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[MR ARCADE FOREVER]

For retro games it's great but for modern games? No thanks

 

[Games of Today]

Sweet, I took older 80's CRT from my grandmas house and played Medal of Honor 2010 on it and it looked real.

 

[U n i o n 0015]

There's so many other benefits to modern OLED that every time I think about going back to a CRT, I remember how much my 27" Trinitron weighed.

Resolution, brightness, size of the image (I remember thinking 27" was HUGE at the time), emulation shaders that get you 99% of the look...I just see no reason to go back anymore, even if motion clarity is better.

 

[Silver Wattle]

I remember absolutely hating using the school computers when they "upgraded" to LCD monitors, CRT was massively superior and we all got scammed into switching to LCD.

 

[KeepThemEyesOpen]

Nice find dude!

 

[fart town usa]

CRTs rule and yes, some HD games look amazing on them.

 

[The Cockatrice]

ambilight

Spoiler

Most annoying and useless shit ever. I remember when TV's invented that shit ages ago and it just vanished from the face of the earth due to how annoying it was and now it resurfaced just to add gimmicky shit to TV prices. Consumers are lol.

 

[Toots]

Until you turn a 16:9 screen sideways

I remember dudes 20 years ago turning their CRT tvs upside down to play some smup (raiden force or something like that, perfect exemple of what NeoIkaruGAF was talking about earlier of games which couldn't have worked on anything other than 4:3) "the right way" .
I guess a few cavemen taste turned their painted rocks sideways too

 

[BlackTron]

I remember dudes 20 years ago turning their CRT tvs upside down to play some smup (raiden force or something like that, perfect exemple of what NeoIkaruGAF was talking about earlier of games which couldn't have worked on anything other than 4:3) "the right way" .
I guess a few cavemen taste turned their painted rocks sideways too

Maybe they turned it sideways? A sideways 4:3 screen becomes 3:4. An upside-down 4:3 screen is still 4:3.

 

[Rocco Schiavone]

Spoiler

Most annoying and useless shit ever. I remember when TV's invented that shit ages ago and it just vanished from the face of the earth due to how annoying it was and now it resurfaced just to add gimmicky shit to TV prices. Consumers are lol.

Actually one company invented this. It was Philips. How can It be gimmicky If It improves the atmosphere??

 

[lefty1117]

I remember when LCDs first came out, thinking the picture quality was actually worse than the CRTs. But the CRTs had weird things about aligning the screen correctly, and degauss/testicle sterilization button. And they were just so heavy and bulky

 

[The Cockatrice]

Actually one company invented this. It was Philips.

Yeah like 15-20 years ago? I remember being a teen and seeing it for the first time. No one used it, cuz it became annoying quickly. Having a colored light that changes behind your TV is distracting as hell. It's like having a x-mas tree behind it. Looks cool in still pictures but its a different thing entirely when playing games. Immersive my ass. Glad you dont get annoyed by it.

 

[Rudius]

It would be nice to have new CRT monitors being made for enthusiasts, with modern connections, at least HDMI, widescreen (16x9 or 16x10) and higher resolutions, up to 1440p. The technology has some important advantages over flat panels, even if they are in an extreme time disadvantage of almost 20 years.

 

[VN1X]

On my way home yesterday, I found a ViewSonic G220f in the alley down the street. The plastic rotating base was broken, which I guess is why they pitched it. Everything else on it is perfect.

TLDR; CRTs handle motion so much better than the flat screen tech that replaced them. Digital Foundry went on a jag about this a few years back, and it's actually true. And because of how you're not limited by a fixed pixel display, you can run in lower resolutions and still get an incredibly sharp and fluid image with absolutely zero ghosting.

Running it through a VGA to DisplayPort adapter that I had laying around, into my EVGA RTX 3060 12GB. It does 1600x1200@75hz and even goes much higher at 60hz. I've been running it at 1400x1050@90hz for maximum suavamente in motion. The motion even at 60hz looks obviously clearer than my Acer Predator 1080p at 240hz does.

To my surprise, a LOT of modern and recent PC games support 4:3 resolutions. Some standouts I've found so far: Doom Eternal, Metro Exodus EE, Fortnite, Forza Horizon 5, The Witcher 3 Next Gen, Cyberpunk 2027.

So Fortnite running at 1400x1050@90hz with all of the Lumen and Nanite features cranked is just amazing looking in person. It's like the monitor is a window into a tangible cartoon world that you can almost reach into, rather than having a screen door that has to shift its squares to provide motion.

Here's my kiddo going old school with Minecraft:

I know this is the nichest of niche experiments, but I'm going to ride this one out until the tube dies and goes to the great recycling center in the sky. If you ever get a chance to try one of these in _current_year, it's worth the trouble IMO.

Man, that's fantastic! I still remember the good old days playing Half-Life, Quake 3, Red Alert, Project IGI, GTA, Turok and many more on those brilliant displays. Would love to see something like DOOM Eternal running on a CRT myself.

Not jealous at all.

 

[Toots]

Maybe they turned it sideways? A sideways 4:3 screen becomes 3:4. An upside-down 4:3 screen is still 4:3.

You are right !
"They turned it sideways because on the arcade cabinet the scrolling was upside down and they wanted to emulate this" is what i would have said if i weren't kind of dumb

 

[64bitmodels]

You can see how games that don’t want to offer a cinematic experience and therefore aren’t displayed like a movie would, often feature scenes that struggle to accommodate the 16:9 format.

like...? Unless your hd portjob is bad like the R&C PS3 HD collection from way back these games will always look better in 16:9 because of simply having more space to spread out the visuals.
The original 2D Sonic games are a prime example of the massive improvement widescreen can give to a game. Many of the visibility issues are massively negated when you have an extra 40% of screen real estate to view your surroundings. Mario World also benefits quite a lot from this though not as much as Sonic did.

As a side note, I believe AUO Corporation now hold the patents for SED displays, which are flat CRT monitors. Perhaps some day when the suits look past the current obsession of modern gaming and its fake resolutions and frames…

That's what makes the suits the most money so I doubt it. You should be asking gamers to stop caring about res and frames

 

[Holammer]

I remember dudes 20 years ago turning their CRT tvs upside down to play some smup (raiden force or something like that, perfect exemple of what NeoIkaruGAF was talking about earlier of games which couldn't have worked on anything other than 4:3) "the right way" .
I guess a few cavemen taste turned their painted rocks sideways too

I tried that in the late 90's too, played some vertical arcade games with MAME using /rol.
The old monitor did not like it at all. So going *TATE* was a shortlived experiment.

 

[ResurrectedContrarian]

The lack of CRTs has also led the younger generations to have a completely false view of the gaming past.

They actually believe that these blocky and awful emulator-on-lcd versions of old games are how things looked. They have no clue just how gorgeous things were on the correct hardware.

(Of course this is a general problem with people under 30... their view of the past is an almost total fabrication, projected to create the illusion of progress)

 

[Porticus]

The lack of CRTs has also led the younger generations to have a completely false view of the gaming past.

They actually believe that these blocky and awful emulator-on-lcd versions of old games are how things looked. They have no clue just how gorgeous things were on the correct hardware.

(Of course this is a general problem with people under 30... their view of the past is an almost total fabrication, projected to create the illusion of progress)

Thats called nostalgia dude, no, nothing gorgeus about it.

 

[EverydayBeast]

TVs and monitors make a huge difference.

 

[small_law]

I've held on to my 27-in Sony Vega flat display CRT for 23 years and it still works. It's heavier than the sun, ugly as sin, and I'd love to throw it out, but I can't do it knowing it's really the only way to play older games.

 

[BlackTron]

You are right !
"They turned it sideways because on the arcade cabinet the scrolling was upside down and they wanted to emulate this" is what i would have said if i weren't kind of dumb

That still doesn't make any sense but okay lol. Arcade screens don't have "upside-down scrolling" and if they did, a sideways screen wouldn't emulate that.

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

like...?

Well, just the other day I was playing Sea of Stars and there's a scene where

Spoiler

one of those Japanese-style dragons with a very long body crosses the screen from right to left over the world map. It's kind of hilarious because the screen is just so long and it seems like the dragon is barely moving. In 4:3 the sense of movement in situations like this felt just right.

The original 2D Sonic games are a prime example of the massive improvement widescreen can give to a game. Many of the visibility issues are massively negated when you have an extra 40% of screen real estate to view your surroundings.

I thought the point of Sonic always was to not know what you were running towards. And I'm only half joking here. You'd think if good gameplay took priority over coolness and speed in Sonic, they would have found a way to make it better from the start, or in Sonic 2 at the latest.
But this is another instance where a tighter aspect ratio helps improving the sense of speed.

Mario World also benefits quite a lot from this though not as much as Sonic did.

OK, now this is just heresy.

But seriously, those games were made for the limitations of 4:3. Seeing more than you were supposed to see in the game's original format spoils the challenge.

 

[64bitmodels]

I thought the point of Sonic always was to not know what you were running towards. And I'm only half joking here. You'd think if good gameplay took priority over coolness and speed in Sonic, they would have found a way to make it better from the start, or in Sonic 2 at the latest.
But this is another instance where a tighter aspect ratio helps improving the sense of speed.

I'd take a lower sense of speed over frustration. The games are still quite fast when you're playing them in 16:9, just less frustrating thanks to a bigger screen. Besides, if the origins collection & Mania are any indication even Sega doesn't want you to play the originals in 4:3.

OK, now this is just heresy.

But seriously, those games were made for the limitations of 4:3. Seeing more than you were supposed to see in the game's original format spoils the challenge.

There's a reason Mario World got that widescreen patch to begin with, being able to see farther ahead of the screen is just objectively good in 99% of scenarios.

 

[Holammer]

The lack of CRTs has also led the younger generations to have a completely false view of the gaming past.

They actually believe that these blocky and awful emulator-on-lcd versions of old games are how things looked. They have no clue just how gorgeous things were on the correct hardware.

(Of course this is a general problem with people under 30... their view of the past is an almost total fabrication, projected to create the illusion of progress)

"Ackchyually! SNES games are meant to be played with an 8:7 aspect ratio. As Nintendo intended!"

 

[ResurrectedContrarian]

lol and I don't know why this thread moved into an obsession with the aspect ratio. The critical advantages of CRTs are across many domains (speed, correct rendering of pixel-based games, color, glow, etc) are the reason people who lived long enough to know the difference still seek them out.

Aspect ratio is secondary and has various drawbacks when you extend only in one dimension. Many classic arcade games and genres privileged the vertical dimension for gameplay over the horizontal, and many levels in even side-scrolling classic games do this as well. A closer ratio to square is more agnostic towards the use of the space, whereas playing something like a pinball simulator or overhead flight shooter is seriously disadvantaged by a horizontal display--entire genres are palpably, unfixably worsened.

 

[cortadew]

It is but i can access my FLACs with a mouseclick and i don't need to change the vinyl all the time
And i have a nice DAC.

In fact they are not, flac is better at everything than a Vynil

 

[amigastar]

In fact they are not, flac is better at everything than a Vynil

Not so sure about it, I don't personally have much experience with Vinyl but i've heard good Vinyl pressings and good equipment sounds better than digital music.

 

[64bitmodels]

A closer ratio to square is more agnostic towards the use of the space, whereas playing something like a pinball simulator or overhead flight shooter is seriously disadvantaged by a horizontal display--entire genres are palpably, unfixably worsened.

This is a fair criticism, but the vast majority of people play genres that heavily benefit from horizontal extensions. Racing games, Platformers, Sports games, RPGs, RTS, First Person shooters, etc all have a major benefit when the game is horizonally fixated. It's simply because our sight is more horizontal than vertical. You see farther left to right than you do up and down, it's why the 16:9 widescreen standard even got established over a pure square ratio. it's much harder to keep track of everything in a vertical oriented game than a horizontal game simply because it's easier to just look around.

It's still disadvantegous for the shmups and games with weird aspect ratios out there but it's not that impactful on the majority of gaming genres out there.

Not so sure about it, I don't personally have much experience with Vinyl but i've heard good Vinyl pressings and good equipment sounds better than digital music.

Flac objectively contains more data and is about as close to the original recording as you can get. A good set of Hi Fi headphones will help you hear details that would've been lost when listening through MP3 or Vinyl.
Either way the worst of both worlds (MP3 & Streaming) are the most popular methods of listening to music these days. :^(

 

[Imtjnotu]

Ever try an oled with bfi?

Only issue with bfi is I can see the frames flicker on bright scenes. Don't need a seizure

 

[amigastar]

This is a fair criticism, but the vast majority of people play genres that heavily benefit from horizontal extensions. Racing games, Platformers, Sports games, RPGs, RTS, First Person shooters, etc all have a major benefit when the game is horizonally fixated. It's simply because our sight is more horizontal than vertical. You see farther left to right than you do up and down, it's why the 16:9 widescreen standard even got established over a pure square ratio. it's much harder to keep track of everything in a vertical oriented game than a horizontal game simply because it's easier to just look around.

It's still disadvantegous for the shmups and games with weird aspect ratios out there but it's not that impactful on the majority of gaming genres out there.



Flac objectively contains more data and is about as close to the original recording as you can get. A good set of Hi Fi headphones will help you hear details that would've been lost when listening through MP3 or Vinyl.
Either way the worst of both worlds (MP3 & Streaming) are the most popular methods of listening to music these days. :^(

I have good Hi Fi headphones (Hifiman HE-500) and i enjoy listening to good Flac Recordings

 

[ResurrectedContrarian]

It's simply because our sight is more horizontal than vertical. You see farther left to right than you do up and down, it's why the 16:9 widescreen standard even got established over a pure square ratio. it's much harder to keep track of everything in a vertical oriented game than a horizontal game simply because it's easier to just look around.

I agree when it's a totally immerse screen like a cinema, where ultra-widescreen formats originated. But having wall-sized TVs in a living room is an offense to taste, IMO, and at appropriate sizes the horizontal viewing issue is never part of the equation.

Racing games, Platformers, Sports games, RPGs, RTS

I definitely don't agree when it comes to sports (widescreen feels cramped for American football), RPGs (grid based combat and world maps are more natural on a square IMO), or even RTS. These are negative cases for widescreen.

EDIT: to elaborate on football, here's what I mean. TV game broadcasts almost always show the field across the longest dimension, so on today's TVs they show horizontal:

...because you need to see the "vertical" (longwise) action on the field clearly to understand how an entire play is shaping up. That makes sense.

But modern football games want to focus on the QB, which is fine, and be a hybrid of "first person" (you are the QB) and overhead (but you need to really see the whole play) in nature. Okay--but if you're viewing the field from the angle where the QB is facing upward, having a very wide screen shortens the critical vertical view, and brings you the opposite ratio of what is clearly considered the standard view of the action in a broadcast of a game. It feels weird and compromised. You end dipping the view downward, but then the defense doesn't have an objective view and 2-player sucks.

 

[ResurrectedContrarian]

One more: why widescreen is a disadvantage for grid-based combat.

Here's what we always get now for tactical games:

To see the actual ranges of characters and attacks, I have to constantly rotate my view. Because the reduced vertical dimension requires the game makers to drop the camera to a much lower angle to compensate, and this just further makes it difficult to see around barriers etc. So you rotate like mad just to see the battlefield, when a more square view of the grid gives you the full information almost instantly.

 

[KuraiShidosha]

This is what us older guys have been trying to tell all you youngins who never even seen one in purpose but they don't believe us. They really are the best still. Not even OLED with BFI can beat it because they lose a ton of brightness and still don't match in motion clarity. I love CRTs.

 

[Soodanim]

One more: why widescreen is a disadvantage for grid-based combat.

Here's what we always get now for tactical games:

To see the actual ranges of characters and attacks, I have to constantly rotate my view. Because the reduced vertical dimension requires the game makers to drop the camera to a much lower angle to compensate, and this just further makes it difficult to see around barriers etc. So you rotate like mad just to see the battlefield, when a more square view of the grid gives you the full information almost instantly.

SIngling this post out because it's the most recent, but it's far from the only one that makes this claim.

Going from 4:3 to 16:9 can be done in one of two ways:
Horizontal+
Vertical-

What you and others are moaning about is vert-, where a 4:3 image loses some of the top and bottom in order to get the 16:9 image. But that's not the only way to do it, and that was seen more in the early days.

Hor+ is what modern games do more often, and it's what you're seeing when you go from 4:3 to 16:9 to 21:9. You're adding more, not taking anything away. To use the screenshot above as an example, if there was some ideal view in 4:3 then a Hor+ widescreen would be without question better because more is shown, not less.

Devs choosing a lower FOV/zoom is not widescreen's fault. You can have that same zoomed in FOV in 4:3. Don't blame widescreen for devs' choices.

 

[JRW]

Nice. I have an old plasma in my bedroom and I hooked up my ps5 one night to play in bed and was shocked how smooth the motion was. Playing horizon forbidden West 60fps mode the game looked kinda better than my OLED downstairs lol.

I wish we could of got a 4k plasma.

I fired up Starfield (PC) on my old 50" Kuro plasma and yea 60fps motion is insane, smooth like 144fps on an 144Hz LCD plus Starfield's weird overbright black levels actually look pretty good on the Plasma.

A shame Plasma didn't stick around longer as it was the closest thing to a CRT (both being Phosphor based).

 

[ResurrectedContrarian]

SIngling this post out because it's the most recent, but it's far from the only one that makes this claim.

Going from 4:3 to 16:9 can be done in one of two ways:
Horizontal+
Vertical-

What you and others are moaning about is vert-, where a 4:3 image loses some of the top and bottom in order to get the 16:9 image. But that's not the only way to do it, and that was seen more in the early days.

Hor+ is what modern games do more often, and it's what you're seeing when you go from 4:3 to 16:9 to 21:9. You're adding more, not taking anything away. To use the screenshot above as an example, if there was some ideal view in 4:3 then a Hor+ widescreen would be without question better because more is shown, not less.

Devs choosing a lower FOV/zoom is not widescreen's fault. You can have that same zoomed in FOV in 4:3. Don't blame widescreen for devs' choices.

First: I don't think either ratio is universally better, to be clear, but simply that widescreen has its own set of trade-offs, sometimes noticeably negative ones for certain genres, which is rarely acknowledged.

More to the point: whether you think of widescreen as adding horizontal space rather than full-screen adding vertical space is subjective--they're simply 2 different shapes, and the sense of somehow increasing a view is only based on which aspect you're moving from/to and the needs of the genre you're playing.

But a common problem is that devs have strong incentive to use the full widescreen space for main gameplay; if people are playing on wide screens, that's the expectation. So instead of the extra space being an enhancement, the game is essentially zoomed to maximize in that available area, and then you have imbalance on games that play better in a balanced ratio. The notion that "you're adding more, not taking anything away" is by no means universal; if you're playing a vertically oriented game, you will absolutely feel that something is taken away, and devs will never make the game fit into the small vertical space then add some "extra" content to the sides... you'll simply have it zoomed to give the sense of using all the screen size, and you'll lose vertical sight or have other compromises put in to compensate.

 

[ResurrectedContrarian]

(wide-ratio CRTs do exist, by the way--they simply didn't exist in great numbers since the LCD downfall transition happened at the same time and incentive wasn't there to develop the new CRTs in wide anymore; so the virtues of CRT and debates over widescreen really are different conversations. It's a sad historical accident that LCDs and their many pitfalls are tightly associated with the wide ratio, when that was just a matter of costs at the time.)

 

[sachos]

Digital Foundry went on a jag about this a few years back, and it's actually true.

I watched their video and was really curious after it. I went and found a Syncmaster 793s that can do 640x480 @ 135hz and 800x600 @ 110hz. Quake 2 at those HZ on an CRT IS INSANELY smooth. Fighting games look amazing too. Anything with a lot of side motion looks incredible. So sharp, clear and smooth.

 

[TheGrat1]

I remember dudes 20 years ago turning their CRT tvs upside down to play some smup (raiden force or something like that, perfect exemple of what NeoIkaruGAF was talking about earlier of games which couldn't have worked on anything other than 4:3) "the right way" .
I guess a few cavemen taste turned their painted rocks sideways too

It is called playing in "Tate Mode." I remember watching a video on YouTube where a guy did a breakdown on a relatively obscure shmup and it had a warning/disclaimer against turning your tv on its side! I can not remember the name of the game, unfortunately.

 

[Soodanim]

First: I don't think either ratio is universally better, to be clear, but simply that widescreen has its own set of trade-offs, sometimes noticeably negative ones for certain genres, which is rarely acknowledged.

More to the point: whether you think of widescreen as adding horizontal space rather than full-screen adding vertical space is subjective--they're simply 2 different shapes, and the sense of somehow increasing a view is only based on which aspect you're moving from/to and the needs of the genre you're playing.

But a common problem is that devs have strong incentive to use the full widescreen space for main gameplay; if people are playing on wide screens, that's the expectation. So instead of the extra space being an enhancement, the game is essentially zoomed to maximize in that available area, and then you have imbalance on games that play better in a balanced ratio. The notion that "you're adding more, not taking anything away" is by no means universal; if you're playing a vertically oriented game, you will absolutely feel that something is taken away, and devs will never make the game fit into the small vertical space then add some "extra" content to the sides... you'll simply have it zoomed to give the sense of using all the screen size, and you'll lose vertical sight or have other compromises put in to compensate.

Hor+ vs Vert- is not subjective by any means. It's not a theory or a feeling, they are the two methods available. If you want to turn a square into a rectangle you either add to the square or take something away from the square. That's it.

I said widescreen isn't to blame for devs' decisions. If you have a 4:3 screen that is 20" tall and a 16:9 screen that is 20" tall, you can have the exact same amount of vertical space shown on both if the game is coded correctly. If vertical space is important and devs choose to sacrifice vertical space, don't blame anyone but devs for that stupid as fuck decision. Horizontal space should be adjusted around that important factor. A scenario where dev decisions are to blame for a perceived flaw in widescreen is not an exception to the rule, that's an example of my rule.

The exact same rules apply to 21:9 displays, and if you run content that isn't 21:9 but expect it to fill the display you're an idiot. People know they're getting black bars for incompatible content, and they modify game files where possible to change the FOV in games so that the experience is an addition to the sides.

Not all of a screen must be used. If you're playing Galaga then enjoy your black bars, borders, or non-gameplay content like scores. Once again, dev decisions don't make a ratio widescreen worse. They make the devs worse.

Also, you can edit posts. No need to double post.

 

[Salmon]

No thanks. I play on my OLED with ambilight.

You had me at OLED, but also lost me at the color quality degrading Ambilight

 

[Toots]

That still doesn't make any sense but okay lol. Arcade screens don't have "upside-down scrolling" and if they did, a sideways screen wouldn't emulate that.

Dude i have so much trouble explaining myself , in certain Arcade smup, instead of going right to left the scrolling went up to down. I clearly remember a smup like that (raiden force i think) with a waterfall in the first level. There was no smup like that on console at the time so dudes turned their tv sideways so as to emulate that kind of « Arcade »scrolling.

 

[ResurrectedContrarian]

Hor+ vs Vert- is not subjective by any means. It's not a theory or a feeling, they are the two methods available. If you want to turn a square into a rectangle you either add to the square or take something away from the square. That's it.

You didn't follow me at all, and in your post is exactly the kind of false objectivity I was pointing to:

I said widescreen isn't to blame for devs' decisions. If you have a 4:3 screen that is 20" tall and a 16:9 screen that is 20" tall, you can have the exact same amount of vertical space shown on both if the game is coded correctly. If vertical space is important and devs choose to sacrifice vertical space, don't blame anyone but devs for that stupid as fuck decision. Horizontal space should be adjusted around that important factor. A scenario where dev decisions are to blame for a perceived flaw in widescreen is not an exception to the rule, that's an example of my rule.

See the bolded part; that's the subjective piece. When you look at a game on a wide screen and think "how would this look on a 4:3?", you're projecting that the equivalent 4:3 set would be the same height, where the 16:9 TV is purely "extra" horizontal space.

That's because you think of 4:3 as a cropped version of 16:9, instinctively and due to historical bias in how these are sold.

But when I see a moderately sized TV on a stand, and it is 16:9, I imagine the equivalent 4:3 TV to be substantially taller than the wide screen. Because: given the same room and same TV stand, if you were purchasing a 4:3 TV, you most certainly wouldn't be purchasing one that is the same height as the 16:9. Even if you just wanted to "buy a 4:3 tv that has the same total room presence (surface area of screen)" then you'd be buying one that is around 20% taller than the widescreen set. The equivalent 4:3 screen would be giving you real additional viewing space vertically.

This is even a very physical thing in many real living rooms. The TV size that people buy is often whatever fits their stand or table that the TV is on; so if you have a 4ft-across stand, you buy a widescreen tv that is 4 ft across, which works out to a few inches over 2 feet tall. But if you decide to buy a CRT or other 4:3 tv to sit on that same stand, you certainly wouldn't buy one that is that same height and wastes all that space. You'd buy one a bit closer to the full width of your table, so you'll end up with probably around 6 more real inches of vertical viewing space.

It's nothing but a specific personal and historical bias to make this absurd comparison where you imagine every 16:9 screen to be a stretched version of the 4:3 which would have taken its place. And you can't even comprehend that others don't reason about from that direction where you already implicitly privilege 16:9 as the standard.

 

[ResurrectedContrarian]

By the way, when debating with one person in detail, and then making a different remark that is intended for the general thread, a "double" post makes perfect sense.

So once again, in separation from the debate above, I want to say: the debate over CRT vs LCD isn't really about aspect ratios, that's a side debate derailing the thread.

Wide CRTs were even produced, so the two decisions of screen tech and aspect ratio don't have to be so intertwined. To change the CRT vs LCD debate into purely a difference of aspect ratios is to skip over all the substantial and critical differences between the screen types.

 

[Soodanim]

You didn't follow me at all, and in your post is exactly the kind of false objectivity I was pointing to:



See the bolded part; that's the subjective piece. When you look at a game on a wide screen and think "how would this look on a 4:3?", you're projecting that the equivalent 4:3 set would be the same height, where the 16:9 TV is purely "extra" horizontal space.

That's because you think of 4:3 as a cropped version of 16:9, instinctively and due to historical bias in how these are sold.

But when I see a moderately sized TV on a stand, and it is 16:9, I imagine the equivalent 4:3 TV that to be substantially taller than the wide screen. Because: given the same room and same TV stand, if you were purchasing a 4:3 TV, you most certainly wouldn't be purchasing one that is the same height as the 16:9. Even if you just wanted to "buy a 4:3 tv that has the same total room presence (surface area of screen)" then you'd be buying one that is around 20% taller than the widescreen set. The equivalent 4:3 screen would be giving you real additional viewing space vertically.

This is even very physical thing in many real living rooms. The TV size that people buy is often whatever fits their stand or table that the TV is on; so if you have a 4ft-across stand, you buy a widescreen tv that is 4 ft across, which works out to a few inches over 2 feet tall. But if you decide to buy a CRT or other 4:3 tv to sit on that same stand, you certainly wouldn't buy one that is that same height and wastes all that space. You'd buy one a bit closer to the full width of your table, so you'll end up with probably around 6 more real inches of vertical viewing space.

It's nothing but a specific personal and historical bias to make this absurd comparison where you imagine every 16:9 screen to be a stretched version of the 4:3 which would have taken its place. And you can't even comprehend that others don't reason about from that direction where you already implicitly privilege 16:9 as the standard.

What you're saying is if you do 16:9 poorly it's a reduction of 4:3 rather than a expansion of it, and by extension a 16:9 is taking away from what 4:3 could be. I didn't miss your point at all, you've restated my point that when it's done poorly the results are suboptimal which is the very first point I made in response to your screenshot.

Real world display sizes and that specific example change nothing about how the image on screen is rendered, which is what we were talking about in the first place. Shit, if you really want to make use of that vertical space run it in 9:16 and be done with it.

For all your talk about comprehension, I think you forgot what we were actually talking about: a screenshot you yourself posted with the claim that the view was cut down. The fact of the matter remains that in a game, it is not necessary for a game to be vert- and as such all complaints of a cut down image are erroneously aimed as the ratio. I'll quote your post again and you can tell me where anything I said doesn't apply to your screenshot where you blame 16:9 for the devs' poor decision to place the camera low and zoomed in:

One more: why widescreen is a disadvantage for grid-based combat.

Here's what we always get now for tactical games:

To see the actual ranges of characters and attacks, I have to constantly rotate my view. Because the reduced vertical dimension requires the game makers to drop the camera to a much lower angle to compensate, and this just further makes it difficult to see around barriers etc. So you rotate like mad just to see the battlefield, when a more square view of the grid gives you the full information almost instantly.

By the way, when debating with one person in detail, and then making a different remark that is intended for the general thread, a "double" post makes perfect sense.

So once again, in separation from the debate above, I want to say: the debate over CRT vs LCD isn't really about aspect ratios, that's a side debate derailing the thread.

Wide CRTs were even produced, so the two decisions of screen tech and aspect ratio don't have to be so intertwined. To change the CRT vs LCD debate into purely a difference of aspect ratios is to skip over all the substantial and critical differences between the screen types.

You double posted to directly reply to me again, directly going against your own rule of when double posting is acceptable. That has to be a wind up. Also, you can insert horizontal rules. I find that to be a decent separator.

That aside, I agree with you. It's not even nearly about ratio, the differences in technology are what should be front and centre (and usually are).

I truly think that with the huge popularity of gaming (that doesn't seem to be going away), some R&D into alternative tech that has better motion (ala CRT) would see decent returns if successful. We had that dude from BlurBusters here before and by his word you need to get extremely high hz to match what CRT did. 1000hz is the peak smoothness we'd all want but won't ever get in consumer grade tech.

 

[ResurrectedContrarian]

The fact of the matter remains that in a game, it is not necessary for a game to be vert- and as such all complaints of a cut down image are erroneously aimed as the ratio

Again, no, that's skipping over the entire reality of the debate.

First, going from 4:3 to 16:9 has in many homes changed the real volume (not just relative) of vertical and horizontal screen in living rooms, and you have to reason from that to see why the devs did exactly that they had to do given this reality of the tv market. If it's true, as I said, that many consumers have less vertical space now (in absolute inches) than they would in the 4:3 era--due to replacing their screen with one that has roughly the same room presence or table width but is now in a different ratio--then for those consumers and those cases, there can be a real loss of vertical viewing spacing, measured in inches.

Second, developers are constrained by consumers who don't want to feel that the playing field of the game is squeezed or small compared to the widescreen. I don't think they made a mistake in the game I posted; I think that this is the only way to do it and sell to predominantly very-widescreen living rooms, where the vertical space can be very small if it's a medium TV and you therefore have to zoom it in this way.

So with 16:9 now having become the standard screen, if your game or genre is something which fundamentally involves the vertical axis or is favored by more equal axes, you're left with a bad situation where you can either "add horizontal space" but leave the zoom (basically not going to happen if you're selling to the lowest common denominator consumer who may not have a massive set, and all medium widescreen sets have a sub-optimal vertical space--so no, devs won't and shouldn't do this) or you can just zoom it in. But it leads to a downgrade for certain genres.

To be clear, your position is borderline magical thinking, where a change in ratios of screens has no drawbacks even given the constraints of real rooms and spaces. It's quite obvious that the shift worked well for selling cinematic movies and experiences but disadvantages the use of screen real estate for some other genres. You insist that 16:9 is always magically stretching a screen that would have been the same height, but no, I can think immediately of 3 or 4 family member living rooms where their widescreen tv is several inches small vertically than the large CRT they used to have in the same spot in their entertainment center.

You double posted to directly reply to me again, directly going against your own rule of when double posting is acceptable. That has to be a wind up. Also, you can insert horizontal rules. I find that to be a decent separator.

Aha, but this was not direct at you, it was about you. Frankly it was an apology for continuing to derail the debate by having to dispel born-yesterday magical thinking about 16:9 as a ratio without trade-offs, when we should have been discussing the value of CRTs in general.

 

[Soodanim]

Again, no, that's skipping over the entire reality of the debate.

First, going from 4:3 to 16:9 has in many homes changed the real volume (not just relative) of vertical and horizontal screen in living rooms, and you have to reason from that to see why the devs did exactly that they had to do given this reality of the tv market. If it's true, as I said, that many consumers have less vertical space now (in absolute inches) than they would in the 4:3 era--due to replacing their screen with one that has roughly the same room presence or table width but is now in a different ratio--then for those consumers and those cases, there can be a real loss of vertical viewing spacing, measured in inches.

Second, developers are constrained by consumers who don't want to feel that the playing field of the game is squeezed or small compared to the widescreen. I don't think they made a mistake in the game I posted; I think that this is the only way to do it and sell to predominantly very-widescreen living rooms, where the vertical space can be very small if it's a medium TV and you therefore have to zoom it in this way.

So with 16:9 now having become the standard screen, if your game or genre is something which fundamentally involves the vertical axis or is favored by more equal axes, you're left with a bad situation where you can either "add horizontal space" but leave the zoom (basically not going to happen if you're selling to the lowest common denominator consumer who may not have a massive set, and all medium widescreen sets have a sub-optimal vertical space--so no, devs won't and shouldn't do this) or you can just zoom it in. But it leads to a downgrade for certain genres.

To be clear, your position is borderline magical thinking, where a change in ratios of screens has no drawbacks even given the constraints of real rooms and spaces. It's quite obvious that the shift worked well for selling cinematic movies and experiences but disadvantages the use of screen real estate for some other genres. You insist that 16:9 is always magically stretching a screen that would have been the same height, but no, I can think immediately of 3 or 4 family member living rooms where their widescreen tv is several inches small vertically than the large CRT they used to have in the same spot in their entertainment center.


Aha, but this was not direct at you, it was about you. Frankly it was an apology for continuing to derail the debate by having to dispel born-yesterday magical thinking about 16:9 as a ratio without trade-offs, when we should have been discussing the value of CRTs in general.

When all of this can be solved by a manual zoom control and UI scaling options, I find it hard to have sympathy for these families that can afford modern consoles but can't afford a TV that's taller than the old CRT they used to have. How big were family CRTs, how much did they cost, and how much does a modest sizes family room TV cost these days? I don't recall our last family CRT being anywhere near as big as modern screens are, so I have doubts about the reality of the scenario. And if the one thing holding your TV size back is the horizontal space, you've probably got bigger problems than the vertical dimension of your TV. Or you should look into wall mounting. I'm not even having a go, I just don't buy this scenario/comparison.

 

[ResurrectedContrarian]

I don't even take the position that 4:3 is overall better, just that there are actual trade-offs for certain genres relative to room scale in particular, and it's a shame that the cinematic 16:9 (which is perfect for movies and wrap-around experiences, certainly) took over all of gaming, where there are definitely genres that more naturally work with a close-to-square space.

And there's nothing I hate more than the "technological progress is linear" concept, so I feel the need to push back hard wherever it rears its ugly head. There are so many trade-offs we live with today across all areas of tech due to one or another historical accident where a certain approach or format took over, despite significant drawbacks and compromises that are now blocked out of memory. Given an alternate history, we'd have tech that is shaped and built radically different from what we actually have today.

A good comparison is cinematic frame-rate. I'm sure it escapes no one that high-framerate films simply don't sell, no matter what anyone tells you about it being "objectively" better ("we're just giving you more frames!"). It feels in fact totally different, and moves from a certain surreal quality of normal film to a kind of jittery too-real rhythm that actually works counterproductively.

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

I was going to say I'm sorry for probably being the one who derailed the thread, but this is a very interesting debate nonetheless.