Flatfingers wrote:Not that my preferred resolution is much more prominent: I am very surprised to see 1920x1200 at only 1.39% of users, versus a whopping 36.33% running at 1920x1080.
What in the world...?
Why are so many Steam gamers -- most of whom, I presume, are PC gamers -- running at a gimped 16:9 console aspect ratio compared to 16:10?
Are 16:9 monitors being sold for pennies compared to 16:10 widescreen monitors? Or are people, for reasons that elude me, actually deliberately choosing to see less of every gameworld than if they ran their 16:10 monitor at a 16:10 aspect ratio?
Informed speculation is welcome!
Tremendously interesting. My first thoughts were, of course, wat? 'Surely someone put thought into why we use 16:9 most frequently.'
The argument of 'seeing less of the gameworld' is pretty tough to work with...theoretically that's determined by the product of
tan(fovvertical / 2) * aspect ratio. If you want to see 'the most' of your gameworld, you should A) be running at the highest possible vertical fov (180 degrees - 1/infinity, or let's just say, 179
) along with the highest possible aspect ratio (i.e., a verrrry widescreen monitor). This will, naturally, be incredibly ugly and distorted due to perspective distortion. (I'm not positive I did that math right -- I always did have trouble with perspective projection -- someone please correct me if I'm wrong)
But let's look at it a different way: what is the aspect ratio of a human's FOV? Should not that be the ideal ratio?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_eye#Field_of_view says
"For both eyes the combined visual field is 130-135° vertical and 200° horizontal." So if we take this, it yields aspect ratio of between
~1.48 and
~1.54. So somewhere around
1.5 = 3/2 seems an ideal aspect ratio if there's any merit to matching our screen ratios to our ocular perception ratio.
And indeed, in this case, it seems Flat is right -- 16:10 is of course 1.6, while 16:9 is ~ 1.78. Not only is 16:10 significantly closer to 3/2, it's also going to produce less FOV distortion (which is proportional to max(aspect, 1 / aspect), i.e., logarithmic absolute value) (once again, I think I did that math right
).
However, that being said, for me as a programmer, (and I imagine for a great many people doing other tasks), it is often quite useful to have different regions of the screen showing different information (i.e. a vertical split in a code editor), only one of which is actually be focused on at any given time. So if we are not focusing on the entirety of the screen, the concept of an ideal aspect ratio becomes totally task-dependent and subjective. 16:9 is better for me as a programmer because vertical splitting of screen real-estate is my jam (heck, most programmers use '32:9' because they have two monitors side-by-side).
So there are my thoughts on it. For gaming, Flat is probably right that 16:10 (8:5) is better. 3:2 may be even more ideal, but I am not aware of any displays with this ratio... (quick google search) ... anddd now I am!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c ... esolutions . Interesting. Clearly 3:2 is still very rare among modern displays, however it's interesting to note that all of the Microsoft Surface products use this resolution, along with some of the older iPhones.
I've actually been considering getting a Surface for some time now, as I have some tools that I think would work really well with stylus input (no, not LT itself, but some related tools). If I do, I'll report back on how 3:2 treats me. (Or if anyone would like to send me a Surface 3 Full HD+, I can offer you...VIP Monkey title?
jk of course).
A quick amazon search reveals that price doesn't seem to be a big difference, however selection is certainly far more sparse for 16:10 than 16:9. I do like the Dell UltraSharp series and they have a reasonably-priced 1920x1200 though.