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| | | Thursday, January 17, 2008 |  | Widescreen vs Pan and Scan PC Gaming
By John @ 4:21 PM :: 9332 Views :: 15 Comments ::  :: Tech Knowledge |  | Resolution The other thing to consider is primary display resolution. Although screen size is important, it really only determines space used on a desk. The aspect ratio on the other hand directly affects the resolution used in testing. So long as my tests cover the most used resolution, it doesn’t matter if I am using a smaller screen than other people, because it takes no more processing power to run a game at 1680 x 1024 on a 24” monitor than it does on a 22” monitor. According to Steam: In the 4:3 aspect ratio: - 40% of users use 1280 X 960
- 31% are using 1024 x 768
- only 1.93% are using 1600 x 1200
In the 16:9 aspect ratio: - 8.86% are using 1680 x 1050
- 2.13% are using 1920x1200
Our Monitor Choice By using a 22” Samsung 16:9 monitor that supports up to 1680 x 1050, I can cover testing on every resolution apart from 1920 x 1200. I was not able to find any reasonably priced monitors that could support 1920 x 1200 resolution and I don’t have the room to put 36” LCD TVs on every test bed! Some games will box out the lower resolutions on a widescreen monitor; others will just stretch the image out. The end results, however, will be the same as testing on smaller monitors, because it’s still the same amount of pixels being presented on the screen. Widescreen vs Pan and Scan Gaming There has been some controversy over the last couple of months about how widescreen is supported in games. There are two parts to this: gaming experience, and gaming advantages or disadvantages. To be honest, I have used 4:3 monitors for a very long time and I wasn’t really too sure what going to a widescreen would give. I kind of expected that it would just stretch out most of my images, which is what I had seen in widescreen gaming in the past. I was very wrong. Let’s have a look at a few games. |
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| Comments |  By
concerned @
Friday, January 18, 2008 2:45 PM | |
the credibility of this article to me has been greatly reduced due to the fact that it refers to widescreen aspect ratios as 16:9 instead of 16:10 |
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| ByJohn gatt @
Friday, January 18, 2008 3:46 PM | |
You might want to go to http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html and see what they use let me tell you it’s not 16:10. As Steam is where I got my figures from Ill stick to it yes there is 16:10 but it’s not what I was testing. |
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| By
badu @
Friday, January 18, 2008 5:27 PM |
Interesting article, thanks.
Concerning the Steam page, I'm pretty sure they just mislabeled it as 16:9... if you look under primary display resolutions, there's not a single 16:9 resolution on there. The page was probably written for console stats originally. |
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| By
not a n00b like you @
Friday, January 18, 2008 6:39 PM | |
all those resolutions are either 4:3, 5:4(1280x1024) or 16:10 (1920x1200 is 16:10, 1920x1080 is 16:9). Just cus steam made a typo doesn't mean you have to repeat it does it? Poor article. |
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| By
John Gatt @
Friday, January 18, 2008 6:40 PM | |
All the Valve games box out the game to 16:9 (Black line at top and bottom) Yes the desktop is 16:10 when set to 1680X1050 but most of the games are played at 16:9 as the game dose not use the full hight of the monitor. |
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| By
notan00b @
Friday, January 18, 2008 6:46 PM |
No, thats wrong, I have a 2560x1600 30" Dell 3007WFP-HC so I can say for a fact all steam games display 16:10 correctly (HL2 games anyway). Please look here for a description of how it does it, they also cover other games.
http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/wiki/index.php/Half-Life_series
Sorry to flame, but you are incorrect. |
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| By
mGuy @
Friday, January 18, 2008 7:06 PM | |
Good article, thanks. This was exactly the info I was looking for when I was shopping for a new lcd - is a widescreen an advantage in fps. |
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| By
John @
Friday, January 18, 2008 7:22 PM |
Screen shot of id calling it 16:9 too.
http://www.tkarena.com/Portals/0/quake4%202008-01-19%2006-04-39-61.jpg
Yes I know 1680x1050 is 16:10 but Games have referd to widescreen as 16:9 for as long as I can remember. Ill put a note in the artical about it :)
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| By
tompee @
Monday, January 21, 2008 9:06 AM |
I foresee the next trend, after everyone has wide screens in 5 years time.
It will be "tall screens", in an amazing new 4:3 ratio, and there will be screenshots where on the wide screen you lose sight of what is at the top and at the bottom of the image, but on a "tall screen" you get to see everything, and it will be amazing! |
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| By
Random5 @
Monday, January 21, 2008 10:47 AM | |
Actually Steam games (Source engine that is) offer 4:3 (which does include the 1280x1024 5:4 res), 16:10 resolutions and 16:9 resolutions. There is a list in video options of which aspect ratio you want! Most people run in 16:10 as there are more monitors for it and since you don't make much mention of ACTUAL 16:9 resolutions you should have said 16:10 |
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| By
Random5 @
Monday, January 21, 2008 10:53 AM | |
tompee, you're missing something here... our eyes are better looking left to right than they are up and down for one thing, and our field of vision is much wider than it is high anyway. Widescreen monitors better fill your vision... if a 4:3 monitor was filling your entire vision you'd miss out things at the top and bottom. A 16:X monitor can almost perfectly fill your field of vision, immersing you in the game or movie more throughly. |
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| By
richiemccann @
Monday, January 21, 2008 1:49 PM | |
Your note about Bioshock is actually incorrect. the game was developed for widescreen. To avoid the 4:3 ratio losing the atmosphere that the developers wanted to give, the 4:3 version actually ADDS the top and the bottom of the image rather than removing it for widescreen gameplay. Details here: http://au.xbox360.ign.com/articles/814/814960p1.html |
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| ByEags @
Tuesday, January 22, 2008 11:48 AM |
To set the record straight:
Movies and TV's have a 16:9 aspect ratios. The screens for displaying them are called 'widescreen'. The term 16:9 describes the ratio and was interchangable with 'widescreen'
UNTIL computer monitors started to become popular, however they came in a slightly different resolution ratio...that of 16:10.
But they LOOK the same as the TV screens right? So people still used the term 16:9, even though its now incorrect.
To the author, this is teh interweb.
Please update your atricle to remove 16:9 and replace it with 16:10. You are tangling the series of tubes and Mr Gore is un-impressed! |
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| By
Jeffro @
Sunday, February 10, 2008 10:56 PM |
OOOH get a life
Quibling over numbers which not a lot of people can reach is inconsequential!!!!
I have an AMD quad 9500 based machine feeding a 8800gts graphics card on a HP LP3065 (thats worth looking up) and the top resolution on that possible is 2560 x 1600 and yes I can run all my games including Witcher at that resolution.
BUT
why are you worrying about larger resolutions when they are not available?
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| By
anoriega @
Saturday, September 20, 2008 12:38 AM |
I just wanted to point out that 4:3 does not mean pan-and-scan. The term comes from movies that are put on VHS or DVD in 4:3 format, cutting off the sides of the movie. The transfer is not just done by taking the 4:3 picture from the middle of the widescreen image; the person/company doing the transfer will "pan" the image left and right to follow the action, so you lose as little as possible by watching the "full screen" version. PC games don't "pan and scan", that's what YOU'RE doing when you move the mouse left and right, regardless of what resolution/ratio you're using. 4:3 != pan-and-scan.
Also, as others pointed out, widescreen != 16:9. The only likely 16:9 resolutions you'll see are people with LCD/plasma TVs: 1280x720 and 1920x1080. The others the author listed were 16:10. Oh, and 1280x1024, another popular non-widescreen resolution, is 5:4, not 4:3. |
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