16:9 resolution change

[DutchFlame]

I don't really get the point why people complain about this. Comeon you can't even expect in 2011 to play games with a cheap ass monitor. Move forward here. Be happy soldat takes a step ahead. Go complain about the netcode instead or anything useful, because this is just not important. If you open your eyes sometimes you can actually notice people sneaking up behind, its not hard you know. Stop being mad about a good thing.

[Bistoufly]

The matter is that either widescreen users get black bars (smaller view) or 4:3 users get black bars. It looks obvious to me that since most users have switched to widescreens, that that would be the preferred ratio.

That's correct.

... besides, they always play tournaments on TFTs, probably LED though.

http://www.geek.com/articles/games/russian-strippers-attempt-to-interrupt-counter-strike-tournament-nsfw-2009112/
CRT's + Strippers! That was in 2009
Anyway you're right, seems I'm the only guy on this forum that who has any interest in how to setup Soldat and what hardware to use to get the best comfort and efficiency. :/

I prefer not to play Soldat at all than playing it on a lcd. So I guess this means goodbye.

btw: Thank you for the discussion ginn. You actually red the thread and the different posts before replying.
Unlike most of the people who replied on this thread.

[L[0ne]R]

On that:

CRT's completely pwn LCD's in very fasted paced games where actions must be performed in a small time window. ( such as Soldat, Warsow, Quake3 , Cs, ...)

I have LCD. Not even some badass gamer LCD. Just a regular 2005'ish LCD for a typical business computer. And I never ever ever had any issues even when playing Soldat, Team Fortress, Quake, or any other "fast" games. :/

just another 2 cents, not trying to prove or disprove anything here.

[miketh2005]

well, "downgrading" to a cheap 16:9 screen won't have an impact on your performance in soldat. I would see it as an upgrad, because you'll have a higher resolution, it won't use as much electricity and not weigh a ton.
Really, your screen is 7 years old....

Reactivity:
Even the best LCD's have significant input lag while CRT's have none. ( basically if you have a CRT you see the bullet before the guy with his LCD )
Fluidity:
On a fast paced game like soldat, fluidity is the most important aspect.
My CRT runs @200hz. The best lcd's run @120hz ( and are very expensive) Common lcd's only run @60hz.

I own two monitors:
a 21inch crt
a 22inch 16:9 lcd

I tried once running soldat on my lcd. Never again! After playing on the crt, going to the lcd is like watching a slideshow. Not to mention the ghosting and bluriness of the moving objects.

As for the resolution, it doesn't matter as Soldat is 640x480. ( 853x480 for Soldat 1.6 )
And anyway my CRT can go up to 2048x1536 while my LCD only goes up to 1920x1080

You're totally right about "it won't use as much electricity and not weigh a ton" tho.

Dude, you are behind the times. You can get a 200hz LCD since 2008, and there are LCDs with 5ms lag. That is milliseconds! MILLISECONDS! You can barely notice 5 ms, that's not going to give you an ounce of edge over the competition unless you have robotic eyes.

[Bistoufly]

well, "downgrading" to a cheap 16:9 screen won't have an impact on your performance in soldat. I would see it as an upgrad, because you'll have a higher resolution, it won't use as much electricity and not weigh a ton.
Really, your screen is 7 years old....

Reactivity:
Even the best LCD's have significant input lag while CRT's have none. ( basically if you have a CRT you see the bullet before the guy with his LCD )
Fluidity:
On a fast paced game like soldat, fluidity is the most important aspect.
My CRT runs @200hz. The best lcd's run @120hz ( and are very expensive) Common lcd's only run @60hz.

I own two monitors:
a 21inch crt
a 22inch 16:9 lcd

I tried once running soldat on my lcd. Never again! After playing on the crt, going to the lcd is like watching a slideshow. Not to mention the ghosting and bluriness of the moving objects.

As for the resolution, it doesn't matter as Soldat is 640x480. ( 853x480 for Soldat 1.6 )
And anyway my CRT can go up to 2048x1536 while my LCD only goes up to 1920x1080

You're totally right about "it won't use as much electricity and not weigh a ton" tho.

Dude, you are behind the times. You can get a 200hz LCD since 2008, and there are LCDs with 5ms lag. That is milliseconds! MILLISECONDS! You can barely notice 5 ms

When will people learn to read and inform themselves before stating false affirmations? :/

There is no true 200hz  lcd. It simply doesn't exist on the market.
You're talking about the "100/120 and 200/240hz TV's. They can only accept 50/60hz input sources. Ever heard of image interpolation? They just process additional calculated frames.
And this is producing a lot of additional lag. That's why it's highly recomanded to turn off these frame interpolations functions if you're gonna play with your xbox, ps3, ... on these.

And if you took the time to read the Wikipedia link. You would know by now that this "5ms lag" you're referring to is just the grey to grey response time. The Monitor constructors don't publish the input lag values. And these are much higher.
And even if one day they manage to make a super high end lcd with 0ms input lag and true 200hz, it will still be a lot less fluid then a CRT. Because the lcd hold the image on the screen for the duration of the frame time.
"an image held on the screen for the duration of a frame-time [i.e. sample and hold] blurs on the retina as the eye tracks the (average) motion from one frame to the next. By comparison, as the [CRT] electron beam sweeps the surface of a cathode ray tube, it lights any given part of the screen only for a miniscule fraction of the frame time."

Illustration of the "sample-and-hold" effect

And here a simulation that gives an idea of how it looks like in real-time:
(made with Pixperan's "streaky picture test")

And another one:

The degree to which all displays approximate a sample-and-hold effect is shown below

that's not going to give you an ounce of edge over the competition unless you have robotic eyes.

How can you judge about that? Do you have the two types of screens plugged to your computer?
Cause I do, and the difference is like day and night!
And for me it's not about competing. It's about comfort and immersion. Seeing your soldat react immediately when you move it. Seeing the map move with fluidity without any motion blur.

[Leo]

I have absolutely no problem playing all games with my LCD monitor, no lag or blur as you post in your pictures.

[ginn]

ehm.... this is just the same pic that's been altered with blur... I was gonna ask how fast the rotation was, but I'm pretty sure there was none.

Anyway, you'll get used to LCD, I used to use CRTs untill like 2 years ago.

[tk]

How can you judge about that? Do you have the two types of screens plugged to your computer?
Cause I do, and the difference is like day and night!
And for me it's not about competing. It's about comfort and immersion. Seeing your soldat react immediately when you move it. Seeing the map move with fluidity without any motion blur.

What a s**tty LCD you must be using then. I admit, old LCDs had signifincant lag and blur (the best example is white cursor on black background), but on new monitors such problem doesn't exist, or at least on mine.

You are not able to notice 5ms latency. it's 1/200 of a second.

[ginn]

How can you judge about that? Do you have the two types of screens plugged to your computer?
Cause I do, and the difference is like day and night!
And for me it's not about competing. It's about comfort and immersion. Seeing your soldat react immediately when you move it. Seeing the map move with fluidity without any motion blur.

What a s**tty LCD you must be using then. I admit, old LCDs had signifincant lag and blur (the best example is white cursor on black background), but on new monitors such problem doesn't exist, or at least on mine.

You are not able to notice 5ms latency. it's 1/200 of a second.

well, you gotta compare it to your reaction time...
according to http://www.fetchfido.co.uk/games/reaction/reaction_test.htm my reaction time is 0.193, though I'm sleepy and got a new mouse (not used to the actuation force and button actuation travel), so it could probably be lower. Now, assuming I have a 5ms delay because of the screen, my real reaction time would be 0.188, that means my reaction time increased by 2.7%. now, if I was doing something I'm used to do and can very instinctively react, it might go down to 170ms~, then it'll be an increase of 3%. My maths may be wrong :p.

This might not sound like much, and might not actually be enough to create an issue in competitive gaming, like LAN CS (I'm not sure how many ms can make the difference between life/death).

[Bistoufly]

.re the images: the first one is an actual photograph. the second and third are simulations of what you would see if you caught the image on the screen "with your own eyes". The simulations were made with PixPerAn. http://www.prad.de/en/monitore/testsoftware/pixperan.html

to all the people that says they've got no problem with their lcd.
Well If I hadn't a crt to compare with. I would say the same thing as you.
You can only see it if you actually try soldat on a crt.
And it's not just like a little difference. It's really day and night as far as playing Soldat is concerned.






From: August 26, 2011, 04:57:38 pm

What a s**tty LCD you must be using then. I admit, old LCDs had signifincant lag and blur (the best example is white cursor on black background), but on new monitors such problem doesn't exist, or at least on mine.

You are not able to notice 5ms latency. it's 1/200 of a second.

For the 3rd time now. 5ms is not the latency its the pixel reponse time. The typical display lag on a lcd is about +-50 ms.

*pixel response time: (+- 5 ms)  due to the nature of the lcd panel)

*display lag: (+-50ms) due to the electronic processing inside the monitor. ( scaling, post processing, overdrive, ... )

On a crt there is no display lag and no pixel response time.

[Shoozza]

I've read through the thread and Fryer's solution seems to make most people happy.
The only stuff that seems to worry people is the increased back view and the fact that they will see black bars in non 16:9 resolutions (or see simply less).

When I look at the results of Steam hardware survey of July 2011 it looks like moving towards widescreen isn't a bad idea:
40.29% (16:10)
35.09% (16:9)
11.80% (5:4)
 8.30% (4:3)
 4.92% (other)

I think removing 16:9 support this late (Soldat 1.6.0 will be released in a few days) is not a good idea. I'd rather do some finishing touches instead.
Lets just try how this turns out in 1.6.0.
Maybe people like the new 16:9 support after all. Or maybe I'm just wrong and we will have to find another solution in 1.6.1.

I myself play Soldat windowed with 640x480 resolution on a 1680x1050 LCD so it's not really a problem for me to switch to widescreen (it adds just a few more pixels).

I apologize for the abrupt introduction of widescreen as best resolution ratio to play Soldat.


Anyways enough excuses and thanks for the feedback!

[machina]

4:3 resolution was making Soldat old... Now, it's a bit newer with 16:9/10...

[biohazard]

Ok with new wide shit, but soldat has to be remade totally in the very near future, like the maps and the WM.

[machina]

Ok with new wide s**t, but soldat has to be remade totally in the very near future, like the maps and the WM.

WM, WM... WM... What the fuck is this?

[DarkCrusade]

WM=WeaponMod