Thoughts on switching back to 16:9

I have been using a Pixio PXC348C ultrawide monitor since April 2023 as my primary monitor. Over that time, I’ve enjoyed using 21:9 in many games. It’s definitely a fun and immersive experience having that wider field of view in first person games. In racing games it’s fun to have that wider vision of other racers.

At 3440x1440 (4,953,600 pixels) it’s a gentler step up in graphics from 2560x1440 (3,686,400) versus full 4K at 3840x2160 (8,294,400). That meant that I would regularly be pushing fairly close to 165 FPS to match the 165 Hz refresh rate of that monitor, or at the very least pushing past 120 FPS. However, it wasn’t a perfect experience by any means.

Firstly, as I’ve mentioned before, as a budget ultrawide it features a VA panel like most other $300-400 34” ultrawide monitors. That helps keep the cost down on the manufacturer's side but it also means you sacrifice performance as well. VA panels are far slower than IPS or TN panels. The pixel response rate is noticeably slower. That means that to do higher refresh rates the overdrive tends to be pushed far harder. In the case of my Pixio that led to inverse ghosting in front of objects, typically in an orange or reddish color, in addition to the standard VA LCD ghosting in black behind the object. I kept it less obvious by using lower overdrive (Middle setting) versus stronger overdrive but it was still obvious, especially with darker objects over lighter backgrounds.

That of course carries beyond games and means even moving windows on the desktop would result in ghosting trails. And over time I did many things to help keep it less apparent. Using dark mode in addition to darker desktop wallpaper choices helped to keep it less noticeable. Keeping brightness slightly lower also helped, in addition to simply not blinding me with such a large screen in a darker environment like I tend to keep my room. Movement clarity was still muddy but it wasn’t completely disruptive.

Slower content, like movies and television, looks pretty phenomenal on the screen. The screen movement isn’t as fast as games typically and the frame rate is generally 24 or 30 FPS depending on what you’re watching. For productivity and media it’s a wonderful experience. Mostly. Some movies are provided in 21:9 and that looks amazing on a monitor that matches that aspect ratio. But most aren’t. Most movies are narrower, many are 16:9 in fact. And television shows are even more noticeable as so many were taped (or filmed depending on the medium) at 4:3. In those cases the black bars on the edges are pretty substantial.

That incongruency between aspect ratios also spread to a surprising number of games as well. Sure, many games handle ultrawide beautifully. Forza Horizon? Gorgeous. The Half-Life games? Really well done, especially after the 20^th anniversary of Half-Life 2 update. But there are quirks too. Half-Life 2 for instance, prior to the update, was pretty jarring with the crossbow where the right edge of it is simply not there. The model was culled for performance but on anything wider than 16:9, or with any high field of view, it would simply be missing a portion of the model.

Even newer games are often not designed with ultrawide aspect ratios in mind. Terraria renders just fine but feels cramped and zoomed in compared to 16:9. Fallout 4, even after the next gen update, feels disjointed and messy in 21:9. The power armor HUD isn’t designed for 21:9 and is cropped with parts that aren’t meant to be seen appearing on screen. New Vegas is also a mess. They can be improved with mods but even with those they still are quirky at best. Anecdotally, Fallout 4 also crashed more frequently running at 3440x1440 than at either 2560x1440 or 3840x2160.

Indie games, of which I play many, are also heavily hit or miss. Peak was great, for instance. But 1000xResist just had bars on the sides. Hollow Knight also did that. Civilization V renders just fine but doesn’t zoom in or out in the steps I was familiar with when running at 16:9 or 16:10. Orgynizer, another fun little indie title, would cut off the top and bottom of the screen when running at 21:9 making the game more difficult, but not impossible, to play.

And that’s kind of the experience of using ultrawide in day to day. When games work as designed it’s a wonderful and engrossing experience. But, when it’s broken it can be in the strangest of ways, generally related to UI elements being cut off. And it’s inconsistent because sometimes the game itself renders correctly, even the FOV working with the wider screen. But then the menus are all jumbled because they crop in the vertical direction based on the horizontal pixel count. An excellent example is Unreal Tournament 2004 where the wider it gets, ultimately, the menu elements begin to overlap and jumble.

I wanted to love ultrawide. I really, really did. It’s so immersive and gorgeous. But it’s annoying at times and as I do play many older games and indie titles the incompatibilities crop up far more frequently than I’d like.

So, I switched back to a 16:9 monitor. In this case an Acer VG270K V4. It’s a dual-mode monitor, capable of 4K 160 Hz, and 1080 at 320 Hz. Being back on IPS for my primary monitor has been a delight. It’s shockingly faster than the VA panel with far more fluid pixel responsiveness. The ghosting is dramatically reduced. And it’s shocking how much clearer text is at 4K and 27” versus what is 34” with the same pixel density as 27” and 1440.

But the biggest change that I’ve had to adapt to is going from a curved screen back to a flat screen. For the first several days I had been so accustomed to that curved screen that to have completely flat geometry again made the new screen feel like it was warped and distorted. It felt like the monitor was bulging out in the center and the edges were curved back, feeling bulbous and convex. It was honestly one of the strangest, and trippiest, experiences I’ve had with displays. Even still, roughly two weeks later, I’m still readjusting to it. I think part of that is that I’ve retained the ultrawide as my secondary display now so my brain has to constantly adapt to different geometries on the fly. But, that really bizarre feeling of the screen being warped and twisted is largely gone now.

I’ve not really played around with the secondary, high refresh with lower resolution mode. It’s an interesting feature but I think it’s more useful for highly competitive online shooters rather than the slower paced single player games that I overwhelmingly find myself playing. What multiplayer games I do enjoy tend to be slower paced and cooperative, like Peak, where I can enjoy the scenery rather than speed through. Perhaps 20 years ago when I was regularly playing Unreal Tournament 2004, Deathmatch Classic, and Opposing Force: Deathmatch I would have found it appealing. In fact, I bet it would’ve been a lot of fun. But At this point I think it’s more a neat party trick than a selling point for me. Still, it is fun to see huge numbers like that so I’m sure I’ll play with it in the future.

But, for now? I’m just basking in the smoothness and clean rendering of 4K at 160 Hz. I’m so happy that my RX 7900XT is able to handle that with aplomb. The last time I was running 4K was with my RTX 2080 Ti which could do some games perfectly fine at the native 60 Hz of that monitor but others would dip down. Having the 2560x1440 at 165 Hz was a nice experience with that card. And it still amazes me that I’m able to run 4K at over 100 FPS in so many games when just a few years ago that would have been impossible.