I am gonna purchase a new monitor and these are my choices for a farely good price. I am debating on which of the 2 would be best for flight sim with a farely recent purchase of my Geforce 7800 GSOC Video card. 1. Chimei WideScreen 19" 2. Avidav Regular 19" Which do you think would be best? Thanks, Josh

A 19" LCD is the standard nowadays. I cannot comment on your choice of brands, beacuse I don't recognize any of them. If you the price difference is just $50, I'd suggest to go with a brand name like Viewsonic, AOpen, etc -or- really carefully review the 'dead pixel' policy from the manufacturer.WideScreen does have it troubles with FS9, because it stretches the panel across the entire width of the screen and due to the unusual resolution it might look funny, so take that into consideration as well.Good luck,Pat

Pat, Thank You. That is pretty much what I needed to hear about that widescreen for fs. Feel a bit better now. Thanks, Josh

I'm seeing more of the 20" wide screens lately. But still a bit more pricey than a "square" 19". there seems to be some bias against running windowed mode. I've never had problems in windowed and could see putting the GPS or other panel aside the mian panel view.I think the actual lcd panels are only made by about 3 companies, but it is proably difficult to get the specs on the panel.scott s..

Howdy, Well I think I just made a 260.00 mistake today. I went to a local computer store here in town and purchased a 19" LCD monitor. I love the day texture's on the sim but night is just ridiculous on this monitor flat out sux's... Look's like a hazy grey instead of black at night. I have tried to adjust the contrast brightness etc... I hope the owner of the store will let me trade it for a 17" or something with better clarity... Oh by the way when I was looking at them in the store today it was well lite and only bright colors were being displayed at the time.. Get it in a dark room and run it looks like crap for night flying I am fired up. It is a 19" AVIDAV by the way. I wish there was such thing as negative contrast or brightness... Oh well see what he has to say when I call tomorrow. I probably just got robbed!!!!! Or maybe there is something I am missing on the adjustments. Happy Landings, Josh

As you might have heard, staring at a display in a dark room is bad for your eyes - it's advisable to at the very least light up the wall behind the display (if there's no wall behind it, then you have to make do with ambient room lighting). This was true before LCDs came about and it holds true even now. Lighting up the background also serves a secondary purpose, one that's less obvious with CRTs than some (most?) LCDs: fooling your eyes.Since LCDs operate on the basis that black is created by BLOCKING the backlight, which apparently can't be done perfectly yet (and is worse on some models than others), the actual shade of black you see depends a lot on what you see "around" the display (what's behind it). If the background is pitch black, your eyes will perceive the LCD's black as "grey". If the background is a light color (and lit), your eyes will perceive it as black. It's very simple, really - sort of how your eyes are fooled by this optical illusion:http://web.mit.edu/persci/people/adelson/i...llusion4med.jpgIf you've never seen this or anything like it before you could swear block "A" is darker than block "B", but you'd be wrong:http://web.mit.edu/persci/people/adelson/i...w_proof4med.jpgThey're the same color, but your eyes are fooled by what's around the area of interest.Most likely you haven't missed anything as far as adjusting the display goes - you've just forgotten to take into account how LCDs work and are trying to use the LCD in an environment it can't possibly operate properly in :) It IS true that you'll get a blacker black with a low-end CRT than a low-end LCD and if you do your research and pay more you can get an LCD with a good black level (as far as LCDs go, anyway), but I don't think you can eke out more black out of that display of yours unless you turn it off ;)