I try to avoid non-native resolutions. I wish some magical new display technology would come along that works more like CRT.

I would run 1600x1200 1:1 or try to get the game to use 1920x1440. I have a 32" 1440p screen and 1600x1200 1:1 on there is bigger and looks better than my 24" anyway.

Depends if the game programmers scaled up their hud/ui or not and/or if my eyes are aging out. X_X (in the case of 640x480 -> 1280x960+)

I have one of those newer 21:9 ratio monitors with a 3440x1440 native resolution. I run most 4:3 games at 1600x1200. Absolutely huge pillarbox bars, but the scaled image is actually sharper than my old CRT running at 1600x1200. 😜

Interesting POVs.

I'm not sure what to buy. A Dell UltraSharp U2412M provides native 1600x1200 resolution in full screen (with black bars) for old 4:3 games, since it's a 1920x1200 monitor. But I wonder if I could go bigger, like, say, the 27" Dell U2715H. Problem is, such 27" monitor runs at 2560 x 1440, so no native resolution for 4:3, 1600x1200 games, except if I don't mind sacrificing full screen.

However, even with 1920x1200 monitor, I cannot run 640x480 and 1024x768 games on native resolution anyway --games like MDK and Monster Truck Madness, which only supports 640x480. The only games that can run full screen on native resolution are those supporting 1600x1200 resolution.

So, why not go bigger?

It seems I'm not really sensitive to non-native resolution in computer games; I've finished MDK full screen (with black bars) on 1360x768 anyway, and the game only supports 640x480. And I could still ignore the fact that the pixels are extrapolated.

Desktop is another thing though; it has to run on native resolution, otherwise it's very blur and fatiguing to the eyes. Such extrapolation blurriness is easier to ignore in games than desktop.

swaaye wrote:

I wish some magical new display technology would come along that works more like CRT.

This. Please. Before driving cars.... new display tech without native resolutions.

I have a 27" 1440p monitor, I also have a modern gaming computer so I use dgVoodoo2 to force rendering resolution for most classic 3D games to 1440p. In addition, it, DXGL and DxWnd helps me integer scale (nonblurry scaling) 2D 480p and 720p (common for widescreen mods for old games) games.

If you have a modern PC, the benefits of 1440p over 1200p for legacy PC games is much larger than the disadvantages. I can't even name a single game that only runs maxed out at 1200p that has no 1440p workarounds available. 1200p is only a clean integer scale factor for 600p, which isn't that common for legacy games and really a too small resolution for pixel-based scaling games on large monitors. Not only is 1440p better for legacy PC games, you'll also be able to pick up a better display as the selection of 1440p monitors is much better.

Obviously, if you have a legacy PC this doesn't particularly apply (except integer scaling with DXGL or DxWnd, which probably would work with an old XP computer). I'm sure many games that support multiple resolutions up to 1200p can be coerced into running at 1440p with some hex editing, but that's a lot of work for games that don't already have figured out values and even games where values have been figured out might have gone undocumented because widescreen wasn't possible. There's also the issue with 1440p requiring more hardware power than 1200p.

Newer games are more challenging for 1440p. dgVoodoo2 only supports up to and including Direct3D 8. This isn't so bad with PC games where higher resolutions started to be more common after that, but it's very bad when we get to 360/PS3 era ports. 3D games usually targeted 720p and while the PC versions usually supported arbitrary rendering resolutions, the UI for many of them doesn't scale so it's smaller at 1080p and even smaller at 1440p. If you have decent eyesight and sit at a normal monitor distance this isn't too bad, but far from ideal. 2D games (indie games and the like) usually opted for one static resolution, the max supported one on those consoles: 1080p. This obviously scales badly to 1200p and 1440p. Both those factors and the required hardware power to render at 1440p over 1080p (which obviously is more expensive for newer games) might make an argument for getting a 1080p monitor.

I'm not going to get into console gaming with real hardware, since I think this is a PC thread, but emulation of game consoles is relevant enough to mention: here more resolution is always better. There's plenty of scaling options to let you use that resolution however you want.

infiniteclouds wrote:

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swaaye wrote:

I wish some magical new display technology would come along that works more like CRT.

This. Please. Before driving cars.... new display tech without native resolutions.

Native resolution is not what is missing to make old games look like they did on CRTs. Look at what RetroArch's CRT shaders do. Just displaying the image larger perfectly (which is what ideal display tech without native resolutions would do) would not look like you want it to. Demanding new display tech on the other hand sounds like the perfect recipe to create another problem similar to the one you want to solve that way.

I understand scan lines and other parts of CRTs but even on my 1440p LCD monitor -- I run it at 1080p for my desktop and such because icons and text get too small for me. That said, with it stretched/scaled to full screen it doesn't look as good at that resolution as a native 1080p monitor would -- CRTs aside.

infiniteclouds wrote:

I understand scan lines and other parts of CRTs but even on my 1440p LCD monitor -- I run it at 1080p for my desktop and such because icons and text get too small for me. That said, with it stretched/scaled to full screen it doesn't look as good at that resolution as a native 1080p monitor would -- CRTs aside.

If your problem is only icon and text sizes then you should set Windows DPI setting to 125% instead of using smaller, non-native resolutions (96 -> 120 DPI on older Windows versions).
That would result in the same text and icon sizes as 1152p. You can also set scaling in advanced mode to 133%. This would result in the same text and icon sizes as 1080p.
Sure, some programs have problems with non-100% settings and can display blurry but it's definitely better than using non-native resolutions all the time (everything is always blurry).

Falcosoft wrote:

If your problem is only icon and text sizes then you should set Windows DPI setting to 125% instead of using smaller, non-native […]
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infiniteclouds wrote:

I understand scan lines and other parts of CRTs but even on my 1440p LCD monitor -- I run it at 1080p for my desktop and such because icons and text get too small for me. That said, with it stretched/scaled to full screen it doesn't look as good at that resolution as a native 1080p monitor would -- CRTs aside.

If your problem is only icon and text sizes then you should set Windows DPI setting to 125% instead of using smaller, non-native resolutions (96 -> 120 DPI on older Windows versions).
That would result in the same text and icon sizes as 1152p. You can also set scaling in advanced mode to 133%. This would result in the same text and icon sizes as 1080p.
Sure, some programs have problems with non-100% settings and can display blurry but it's definitely better than using non-native resolutions all the time (everything is always blurry).

Thanks. I wasn't aware of this -- but I do prefer to play many games in 1080p as well and things like Steam don't seem to scale with the Windows DPI. It honestly isn't quite that bad scaling down to 1080p resolution if I force nvidia control panel to let the display do the scaling rather than the GPU -- you'd think it would be better the other way around but it isn't!

infiniteclouds wrote:

I understand scan lines and other parts of CRTs but even on my 1440p LCD monitor -- I run it at 1080p for my desktop and such because icons and text get too small for me. That said, with it stretched/scaled to full screen it doesn't look as good at that resolution as a native 1080p monitor would -- CRTs aside.

That's very very far from the best case scenario for LCD tech though. You're using a bad rescaling algorithm on a low resolution monitor. Yes, 1440p is low resolution when talking about what the limitations of LCD tech are (2160p is common, 4320p is available and phone dpi is higher).

It's not a problem with the technology, it's a problem with scaling algorithms (fixable in software) and low resolution displays (higher resolutions displays will be easier to get over time). It's easier to fix those problems than create some new display technology from scratch.

Not that you'll have much success begging display manufacturers and GPU driver teams to implement better scaling algorithms either... People just don't care enough for that to be worth the investment.

ZellSF wrote:

It's not a problem with the technology, it's a problem with scaling algorithms (fixable in software)

You mean, like, modding the monitor's firmware?

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

ZellSF wrote:

It's not a problem with the technology, it's a problem with scaling algorithms (fixable in software)

You mean, like, modding the monitor's firmware?

No one but monitor manufacturers is going to do that, but yes. I was just saying the technology isn't the problem. It was a theoretical statement, hoping to get people to ask for something that's more reasonable and within the realm of possibility. Inventing a new display tech is a bit more extreme to ask for (and likely to introduce more issues) than just fixing software issues in existing tech.

ZellSF wrote:

It's not a problem with the technology, it's a problem with scaling algorithms (fixable in software) and low resolution displays (higher resolutions displays will be easier to get over time). It's easier to fix those problems than create some new display technology from scratch.

Not that you'll have much success begging display manufacturers and GPU driver teams to implement better scaling algorithms either... People just don't care enough for that to be worth the investment.

I don't think this is simply a 'software' problem or more precisely a software implementation problem. There are theoretical limits of solving the a priori problem how to represent perfectly 3 pixel information on 4 pixels... (1080p -> 1440p). On one side there is perfect clarity/crispness on the other side there is perfect proportion/aspect ratio. You cannot have both even with the theoretically best algorithms. Pixel perfect scaling is only possible if the ratio between 2 resolutions (in both dimensions) can be expressed with integers. It's not a coincidence that new display standards skip in-between steps and 1080p-> 4K-> 8K fulfill this requirement.

Falcosoft wrote:

ZellSF wrote:

It's not a problem with the technology, it's a problem with scaling algorithms (fixable in software) and low resolution displays (higher resolutions displays will be easier to get over time). It's easier to fix those problems than create some new display technology from scratch.

Not that you'll have much success begging display manufacturers and GPU driver teams to implement better scaling algorithms either... People just don't care enough for that to be worth the investment.

I don't think this is simply a 'software' problem or more precisely a software implementation problem. There are theoretical limits of solving the priori problem how to represent perfectly 3 pixel information on 4 pixels... (1080p -> 1440p). On one side there is perfect clarity/crispness on the other side there is perfect proportion/aspect ratio. You cannot have both even with the theoretically best algorithms. Pixel perfect scaling is only possible if the ratio between 2 resolutions (in both dimensions) can be expressed with integers. It's not a coincidence that new display standards skip in-between steps and 1080p-> 4K-> 8K fulfill this requirement.

You don't need pixel perfect scaling if the source image and display are both large enough resolution. For example here's Starcraft at 1920p, an integer scaling ratio

And here is it is resized to 2160p (very much not an integer):

Without the black bars, could you really tell which was perfectly scaled? I'm really struggling to tell those two apart with my nose like, 5 inches from the monitor. In fact the only way I can tell them apart without checking the filename is by looking at the building outline in the bottom status panel. It's easier to tell scaling artifacts at 1080p (here then integer scaled back to 2160p for easy comparison with the 2160p screenshot):

Higher quality sources (here we have a very high quality 1920p source because the integer scale is what we want it to look like) and higher quality resolutions both make scaling artifacts less and less of a problem.

Perfect (as in indistinguishable from perfect to human eyes) scaling is definitely within the reach of LCD tech. It's a bit far away still of course, just not as far away it would be to create entirely new display tech and perfect it.

Hi,
I don't think Startcraft or games are good examples. In case of games some kind of interpolation technics are even desirable sometimes (AA). But in case of desktop/text this is not true. Also even in the distant future you will meet not so high resolution materials/standard classic display resolutions that future LCDs have to deal with.

Here's a screenshot cropped to 640x480 (original resolution of Starcraft):

Here's the 1920p version. Simple pixel resize but it's almost perfect because of integer scaling ratio.

Here's the 2160p version with simple pixels resize. It's crisp but you can clearly see proportion anomalies/distortion problems.

And finally here's the bicubic resize version of 2160p (closer to what present and future LCD displays use). There are no anomalies/distortions but Text is visibly more blurry. (It's 8-bit color since 24-bit cannot be uploaded because of Vogons size limit but color accuracy is not relevant in this context)

@Edit:
Finally an overall comparison:

But we're talking what a perfect scaler would do though, it wouldn't do just a plain resize or a plain bicubic scaler, it would do something like this:

Which again I find hard to distinguish from the integer scale and that's with a current common resolution, 8K should give better results.

Yes, which is somewhere in-between as I said before: It's less crisp/more blurry than pixel resize and less accurate proportionally than bicubic/bilinear:

Are you saying you're able to see any scaling artifacts on, say, a 28" 4K monitor with an image scaled that way? Are you saying you would also see it on an 8K monitor?

No, since I have not had the opportunity to try/test 8K displays so far 😀.
But my experience with 4K and HD displays is the following: similarly as 1080p material does not look any better on a 4K display than on native 1080p displays (what's more quite the contrary, so I strongly think this is just a marketing gimmick) SD/VGA etc. material does not look better on bigger resolutions/display sizes, just because of bigger sizes/resolutions.