Widescreen Gaming Forum

So, I'm playing Stalker last night on my relatively new 8800GT (upgraded from a 7900GS) with Oblivion Lost 2.0 and version 2.2.2 of the Weather Overhaul Mod (if you've never played with this mod and have an 8 series or higher video card, get it. The difference in everything right down to the smallest shadow detail is amazing) when I says to myself "Self, these graphics are crazy good, but it sure would be nice if AA was compatible with Stalker's dynamic lighting engine. Too bad it isn't." Then I says to myself as I look slightly to my left "you know, that 20" Dell flat panel that is on your secondary computer has a smaller dot pitch than this 22" Westinghouse you've been staring at. I bet that would help." So, since I have both hooked up to my main computer, I head on over to that nifty Nvidia control panel and bop the screen over to the Dell.

*smackhead*
*facepalm*

Well, it looks like I forgot how much better images looked on that thing. Not just the dot pitch, but the color and gray levels are outstanding. Much better than the Westinghouse. But I like 22" of real estate.

I do this once about every 6 months. Use the Dell, miss the space. Switch to Westinghouse, tolerate the picture quality. Switch to Dell...ad-naseum. I know the answer is a 24". I also know my wife would behead, crucify, skin, impale and qaurter me and then kick my butt, all of which would be swiftly followed by a "talking to" that would be worse than any of it.

*sigh*

Maybe I can get one for Christmas.

P.S. Can anyone explain why the Dell would look so much better? The Dell is an E207WFP and the Westinghouse is an LCM-22w2.

P.P.S. Comments about my better half were inserted purely for humor. She would actually support me (probably) buying one. I'm not going to because we have a baby on the way.

P.P.P.S Our first!! Yay!

P.P.P.P.S. also...it's a girl!! Yay!

P.P.P.P.P.S : awesome post :D

Get the 24" because then you can look at all the baby pictures in all their glory !! Forgetting for a second that you can actually just look at the baby that is.

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Formerly eZ`

Follow me on twitter: @theg00seberry and find me on Steam

24" screen, you must have. :) Until then, resist the Westinghouse!

From a fellow married gamer, your humor is not lost on me ;).

And big congratulations about the baby! :cheers My oldest is a girl (turns 4 in November), and being a dad is an experience like no other. I swear that I gained a whole new set of instincts and emotions when my daughter was born--almost like a dormant alter ego just 'woke up'.

In my proud opinion, fatherhood is the greatest adventure a man can experience.

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VirtualDub Game Recording Guide | BFME2 & RotWK Widescreen/Triplehead Mods

Hi Mergatroid!

I don't know what graphics card you are using but S.T.A.L.K.E.R. has had AA support for a long time, even with Full Dynamic Lighting. When it was first relasesd it wasn't possible but the latest drivers support it. Bioshock too!

See below, I am using an nvidia 8800GTX with windows Vista-32bit, with full dynamic lighting and forced 4xAA, (with transparency AA supersampling) & 8xAnisotropic.

Looks great:





p.s. Congrats on the baby!
p.p.s. Sorry if this wasn't what you meant!!

This gets back to what I was saying in another thread where the subject of a 20" pitch vs 22" pitch is not nearly as big as that between 24" and 27". Like I said you really need to have the same brand and model (within it's size) and set them up identically on the same system to accurately see any differences between the two.

I think often times when people say it's a lot to do with such a small dot pitch change (roughly 10%) they are really looking at two different quality/brands of displays which amplifies the difference of the pitch all the more due to things like color bleeding and less sharpness in the lesser quality unit.

STALKER with Weather Overhaul is the only way to play the game IMO. The nights just aren't dark enough otherwise. I recommend the Package for Duty and Kill the Mercs quests once you install WO. Both are greatly enhanced by it if you take them on around midnight.

GA: Thanks, I've been looking forward to fatherhood almost my whole life and have already started experiencing the "alter ego wakeup". My wife tells me she can see a difference (and she loves it).

Others: Had my technology screwed up. The dot pitch is the space between the pixels, not the width of the pixels (or PPI, pixels per inch) and the Dell actually has a greater (read: worse) dot pitch than the Westinghouse. The things that make the dell better are the higher contrast ratio, greater number of pixels per inch, and much higher color production (a bit over 1/2 million more colors). I have a friend that works for Dell who supplied me with the info.

As far as the AA, if you mean the in game setting, that's not real AA, they just call it that. It's actually a smoothing algorithm that was created along with the dynamic lighting algorithms in that rendering engine so that AA it could be closely simulated. If you actually forced AA through the control panel, I would like to know what you are doing :). For me, with all settings max and the weather mod (which has higher resolution textures and enables some of the "ultra" settings you can't get to in the in game menu):

No forced AA: 40-55 fps
2x forced AA: 15-25 fps
4x forced AA: 4-5 fps

I have an 8800GT on 32 bit Vista and the latest almost-bleeding edge drivers (177.39).

What other mods are good for Stalker? I just got a copy and haven't played it yet.

My wife and I plan to never have children but it seems like all our friends have or are about to. Best of luck! Sleep while you can!

Had my technology screwed up. The dot pitch is the space between the pixels, not the width of the pixels (or PPI, pixels per inch).

Incorrect, the dot pitch is the old CRT way of saying pixel pitch. The pitch is the width of the pixel itself in fractions of mm. The PPI is the number of pixels that fit across a length of one inch.

Here's a handy online tool that calculates the dimensions for you.
http://www.thirdculture.com/joel/shumi/computer/hardware/ppicalc.html

Sell both of your LCDs and get the 37" Westinghouse LVM-37w3 to replace them. Quality and Size for the right price.

[quote]Had my technology screwed up. The dot pitch is the space between the pixels, not the width of the pixels (or PPI, pixels per inch).

Incorrect, the dot pitch is the old CRT way of saying pixel pitch. The pitch is the width of the pixel itself in fractions of mm. The PPI is the number of pixels that fit across a length of one inch.

Here's a handy online tool that calculates the dimensions for you.
http://www.thirdculture.com/joel/shumi/computer/hardware/ppicalc.html

Actually, we are both wrong. Or both right depending on how you look at it. :P

The dot pitch is actually the distance from a point in one pixel to the same point in a similarly colored pixel (base rgb). Basically it's both the width of a pixel and the distance between them. I confirmed this using the tool you linked to and my own calculations. Here's a picture that explains it:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Dot_pitch.png

Edit: Ryom, thanks for the suggestion, but I wouldn't want to go over 24 inches. I'm basically bottlenecking at my FSB now and there's no money in the future for an upgrade.

Edit: Oh yeah, I had the numbers backwards on the monitors. The dell has the lower dot pitch.