How do LCD's couple with low resolutions ?

[Zenoth]

'Sup guys ?

Alright, I think I will finally jump into the LCD's world by the end of either October or November.

I know LCD's, Wide Screen or not all have what they call "native resolution". As I understand it, and from what I've read, LCD's rely on interpolation (image scaling) to fix a smaller resolution image to the original native one. But ... does that mean that games like ... say ... StarCraft and Diablo 2 are doomed to look very bad on LCD's ? They are games that run at either 800x600 or 640x480, and there's of course plenty of such old games. So how's an 800x600 game can look on a 1600x1200 LCD ? Is it noticeably worse than on CRT's, negligibly worse, or simply the exact same thing ?

 

[Ika]

Definitely noticeably worse. LCDs don't like doing full-screen at a resolution that isn't their native one. Bars won't help, unless the LCD centers the image and fills in the area that isn't part of the resolution.

 

[TC91]

I think if you only go down by 1 notch (maybe 2) it doesnt look that bad. 1440x900 or 1280x1024 on my 22inch doesnt look significantly worse than 1680x1050 for games. If u use something really low like 800x600 or 640x480 then it will look pretty bad.

 

[imported_Filbert]

Well I'd imagine that a 800x600 game running on a 1920x1200 native resolution monitor with aspect-ratio maintaining scaling would actually look pretty sharp. Since after all the 4:3 aspect-ratio counterpart to 1920x1200 is 1600x1200 and I'd imagine that the monitor would just use 4 pixels for each in the original resolution.

It's not terrible though.

 

[BernardP]

You will get better results with integer numbers (2/3, 3/4...) of the native resolution. If you scale in the videocard instead of the monitor, you will also get more consistent results at any resolution. I am running 1360x850 on a 1920x1200 monitor using NVidia scaling and am very satisfied with the results.

 

[kmmatney]

In general, I think newer LCDs scale very well - at least mine does. You also have to keep in mind that LCDs are huge - scaling an 800 x 600 image across a 24" screen will show the blockyness of the low resolution no matter what. However, I play a lot of older games and in general it looks good. My LCD also has hardware scaling for 4:3 reoslution games - this comes in very handy.

 

[AzN]

It has a slight warm fuzz compared to native resolution.

Newer LCD doesn't look bad even @ 800x600. I even tried playing MOH:Airborne @ 800x600 on my 19" widescreen LCD and it still looked great.

 

[superbooga]

Compared to the 19" Trinitron CRT I used in the past, the LCD handles lower resolutions considerably better. At 1024x768 and below, the screendoor effect is awful on the CRT. So the lower the resolution, the better the LCD does. At 320x240, the screendoor effect is so bad on the CRT that only like 50% of the dots are colored.

CRTs are better when it's at a resolution that is near optimal for CRT (they don't have native resolutions) but non-native for the LCD.

 

[zagood]

Also check if you can run any of those games in windowed mode. That'd get rid of any scaling issues completely.

-z

 

[lupi]

How do you get thid dcaling to work? I used to play rainbow six on a 20" crt and it looked great. I loaded it up on my 24 dell and it went craptastic.

 

[ConstipatedVigilante]

My monitor (Acer AL2051W) scales quite well in games from 1680x1050 all the way down to 1024x768. It doesn't look super sharp at that res, but that's a given. I haven't tried Diablo II on it yet, though.

 

[CP5670]

Originally posted by: superbooga
Compared to the 19" Trinitron CRT I used in the past, the LCD handles lower resolutions considerably better. At 1024x768 and below, the screendoor effect is awful on the CRT. So the lower the resolution, the better the LCD does. At 320x240, the screendoor effect is so bad on the CRT that only like 50% of the dots are colored.

CRTs are better when it's at a resolution that is near optimal for CRT (they don't have native resolutions) but non-native for the LCD.

I think your CRT just wasn't good. I know the effect you're talking about (which is different from screen door, by the way) and have seen it on some CRTs, but others like mine don't have it. LCDs look good at low resolutions if they're exact factors of the native one, but otherwise have a blurred, smeary look to them.

 

[superbooga]

Originally posted by: CP5670

I think your CRT just wasn't good. I know the effect you're talking about (which is different from screen door, by the way) and have seen it on some CRTs, but others like mine don't have it. LCDs look good at low resolutions if they're exact factors of the native one, but otherwise have a blurred, smeary look to them.

It was a Sony G400, which was considered a pretty good CRT for its time.

 

[clickynext]

Newer LCDs scale decently. It's not going to be perfect, like I wouldn't want to read text on a scaled down LCD all the time, but on old school games, you won't need it to be perfect.

 

[TanisHalfElven]

Originally posted by: TC91
I think if you only go down by 1 notch (maybe 2) it doesnt look that bad. 1440x900 or 1280x1024 on my 22inch doesnt look significantly worse than 1680x1050 for games. If u use something really low like 800x600 or 640x480 then it will look pretty bad.

try 1280x720 instead 1280x1024. similar aspect ratio will make it look a little better.