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Simple resolution explination requested

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August 12, 2013 2:45:28 PM

I don't get resolution. And when I go into stores, or I read about it, I continue to not get it.

This is the sort of thread that comes up a lot, and I've read through them, but I just... can't fully wrap my head around a couple of things. Partly because some people seem to not get it.

So, on my desktop, I've got 1920x1200 and when I compare that to my 1080 display I can see that equates to a couple extra rows displayed in excel.

That said, if I go look at a retina macbook pro, it shows less rows.

Now I've found that this is because of how the software interprets the info coming out and it sort of makes the display effectively 1650x1050 because to make it 2500 or whatever retina is would make text too small to read.

My question is, how does this relate to games and movies?

Sometimes I look at screen shot comparisons and I'm like, I can definitely see more to the left and right at 1080 than at 720. There is literally more information being shown. But sometimes it looks exactly the same.

Like, what's going on here with starcraft 2:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_i...

And does aspect ratio matter more than resolution? Is that really the key?

It doesn't make sense that movies could actually show larger landscapes so in that case, what's going on when a movie is displayed at 720 vs 1080. If you have a 1080 monitor watching a movie, do you see more to the left and to the right, like more of the shot? This seems unlikely.

Likewise, what's happening when I put the resolution up to 1080 on a youtube video but I don't expand it to full screen? It looks crisper, but it can't be showing 1080 because there aren't 1080 pixels in that small space.

I have read a lot of articles on this, and even gone into mac stores and best buys and tried to get someone there to give me a quick run through, but it just never light bulbs for me.

Thanks ahead of time.

TL;DR

How does resolution effect displayed information? Do you actually see more game at higher resolutions? Does it change from game to game? Does it change from movie to movie?

Does a dual or triple monitor set up change how much displayed information you see?

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August 13, 2013 5:23:04 PM

I understand by the amount of questions that this is something that is important to you. Therefore I'll do my best to aid you on your research. If you have any additional questions or there is still something left unclear just let me know.

Display resolution (hardware) – this is the total number of pixels on your screen. For example, your 1920x1200 monitor has 1,920 pixels widthwise and 1,200 pixels lengthwise for a total of 2,304,000 pixels. Now in order for your screen to be able to display different formats you have a scaling engine that matches the incoming picture to your display. Think of screen resolution as the maximum amount of pixels that an image in a game or a movie can use to show itself.

The aspect ratio - describes the proportional relationship between its width and its height. This is your screens general scalar. To your point, this is the key for determining how zoomed in or out is your camera in general. 4:3 standard dates back to the 35mm days of motion picture, when TVs became prevalent in households they were also made to this standard. In order to gain a competitive advantage Hollywood created the widescreen aspect ratio. However, with the 16:9 standard of HDTVs widescreen is easily enjoyed on TVs and PC monitors across the world.

Now despite aspect ratio there is also a software scalar that is used by the gpu (in PCs your video card and for TVs your DVD/Blue Ray player or cable provider DVR). Movies & games use scalars in software that interact with the aspect ratio to give you a better viewing experience.

I suspect this is what your experiencing on youtube.com. As long as the general scalar, the aspect ratio, isn't engaged by making the video full screen. The scalar used is the original one the creator of the video used to make it.

In games the Field of View (FOV) is what scales. There are a few methods for scaling which you can research for yourself. Here is an article on FOV and some of the scaling methods used today. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_of_view_in_video_gam...

I hope this helps!
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August 13, 2013 6:10:52 PM

Comparing 1920x1200 to 1920x1080, the latter has 120 less rows, that is why when you look at an Excel spreadsheet the 1080p will display fewer rows. The MacBook Pro Retina display is either 2560x1600 (13") or 2880x1800 (15") resolution. It sounds like they are using larger size fonts to make everything look bigger and easier to read. If those were laptops running Win 7 or 8, then everything will look pretty tiny. So, I conclude that Apple is simply using large fonts to make everything easier to read.

Regarding movies... both 720p and 1080p have 16:9 aspect ratio. Watching a 1080p movie on at either 720p, 768p (1366x768) or 1080p will result in basically the same image. Nothing is cut off from the top, bottom, left, right. However, displaying a 1080p on a 1366x768 screen or 720p screen means some of the details are left out simply because there are not enough pixels on the screen. The graphics card does some image interpolation to fit a higher resolution video on a smaller resolution screen. That results in a minor loss in quality, but since a 720p / 768p screen is generally smaller than a 1080p screen you won't be able to tell the difference. After all, the small something looks, the harder it becomes to see all the details.

I don't know what's going on with Youtube and how they decide on what gets displayed on their site, but if you playback a 1080p Blu-Ray movie on a screen 1366x768 resolution screen and on a 1920x1080 resolution you should see that neither has any black bars or parts of the video being cut off.

A bit of trivia for you... Batman: The Dark Knight was film at both 16:9 and 2.35:1 aspect ratios. I think 2.35:1 was used for most of the action sequences. Therefore, if you pop in that movie in your Blu-Ray plaer to watch it on your 1080p HDTV, you will notice that some scenes will have black bars on top and bottom (2.35:1 aspect ratio), while other scenes fills up the enter HDTV screen.

In terms of games, the difference between 1200p and 1080p depends on how the game displays the graphics on the monitor. Each game can be different. When looking that the link you provided, the thing I noticed immediately was that for 1200p the game had black bars on the left and right of the screen. That is very odd and tells me that Blizzard didn't really bother to implement 1200p correctly.

Let's look at the numbers.... 1920x1200 means 1920 columns of pixels, and 1200 rows of pixels. 1920x1080 means 1920 columns of pixels and 1080 rows of pixels. Since both resolution have 1920 columns of pixels, why does 1920x1200 have black bars on the left and right, and 1920x1080 does not? Lazy, real F**KING lazy ass developers.
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August 14, 2013 8:25:42 AM

Rok125 said:

Now despite aspect ratio there is also a software scalar that is used by the gpu (in PCs your video card and for TVs your DVD/Blue Ray player or cable provider DVR). Movies & games use scalars in software that interact with the aspect ratio to give you a better viewing experience.

I suspect this is what you're experiencing on youtube.com. As long as the general scalar, the aspect ratio, isn't engaged by making the video full screen. The scalar used is the original one the creator of the video used to make it.

In games the Field of View (FOV) is what scales. There are a few methods for scaling which you can research for yourself. Here is an article on FOV and some of the scaling methods used today. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_of_view_in_video_gam...

I hope this helps!


The video scaler is the part of the puzzle that I was missing. And it seems like Hor+ is what's going on with most games. I wish things didn't scale and I could just see more of the map. That would make eyefinity and dual monitors way more appealing.
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August 14, 2013 9:18:26 AM

Squander said:
The video scaler is the part of the puzzle that I was missing. And it seems like Hor+ is what's going on with most games. I wish things didn't scale and I could just see more of the map. That would make eyefinity and dual monitors way more appealing.

You may want to look into widescreen fixer, or flawless widescreen. If you want a wider FOV. I know someone who uses widescreen fixer for COD on 3 monitors and its Awesome! Some people complain that this is cheating but common that's like me saying people shouldn't buy a 690 because I can't afford it. Currently I can't afford a 690, but I don't $#*+ on people who can.
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