Monitor Choice for OpenGL Development

I’m trying to decide on a monitor for my new Linux PC that I will use primarily for OpenGL graphics development.

I want an LED monitor. But should I choose an HD model? I will not be watching movies on the monitor. Just developing OpenGL graphics, and maybe some light gaming.

Would OpenGL graphics look better on an HD monitor vs non-HD?

Thanks. As you can no doubt tell, I’m an OpenGL beginner. I appreciate all the good help I’ve received on this forum.

Buy a CRT (ok I am half-joking).
Any good screen will do.
Just beware of reverse-ghosting effect caused by too strong overdrive present on quite a lot of LCD screens. This leaves ugly negative trails behind animated objects, but allows to pass artificial response-time tests below a handful milliseconds :
http://img1.lesnumeriques.com/produits/150/3796/WebAlex%2816%29.jpg
Had to return my iiyama B2409HDS, it was really horrible.

At least choose a model allowing to tone down this overdrive.

Actually, while we’re talking about it, I have a question. I’ve always heard and read that the color/gamma quality on LCDs wasn’t up to tube standards, and that anyone that cares about such should go CRT. Even recently, tripped over web page recently stating that gamma on many LCD varies all over the map just based on viewing angle (I think we’ve all seen this effect).

This still the case? I haven’t seen any recent LCD-CRT “showdown” reviews that address this question properly.

I still use a tube (21"). But every once in a while think about what I’d get if it ever quits.

LCD did not improve much on the angle-dependant color change.
With a large screens (eg. 26" 16/10 ratio) you can clearly see a gradient of color on what should be a uniform red or blue.
With lower color saturation, gamma “randomization”, and light gray going to white while dark gray and black clamping to very dark gray, these are the main problem I still see on computer LCD.
These pages are interesting, all the best if you can try a screen on it before buying it :
http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/

To me, large response time is no longer a problem, as long as the overdrive is not too exaggerated.

Beware of online reviews, they are often badly done or simply paid for screen sellers …

Don’t even get me started on LCD TV, I would just say they do marvel to transform any signal to interestingly colored fantasy with fake 120hz of motion working correctly half the time, as well as introducing several frames of latency for this “feature”.

All in all, this is not so bad, I got an ASUS VK266H, and after some tuning, gamma ramps are okay, only missing the color saturation and contrast ratio of my old CRTs. Refresh rate clamped to 60Hz is a bit sad (used 75 or 100 on CRT), but bearable as flickering is almost unnoticeable. Gain of both real and virtual desk space was significant with the LCD.

Would OpenGL graphics look better on an HD monitor vs non-HD?
Probably not. You would have to be doing incredibly detailed realistic renderings for it to make a difference, and you wont be doing that for a very long time.
As a beginner with OpenGL you will find yourself editing your programs more than you will be looking at graphics so you should go for something that displays as many lines as text as possible while still being large enough to read easily without getting eyestrain.
Hence the physical size of the monitor (the screen height more than the width) is probably the most important consideration.
Around 1024 lines vertical resolution is usually plenty for most uses.

Buy a CRT (ok I am half-joking).
I’m looking at a philips 109P CRT as i type this. It cost more than the rest of the computer when i bought it 10 years ago, but its outlasted several computers and still looks as good as new.
Although the new passive (polarised) 3D monitors are starting to look tempting, they look so much better than those horrible active 3D screens with the shutterglasses.
I would probably still keep the CRT in a dual-monitor setup though.

Any idea how you can generate stereo 3D content with OpenGL for passive 3D screens ?

It looks like they use opposite polarisation on alternating lines, so it probably uses an interlaced 2-field frame in 3D mode.
The specs says it supports most 3D formats so a quadbuffer card should certainly work.
I dont know if the NVIDIA 3D vision would work or not.

Actually, as its a physical part of the screen that cant be turned off you could probably make it work just by writing fragment shaders that write the left eye view to odd numbered lines and the right eye view to even numbered lines of the framebuffer and output as 1080P.

I’ll try to get to a retailer thats selling them here and pump them for information.

There’s supposed to be even better ones coming soon that double the resolution so you still get the full 1920x1080 to each eye in 3D mode.

From a cursory search on web/forum it appears that 3D nvision does not work at all, but side-by-side stereo is supported. Maybe it is easier to generate “by hand” side-by-side views that the screen could accept as stereo.

Ok, thanks for the info.

Sometimes not being v-synced to 60Hz may be useful for graphics programming.

For doing art work (especially texture work) I will always suggest CRT over LCD, as the latter always show a gradient towards the edges of screen, even the most expensive ones (as they are typically also bigger). It is much harder to make good tileable textures when the brightness varies over the screen and/or depending on viewing angle.

I also miss my 21" CRT during cold winters.

LCD/CRT is orthogonal to vsync or not.
Maybe some lcd models internally vsync, but it is not what I experienced in the general case.

OT: … and the regular revision of one’s glasses. :slight_smile:

IMHO, choosing a special output device shouldn’t be your main concern. Like ZBuffer said, any screen that doesn’t produce notable artefacts will do just fine.

If you think about it, most (if not all) consumer displays aren’t really representing colors correctly anyway - which is a frequent matter of disconcern among people doing real photorealistic, spectral rendering.

Some more trivial facts in favor of LCDs are lower power consumption, usually lower space requirements and they’re way better for the eye in the long run.