tried seem to work in some area, but fall short in others. Stepping into Power Armor brakes the UI and many conversations don't direct the camera correctly. The 5% confusion that I have had was dealing with modifying .ini or config files for some older games. Many of the settings tend to just fail to save or require a little bit more knowledge to get working. 

 

Your milage may very, depending on the titles you want to play in UW resolution. Many eSports titles support UW, so you should be covered there. 

[xg32]

3 hours ago, mapegl said:

I have a Dell U2419H and want something better for gaming. 

I am considering either an LG29UM69 with 75Hz or one of the AOC 1080p 24inch 144/165Hz. I don't care too much about high refresh...too old and slow anyway.

Both could be had new for what I can sell my old display for. What would you do and why? 

 

AND if you have an ultrawide, which I am leaning towards: what issues du you have in games?

i can only recommend UW if  it's your #1 priority, but for image quality there are many great deals at a low price.

 

for 175-200usd i'd get a 24G2, for 350-400usd i'd get a 1440p 144hz monitor

[Stahlmann]

1 hour ago, Dedayog said:

3.  Lack of a 2nd monitor, since my 35" is so large I don't use another monitor like I would if it was a regular 16:9 screen.  Alt tabbing to do stuff can be annoying at times.

I fixed this by wall mounting a 2nd monitor above my main UW. It's not that ergonomic, but i mostly have teamspeak, spotify or youtube running up there when playing games on the primary display. So i don't really tend to pay much attention to it anyway. I've tried a few weeks without a 2nd monitor but i just couldn't manage.

 

28 minutes ago, aflyinghotpocket said:

I've been daily driving an UW for about 6 years now and have had a mix bag of experiences. 85% Great! 10% Terrible! and 5% confusing.... let me explain. 

 

Gaming on an UW comes with its own set of challenges, like if the game you are playing even supports UW resolutions. I tend to check https://www.wsgf.org/mgl to see if a game supports UW natively, with the modification of a config file, or mods. 

 

I'm going to be honest, if you want to tinker, you can get just able any game to play without issues on UW monitors. part of that 10% mentioned above for me has been a few of my favorite games just breaking or not working correctly in UW. For example, Fallout 4 is a hot mess of an example. The game does not support UW out of the box, and the mods that I have tried seem to work in some area, but fall short in others. Stepping into Power Armor brakes the UI and many conversations don't direct the camera correctly. The 5% confusion that I have had was dealing with modifying .ini or config files for some older games. Many of the settings tend to just fail to save or require a little bit more knowledge to get working. 

 

Your milage may very, depending on the titles you want to play in UW resolution. Many eSports titles support UW, so you should be covered there. 

YMMV is about as accurate as it can be:

 

- Fallout 4 is one of the cases where it's very simple to install a mod that can fix all your problems almost instantly.

 

- Then there are games like AC: Odyssey or Witcher 3 where you need to edit the .exe using HxD to fix it. This is obviously out of the picture as soon as anti-cheat software is involved.

 

- Other games are simply fixed by editing some .ini file (Dark Souls 3).

 

- And then there are the rare cases where ultrawide is just not supported. Mostly older games fall into that category.

 

- Competitive games often have rather bad ultrawide support. Either they don't allow for anything other than 4:3 or 16:9 resolutions (Overwatch comes to mind) or they zoom in the whole fov so the horizontal fov is the same as 16:9, but the vertical fov is cut off. (CS:GO). So if anything you'll be at a disadvantage in competitive games.

 

 

That being said, most games just work without any tweaks and run fine. And if it works the pros heavily outweigh the cons imo. But i'm not afraid to get into any of the stuff i mentioned above. After about half a year or so with an ultrawide you know most of the tricks and the experience will be much smoother going forward.

[aflyinghotpocket]

3 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

YMMV is about as accurate as it can be:

Agreed

[mapegl]

17 hours ago, aflyinghotpocket said:

I've been daily driving an UW for about 6 years now and have had a mix bag of experiences. 85% Great! 10% Terrible! and 5% confusing.... let me explain. 

 

Gaming on an UW comes with its own set of challenges, like if the game you are playing even supports UW resolutions. I tend to check https://www.wsgf.org/mgl to see if a game supports UW natively, with the modification of a config file, or mods. 

 

I'm going to be honest, if you want to tinker, you can get just able any game to play without issues on UW monitors. part of that 10% mentioned above for me has been a few of my favorite games just breaking or not working correctly in UW. For example, Fallout 4 is a hot mess of an example. The game does not support UW out of the box, and the mods that I have tried seem to work in some area, but fall short in others. Stepping into Power Armor brakes the UI and many conversations don't direct the camera correctly. The 5% confusion that I have had was dealing with modifying .ini or config files for some older games. Many of the settings tend to just fail to save or require a little bit more knowledge to get working. 

 

Your milage may very, depending on the titles you want to play in UW resolution. Many eSports titles support UW, so you should be covered there. 

Thank you.

Is it difficult to set the monitor to 16:9 for those weird games? Basically make everything think you are using a regular screen? 

[Stahlmann]

5 hours ago, mapegl said:

Thank you.

Is it difficult to set the monitor to 16:9 for those weird games? Basically make everything think you are using a regular screen? 

Yes, essentially every ultrawide comes with a 16:9 monitor "built-in", so you can still just use the 16:9 part of your screen for games that don't play well with ultrawide.

 

On my 3440x1440 UW i can just set the resolution to 2560x1440 making it essentially a normal 1440p monitor with black bars on the sides.

[mapegl]

33 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

Yes, essentially every ultrawide comes with a 16:9 monitor "built-in", so you can still just use the 16:9 part of your screen for games that don't play well with ultrawide.

 

On my 3440x1440 UW i can just set the resolution to 2560x1440 making it essentially a normal 1440p monitor.

Thank you. That was actually very helpful. I do quite a lot of photography, research and writing as well, so I am thinking that a big monitor like a 3440x1440 would be beneficial. Again thank you for all the interesting info. 

 

[Stahlmann]

3 minutes ago, mapegl said:

Thank you. That was actually very helpful. I do quite a lot of photography, research and writing as well, so I am thinking that a big monitor like a 3440x1440 would be beneficial. Again thank you for all the interesting info. 

 

No problem, happy to help!

[mapegl]

Just to conclude the whole debacle...I bought an AOC 24G2U. Not really what I wanted, but I now regularly stay for a week or so at my girlfriend's and work from her home and then go back to my home. Meaning I need a decently portable display and that just doesn't apply to ultrawide monitors. I doubt I will be disappointed, but I would have loved an ultrawide. Maybe when I have more money I will buy an ultrawide in addition to this thing...

Thank you again for the help. 

On 11/30/2021 at 10:41 AM, Stahlmann said:

No problem, happy to help!