Comment on Death Stranding 2 looks amazing in the 21:9 ultra-wide
Goodeye8@piefed.social 1 day ago
Having used a 34 inch 21:9 monitor for over 3 years now I can’t go back to 16:9 anymore. 16:9 just feels so small. With 21:9 the extra space on the sides feel just big enough to feel so much more immersive. With my monitor it’s like the screen cuts off just where my peripheral starts so my whole focus is on the screen. I can get so much more immersed in it because all I see is the game. And just like with the images, my god how much better games look when you give it more horizontal space for framing.
It’s clear to see from the Fragile image where 16:9 stops and 21:9 continues. The left edge of 16:9 would start just left from her name and the right edge of 16:9 would be either right past her left shoulder or just cutting off the edge of her shoulder. Everything left from her name and right from her shoulder is what you don’t see in 16:9. Which isn’t that impressive on Fragiles image because there’s nothing interesting in the background. But if you look at Sam feeding the baby you see how much 21:9 adds. In 16:9 you probably see the baby on the left, Sam on the right and the only part of the room you see is the boring part between the two. Now add in the extra space from 21:9 and the room becomes more alive. You see the books behind the baby, the plant and cupboards? on the right, the whole bowl with the apple on the bottom right (the apple you probably can’t even see in 16:9) and for me it stops being just Sam and baby and becomes Sam and baby in this room. They don’t exist in some nondescript space, they exist in an actual room.
Seriously, if you want to enhance your gaming experience I completely recommend getting an ultrawide monitor. It is a game changer.
The first ultra wide gaming experience I had was with Shadow of Mordor. It was like walking onto the set of one of the Peter Jackson movies.
If you can swing it, I recommend the extra step of getting a curved ultra wide. I started with one and ended up swapping it with a bigger flat one for some productivity features and the corners just felt so far away from me that it diluted the gaming experience a bit.
Same here. For 2D and older games you get black bars at the sides, but for the rest is great having extra vision.
My only issue is that I’ve wanting an oled monitor for some years and the ultrawide are quite more expensive than the regular ones.
I think that’s more of an issue with OLED being really expensive. From what I’ve checked going from 16:9 IPS to 21:9 IPS should be roughly the same the price increase (percentage-wise) as going from 16:9 OLED to 21:9 OLED. Besides the bigger screen simply costing more going from 16:9 to 21:9 doesn’t really increase the cost of the monitor. It’s just the OLED itself that makes it cost so much, at least in theory.
100%. The only gripes I have:
Not all games support it. Looking directly at Fromsoft specifically. It’s 2026 and ultrawide monitors are here to stay.
Baked in black bars on the top and bottom of videos to force them to be 16:9. Utterly useless for everyone, even 16:9 users, and ruins the native ultrawide experience you might have had with that trailer or whatnot.
I have to switch back and forth because my GPU isn’t powerful enough for games with shiny new graphics. It’s fine to still play 16:9 for some games that require a bit of precision, some old games scream for 640x480. But for the Truck Simulator, 21:9 is a game-changer: I have much better spatial awareness of my right-hand side. :)
solok333777@thelemmy.club 9 hours ago
Coming from someone who enjoys open matte versions of movies, i understand the appeal of wanting more real estate (although, in the case of movies, its usually vertical space they add, as opposed to 21:9 adding to the horizontal space). I do think about viewing areas outside of the directorial intent, however, especially in cutscenes, which are akin to movies. (For gameplay i cant necessarily see a downside.) Just like how open matte versions ignore the desired framing in favor of “more is more”, what do you make of cutscenes that werent designed for 21:9 merely showing you more because you can, as opposed to what you’re supposed to see?
This doesnt apply to games that have cropped images during cutscenes, as they obviously are designed for ultra widescreen to begin with.