Ultrawide monitors for gaming?

[Migel]

I'm looking into getting a new monitor or new monitors, mine are old, they're thick, not very bright, 1080p, and below 60Hz. I've been considering getting an ultrawide or three matching monitors. If I am to get an ultrawide, I might keep the newer ones of my current monitor around it for work etc.

My main question is, how is gaming with an ultrawide monitor? How many games support it? How do games play if they don't support ultrawide? Super wide side-letterboxes?

[Zukabazuka]

While I don't own a ultrawide monitor, I do see topics coming up on from time to time about not supporting it. Sometimes mods would be able to give access to it or the devs add support for it. If there isn't for that you are out of luck. But how often I can't remember but believe ports from console usually had trouble with it.

[Ariortega]

I haven't had a ultrawide monitor myself yet, but as far as I can tell, there are still not many games that support ultrawide format (and I'm not talking about fighting games). Some games require you to "fix" the problem by using community mods / "hacks". If you play games that can't / don't support ultrawide, you'll have black bars on the left and right side of you monitor. Some don't mind that, others find it unsightly.

So in the end, I would say - about getting an ultrawide or not - it highly depends on the games you are playing (and of course other stuff you're doing on your pc). Check out if they support ultrawide or not and decide yourself if it's worth it or not.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Most games the past 5 years support them. Go back further and support is spotty. The only real issue is FOV because a lot of games don't let you go above 90. On a 3440x1440 screen, FOV of less than 100 looks awful.

[retro_Ed]

Ultrawide vs 16:9 is some kind of compromise anyway on both aspect ratios.

Sometimes I use ultrawide aspect ratio on my 16:9 display. Games have black bars on top&bottom but often FOV is much bigger. On a living room with television this works surprisingly well.

One more bonus using ultrawide on a 16:9 display is that it will give more FPS because lower resolution than displays own native.

[Migel]

so maybe I would be better off with going for a triple monitor setup and, should the opportunity arise, merge the monitors into one ultra wide display?

[ugafan]

Keep in mind that with a triple monitor set up, you have to multiply the resolution times 3.

If you had 3 1920x1080 monitors, the resolution would be 5,760x1080.

So you'll get lower fps than an ultrawide that is 3840x1080 or 3440x1440.

[Zig6000]

I tried it out after reading loads of comments from people saying the difference was night and day or more immersive etc.

Honestly it is nice having the extra screen space but also harder to run games because more pixels (I was playing 3440x1440) and as others have said not all games support ultrawide properly like cutscenes and stuff you will have big black bars down the side in some games .. not ideal.

Personally I don't rate them, prefer a 16:9.

[_I_]

you can always use the gpu control panel use the gpu to scale non native res (letterbox)

not all games support the ultrawide aspect ratios 32:9/21:9 properly

[UserNotFound]

Originally posted by ugafan:

Keep in mind that with a triple monitor set up, you have to multiply the resolution times 3.

If you had 3 1920x1080 monitors, the resolution would be 5,760x1080.

So you'll get lower fps than an ultrawide that is 3840x1080 or 3440x1440.

I have a Samsung 49" 3840x1080 Freesync 2 144Hz monitor as well as an Acer 34" 3440x1440 Freesync 75Hz. Many games now have support for such res, I've played many FPS games that do nicely with my monitor like COD MW WZ, Gears of War series, Strange Brigade, Serious Sam series, Metro Exodus PC EE, just to name a few.
The think about gaming at such res is, you'd need reasonably powerful GPUs to hit higher frame rate with very good PQ.

[Lord Flashheart]

I have 3440x1440 34 inch 21:9
There are some very old games that have issues with it - maybe 10+ years old.
Ensure your GPU is powerful enough for it. My gtx 1080 ti scrapes by.
I like it for gaming myself. It is also good for watching widescreen resolution movies.
I could not go back to 16:9 now though.

[UserNotFound]

Originally posted by Lord of Misrule:

I have 3440x1440 34 inch 21:9
There are some very old games that have issues with it - maybe 10+ years old.
Ensure your GPU is powerful enough for it. My gtx 1080 ti scrapes by.
I like it for gaming myself. It is also good for watching widescreen resolution movies.
I could not go back to 16:9 now though.

Yes, when watching WS movies on a 16:9 monitor, you ofc get the black bar on top and bottom of screen. But, using VLC Player when I watch my ripped WS movies, I can crop the image (2.35:1) to fit the 21:9 aspect ration monitor which is just about a perfect fit, so the image fills up the entire monitor without those annoying bars on top and below.

Some older games would have issue with this aspect ratio, but surprisingly, some pretty old games do support 21:9 and 32:9 quite nicely, one that comes to mind is the game Enclave (circa 2002) which fits nicely on both these ratios (may have to adjust FOV, but I usually don't, pretty used to side image be somewhat stretched, got used to this from the good old EyeFinity days - 3x 1920x1200 monitors).

[🦜Cloud Boy🦜]

Most modern AAA games have support for Ultrawide. Ultrawide looks awesome, more FOV (field of view). And the support will only get better in the future. You will get side black-bars in the unsupported games, it's tolerable imo. Multimonitor can't mimic Ultrawide because of the bezels, they breaks immersion.

[DaHotFuzz]

Like others have mentioned, most modern big budget games nowadays support ultrawide. Depending on the game, your experience may be a lot better going this route. Take for instance Witcher 3 or WoW; playing some of these titles on an ultrawide significantly increases immersion. There's so much more to see on screen.

Some titles won't have ultrawide support however, like many popular e-sport titles, due to fairness issues on the competitive level. Another drawback which is more obvious is ultrawides ask for beefier hardware depending on the resolution.

I started out with a regular 1920x1080p display and went to a 2560x1080p ultrawide. That was about 33% more demanding on my setup. Visual upgrade was immediately apparent. After that I went to my 3440x1440 160 hz display which looked way way better.

Most important thing to understand is if you invest in an ultrawide, you're actually making multiple investments ahead of time. If you go to something like 3440x1440 and wish to crank your graphics to max for every big budget release, expect to spend big bucks on the best video card out or that you can afford for when you buy the monitor AND for every video card upgrade moving forward.

[AbedsBrother]

Originally posted by Migel:

My main question is, how is gaming with an ultrawide monitor?

Gaming on ultrawide is fantastic - when the game supports it.

Originally posted by Migel:

How many games support it?

Absolutely no way to tell. Check the forums for the games you like to play.

Originally posted by Migel:

How do games play if they don't support ultrawide? Super wide side-letterboxes?

- Pre-rendered cinematic cut-scenes are usually 16:9 widescreen. Expect black boxes on either side of the picture.
- Some games have in-engine cut-scenes that fill the screen. Some don't.
- If a game says it has "ultrawide support" the only thing guaranteed is that the parts where you're actually playing the game will display properly in ultrawide.
- Even then, the in-game hud (heads-up display) may not extend to the horizontal edges of the screen

For example, Borderlands 2 in ultra-wide. Gameplay is in 21:9 ultra-wide, cinematics are in 16:9 widescreen, and the hud fits vertically, but not horizontally.

Good to see you, Michael. 

A Screenshot of Borderlands 2

By: AbedsBrother

That's a rather typical experience for gaming on an ultrawide. Some games handle ultrawide better, some worse. Entirely depends on the game & dev team.

[Guydodge]

its really hard to recommend a monitor as everyone is different in what they want out of it.
more into graphics go 4k,more into super smooth gameplay lower res is better.sit close to
your monitor wide screen kinda sucks and so on.for me 27 ips 10bit 144hz w/HDR is the
sweet spot,high fps on ultra settings w/super smooth gameplay.may change with the
4000 series cards but for now even with a 3090 your not going to get that across the board.
theres always sacrifices just try to minimize them to your taste and needs.