Quote from thisnameistaken :

You weren't arguing that TN-tech LCDs were better, you were arguing that they're cheaper than decent LCDs, and more compact than CRTs.

Neither of those seem like very good reasons for buying one, given that they look like shit. A monitor's primary purpose is to display things clearly. If it does a second-rate job of that, then any other peripheral benefits lose their appeal. Unless of course you're looking for a more portable monitor that looks like shit.

No, what i'm saying is they both have pro's and con's... they are two different technologies that are used for the same purpose. Where as a portable iron is just that, an iron that is portable.

They look like shit? To who? To you? TN panels are the most common type of LCD monitor in the world right now. Do you think that when people go into the store and to buy a new monitor they look at them and say "Hmmm, that one looks like shit but it's cheaper so i'll buy it anyways"?? No, TN panels look good... Is their colour reproduction the best? No. Are other technologies better for colour accuracy? Yes. But they do not look bad... if they were that bad people would not buy them. Fact of the matter is most people have old worn out CRT TV's at home and TN panels look good enough to them. If they are not good enough for you, thats fine... but that doesnt make them shitty... shitty to you? sure.. shitty to everyone? Not a chance.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

Travel irons have their uses too, but they're not as good as normal irons.

Thats because the only difference that I know of between the two is one is portable and one isnt... we're not comparing desktops to laptops here...

If you want to be arrogant or stubborn and ignore the disadvantages of the CRT monitors you have every right to do so... Once again I will mention that the fact is they do have disadvantages. Some peoples opinions are CRTs are better, some peoples opinions are LCD's are better... Neither of those two opinions are fact and your opinion does not make the disadvantages disapear regardless of which technology you prefer for yourself.

You didnt offend me in any way... I'm arguing fact, your arging opinion... If your going to be stubborn it's fine with me.

These are facts that cannot be argued.

The majority of CRT screens are not widescreen.

I do not have a space issue myself, but lets get real here... All sorts of people play games, Young and old.. Rich and poor... and everywhere in between. Not everyone has the funds or ability to buy a bigger desk/apartment or house either because they cannot afford it or they still live at home. You cannot fault them for things out of their control... I am not saying one is BETTER than the other.. I am saying they both have pro's and con's.

If you cannot see the ability to wall mount a screen I will show you when my racing rig is done... which will be soon.

Ok.. your monitor uses lead glass.. are you saying that i'm wrong about a CRT having higher radiation levels than an LCD? or are you saying that the lead glass is protecting you from the higher levels of radiation?

Who says i'll never notice the improper geometry of a CRT? It's hit and miss with them, some are better.. some are worse. I can argue that some people will never notice the lower colours of a TN panel, but then we would be debating opinion, not fact. The fact is CRT's do not have as good geometry as LCD's.

You state that you do not notice the burn in on your monitors unless you look for it. The fact is its still there..

Your personal opinion that the sharpness of an LCD makes fonts look worse is just that, a personal opinion.. and if YOU prefer the picture on your CRT you have every right to do so, but the fact is LCD's are sharper and some people will prefer the sharpness.

I can have unshielded speakers beside my LCD it cannot harm it in any way. The fact is if you put an unshielded speaker beside your CRT I think we can both agree that it would have an effect on your monitor... and that is fact again.

You want to say some LCD's have a reflective coating? Ok... some do... and the fact of the matter is that the majority of LCD monitors do not have a reflective montor. That is fact. Those coatings are a marketing tool and they are there because some people prefer the picture with that coating.. once again they have every right to prefer it. It's also fact that the majority of CRT's ALL have glare because they are made with glass.

I'm not too sure what a flip flop paint job is... and as per the wikipedia on chavs apparantly they're some type of gangster looking person. I'm not too sure what that has to do with a TN panel but you can ellaborate if you like.

I see you left out my comparisons of weight and depth.. How come?

At the end of the day I understand the benifits that both technologies offer. Neither are bad, they are both just different... I just don't quite understand your difficulty grasping the idea that they both have pro's and con's.

In my example I have triple 22 inch monitors that are used for nothing but my racing cockpit. I do not use them for anything but racing games. They are built onto a sliding panel that is mounted to the wall and extends so the monitor comes right up to the steering wheel when they are extended out.

In my case I wasnt willing to spend more than one thousand dollars for my triple screens since they are only used for racing sims.. Also because they are attached to the wall on a sliding rail that extends over my racing cockpit they HAD to be light.. Imagine what kind of bracing would be required if I wanted to put almost 300 pounds of CRT on a sliding rail attached to drywall!! Also the bezel is much smaller for multi monitor gaming... In my situation TN panels were a perfect fit. Light, Cheap, Fast response time and very thin bezels for triple screen gaming.

You don't have to like TN panels.. I just hope you can understand that even they have benefits and they are far from "rubbish".

Welcome to the club I have no experience with triple screen setups using different sized monitors.. I am curious to see how well it works out for you.

Congrats.

Quote from Jakg :

No, it just reads 4 GB of RAM in "My Computer" - 32-bit limitations still apply so 32-bit Vista will still only use 2.75-3.5 GB of RAM.

Interesting... I guess my excitement was premature.

Quote from Jakg :

The CRT that Shot has (an FW900 iirc) will kick the crap out of your TN image quality wise.

Although I'm not really keen on having something that big on my desk, and eyestrain sucks.

For a CRT i will gladly admit that it is damn nice... but at the end of the day no monitor in the world is perfect... I don't care if it's a LCD, CRT, Plasma, DLP, Over head projector, LCD rear projection, OLED or whatever... there are pro's and con's of every single one of them and none of them are flawless... none of them are even CLOSE to being flawless.

If he wants to sit there and bash TN panels I can bring up the con's of his monitor.

Shipping weight of almost 110 pounds.
It is not a true flat screen
It can and will have convergence issues
Sharpness will be good in the middle of his screen and degrade as you get closer to the edges
No CRT can display a perfect circle anywhere in the screen... geometry will never be 100% accurate
CRT's flicker
It is roughly the same depth as the viewable image size, which is great if you want to put some nice big speakers beside it... just make sure they're shielded or your in big trouble.
and.. Enjoy your radiation.

There is no such thing as a perfect monitor, or a perfect TV.. They ALL have pro's and con's.. you just have to find the one that suits your needs and budget the best. To call one "crap" or "rubbish" is really quite childish since they all have their downfalls.

I don't dislike CRT's in any way... I recognise that they are in many ways superior to LCD's... but LCD's are also superior to CRT's in just as many ways... even if your using a TN panel for comparison.

Last edited by wtf im nameless, Tue 1 Apr 2008, 20:56.

Quote from Shotglass :

good luck finding a tn that can even remotely compete with it on price... or anything else for that matter

oh and by the way if you want we can ask around and see if my setup can "compete" with yours on everything but price

Here's a link to my "rubbish" setup.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHl_6tuuFc4

Quote from Shotglass :

meh



i am thats why i still use a crt which i got for free btw
good luck finding a tn that can even remotely compete with it on price... or anything else for that matter

You're right... Obviously the entire world has made a mistake and you know better.

Is it that hard for you to understand the pro's of LCD?

Widescreen
Space saving
Wall mountable
Less radiation
Over double the energy efficientcy
A true flat screen with no geometry problems
Harder to burn in
A sharper image
Not effected by magnetics
Glare free

And if you check your answering machine you'll see that the 90's called and they want their CRT back.

If your happy with your CRT thats great... I threw mine in the garbage and am a lot happier with my triple 22 inch TN panels running LFS at 5040x1050.

To each their own, but to say they are rubbish is.. well.. rubbish..

its no different than saying why bother with a car! Horses are cheaper... you can feed them food instead of gas.. horse accidents are less likely to kill.. You can even take a horse through a river and on top of it all, they are not half as bad for the environment!! Cars are rubish and thats a fact.

Quote from Stang70Fastback :

Ok guys. What do you think. I've been putting off installing Vista on my desktop lately. I have XP on my laptop, which I use 99% of the time in college, and the desktop which I use solely to play games like COD2, LFS, etc... AND to watch ripped movies, play music and watch DVDs and TV through an open source program called MediaPortal. I'm considering upgrading it to Vista Enterprise SP1, which is hosted on our school's servers.

Suggestions? If anything I'm doing it cause I'm bored and I just want to see how it works. I DO have 4 Gb of RAM, and I'm not sure whether the version offered is 32 or 64 bit.

SP1 for vista is out now.. Vista 32-bit will see all four gigs of ram now. By the time you _NEED_ more than 4GB of ram your motherboard will be far outdated anyways.

Quote from Jakg :

The 680i chipset has random incompatibly issues, overclocks badly (esp Quad Cores) and is very expensive.

The P35 WILL use PATA hard-drives.

The 680i is only a worthwhile choice if you NEED SLi - saying it's crap is not an opinion it's a fact.

He said under £100. I found him a board for £70 with almost everything he needs.

lol sorry I didnt think 1.8GHZ to 3.0GHZ on air was a "bad" overclock... I have two video cards, 2xraptors in raid.. vid card oc'd, memory oc'd, CPU oc'd, PCIE bus OC'd, FSB oc'd... never had one issue with incompatiblity or anything over heating.

Quote from harjun :

I got a new monitor, 17" !Widescreen for my cousins, and windows xp wont let me run 1280 x 720.only 1280 x 800....any ideas?

Thanks

Did you buy a PC monitor or an LCD TV that has a PC input?

Quote from Jakg :

nVidia Chipsets on Intel CPU's are rubbish - the 680i is total fail, the 650i is slightly better but still totally unimpressive, and the 7xx is still very expensive for a tiny step in the right direction.

Why would you say its rubbish? If he's on a budget like that he's probably not going to be using DDR3. They both over clock well.. he wants to use PATA hard drives which the P35 will not do. I think you're saying its rubbish is just a personal opinion which I would disagree with... I do like the P35 boards as well, I don't have anything against either of them. He already stated he wants an inexpensive motherboard.. you are giving him good options but at almost double the price.

Buy the one in your first link.. use it for 12-24 months, and upgrade it again with something else around the same price at that time if you want up to date.

Last edited by wtf im nameless, Tue 1 Apr 2008, 17:28.

I would go for the newer 700 series P5N-E.. there is not a lot of price difference. The 600 series roughly a year and a half old already.. Being a tech you know that in PC years thats old

Asus is a great brand and i've had a 680i motherboard overclocked from 1.8GHZ right up to 3.0GHZ on air cooling with no issues. I usually run it at 2.6 just to be safe though.

First off, I'll give you some backround information just because I think it's rellavent in this situation.. just don't mind my spelling and grammer cuz I know its garbage.

I have built my own computers since the 486 was the best you could buy... I sold PC's for almost 4 years and worked in home theater sales for almost 7 years... I have descent knowledge of upper end LCD and Plasma's like Sony XBR5's and Pioneer Elites and work with them all day long.

That being said, what i'm offering you is nothing more than a personal opinion.

There is no right or wrong when it comes to buying an LCD monitor.. There are pro's and con's to TN panels... simple as that. They are not crap like some people will say.

Can they reproduce colour as well as SPV-A or MVA panel? No... Is their viewing angle as good? No.

BUT

They are cheap compared to other options and are great if your looking for a fast responce gaming monitor for a good price. If your eye is not trained well, or you do not have two monitors side by side to compare a lot of people cannot tell the difference between an upper end LCD monitor and a cheap one.

Go look at something like a Samsung 225BW or 226BW.. There's tonnes of people online who will tell you that they are amazing gaming monitors even though they are TN panels.

As for 20 vs 22... they are both the same resolution and the same aspect ratio so neither will look streched or compressed. One is just bigger than the other.. Also, don't go by all the numbers the manufacturers give you.. most of them are total BS... If you can, go look at some monitors and buy the one that looks the best to YOU that you can afford.

If you want a suggestion, look for a good deal on a Samsung 225BW or 226BW.. for the price they are a great gaming monitor. Are there better monitors out there? Sure.. but unless your playing on something like a 34 inch widescreen XBR CRT or a 60 inch Pioneer Elite plasma there will always be something bigger or better.. its just a matter of budget and priorities.

Here's some info for you:

http://www.pchardwarehelp.com/guides/lcd-panel-types.php

Hope I could help.

Quote from klingon :

I dont have $120 even lol...

Check around your local city for a used one maybe?

If you don't have at least $100 I think you'll be out of luck though...

Cool. thanks for the reply. I am looking at my full dash on the floor in front of me as we speak. Its out of an MK4 Jetta/Golf GTI. I want to try to get it in this week. I'm so excited.

Go to the auto wreckers and buy a used handbrake out of a car (cost me $1)... go to a hardware store and buy a spring of some sorts, a fairly large one. The one I used is meant for keeping a garden gate shut... you can use one meant for a screen door as well. ($8).

Mount the handbrake on a 2x4 or some sort of peice of wood. Put the spring behind it so when you pull the handbrake up it will go "click click click" just like a real one and offer some resistance.

Take an old logitech joystick or something like that and use whatever.. a peice of string or a small peice of wire and attach the analog stick to it so when you pull the handbrake up it pulls the stick.

The joystick or USB controller is the most expensive part... its not hard to make, but it does take some time.

Quote from Technique :

The side view mirrors aren't different angles - they're the same as the rear view (exception they only display a portion of what the rear view displays).

hmm, maybe thats the issue, maybe this game can only have front and back views at once. thats too bad if thats the case.. Oh well, it's all speculation at this point... guess we can only hope for the best.

Quote from Not Sure :

Oh now i understand what you were on about with the side mirrors. At first it seemed like you wanted to have two full screen mirrors or something

So LFS currently renders 2 camera angles simultaneously, forward and backward. Should not be too hard to add a few more? But I really don't know what it takes..

It's late. .

Is it just forwards and back though? Don't forget about the in car mirrors too.. I think they're different angles too.. so thats 1 main, 3 in car rear views plus one virtual rear view. 5 total.

Don't mean to double post but heres what it boils down to:

1) Is it possible to add "Left" and "Right" virtual rear view mirrors just like the center one we can turn on right now?

2) Can the camera angle of these virtual rear view mirrors be changed?

3) Can these left and right virtual rear view mirrors be made bigger?

4) Can you base the size of your two virtual rear view mirrors on the resolution of the game?

Example: I am running at 5040x1050.

There is an option just under the "rear view mirror: none, virtual, both" that says something like "Triple Montior" or "Multi View"

When I click this on, all it does it enables two "virtual" side views.

To figure out the size of these virtual side views, LFS takes your horisontal resolution and divides it by 3, so it gives you two virtual rear view mirrors that are 1680x1050 and puts them on the far left and right of the screen.

Presto, triple screen support done.

Granted this is something the devs have to do, and they just might be too busy doing other things to the game. There is nothing wrong with that, LFS is their baby at the end of the day..

Like i've said before, I don't know a lot about programing so there's gotta be something i'm missing here... either that or people put too much thought into what you need to do to make triple screen work.

KISS - Keep It Stupidly Simple

If one of the mods can check with a dev about those four questions. Because if the answer is yes to all four then it's just a matter of what the priorities are and this conversation can be over. If the answer is no then we have to think of a better way... I'm basing this all on the fact that the virtual rear view mirror that this game has is a box showing a different camera angle... Just make the box bigger and change the camera angle. If it's possible for the dev's to add virtual side view mirros, this is possible... if they cannot do that for whatever reason.. then this idea just won't work.

Last edited by wtf im nameless, Wed 26 Mar 2008, 22:08.

Quote from Not Sure :

I don't think wtfimnameless meant this side-view-with-spectator-mode to be a solution really. I understood it as a experiment with independent angles for separate displays. By using this unwieldy setup the benefits of multiple viewports have been proven.

I wonder what Scawen thinks about this? I for one would like to hear some feedback.

At first I did that just to see what it would look like.. and it blows the doors off the current system for FOV and just how proper everything looks.. no distortion.

What i'm saying now is what is the difference between a rear view mirror in the car and proper multi screen support?

What is a rear view mirror in this game? It's a box that displays a different camera angle.

Right now when I play triplescreen the left and right rear view mirror are on my side screens.. why can't you make them larger and instead of being rear views, move the camera angle so its a side view.

What is the difference? Am I missing something here?

For the pics go back to my thread a couple posts up and go down near the bottom of the first page. There are some links of pics showing my new idea.

I cannot make the game do that, all I can do is hack it together to show what it could look like... and its freaking amazing.

Even if thats too hard to do why can't I just connect via lan from a second PC?? Thats how Forza 2 does it on Xbox 360 and thats how Gran Turismo 4 does it on PS2.

On Forza 2 mutli screen you just tell the game you want multi screen, tell it which camera angle.. and when it reboots it sits and waits to connect to the main screen. All it is, is a spectating view turned to the side. All the multi screen work is done offline.. just a client taking info from the main player. You only need one xbox live account to connect and play even quad screen on 360.

I just skimmed through the thread so I don't know if it was brought to your attention yet, but all 32-bit versions of Vista support 4GB ram now. I have not tried more, but I know 4GB works.

Just install Vista SP1. It is not on the auto update yet, it will be in about 2-3 weeks. It's on microsofts site as a 450ish MB download if you want to manually install it right now.

My P4 machine with vista didnt change much, but my Core 2 Duo machine runs much better now.

Nice job so far

Two questions for you, if you don't mind.

1) You mentioned that you moved the wheel up to make more legroom. A few posts prior to that you mentioned that the floor to the top of the gauge cluster is 740mm. When you raised the wheel did you have to raise the whole dash too? If you did, what's the current measurement? I'm trying to compare yours to mine as im starting to install my dash today, but mine will be a little higher from floor to top of dash.

2) How sturdy is the wheel like that? Do you get any flex in the wood under hard cornering or when you have to whip the wheel around quickly to correct for oversteer??

Thanks.

This would only happen if you have a poor connection with the server and only if the devs cannot impliment this into the game.

If the rendering of the side screens was being done locally there would never be any lag... Also if you look at the pics on my last post the rear view mirrors are no different than side views.. they are just smaller and looking the wrong way.

How do you think Forza 2 does it on Xbox360... or Gran Turismo 4 does it on PC2... even rFactor added this feature on their last patch, it's just too bad the game has major flaws in it other than the triple view.

Last edited by wtf im nameless, Wed 26 Mar 2008, 16:07.

Here's some updated pics using my mad ms paint skills to explain what im talking about and to hopefully keep this thread alive. We need true triple screen support in a game this good... there's many ways to do it.







Before Video: (Normal SoftTH 5040x1050)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RLdaGkUNsw


After Video: (1680x1050 Windowed Mode X3 Games running - 2 specators plus main screen - so 3 camera angles)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHl_6tuuFc4