2560x1600. My Gawd!
 

Well, it all started with a $20 purchase of IL-2 1946 at Circuit City a few months ago. Was playin it with arcade settings and an xbox 360 controller.

Then one way or another I wandered in here and heard all of the good preachin about Track-IR4, CH Products, etc.....lol that $20 caused me almost another $500 in purchases when I picked those up, then I noticed that 8800ultras were down to $200 so I picked another one up for SLI, which I finally got working properly!

And then since I now had the video hardware, I found myself staring at 2560x1600 monitors. But I was not conviced that I should upgrade my monitor as I had been using my 40" 1080p samsung as my CPU monitor and thought that that was pure gaming bliss with IL-2. I mean really, 40" at 1920x1080 is a huge freakin screen and IL2 was great on it!

But alas I came across a bargain on the Gateway xhd3000 30" 2560x1600 for $899 at J&R and I could not resist any longer. OH MY GAWD people!!! This is how I felt when I got my trackIR to work perfectly!!!! Such a revolution to the game!! the DEFINITION IS MIND BLOWING even though it is an OLD GAME, and the 16:10 aspect ration lets you see so much more above you than the 16:9 ratio that my 1080p offered. YOU MUST GET ONE OF THESE 30" 2560x1600 beasts! I dont care what brand you get, just get one....divorce the wife, break up with the girlfriend, sell you children or send them to an inlaw, whoever tells you NO must be eliminated! Seriously, its that good.

So all in all that $20 game forced my hand on another $1700, but it was totally worth it!!

sounds like you created yourself a nice setup :)

one thing to be aware of, pixel size on those ultra high resolution monitors is fairly small (around 0.25 mm) which is a good thing for most pc purposes, except for locating and tracking dots of distant aircraft in il2.

the 40' tv you were using had pixels about 2x the size (about .50 mm), so those dots used in il2 to represent distant aircraft would be 2x larger and much easier to see.

when il2 users initially started to buy those big high resolution pc monitors thinking they would land in gaming nirvana, they found that it made them vulnerable in flying competitively online because they had a hard time seeing the enemy, and ended up setting their expensive monitors to 1/2 its native resolution to overcome this (running it at 1280 x 800)

it is possible that with better gfx cards and being able to run 16x AA and high AF settings that this is less of an issue now, but its something to be aware of when you find you are starting to have a hard time seeing the enemy !

there is no indication oleg will resolve this issue in BoB either, or any sign he is even aware of the problem.

And you don't think those "competitive" types on-line are not running 800x600 in 16bit to gain the advantage ??

Just drop the graphics down to see house bricks flying around and you will see the advantage some of these "aces" have. :grin:

WOW!!!!!!! 40 inch monitor sounds amazing!!!!!! I recently went from a 17 to a 22 and I'm still in shock.A 40 inch has got to be like a movie theater!! Good for you!!

Hahaha, looks like someone has caught the "IL-2 Contagion", a progressive and financially devastating disease which has no known cure! Join the club!:) Yeah, fellow sufferer here, and my Girlfriend thinks I am a complete dork......she may have a point lol, but do I care??? Hell No!!!:grin:

Get well soon mate hehe.

Actually the 40" turned out to be bad for gaming and bad as a computer monitor because on an HDTV at 1080p the refresh rate tops out at 24hz! Even though the sets are rated at 60hz that is only for the lower resolutions. At 24hz the set was giving me headaches. There are now true 1080p 60hz HDTV sets and even 120hz sets hitting the market however. I also saw substantially less due to the 16:9 aspect ratio. The 16:10 aspect ratio allows me a more natural vertical FOV.

As far as online competitive gaming...well I dont play this game online. I only play single player campaign and the picture is so clear, so precise that I can see the dots on the horizon like you would in real life. That is what it is all about for me, I cant play in a crappy resolution so I can cheat online, that is pointless and just sad.

I play this game for the immersion because I have a soft spot for WWI & WWII aircraft and combat history. This game lets me tinker around in that realm and I love it!

Playing this game at 800x600 resolution online is the equivalent of playing competitive kickball with 5 year olds...honestly how much fun is that?

if someones dick, sorry EGO, is small enough he or she will enjoy the cheap thrill of an easy kill.

most people dont have problems seeing distant dots that are above the horizon, no matter what their system or display size is.

dot size and the degree to which they stand out in il2 however becomes very important once you have to try and make them out against a terrain background (because now they tend to blend in with the textures that create the terrain, rather then a black dot standing out against an open blue sky)

but i completely agree that what really matters to get the immersion effect in our virtual il2 world we fly in, is to make the scenery look as good as possible. and for that you need a decent size monitor with high resolution, and high end gfx cards to drive it (for high fps and high AA and AF settings).

sadly in il2 right now, the better and nicer your display of the il2 virtual world is with a high end system, the less you will be able to locate and track distant enemy aircraft that are drawn as dots when you look for them against a terrain background.

there is also no indication oleg will correct this error in BoB, or even an indication he is aware of this problem on high end systems. i suspect this lack of awareness is principally caused by the programmers for il2/FB/1946 using lower end displays.

Yeah zapitista, you are spot on right.....I fly at 1920x1200 res and the only time it becomes difficult is spotting them in a terrain background as you say. Lucky enough to have 20/20 vision, (though my ears are porked and I have to wear an aid hehe) but it is still difficult to spot them sometimes at this res. Much prefer it this way though, and I certainly wouldn't bother dropping to 800x600, that is just tragic lol.

Play to your strengths, my PC beat me at chest so i challenged it to a round of kick boxing.

You poor sick bastard (pun intended). You think your puny attmpts at self treatment will satisfy the beast within, but you are mistaken. Wait till you see that next new toy waiting on the shelf.... calling out to you, the old familiar cravings will return, then you will be driven to fufill the urge........

Have fun! :)

Uggg no that would be Crysis, that game is what drove me to the madness of creating my monster rig and then IL-2 actually gave me a reason to use the monster rig once crysis wore off.

All I want now are the new gfx cards coming out within the next six months so I can enjoy even more high res goodness!!

1. Count yourself lucky you "discovered" this sim at such a late stage. $500 and 1 new monitor is chump compared to most who've been on this crazy train for over 6 years now.

2. I have a 27" monitor and run almost everything at 1680x1050 and NEVER drop it lower...even when flying (and competing) online.

I dont know how lucky I was to discover the sim "later," because I had been on a console odessey. During that time I racked up 6 xbox 360's on a lan for gaming with friends, so you can imagine that little diddy right there cost me a couple grand :(

Before this I was addicted to battlefield 1942, but that only cost me $1,000 for a worthy 2.4ghz p4 CPU and $399 for the radeon 9700pro. That computer lasted me from 2002 until 2007 :() I cannot imagine a computer lasting me five years now!

One thing I know is we all have to pay stupid amounts of cash for our hobbies, because from a financial standpoint there is no justification for the madness lol.

Try justifying burnt and scratched table tops to the missus when you start putting together your own controllers. You Just can't do it!

I poked the lenses out of the wifes perscription glasses/sunglasses to put over my TRK IR 4 to hide sunglare that was drivivg me nutts at the time.That was 2 yrs ago.........I'm still paying for that one!!!!

As a consolation,I did down 4 zeros that day.......MOHOOOHAAAA!!!!! She did not share in my victorious "all or nothing attitude" however.