I am getting ready to order a new monitor to replace my old Trinitron CRT. I am looking at a Dell 19" or 20" LCD that is not widescreen or maybe the Dell 24" widescreen. I use FS2004. Will FS2004 work well with a widescreen? Is there any disadvantage to getting a 20" instead of a 19" 4:3 screen?

I use the Dell 2407 and it is amazing. It is very bright even against a window. It is very immersive. There is some banding that occurs which is noticeable on a blue sky or dark backgrounds. There is also some stretching of the gauges but to me this is so minor it doesn't bother me one bit. I highly recommend these monitors. Also, if you can afford it get the 24 I think I noticed that they have a 27" version now. Good luck.

L recently got a 17inch LCD, not the wide screen. FS9 may work on a wide screen but I'd rather see the standard view I've become used to but in sharp resolution. This new screen gives me that - great clarity and color. It makes it especially easy to read the gauges.

I absolutely love mine. (see sig specs) As far as wide screen goes, FS9 works in wide screen. It does stretch 2D panels a bit but VC and externals are fine. I fly exclusively in VC so wide screen is excellent for that.

Going Widescreen will stretch your 2-d panel by 20%. If you have a large monitor it can be quite noticable. I love widescreen so on my regular aircraft I have created my own widescreen 2D panels in 8:5 aspect ratioHere is a picture to demonstrate the effect on a single gauge.Here is one of my widescreen 2-D panelsRegardsJim

The same panel for comparison in both 4x3 and widescreen formats to see the effect of stretchingregardsjim

edit: Sorry -- didn't realize this wasn't in hardware forum.IIUC the question is to compare a 24WS (19x12) with a 20 (16x12) and a 19 (12x10).I think the 24WS and the 20 are going to be fairly comparable -- more a function if you want the WS aspect or not. If so you might want HDCP so you can display HD content without the copy police after you. Both are going to tax a graphics card pretty heavily, esp if you use a lot of AA/AS on the card. Of course the 24WS will be that much worse on the card.When looking at the 19, most any current graphics card is going to work with that resolution. An alternative might be a 20WS (16x10) but I would want to look very closely because I wonder how clear a 2d panel is going to be at that fine resolution. I'm not excited about 20WS myself. But I am interested in the 22WS which also is 16x10 but probably not such an "eye chart".Vista should be better in this regard since the "aero" / WPF should make it easier to get good clarity at any resolution. But if an app is using GDI for its windows that still may be an issue in vista.scott s..

Thanks for the info. How about the getting the 20" monitor and using a lower resolution setting to help framerates? I have a GeForce 6800. I was thinking about the 20" because I was wanting to get the panel guages as big as possible, but do you think I would be better of with 19"? I know how to fly real planes, but I am not an expert with computers. Thanks.

Also, I noticed the Dell 20" has a respose time of 16 ms and the 19" response time is 8ms. Is this a critical factor?

>Thanks for the info. How about the getting the 20" monitor>and using a lower resolution setting to help framerates? I>have a GeForce 6800. I was thinking about the 20" because I>was wanting to get the panel guages as big as possible, but do>you think I would be better of with 19"? I know how to fly>real planes, but I am not an expert with computers. Thanks.You should always endeavour to run a lcd monitor in native resolution ie a DELL 20" should be run at 1600x1200 and a 19" at 1280x1024.Running at a lower resolution may make it easier on the CPU because it has to calculate less pixels but then you're simply transfering processing overhead to the GPU....becuase it then has to figure out how its going to transfer the 1024x768 picture from the CPU onto its 1600x1200 pixel monitor.RegardsJim

YES!The lower the response time the better and less chance of lag and ghosting.I heard anything under 12MS is acceptable for gaming. My Samsung 204B has 5MS and is stellar.Do a search on google/yahoo for this subject as their are lots of site dedicated to this very subject.

>Also, I noticed the Dell 20" has a respose time of 16 ms and>the 19" response time is 8ms. Is this a critical factor?DELL offers a range of 19" monitors with differing response times and contrast ratios. Eg they do a 8ms response time with a contrast ratio of 700:1 but they also do a response time of 20ms with a contrast ratio of 1000:1. The 20" has 16ms and 800:1.For Flight Sim any of these is a good monitor. If you are playing other games that need very high frame rates..ie shoot-'em-ups where you're panning around a lot then the faster response time might be more appropriate. From experience I'd suggest the bigger the monitor the better for FS and go for the 20"RegardsJim

Thanks for the help. Two more questions... Is my computer fast enought to handle the higher resolution of the 20"?Dell 3.2GHz 1GB of RAM. NVIDIA Geforce 6800 256MBWill the high resolution of the 20" make everthing look small when using the internet etc?Thanks.

Hi,I have a Geforce 6800 as well and bought a 22" Samsung 204B 4:3 LCD for FS. Razor sharp, 1600x1200, and this video card can easily push frames for FS9 at that resolution, with everything maxed, plus 4XAA.DO NOT DOWNGRADE the native resolution of your LCD, unless you don't mind the degradation in IQ. This LCD scales well, but native resolution thru the DVI cable is definitely the sharpest and cleanest option.I prefer this aspect ratio over wide screen. I like round gauges to be round.Noel

>>Thanks for the info. How about the getting the 20" monitor>>and using a lower resolution setting to help framerates? I>>have a GeForce 6800. I was thinking about the 20" because I>>was wanting to get the panel guages as big as possible, but>do>>you think I would be better of with 19"? I know how to fly>>real planes, but I am not an expert with computers. Thanks.>>You should always endeavour to run a lcd monitor in native>resolution ie a DELL 20" should be run at 1600x1200 and a 19">at 1280x1024.>Running at a lower resolution may make it easier on the CPU>because it has to calculate less pixels but then you're simply>transfering processing overhead to the GPU....becuase it then>has to figure out how its going to transfer the 1024x768>picture from the CPU onto its 1600x1200 pixel monitor.Changing resolution does not increase the workload for the CPU in any way.The increased number of pixels to render mainly affect the video cards memory bandwidth. Also, the required memory for the rendering buffers (at least 2, 3 with triple buffering) will increase and this will in turn increase the memory requirements for the AA filtering on the video card. Effectively, this means less video memory available for storing textures.It also affects the GPU, because the gpu does all the texture filtering and a higher resolution means that there are more pixels to calculate.As for the monitor question:Apple Cinema. Have not seen any better image quality and the design is top. They don't have the typical cheap plastic look of many other products. I've compared many and the apples were looking best. The price tag is the only drawback on these products.In any way: NEVER purchase a monitor w/o having tested it. Image quality, color balance, brightness and other values cannot only be justified by the technical data. People are different and so are our eyes. Even if other people say a certain monitor is good, you may experience it differently.