What is Best Screen Resolution? 18.1" monitor

[Guest Stanner1953]

I have just purchased a new Dell Dimension XPs with an 18.1 inch Ultra sharp flat monitor, using Win XP Pro. I have yet to reload my FS2002 etc., but wanted to know your opinion of what the best screen resolution for this large monitor would be relative to best viewing of flight sim software, particularly FS2002. The standard seems to be 1024 x 768.However, I can go to 1152 X 864, or 1280 X 1024. The last resolutionis extremly sharp, but naturally quite smaller in size. What have been your experience with a large monitor, on a very powerful system (Pent 4, 3 Ghz, 1024MB SDRAM and a 128 MB ATI Radeon9800 Pro Graphic video card) regarding screen resolution size?Thanks,PS any tips you can give me regarding Win XP Pro as it applies to flight sims, or the XP software in general, will be appreciated. My XP came with Service Pack 1 installed. Stanner

[Guest racartron]

I'm running an older 21" Samsung SyncMaster monitor and have it cranked up to the best it will do -- 1280 x 1024 And would kill for one that handles 1600 or up. The sharper the better and the less dependent you are on anti aliasing bits. Not sure what you mean about smaller in size. It sure fills up my screen.Racartronit means something, but I just can't remember what

[Guest flightjunkie]

I have a ViewSonic VG800 18.1 flat panel and run it at 1280X1024 which is the max, at 70Hz refresh rate. My config is almost the same as yours, with a Radeon 9800 Pro and 1Gz of 1066Hz RDRAM and P4 2.26Ghz CPU.Works like a charm.

[gosta 0]

As long as you preserve the 4:3 aspect ratio, the resolution shouldn't really matter - the higher, the better it will look, of course. So I would suggest 1280x960 if 1280 is the highest you can go (1280x1024 isn't 4:3, so some objects will appear distorted).Cheers,Gosta.http://hifi.avsim.net/activesky/images/wxrebeta.jpg

[Guest SlimDady]

i like 1280x1024 as high as my samsung 17 inch will do..It looks so much better.. and i find little to no performance difference.I believe there is a way to make fs allow you to do 1600x1200 if your monitor supports it.Some peopele also find 1280x1024 distorted. It all depends on you. I myself like the look better then 1280x960

[Guest lmoelleb]

Basically DirectX will always draw to fill the screen at whatever resolution you are running, so the higher the better. Instruments etc will not be smaller, they will just be clearer (people complaining about instruments not being readable in the VC are basically always running low resulutions). The text windows like ATC might be a bit small. I run 1600x1200x75 (75 all my 8-9 years old 21" will do at that resolution) on the ATI 9800Pro (128MB), and the picture quality is pretty good. I am not sure if I would run 1600x1200 on a small 18.1 inch monitor, but I would at least try it out if it is a CRT monitor. If it is a TFT monitor, you should run it at it's native resolution, and if that native resolution is anything less than 1600x1200 - well, then you won't have to fear me stealing the monitor as I wouldn't touch it with the water from a remote controlled firehose).You need to make sure to play around with the settings a bit (both in the driver and in FS) to find the settings you prefer.Generally speaking I never got that high framerate improvements (under 10 in EHAM) when I went from the Radeoon 8500 to the 9800 on my Athlon 2.4, but the picture quality was dramatically improved. Who knows, I might be able to find one or another setting that will give me higher framerates for an acceptable degration of the quality, but I have never found the time to look./Lars