A couple a days ago my high end CRT monitor died on me, and i dont know yet, what that means for the textures i make.


Backthan (when i still had a relative decent income) in 1999 I bought a 22 inch 160hrz flatscreen iiyama CRT monitor for 1500 Dollars. And that monitor is from unmatched quality, which means it had a super, uber, uber, uber good crystal clear contrast. Already a couple a years ago CRT's were getting more and more rare, and were all replaced by LCD monitors.


And over the years i have been checking on LCD monitors, but there is simply no LCD monitor that remotelly comes close to what my CRT is capable of. So aside the financial blow, i am forced to buy an LCD monitor, and i can only hope it will be good enough to work with. But frankly i am pretty much scared shit about it.


So monday i am gonna order a new monitor which will consume the little savings i have left and ill just keep my fingers crossed and hope it will not be that worse.


Aside that, it really sucks, because i had planned to buy new hardrives for the projects, since the ones i got now are all filled up to the top. On most drives i have like 5-10 gig left which is pretty much a few days work of space left.


And last year i got a very cool donation for which i am still super happy , and i still will use that money to go buy a new drive, but at this moment it has to wait. And the reason is simple, it is enough to buy me a drive, but i always also need to buy a second one that serves as backup in case a drive fails.


And without a monitor i cant do anything at all obviously, so that has priority right now, and than hopefully i am able to buy the drives in a couple a months.


But ok, maybe the new LCD wont be as bad as i am afraid of, and if it does work properly enough than it will be a big relief because i have been worried about this for years and years. All that that time it has been, what if.........


So lets just see what happens next week.
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The LCD monitor I have has amazing color contrast if you're sitting at the right angle. Everything is much more vibrant than my old monitor.. sure, the old one was a garden variety 17 inch CRT, but either way one of the cheapest LCDs is far better than a normal CRT.

The quality isn't necessarily worse on LCDs. Maybe it's just different - you will actually see what players see when they download your textures...

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That is actually the culprit.

In the past when everybody had a CRT monitor, the last thing they bought was a monitor, and while people tried to get a good computer for as less bucks as possible, but the monitor people bought was as cheap as they possibly could get, and no-one looked at the quality, just the cheaper the better.


Which ment people were getting headaches all the time, got problems with their eyes, and people that were sensitive would get problems with their faces and hands(rash and eczema) as well. And the reason was simple, most monitors could not go to a higher refreshrate than 55 or 60 Hrz and were not equiped with an anti static layer henge the eczema. Also contrast was just plain horrible, unless you were real lucky.


And in my country it was not that different than in other countries worlwide. And to get a monitor that had good contrast, good anti static protectione and good refreshrates, for a 17 inch CRT you would have to pay 800 dollars+ and for a 22 inch you had to pay 1200dollars+


Which means that the monitor would be prettty much double the amount that people were willing to pay for the entire computer........... Instead paying 600 dollars for a computer including a moniter it would have ment people would have to pay 1600 dollars+ for a computer including a monitor. And seeing what i saw in the past, only if hell freezes over that happened.


So its simple, no-one had such a monitor. The fact i did pay that amount for a monitor was i had to do high end graphics even backthan. And i have a rare "condition" which enables me to see refreshrates up to 83-85 Hrz. So any monitor that run below 85 Hrz to me looked like a stroboscope.


And no matter where i went, to poor people, to rich people, to the government, to small companies or to very wealthy large companies, time after time i saw flickering stroboscope like monitors. And since i did graphics work, even on graphical companies i saw the same thing.......


Than Halleluya, LCD came. Shop owners said, wow, that means we dont have drag around a huge lump of glass weighing half a ton. We can store 50 times the amount of LCD's in the same space. We can get rid of the service that we have bring monitors to peoples home because they weight too much or they are to large for people to take home in their car.


And halleluya, headaches were gone, rash is gone, eczema gone, the d a m n thing can be placed on any table, no matter how small, you can take the box containing the LCD home under your arm, the powerconsumption is zero to nothing, so its green as hell. WOOOOW


But the graphics..........


IT TOTALLY SUCKS, it simply does. For gaming, you can have ghosting which is impossible with a CRT. The contrast is zero to nothing, and i can easelly proof that. About a month ago i already was looking for LCD monitors to see if they had improoved somewhat. And while i was there in the store i also had a look at televisions, and there the same story you can only get LCD or plasma televisions.


And i am talking about a huge store where they have like 300-400 LCD televisions running. And the price range 200 dollars for a smaller television up to 5000 dollars for a wall sized telly. And they sold cheap brands as well as highly recommended brands. On all televisions they showed the same thing a snooker game. So all the time you saw the snookertable with collored balls and the guys playing the game.


And its simple, i watched in total horror, no matter what brand, no matter what price, all balls on the screen had jpg like artifacts around them. The hair of the players was simply not visible, they all were just a fuzzy jpg compression like fuzzy blobs. Some screens it was a bit better and you could see a bit detail, well a bit detail, it now looked like all the guys had thick 1 inch wide dreadlocks.


Oh wait, there is a televion where you can see the individual hairstrands. It has a sigh above it telling this is how it looks on a CRT television. And of course the colors were set so it looked real bad....... But..........., you could see any individual hairstrand, and no artifacts arround the colored balls, and the contrast was crystal clear  



LCD is utter, utter, utter, utter c r a p quality, and if you dont believe me, go to a similar store, and tell me if you can see individual hairstrands crystal, crystal clear, i bet..................................


Its simple, LCD is super easy to handle, and has tons of plus points, no disagreement from me there, becaue there really are alot of pluspoints But where it really matters, the quality, well, the quality, is as bad as you can get. Not to mention, motion is still a big problem on 95%(+) of the screens and that includes the most expensive LCD screen you can get. And as i see it, if you buy a television, since that is a picture that moves all the time, its kinda handy if the telly actually can follow the motion  
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Personally, I needed 70+ hz on an CRT, if I had below 70 hz I would get massive headaches.

This LCD I have is 60 hz and I don't notice it. There are 120hz LCDs that are fairly cheap, so that is your best bet if you are worried about it

Thats very true that LCD screens dont need a refreshrate like CRT monitors have. LCD monitors only alters an individual pixel if it receives a change. But a 120 Hrz monitor still could serve people well that play movies or game alot. It might reduce the ghosting as well, as the the pixels are updated twice as fast as a 60 Hrz monitor.


And since all of us are gamers, such a monitor would not be a bad idea. Because it would also allow higher fps than you can have now. So for gaming its big plus if you have an 120 Hrz LCD monitor, at least theoretical.


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It actually was a life broadcast form the world championship if i recall correct, so it was not a picture but life broadcast. And i also did check at home to see the difference since it still was going on, and i am only at a 3 minute walk from that store.


But i went to that store specifically to see how LCD screens behave, both on monitors as televisions. And its simple, there was nothing wrong with the broadcast, it was just bad LCD's what i saw. Aside that, even if the broadcast would have been bad, you would see static and rolling pictures or digitation of the picture, but not jpg like artifacts around the balls or in the hair.


Some televisions were also equiped with a certain tecnology(cant remember what they called it, have a look tomorrow) that made the screens having more contrast. And indeed those televisions seem to have a better and sharper picture. But if you actually studied the picture, which is what i did, it simply brightened the artifacts around the balls to achieve higher contrast, which effectivelly made look even more worse.


But i am sure, if it was show to the averidge customer, than that customer simply will say, yeah, damn that does look alot sharper, wow, i want that! But its like total bull to achieve contrast like that, because it emphesises the artifacts which make it look like its better, but its not at all. Plain said it looks sharper but completelly ruins the actual picture.


Good contrast on a screen means, if you go from one pixel to the other, there should be as less blend between the 2 pixels. The less antialias the more contrast. And if in a picture a certain object has artifacts around them, and the contrast highlights those artifacts, that will result in a plain ugly picture. And there comes the trick, a good monitor has pixels that do not blend easelly, and solving that softwarematic is a bad thing and never leads to good results.


And to get back to my textures, exactly that effect always needs to be prevented. You can make textures having better contrast, but never to the extend that you start to see artifacts around an object. If that happens, i know i overdid the contrast and sharpness and i need to do a big step back in adding contrast.
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Well, i got my monitor installed. And all together its good news, i may not completelly like it how it looks. But the end of the story is, its workable for me. And that of course is the important thing


I have been worried for this for the last 5 years, and i kept investing in my old monitors (repairs and such) to postpone the moment as long as possible before i had to switch to LCD. All that in the hope, when the time comes, LCD monitors would have been improoved good enough so they are usefull to me.


And as it looks like now, it did. I am satisfied with the quality, its alot less than my CRT, but very doable. The main problematic thing is, that colors shift easelly when you even move your head slightly. And as i said before, this isnt so much of a problem with my own textures, but more a problem if i need to recreate excisting Unreal textures, as i need exact colors. But alla, i guess i need to get used to that and the new situation.


So i think its pretty good news, because it can only get better now and not worse. And its also reasuring that even if this new monitor dies, i easelly can get a cheap replacement. Euuh, not that i want that to happen, but if it does its not that of a biggy. Its after all alot more easy to replace a 250 dollar monitor than a 1500 dollar monitor.


In time, when the 27 inch monitors wil become cheaper, and more important they will have a dotpitch from 0.25 mm(which is now 0.31 mm) ill replace this monitor for a 27 inch version, and this 22 inch will go serve as menu for Photoshop.


And the main reason for the future replacement is the height, even though this is a 22 inch monitor, which is also the same as my old CRT, what i was afraid for is true. This 22 inch LCD monitor is widescreen, well, widescreen, they simply did cut off alot of the height. So widescreen my ass, it simply misses 25% in height  


And since most textures are square, i desperatelly need height, which is where the 27 inch comes in. But i guess that will take a couple a years. But for now, my setup works and i am happy with it. So all together its good news, and i am happy with the outcome
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DieHard SCWS wrote on 02/21/10 at 00:18:15:


I know what you mean
I'm thinking of getting an LCD when I buy the remaining parts for my new PC, just to see how it looks like (22" probably) cause I only have a 17" CRT and a 10,1" LCD on my laptop.