Screen Resolution

[Velvet-Glove]

You'll have to fight me to make me part with my Sony Trinitron 36" High Scan CRT TV

LOL! Don't worry, there's no question of a fight - my 32" Panasonic LCD is exceptionally capable, thank you very much, and the perfect size for my viewing position of about 8 feet away. Even fast action movies do not faze it. I'm looking forward to seeing some digital HDMI content when it begins to roll out on Sky/cable in the UK later this year, reputed to be quite stunning, from what I hear.

I hope you will remain very happy and faithful to your Sony.

 

[Velvet-Glove]

I also run Dell 9300 at native 1920x1200 17" widescreen and find it clear enough even though my eyesight isn't too good these days.

...

Picture demonstrates how much more can be seen [I made it quarter size so it can fit on lower res screens]

Thank you for the picture, Sir Janus. You certainly can see more of the terrain than I can with that resolution, I think. I'm glad to hear you can manage with the text OK. I'm one of the more 'mature' players here and have to struggle with bi-focals (still not used to them, even after 3 years) so perhaps there is hope for me yet. As you say, the text is not absolutely essential - now that I am more familiar with the game I'm sure I could get by.

 

[sfuller]

Just for my 2 cents: I've had alot of success running an LCD at exactly HALF the native resolution. From what I understand, LCDs like that.

That's about as much time as I'll spend typing, although I'm sure it's really technical.

 

[HeXeD_3010]

LOL! Don't worry, there's no question of a fight - my 32" Panasonic LCD is exceptionally capable, thank you very much, and the perfect size for my viewing position of about 8 feet away. Even fast action movies do not faze it. I'm looking forward to seeing some digital HDMI content when it begins to roll out on Sky/cable in the UK later this year, reputed to be quite stunning, from what I hear.

I hope you will remain very happy and faithful to your Sony.

LCD TVs are nasty

 

[hotstuffjsn]

Well the reason why I can run such a high resolution on my LCD, 1920x1200 is because I have the best possible display for my laptop and i'm running the best video card I could buy for it. It makes the text and images so crisp and sharp that you can see even the tiniest of images and text. I'm glad to see at least one other person running my resolution though. At least I know not to run in anything other then the native from this point onward. And yes I love being able to see everything on screen at once.

 

[Velvet-Glove]

Well, for what it's worth I now have my 19" screen and it is fantastic, I'm really pleased.

For those of you that wondered (as I did) this is what I have found, having gone from a 15" 1024x768 native display size to a 19" screen with a native 1280x1024 resolution:

As far as this game is concerned the text is the same size as it always was. What's changed is that I can see much more of everything now: more of the terrain, less scrolling in city maps when you have a long list of buildings on the left and more units available to build viewable at any one time at the bottom (because more icons fit in horizontally so less vertical scrolling required), to name but a few.

All I did was adjust the resolution settings from within the game (it didn't look too good before I did this as it still had the old display size set).

I have a 3yr-old mid-range card (GeForce Ti4200 128MB) and it is perfectly happy with the new resolution. AFAICT performance is just the same as on the old monitor. In fact it may even be better, for some unknown reason - I zoomed out to a world view and it was as smooth as a baby's bottom.

There are other benefits to a bigger monitor when it comes to web browsing and other applications so all in all I have to say that I am delighted with my new toy. I played a couple of hours on civ last night and it was so much more enjoyable, perhaps because this screen has richer looking colours than my old one.

I'm a happy bunny today!

 

[Sahkuhnder]

Some 17" WXGA laptop displays say the native resolution is 1440x900. Anyone tried that ? I was thinking of buying a 17" laptop. Now I'm not so sure.

I run it on my laptop (Toshiba Qosmio G25-AV513) at 1440x900 and it looks great and has lots of space on the screen for all the info (see post #8). The text is not too small to read. I'm really glad the civ game offers this widescreen resolution as a setting for us to use. If you can afford it I strongly recommend buying one like you mentioned.