21:9 monitors for racing

[Pär Öqvist]

Curious if anybody use the new 34-35" 21:9 monitors? I have a trouble fitting larger triple monitor setups (nor afford them) since I do more then race. 3x27 wouldn´t quite do it for games where I am limited to one monitor. I am also no fan of artificial borders so thought about testing a 35" 21:9 as in the Acer Predator Z35 even though it feels a bit on the small side.

Will not get close to the fov of proper triple monitor setups but I do hope it will be wider then my current 50" 1080p as I hope to be comfortable with it less then 50 cm away. Reasoning is I have this 1,8 metres away to my 50" to not suffer to much screendoor and stiff neck because the vertical height of it get to impressive when on the cockpit. That said the experience when I put the cockpit is terrific apart from the headache following from unergonomically tilted neck.

Question is do all racing sims offer proper fov for the odd 21:9 format?

 

[Pär Öqvist]

For me it´s the space and I really don´t want that borders however slim. I could maybe support a triple 27" 16:9 setup but then in some games I risk having to use just a tiny little 27" monitor and it´s to bulky to remove. If I ever find a game that don´t work with 21:9 I could just remove this monitor and run my old 50" though it would be quite some sad panda moments lol.

I wouldn´t call the 21:9 cheap. 11000 euro my Z35 is but I save on hardware to drive it versus the 1440p cousins. My 50" Tv was considerably cheaper and offer a better panel tbh. That said this is the best gaming experience I ever had

There is some tvs using 21:9 format like philips and some others have some. Though I don´t recon any of them have low enough input lag to be really suitable. Then you have the triple projector setups and curved screens with 270 degree fov but then it get really expensive but that must be absolute killer.

As for the comparisons remember that inches is measured diagonally so a 42" 16:9 has more surface area then 42" 21:9.

If you get neck issues you could try run a 21:9 resolution and 1:1 pixel mapped on your 42" if you want it really close to you. The PPI will be quite low though unless you have a 4K monitor.

As for standards there is a lot standards proven wrong. That 24p would be the absolute ideal. 30 fps there is no way the eye can detect more. And the 4:3 format which was actually abandoned. I don´t see how 21:9 would necessarily be less useful then 16:9 depend on what you want to achieve. On my 32 16:9" it would be harder to work with three A4s up at the same time for example then on my 35" 21:9. Most workstations do run triples on the side and not so much put them on top of eachother.

If you go by larger 16:9 say 40" maybe you can start and use 4 A4s but then you are comparing larger panels versus smaller again

 

[Pär Öqvist]

Have I said how bloody awesome this format is? Running The Hunter it feels like I can just walk into the picture such depth like 3D with absolutely no crosstalk. Just wow. The only biggie with the Z35 I want to mention is that the black transitions are really slow. It´s around 55 ms delay so if you have dark objects next to white you get really long trails. You can play with od and ULMB will get rid of it but for some content there is just no proper fix you have to live with it. ULMB kills the contrast some and overall give a less pleasant image for me. But overall oh boy I have not been able to get this experience with my flat monitors even the 50" on my desktop. However the closest I could get that is 80 cm from view I am now at about 65 cm. Still from memory the 50" occupied more of my vision as I recall. It certainly was more towering and impressive that way. But on that everything got big on the 35" people are about the same size as me. Getting closer then 60 cm on this and you start to feel the monitor heat though. Having the monitor further away is certainly easier on the eyes.

I would want to do a comparison to the 3800 CR and flat 21:9s. This is 2000 CR. I am curious how much the curve actually does but I suspect it´s actually quite crucial to the experience.

 

[Pär Öqvist]

Hmm got some issues now when not running digital downloads. Regular blurays my bluray player and power dvd stretches the image horisontally. I can´t stretch it vertically so I either get a big black box all around for 21:9 movies or I get the image stretched with the same letterbox as if it was 16:9.

Sadly I can´t get VLC to play bluray movies due to cinavia I suppose.

 

[PicoBp]

I wouldn´t call the 21:9 cheap. 11000 euro my Z35

I guess that's a zero too much. Mine was around EUR 500 and ticks all the boxes. Better panel than the ASUS, minimal input and display lag, 34", 21:9, 2560x1080. It is not curved though.

 

[Robert Bachmayer]

Have I said how bloody awesome this format is? Running The Hunter it feels like I can just walk into the picture such depth like 3D with absolutely no crosstalk. Just wow.

So this works out of the box with nvidia 3d vision 2, or does it need some sort of edid editing?

 

[Pär Öqvist]

I guess that's a zero too much. Mine was around EUR 500 and ticks all the boxes. Better panel than the ASUS, minimal input and display lag, 34", 21:9, 2560x1080. It is not curved though.

Ah yes 1100 euro. I think I should pay 500 euro for curved 3dvision is not supported so would require some sort of hack. I would be curious to try it out but I am not quite as frustrated loosing 3d after converting to Lcd anymore.

 

[Pär Öqvist]

Kodi let me zoom the picture so on pc the problem is solved. Seem to be out of luck with my bluray player though wish acer would have thought of this. Of course my bluray player is older when even the first philips was released I believe and for the projector guys it´s not much of an issue

 

[Pär Öqvist]

Yep none of my three bluray players let me fill the screen properly. I guess it´s mainly Acer to blame though.

Netflix is working on the issue I believe. None of the addons to chrome work satisfactory but for bluray discs kodi and popcorn time work flawlessly and is very easy to operate. Digital downloads is of course not an issue if you are on pc.

I tried tft centrals calibration and they let me know I had a light cannon. Certainly easier to the eyes running 120 CD instead of 300+ish and a lot deeper blacks.

At this point I am absolutely religious about the cinematic experience 2000 CR and 21:9 format gives me.

I don´t have any really noticable color shifts when in the sweetspot so for a single monitor this VA behaves well for me.

 

[Pär Öqvist]

Pico how did you set up raceroom?

 

[PicoBp]

The x1.0 FOV for single screens is 58° in RaceRoom. For triples the default is 40°. In-game you can only adjust it with 0.1 precision, which really lacks any fine tuning.

To set it to an exact FOV, I went to the file \Documents\My Games\SimBin\RaceRoom Racing Experience\UserData\graphics_option.xml and adjusted the below line:

<game__GraphicsOptions ID="/options/graphics">
<latestVersion type="uint32">14</latestVersion>
<custom type="uint32">2560</custom>
<custom type="uint32">1080</custom>
<custom type="int32">22</custom>
<custom type="int32">60</custom>
<custom type="bool">true</custom>
<custom type="bool">true</custom>
<custom type="uint32">4</custom>
<custom type="uint32">2</custom>
<custom type="uint32">2</custom>
<custom type="uint32">2</custom>
<custom type="bool">true</custom>
<custom type="bool">true</custom>
<custom type="bool">false</custom>
<custom type="bool">true</custom>
<custom type="float32">0.56896552</custom>
...

You can calculate your value by dividing the FOV you want to achieve by 58 and put the result in place of that with 8 digits after the separator. For me it is 33/58=0.56896552.

To ensure that it will be kept, you have to set the file to read only after this. A side effect is that whenever you start the game, it will pop an error in the background, you have to Alt+Tab out and click Yes on it to proceed. It just whines about not being able to modify that file and if you want to move on anyway, which is exactly what you want.

You might also want to reset the seating positions after this, and there are sadly no options in game for this, so you'll have to edit a file per car to do so under Documents\My Games\SimBin\RaceRoom Racing Experience\UserData\CarSetups\.

Each car has a *.uvm file, and you'll find the lines for seat position height and such, just remove those lines and save the file.

 

[Pär Öqvist]

Thanks I did a race yesterday and the view was not to shabby by default will see if I can ace it .

 

[PicoBp]

You can start by using just the in-game FOV multiplier to get closer to what you want. x0.5 was too low for me and x0.6 a bit wider than I got used to in all the other sims I play. If you felt that x1.0 is not that bad, try x0.8 and do a few races with AI on a single track, starting from the back. I always used that to validate how "believable" the proportions and car feeling became. If you like where you're heading, try x0.7 with the same test. Once you reach the point where it suddenly became strange, step back one click or two to find the sweet spot.

However, if you got used to a specific FOV in other sims, it will always be strange to drive on the same track with different proportions and FOV, that's how I got to modifying the xml.

 

[Pär Öqvist]

That was spot on. Not sure I think I was running 0.7 before but it felt to much.

What do you run in the other sims

 

[PicoBp]

I mostly run 33° all around, or as close as possible.

- Assetto Corsa: 33
- SCE/AMS: 33
- pCARS: 69 (it uses horizontal FOV, not vertical as the others)
- rFactor/rFactor2: 33
- Dirt Rally: 33 (via Enhanced Camera Mod 35° file set and x0.8 in-game)
- Wreckfest: around -40% or such (couldn't really figure out this one, but it gives a good feeling)
- Euro/American Truck Simulator: 50° (via FOV mod 50° sets)
- iRacing: 69° (horizontal FOV here as well)
- Race07/GTR Evo/...: 56%
- RaceRoom: 0.56896552

This is as much as I could remember from the top of my head.
Sometimes I feel the need to go up to 35°, but always get back to 33° in the end. As soon as I can DIY my Obutto monitor mount to bring the monitor closer to the wheel, it will probably feel all in place without thinking.

 

[Raikku]

I just few days ago bought Benq's XR3501 35" 144Hz monitor for sim racing use.
To this day I have used my 50" tv for sim racing but with that there's obvious problems like setting fov etc when you are 1,6m away from screen sitting on race seat.

I had already stand where I can put that monitor to move it around and get it straight next to my CSW v2-steering wheel base.

Anybody here has similar sized curved screens and what is your eye to screen distance and which kind of fovs you use in most sims(iR, AC, RRE, rF2 etc etc).

I don't have room for triples so they were out of question, same went for 4K resolution, I still have GTX 670 and with it 4K would have been impossible performance wise, around 1080p resolution(2560x1080 in Benq's case) I still get 100-200 fps's in most sims, not in pCars, with almost full settings.