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I don't like curved displays

blog.danielh.cc

131–137 of 137 posts

Re: I don't like curved displays

#131

I like my curved ultra-wide. I didn't at first, but my brain has very noticeably adapted to where curved things on it appear straight just fine. I noticed this when I went back to the office after a few weeks absence, where I have a regular flat pancake screen in 16:9, and straight text looked CURVED in the opposite direction! Brains are weird.

I have a curved monitor on my regular desk, and a flat panel on my treadmill desk. Switching between the two takes a few minutes of adjustment for things to look right.

I had a similar peculiarity with eyeglasses. I'd always had great vision, but middle age recently hit me like a truck, and my eyes have started to go. I got a prescription, and there was a difference between the two eyes. For the first few days, everything looked misshapen, larger on one side than the other, until my brain compensated. Most curious.

Re: I don't like curved displays

#132
post #26

I have a 2x 4k ultrawide. The Samsung Oddysey 55(?)inch variant. Not only is it very bright and legible, the fact that the screen takes up my field of view helps me focus. And I connect it to my MacBook using two seperate HDMI cables, so it's essentially two seperate monitors without bezels. I think I'll probably keep this monitor for a decade or so: any higher DPI and it doesn't make any difference because you have…

How do you use two of these massive monitors? They are stacked vertically?

Sorry, I should have been more clear: the resolution is equal to two 4k monitors glued together.

Re: I don't like curved displays

#133
post #39
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a cost thing, ultrawide has always been expensive relative to how much extra area you get, and pushing the resolution up compounds that. 5120x2160 (extended 4K) panels do exist but they cost a fortune.

Dell UltraSharp 40 Curved Thunderbolt™ Hub Monitor - U4025QW Worth every penny.

I have a U4025QW and there's a glitch I'm typing here for google to pick up.

If my macbook (any macbook, perhaps any computer?) is plugged into the U4025QW and the power goes out, the U4025QW won't get the signal from the laptop and will remain blank. There's two ways to 'fix' this:

The first is to unplug the monitor for a long time, perhaps 2 to 4 hours. Sometimes I'll plug it back in at hour 2 and it wasn't long enough and I'll have to start over.

The second, and this works reliably, is to unplug the U4025QW, and then also unplug the monitor side of the HDMI cable, and then plug it back in with no signal, and then reinsert the HDMI cable. This gets the U4025QW to receive the signal after as long as the above operation takes, a minute or so.

I have had two U4025QW units. The first one was overheating and losing the signal as above on its own. I stopped having overheating issues when I stopped using an undersized UPS. I ran it straight into the wall.

But if there's a power outage (i live in an area with monthly power outages), the signal loss operation is how I restore functionality to the U4025QW.

I finally got one of those 300 dollar UPS units for the U4025QW and it's been very stable since then.

A multi variable episode that took me a very long time to reduce. U4025QW is a great monitor but dont give it bad power and it needs a little love after a power blip.

Re: I don't like curved displays

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Optimal viewing distance for most media (including text found in programs and websites made in the "Vista" and "Retina OSX" era to today, but also all movies and TV shows cut for modern 16:9 displays) is between 30 (SMPTE rec.) and 40 (THX rec.) degrees. THX's recommendation is based purely on the viewing angle of the fovae (the inner part of the retina that is "high res"), and trying to optimize full coverage of it…

I'm not sure if I understand your thought process. I'm talking about distance errors between center of screen and edges of the screen, not singular distance. Frankly you can just paste this to ChatGPT. It's correct enough for this type of topics. > let distance between head to display 20 inches, screen width 20 inches as well, tell me how to calculate distance errors between center of screen to edges of screen ^ this…

>I'm not sure if I understand your thought process. I'm talking about distance errors between center of screen and edges of the screen, not singular distance.

Yes, I covered this above, but maybe it wasn't clear: this is only a concern on low quality polarizers on normal DPI LCDs. Mostly due to sub-pixel text rendering in combination with certain forms of eye problems (nearsightedness and astigmatism are two I know of, but aren't limited to that), your angle of view through the polarizer changes enough that it causes eye fatigue via color fringing.

Another issue is non-IPS/IPS-like screens: gamma and hue shift happens on traditional TFT and MVA/PVA screens, which leads to eye fatigue.

The fix for TFT and MVA/PVA is going to IPS. The fix for shitty polarizers is either good polarizers or exclusively HiDPI monitors (all 4k monitors of any size seem to have exceptionally good polarizers, in comparison of the past 20 years, even if the panels themselves are sometimes mediocre) or just getting rid of LCD altogether and going to MicroLED and OLED.

I have not observed extreme color fringing or LCD-like gamma/hue/brightness defects on off-angle viewing on MicroLED or OLED.

And for full disclaimer, I will state: some MicroLEDs and OLEDs do not have standard RGB layouts, which may lead to a different (although consistent) sub-pixel color fringing effect: DirectWrite in Windows only understands (V)RGB and (V)BGR, not any other alternative format which a lot of MicroLEDs and OLEDs seem to be experimenting with. Freetype CAN do others, but Gnome, KDE, and other desktops lack ability to describe new formats via GUI. This is less of a concern on HiDPI, but Windows is allergic to making greyscale AA a normal thing again.

So, to reiterate:

* Hue/gamma off angle: Curved can help, but so can using IPS or non-LCD

* Brightness off angle: Curved can help, but IPS is extremely mild, and non-LCD doesn't have it

* Sub-pixel text off angle: Curved can help, but good polarizers on IPS _or_ HiDPI IPS or MicroLED or OLED are better

* Sub-pixel text on-angle: Curved can't help, HiDPI is only way out.

So, given eye fatigue is what we're trying to cure, all the other technologies (which many curved monitors also employ) seem to be a better option.

Re: I don't like curved displays

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if I understand your thought process. I'm talking about distance errors between center of screen and edges of the screen, not singular distance. Frankly you can just paste this to ChatGPT. It's correct enough for this type of topics. > let distance between head to display 20 inches, screen width 20 inches as well, tell me how to calculate distance errors between center of screen to edges of screen ^ this…

>I'm not sure if I understand your thought process. I'm talking about distance errors between center of screen and edges of the screen, not singular distance. Yes, I covered this above, but maybe it wasn't clear: this is only a concern on low quality polarizers on normal DPI LCDs. Mostly due to sub-pixel text rendering in combination with certain forms of eye problems (nearsightedness and astigmatism are two I know o…

wtf. I'm talking about DISTANCES. not ANGLE. Are you an LLM? I don't think there's a way out from here for you, no matter how you spin it. Why double down?

You can't focus on objects at 20 and 25 centimeters away at the same time. How hard is it for you to understand this?

Re: I don't like curved displays

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1440px is just so little space. 1440px tall on a common 13 tall ultrawide is 107 PPI. In my mind > 100 PPI is pretty much perfect for most tasks. Or are you talking about physical size?

100 ppi is horrible for coding.

That's my day job. I'm a big fan of big font sizes with code so I've never found it much of an issue. Even on a 4K monitor, if I use small text sizes, I strain my eyes.

Re: I don't like curved displays

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm not sure if I understand your thought process. I'm talking about distance errors between center of screen and edges of the screen, not singular distance. Yes, I covered this above, but maybe it wasn't clear: this is only a concern on low quality polarizers on normal DPI LCDs. Mostly due to sub-pixel text rendering in combination with certain forms of eye problems (nearsightedness and astigmatism are two I know o…

wtf. I'm talking about DISTANCES. not ANGLE. Are you an LLM? I don't think there's a way out from here for you, no matter how you spin it. Why double down? You can't focus on objects at 20 and 25 centimeters away at the same time. How hard is it for you to understand this?

Are you an LLM? I feel we're talking past each other because you're obsessed with one kind of fatigue, and there many kinds of fatigue.

Your math only gives a 5 cm/2 inch change in focal distance on very large 21:9-or-wider screens, and it is well known that 21:9 or wider monitors cause eye fatigue due several reasons, only one of them is the one you speak of.

21:9 and wider monitors are very niche market, and aren't inherently worth discussing other than mentioning they're a good source of eye fatigue. The fix for them isn't buy curved ones, the fix is to not buy them.

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