While this article presents it in a humorous way, some air traffic control systems actually do use a diagonally rotated screen, with that "long line" being lined up with the primary approach to the airport. The setup I got to observe involved large displays that worked with stylus input.
These weren't ultra-widescreen displays; they were relatively standard aspect-ratio displays, rotated at an angle.
I was involved in the US air traffic control system upgrade in the early 90s as a software subcontractor. They were using Sony 2k square CRT monitors. If I recall correctly, they cost about $20k each - in 1990 dollars - partially due to the hardware subsystem for antialiasing.
Googling, I see that this is the replacement monitor:
Why would anyone make an LCD specifically for ATC displays!? From what I can see, it’s just an ordinary LCD monitor! Sure the 1:1 aspect ratio is a bit weird, but that’s not worth $20K…
looking at the datasheet [0], it has a lot of specialized ports that I would never need, but I wouldn't be surprised if an ATC tower somewhere needed it for obscure compatibility reasons. 5x BNC for analog input, for example. also multiple serial ports for remote controls of some kind, and SNMP support.
the field-replaceable backlight seems to be a big selling point too.
Typical enterprise logic: $20K for an ordinary display that can be "repaired in the field" and comes with "support", instead of $200 for a display that can be replaced in its entirety for... $200.
Biggest change in mentality I saw moving from SMB to enterprise is that in SMB I just kept bought through consumer, often on sale, sometimes used, and kept extra stock.
Enterprise as little as a 8gb sodimm is treated as un-obtainium and costs like $200 or something because it’s special compatibility tested and supported ram. I would see hundreds of 1080p monitors replaced with… hundreds of new 1080p monitors from a different vendor because management bought everything as a package deal form the vendor. The monitor was treated as an essential part of the vendors enterprise offering and one couldn’t very well use another vendors monitors with their docks.
The $200 monitor can be replaced in its entirety but then union rules mean you need a full-time union tech to swap it out and you need a bunch of them on payroll to ensure you have 24/7 coverage vs a vendor support contract
This is not a complaint about the phone but, God, visiting that website is a nightmare. Immediately hit with a sudden sound notification, a chat widget, a popup, and random decorations scattered all over the screen.
UblockOrigin - set to default block all javascript on the website, and one gets no "sudden sound notification", no "chat widget", no "popup" and no "random decorations".
I just scrolled through half a dozen ATC tower tour videos on YouTube and didn't see any skewed displays, but it's possible that they 1) they tidied it up for the tour, or 2) they just didn't apply this approach in those particular sites.
I'm still very interested to see this novel application.
This was more than a decade ago, and they may have moved to a different approach since then. At the time of the tour I took, ultra-widescreen monitors didn't exist.
Interesting. This is why I don't understand why people either choose to, or have set for them, GPS/mapping apps and run them on a device in landscape mode, IF you have the setting that "up" is the direction you are heading as opposed to "North"
Me, I want to maximize what is "ahead", not off to the sides where I'm not driving.
I learned to navigate primarily using cardinal directions, before handheld GPS was common. When I walk around a new city, I find it easier to look at google maps to figure out the cardinal direction I need to travel, as opposed to remembering a series of turns that are relative to each other.
That’s assuming the sun is out or a compass is available
Sure, I do too, but that's more a lay of the land thing for me. When I'm going to a specific place and I don't really care much about what's between me and it, I'll go "relative directions". I know ahead of time the ~direction I'm going, and the GPS is to tell me what's coming up, so I want it "ahead".
I guess the apps could be tweaked to do both; show cardinal direction, but put "here" near the edge of the screen that maximizes the distance forward. I suspect it's not because "here" is always on the same spot on your screen the way it is, which is a UX consideration as well.
If you've got an ultra wide monitor, maybe spin it and go for persistence of vision effect and a huge circular display? Could double as a fan to help spread all the heat generated by the GPU having to redraw it nonstop!
If you have it going 3600rpm for 60hz uh… θ axis refresh rate (?), you have a pretty tough monitor. Now I’m wondering if you could mount it to 2 really fast linear actuators perpendicularly attached each other. One connected to the desk vertically, and the other fixed to it, with its business end mounted to the monitor.
Now (considering the monitor doesn’t explode from the inertia) you could tile an area larger than the monitor itself. Could even adjust on the fly, so you can drag a window off the screen and it just starts vibrating more and more violently.
Combination of vibrations and actuators fighting the gyroscopic effect of the off-axis spinning monitor would risk the whole thing violently ripping itself off the desk.
I feel the need to point out that this is why mechanical TV never scaled. From very old memory, if you wanted a 40" screen then the wheel needed to be two stories high.
For a rotating persistence-of-vision display you need to redraw everything as soon as it's physical position has shifted a "pixel". i.e. non-stop, regardless of whether the content has changed or not.
Do they bother? Throwing a dozen windows together is really easy.
> For a rotating persistence-of-vision display you need to redraw everything as soon as it's physical position has shifted
You do have to redraw. Which means you have a non-moving buffer that covers the entire display area, and you have to render it to the screen every frame.
That's one big quad. A scaled up SNES could do that with mode 7. It's utterly trivial.
Sure - it's not a matter of bothering to do an optimization, but rather just the way things work.
Any applications running will only redraw on event driven basis when something happens to change the way it wants to appear (user input, timer, etc).
The window manager will only recomposite/redraw on event driven basis when something happens to it (windows moved/resized/etc).
Sure the GPU can handle it, although redrawing a 4K pixel display at 60Hz is still no joke. Even if you do something as simple as playing a video full screen on a large monitor you'll see GPU temp increase.
I don't get the point of a lot of monitors. My current setup is a 4K 32" 16:9, which I do 98% of my work on. Everything on one big screen.
I have another monitor next to it, which I sometimes use for to put documentation on, a hot reloading web app I'm working on, maybe a video I'm watching while doing some work, or a video conference while I'm screen sharing. But turning my head to the secondary monitor is too much of a burden to really use it a lot. 80% of the time the second monitor is just empty.
I think it's down to personal preference, so obviously do what works for you!
I have the triple-27" monitors @4k setup described elsewhere..
Left-side monitor is Slack and Discord, and sometimes a File explorer or other misc apps that usually live minimized (Spotify, etc)
Center monitor is my IDE and terminal, or whatever "main" app I'm working in at the moment (sometimes Lightroom etc)
Right-side monitor is work browser (we use GSuite so lots of various tabs in GDrive, Calendar, Gmail, Docs etc)
You can certainly do this all on one screen, but I like to be able to glance at those things while still having my main screen laid out for ongoing work.
I also use multiple desktops so I have one for work and one for personal, and I can swipe all 3 monitors over to a different workspace with one key command, which makes macro context switching easier.
Similar setup here since about 2015. 5K iMac in the center and a thunderbolt display on either side (2560x1440). IDE, terminals, and/or primary task in the center, application output on the left side, documentation/browsers/e-mail/calendar on the right.
My only complaint is one of the thunderbolt displays is getting flaky. It likes to briefly turn itself off and on again, and unfortunately Apple's braindead software flashes all three monitors on and off when this happens. I've tried replacing the display's power supply, main board, and thunderbolt cable with no luck. Other than that, the setup has been rock solid and being surrounded by monitors makes me feel like I'm running The Matrix.
I have one of those Thunderbolt Displays and it’s been a trooper. Sitting at around a decade old now and still works great. Its connector is getting worn out but as long as I don’t bump the TB2 → TB3 adapter it’s connected with it’s solid.
It’ll be a bummer when it finally goes. In addition to being a secondary monitor it also gets used to test how graphics appear on“normal” DPI displays (main monitor is a Studio Display) and while decent 2560x1440 are now cheap and ubiquitous none of them are going to be controllable via keyboard without third party software.
Interesting fact: you can use the other Thunderbolt port and a regular Thunderbolt cable (with the Thunderbolt 2-3 adapter) instead of the permanently attached one (the one with the MagSafe power cable) so there’s less stuff dangling.
I heard about this kind of set up often, dedicated monitors for dedicated applications/tasks. Great that it works for you, for me it just doesn't seem to make any sense.
I usually use all the monitors for the task I'm currently working on, and not for different serial tasks. For context switches I use Alt+Tab or sometimes virtual desktops.
Totally get that.. I actually don't like alt-tabbing between windows, I find it clunky.. Much like you don't like to turn your head to look at other screens.. :-)
Last detail to add is that I use Powertoys FancyZones in Windows 10 to set up zones in my screens that let me snap windows into specific layouts easily on the side monitors, so setting up dedicated layouts per-monitor is more intuitive and easy for me.
Apps and window managers understand full screen. With my wide monitori often want full height, but not full width this needs manual adjustment to work. Windows can sometimes be made full height (tripple click), but this somehow always seems to get the wrong width
That's why I use picture-by-picture (PBP) on my 32" 4K. Two DisplayPort connected to the same computer and control them independent of each other.
I also love how my Ubuntu virtual Desktop only rotates the primary screen leaving the other half static.
I'm using most applications not in full screen mode, and don't have a lot of issues with that on windows. I think the only thing I commonly run in full screen is IDEs.
I also have similar single monitor (a BENQ EW3270U) set to 200% scale. I use Linux, and my productivity is good by binding F1 to F5 keys to switch to different virtual desktops.
F1 -> Terminals. (Wezterm showing 4 terminals in a 2x2 grid)
F2 -> Code editor or IDE. Sublime Text in my case.
F3 -> Internet Browser. Firefox with Container extension.
F4 -> File Manager or any other misc apps.
F5 -> unused
I'm so used to these keybindings, that when I'm on foreign computers I involuntarily find myself pressing F1 or F3 when I want to enter some command or browse some web page.
I do that as well, and I’m on a MacBook Pro. So when I’m on MacBook Pro that has macOS, well, that’s funny, as it takes some time to remember what macOS is and how I had been using it before.
I’ve got the LG 2-UP monitor and a plain-Jane 1080p monitor in portrait mode. I use the second monitor for mostly-PDF mostly-letter paper document review. I would love to find an ergonomic reason for my org to purchase an eink monitor for that, but I haven’t come up with any excuses ;)
Two monitors let me compartmentalize my workflow. Window management is otherwise too messy for my needs with a single display.
It shows up as one device. The res you get depends on your source. You won’t get full res if your device only has an older HDMI or Display Link output.
I’ve got it set up for occasional PIP with a Bay Trail home server. That device has an HDMI out that does max 1920 x 1080 and won’t do the full width of 2560 x whatever.
I have a dual up from LG and it is the greatest coding monitor ever made!
In Intellij and VSCode, I can see project outline, 120 columns of code, and DB details all on the same screen. I use it as a side monitor, with main monitor being a Dell 32 inch 4k.
I used an EIZO FlexScan EV2730Q (1:1), and upgraded to a DualUp.
It is the best configuration I've found for programming and CLI work. For gaming I typically use one of the normal widescreens to the left/right of it.
Only downside I've found is that I screen share often, and the odd aspect ratio means sometimes I have to use one of the normal widescreens instead to avoid small text on the audience's side.
Also I ran into some scaling issues on Mac but got past these using BetterDisplay.
Overall - love the LG DualUp, my only suggestion is to pair it with a normal monitor :)
I use it for R Studio occasionally, and I appreciate being able to see my code and my data at the same time.
My main use is writing, and it can a little overwhelming to see all my copy at once. I tend to fill out my screen with other resources that I’ll use.
Since it’s an odd-ball ratio, built-in Windows 11 window snapping also has some weird default behaviour that assumes that I want my windows a third of the height and stacked.
It all depends on your workflow of course. I run 3 monitors for my main workstation. Admittedly the third is mostly for rare events (e.g. debugging a performance issue across many services) or most of the time background TV/security cameras.
I get motion sick on anything over 27" so that kind of limits my screen real-estate. I also like to be able to quickly reference material across two apps without having to mess around with window sizing or the like.
It's sort of like having two computers from back in the 90's I guess, which is likely where I picked up the habit.
I still find it difficult to work on a laptop due to the lack of a second display. It's fine, but not quite as mentally satisfying to me.
I would also argue any ops-oriented position where you need to have a lot of graphs and logging displayed at once can benefit from multiple screens - or at least screen real estate. Using multiple monitors for these setups is usually more practical just due to desk layouts.
I use three monitors for my multimedia development work, and I can't imagine using fewer. I would get a fourth one if I could.
#1: My main 4k monitor, where I do the bulk of my work. I need the whole screen for this.
#2: My second 4k monitor, which I use for looking through documentation, taking notes, and working with the file system. (I have it split into quarters using PowerToys, but it's still very busy with many overlapping windows that I have to flip between frequently, which is why I wish I had a fourth monitor.)
#3: My old Cintiq, which I use when I need to hand draw something. In the meantime, it is dedicated to monitoring communication with colleagues (it's too low res for much else).
Right, horizontal screen: Chats and email, devtools from Firefox, separate VSCode workspaces, etc.
Main problem I've ran into was the newer M1-based non-Ultra/Max Macbook Pros don't support more than 2 external displays unless you use DisplayLink which is CPU-based and lags enough to notice. I wasn't able to convince our client to buy a laptop that would support my layout :/
I use two displays with the same specs as yours, but have them both vertical. Code goes on one, browser/documentation on the other, and I don't have to turn my head too much to go between them.
But then I _really_ like a vertical display for coding.
My 32" 4K is configured with 150% zoom on Windows. So it's usable resolution is in practice the same as an UHD monitor, just a bit sharper and bigger. More crisp fonts, icons and images. Totally enough.
100% disagree. I went with 2 4K monitors years ago. When I switched to an ultra wide lat year it was a night a day difference. I wish I never bought 2 4k monitors (or dual monitors at all). Ultra wide is perfect and has a more functionality than a massive piece of each monitor's border in the dead center of your vision.
Yeah, bezels midfield is no good. That's why three monitors is where it's at. Or perhaps one of those 32:9 ones. But many window managers make it easier to deal with multiple monitors than one enormous one.
There's some jank involved depending on which combo of x/wayland, window manager, and compositor you're using, but if you can manage to get virtual monitors working on an ultrawide it's great.
A lot of recent models also support "picture by picture" mode, allowing you to connect two separate inputs to the monitor and avoid doing anything in software.
I, too, am in the ultrawide camp now. I initially bought a 4k monitor. The default rendering was too small for my eyes. My Linux didn't support fractional scaling; 200% scaling kind of defeated the purpose of having a 4k monitor in the first place--net real estate I got felt the same.
I then returned it and went for a flat 34" monitor (HP X34), and I'm happy for it.
On the contrary, I have a 49" 32:9 monitor, and for a laptop it's wonderful. The support for a single monitor is just way better than any dual (or more) setup.
I can just connect it directly to my laptop, and it just works. When I had two displays I needed a docking station, and truth is most of those out there suck. Unless you go for the top models, and then you've lost all the money you saved on cheaper monitors. In addition you generally need a thunderbolt compatible dock, and that seems to come with it's own category of issues, assuming your laptop even supports it.
Also found ultrawide easier to configure hotkeys for windows management.
The advantage I've found with multiple monitors is the ability to independently switch the "desktop" that's showing on each.
I can have a desktop for coding, a desktop for reference docs and previews, another for working on non-coding tasks, one with general browsing, one for chat/email/calendar, etc.
I've not found a satisfying way (on Mac OS on my Macbook or with various WMs — Sway is my go-to) to quickly replicate this ability to have multiple task oriented sets of windows visible at the same time and make them quickly switchable without multiple physical screens.
I may be misunderstanding your description, but isn’t this how macOS built-in spaces already work? I use this daily, and swap desktops with ctrl+left/right and the ctrl+num keyboard shortcut to get direct space switching (I have 4 for roughly the same purposes as you describe). When using multiple displays, I can even make each display have independent spaces.
It's exactly how it works but only if you have mutliple screens.
My comment was that, for this reason, 2 or 3 smaller (ish- ~27") 16:9 4k screens [1] (previously, 4–6 even smaller 4:3 screens) works much better for me because I can switch the spaces on my Macbook and i3/Sway virtual desktops on my Linux machine individually for each screen.
If we're talking about having a smaller number of giant screens it would need to be able to be partitioned into logical "zones" for virtual desktops to enable this way of managing sets of windows together, and I've not found anything that really does this, let alone does it well (though honorable mention to HerbstluftWM [2] which I think, with patience, could probably do something pretty close).
[1] preferably 16:10 but that seems to have died out as an aspect ratio :(
I'm in complete agreement with you. I use i3 (still using Xorg) and find the ability to have multiple desktops that I can move atomically between monitors to be far better than having to position windows individually. I put reference material, chat, etc, on the side monitor and then can very quickly move it back to the primary monitor when I need it. I find a normal 16:9 monitor to be just right for two side by side windows, or a tile of three, with one tall window taking half of the screen and two terminals top and bottom on the other side.
I hate using the mouse to manage windows, and having one huge ultrawide just feels like a nightmare to manage -- I'd need some way to split it logically into 2 or 3 virtual monitors.
With i3/Sway having the limitation of 1 workspace per monitor AND each app only being in 1 workspace, I could still use that logical splitting at times even on normal 16:9 displays.
I do this too. Main monitor has sets of desktops for “primary” tasks (e.g. IDE windows) while the secondary has several “auxiliary” desktops (one for email, one for chat, one for documentation, etc).
The ability to mix and match these between monitors is seriously powerful and basically eliminates window micromanagement and seriously curbs alt/cmd-tabbing. Everything stays put as switching desktops becomes the primary form of navigation.
How would you organise such a multiple display setup in sway?
I use sway on my laptop only, but Gnome 45 and macOS is easier for me, for now. When it comes to multiple displays. The best feature of sway for me is the ability to assign apps to their workspaces, and also assign hotkeys to these workspaces. So e.g. cmd+alt+e opens Files app (nautilus) and it’s always on its files workspace that I activate with cmd+e. Quite very useful for me. I almost never open windows tiled, very seldom that I have two at one screen.
So with multiple displays, I am quite unsure how to organise that, which logic to apply here. Maybe I alt-tab out of old habit, but it’s so much easier, cognitively speaking, comparing to remembering all the logic for my multiple displays setup.
- Assigns the standard hotkeys to focus specific workspaces
- Assigns a hotkey for Rofi to filter and focus apps directly
- Assigns hotkeys to move a workspace to the current output/display
- Sets hotkeys to move a workspace 1 output left/right
Now I can quickly bring the most relevant contexts for a task to each display, and can also quickly switch to another context and back as needed.
It's not perfect, but it's pretty good. I'd like some apps to be on multiple workspaces, for example. And I am exploring the idea of a way to search for and bring an app onto the main display as a centered float temporarily then dismiss it back to where it came from with a single key — for example to bring up a Slack channel front and centre, reply to a message, then quickly dismiss it again.
I’m not sure what the high-level strategy is, but do note that there’s the
move workspace to output right
and so on bindings to help out. I’ll typically keep a workspace as “whatever windows I happen to have put in it, over time” and then I’ll bounce them around to monitors as needed.
In my experience CalDigit docks are really solid. The only issue I've ever encountered is caused by my laptop demanding more power than the dock will provide: when I hit a power usage spike sometimes my laptop will briefly drop connection with the dock, causing my display to momentarily lose signal.
This is easily fixed by plugging my laptop into a separate USB C power supply.
Dell docking stations have been rock-solid for me (the laptop is also a Dell) and they can be had for quite cheap (about 50% retail) on eBay. I also balked at the price of caldigit units.
Be very careful about Dell docking stations. It's not always clear whether they're based on DisplayLink or real Thunderbolt/USB-C. The problem with DisplayLink is that a) you need a driver and b) after installing the driver, some websites don't show video (Udemy for example). This is on macOS, by the way.
At $work they had a variety of dell docking stations around the cube farm.
I use an old intel macbook running macos, and found that the docking stations with usb-c didn't support secondary video, while those with thunderbolt (usb-c with lightning bolt) worked fine for all docking station needs (secondary video, charging, USB keyboard / mouse / camera / etc).
A thunderbolt docking station and a 24 inch 19:10 monitor transformed my home office setup. Big monitor in portrait mode in front of me, macbook to left, old IBM M4-1 (trackpoint) keyboard, webcam perched on top right corner of macbook so I can have windows in either screen and it kinda looks like I'm still looking toward the camera instead of being rude.
I've found the biggest problem with the big monitor is where to put the video call camera -- if you're looking anywhere but toward the camera it looks like you're not making eye contact with the people on the screen and it seems "rude" because there's the impression that you're not engaged.
On windows and Linux this works great. I have two Dell business screens, one with USB-C, a DP in and a DP out. Just connect another screen to the DP out, and you get two screens over one USB-C connection. Together with the charging and USB hub provided by the screen this replaces a docking station for me.
However, Macs have spotty support for this. I believe it works on the newest Mac books, but not older generations, and not the Mac mini?
It doesn't work on Macbooks. References to macbooks supporting MST are about certain early high res monitors that behaved internally as multiple monitors due to bandwidth limitations on Displayport 1.2. That's fixed with higher bandwidth newer DP and HDMI revisions so the MST feature people care about these days is monitor chaining, and that is still not supported even in M2 Macbook Pros
The text is sharper with a higher PPI even if the actual size of the text is the same. I have a 4k 24" screen, and text is much much sharper than on any FHD 24". Hell, it's noticeably sharper even than on my 14" FHD laptop. And sharper text helps with legibility, so I find I can actually use smaller font sizes more comfortably than the "regular" size on a lower-res screen.
You don't get more real estate, indeed, since that depends on zoom level. However, depending on your setup and habits, you may actually gain some. In my case, I use 4k at 100% zoom. I don't care for window decorations, interface icons and so on, so it's not an issue if they're small.
If you go up PPI by a percentage you can reduce font size by a similar amount. Too small to be legible? Literally move the screen closer. No need to magnify anything.
Have a 27" 4k monitor and a 42" 4k monitor? Move the 27" close enough that it takes up the same FOV as the 4k and you get the same experience.
This isn't like home theatre where you're constrained to the dimensions of a room (ie. wall or console location a TV sits on top of and seat viewing distance).
You don't want it too close, but it can be closer than that if you have normal eyesight. The line should be where your eyes have trouble focusing and add a small buffer. For me that's about a foot. So wherever you're comfortable looking at a smartphone (or really any object) is a good point of reference.
Otherwise this is a commonly propagated myth related to radiation from early TV sets.
My preferred setup in terms of screen real estate is 24" 2k (2560x1440) without scaling. In terms of PPI it's a bit low (122), but 244 PPI 24" screens are hard to get. 1.5x scaling is an option
I like 25x14 on a 27" and the fact that on a mac you have to buy BetterDisplay just to make it work about 80% as good as on Windows makes me... not at all surprised since I'm supposed to use an apple display with an apple computer, right?
Why not just get a 4K 27”? They can be had for around $220 USD nowadays. I paid that for mine.
I do dislike the fact that Apple removed decent support for lower resolution monitors, but I also don’t see why anyone would prefer them to higher res unless it’s a budget issue.
The core issue with 4k on Mac is that unlike Windows or Linux, Mac doesn't have usable 125%, 150% or 175% scaling modes. But at 1x font rendering on Macs sucks, and at 2x you basically have a fancy 1080p screen; it just doesn't fit as much as an unscaled 1440p screen.
This forces you into 5k screens, or tricks to make the OS do actually useful scaling.
4k is... too low res for desktop use on a mac. 25x14 upscaled to 5k only to be downscaled again to device native resolution by a $15 tool still gives me more usable screen real estate than a native 4k and the $15 makes it so text is actually legible...
By 25x14, do you mean 2560x1440? If so, are you saying that a $15 device will magically make a 2560x1440 monitor higher resolution than 3840x2160? If that's what you're saying, do you have a link that provides some detail on this because I don't believe it.
I'm also unable to believe someone would consider 27" 4K text illegible on a mac since that's what I use that every day and can read text comfortably. Edit: Unless you're using it unscaled, then yeah, text isn't that legible.
These are strange statements to make without any detail.
It isn't a device, it's a software tool. It doesn't make the monitor magically 2x the resolution; it can trick macos to render onto a 5k buffer and then downscale the output to the physical display so it looks not-broken.
I'm saying macOS is unusable on native resolutions - everything is either too small or too blurry, so a 4k display won't do me any good. 25x14 is the sweet spot for me, but I guess Apple decided I'm holding it wrong, because they want me to get a 5k display to get usable 25x14.
I'm working on a new build to replace my 11 yr old system. Monitors are a vexxing issue as I have competing needs - general/coding use and photo editing. As I'm working with 40+MP images, I'd like to have a screen with as high a resolution as possible to minimize the need to zoom in and out.
However, then you run into the need to do display scaling for UI elements for everything else. Windows mostly works in that regard and when it does not it is often the program in use that is not quite up to snuff.
After a lot of research, it seems to me the best approach is trying to get the resolution you want at a physical size that doesn't require excessive scaling (like 300%) as after all, we all want more desktop real estate and scaling reduces the effective resolution for most non-photo/video apps.
I've been looking closely at the Dell Ultrasharp 32" 6K monitor. The dpi is a little high at 223 but it will fit about 75% of an uncropped photo. I'd likely also get one of the LG dual UPs as well.
The one issue with both monitors, disappointing for the price of the Dell, is they are 8bit+FRC panels. Don't want to find out that I'm one of those who are sensitive to flicker or that the panel does not age well. At least the Dell is a 3yr warranty and the LG can be had in a commercial version that has 3 yr too.
I find it difficult to actually figure the proper position where the 27” Dell 4K (still very top notch) is just as far so that I can see it and not have to move my head left and right.
Anything beyond this size may be OK for games, but too much space and too much windows is actually too much of cognitive load.
It is not a surprise that many ppl (not me though) start to prefer full screen terminal rather than dozen windows arranged in some disarray on a large screen.
> I find it difficult to actually figure the proper position where the 27” Dell 4K (still very top notch) is just as far so that I can see it and not have to move my head left and right.
> Anything beyond this size may be OK for games, but too much space and too much windows is actually too much of cognitive load.
I find the oppposite. The goal is not to be looking at everything all of the time but to make anything I might want, from key chat channels or monitoring dashboards, to my calendar, reference docs, secondary source files, etc. to all be "glanceable" within a given context.
I find a glance, even if it requires a turn of the head, is far preferable and breaks my flow/immersion much less than having to switch windows/desktops in place. It feels much more natural to me to place things like my calendar in a consistent physical place than to have everything intrude on one place, and I find it much easier to build the muscle memory for these glances.
The biggest downside is that travelling, even with a small second monitor, completely breaks the setup.
I always thought that moving my head to look at another monitor isn’t really faster than pressing a key to make my fullscreen terminal appear, especially if we start taking cursor hunting into account
I agree it's not faster, especially when using a simple WM with no animations.
However, I also find it easier to recall where I was looking by moving my head between static content instead of having it change.
FWIW I use a 32" screen positioned so that I barely need to move my head to see it all, and try to have all things I'm looking at visible at the same time.
I did think that for years and I scoffed at multi-monitor setups thinking they were a poor imitation of the virtual desktops that have been present on *nix systems forever. But they are both good and complement each other.
I use virtual desktops as more to separate unrelated areas of work (like different projects). It's like having a completely different desk with different books open on it. Having more screen space is just like having a bigger desk. It's like having multiple books open on your desk at once as opposed to picking up one at a time to look at it.
One big monitor would be ideal (it could be split into an odd number of frames, for example), but in practice multiple monitors is a good compromise between flexibility and price.
My dream monitor is a 22” 4K monitor. I searched it for a decade and this creature just doesn’t exists. There have never been a single 4K monitor under 27”.
The only thing that somehow could do the job would be iMac’s panels but I’m just not interested in an All in one and I already have good enough computers.
It is surprising how much more affordable 4k displays are. I was stuck finding a suitable display for my macbook being used to the 5k iMac, and ended up with the 32 inch samsung m8, which is one third what apple charges for the 5k studio display. I find myself liking it more in practice than the 5k imac, because while it is a bit less crisp, the colors once properly set up are equally nice and the size is luxurious.
It depends. If text contrast is a priority, VA provides better blacks. Personally I also can’t stand IPS glow and rather live with the VA off-axis gamma shift. OTOH, my favorite VA monitor is now 15 years old and there is no current replacement with the same picture quality. I’m hoping for more OLED monitors coming out.
IPS black imho better choice (I own one). VA looks very very bad with dark themes in IDE. Also, I do not know any Eyesafe certified VA's. I am sensitive to blue light and my eyes love Eyesafe certified panels.
IPS panels have the best color accuracy and viewing angles. VA can produce the best blacks but pixels are slow to change. TN are the cheapest and historically have the best refresh rates.
I use a single 43” as my main display, and then also two 27” displays in portrait mode on either side.
The 43” is where I actually work. The other two are like static displays, the left one is slack on top and iMessage on bottom. The right one is task list app on top and calendar on bottom.
You get used to it pretty quick. It’s just great for like having a few conversations in progress without being interrupted and so on. They’re right there I’m just not looking at them.
Not sure if it’s decades of driving or something in the brain but having static readout displays like that really doesn’t bother me the way trying to juggle everything on one screen does. Reminds me of how a dashboard full of indicators in a car can be constantly changing without feeling like it’s “interrupting” my ability to look at the road.
I think 27" 4k with some scaling is a good spot indeed.
32" 4k is nice as well, if you scale down to 2560x1440, or 3008x1692.
On 32" 2x scaling (1920x1080 is just too big, and native (3840x2160) is just too small.
But if money is no problem, 3x 24" 4k, 2x 27" 5k, or 1x 32" 6k is really the endgame.
That 2x scaling is just soooo crisp. :)
There are 32" monitors with native 2560x1440. I still prefer that dpi to run Windows, where some apps still have problems with hidpi scaling. It's mostly about older and niche apps, but every now and then you encounter something that doesn't scale well.
I do find that 4k with scaling still feels crispier than native 2560x1440.
And I also find myself switching between 3008 and 2560 a lot, depending on the workload I have. 2560x1440 is nicer for reading, 3008 is nicer for programming, video editing, ...
The PPI ratio for 32" 4k with no scaling is actually pretty good (at least to my eye, since it's similar to my previous 24" 1080p, 27" 1440p monitors). If we can agree on that, then the solution is to just move the monitor closer to your eyes, 3rd party monitor arms help with that.
> then the solution is to just move the monitor closer to your eyes
Depending on how close we're talking about, it may not be so great, especially with a non-curved screen, because the actual angle at the edges is possibly not so great anymore. That's the case on my 32" LG, for example (with an IPS panel, FWIW).
Significant difference. 32" 4k is not pleasant to read natively, and bringing it that close that is would be readable means you are putting things out of your focus and you need to start moving your head a lot.
I have a 1440 ultra wide and it's been great, for gaming and dev, 2 windows side by side is basically like having two separate monitors, but with the ability to have like 0.25,0.5,0.25 window layout if I really want.
I do need to upgrade it at some point, I think it's easy to justify the higher price of a high res uw given that it's a replacement for two monitors, not one.
I was within inches of buying this this holiday season but was offput by people’s brightness complaints. Figured I could wait another iteration until either the brightness or the refresh rate gets better… the 5K2K seems like the move though.
In practice, the brightness and refresh rate have not been an issue in a software development / home office setting. It has been more than enough.
For gaming it isn't as desirable. HDR also gives the brightness a boost for media so it is plenty fine for that too.
The only thing that I found annoying is lack of inputs. There is 1DP and 1TB, and 2 HDMI (60hz). I wanted at least 2DP and 2TB to be super useful with a dock and a few other inputs.
The size is perfect however.
If LG release an OLED version better brightness, you bet i'll be ordering that too. It has been so ideal, the ROI has been better than any monitor setup i've used.
This is really useful. Maybe I'll just yolo it and give it a shot. Display panel advancement doesn't seem to be as reliably "it'll come next cycle" anyway haha. Thank you for your input!
I don't think you'll regret it :) Personally, for web/dev/youtube/... I don't know how it took us SO LONG to get to this display dimension, aspect/resolution.
The curve is just right, the width is just right at ~60cm away. The ratio is the real winner. I can split it into thirds and each third has enough height (2160px) and width (1706px) to be useful. Each third is taller than it is wide, which is ideal for coding, web, documents.
It's more like having 3 portrait monitors for productivity work. For media editing, splitting the monitor into 2 is like a classic dual monitor setup with enough width for widescreen video.
Then, if you really need it, it works great as a single wide monitor without making the workspace too "letterbox" like other ultrawides.
It's unclear to me why we'd be optimizing solely for pixels or pixels/$.
I personally like my wide monitor, and I don't even particularly care to go for more pixels when available, ie my preferred resolution is ~1440p. They're nice and cheap, they look good to me, and they're easy to drive for the gpu.
I go more for deep blacks and good colors, pixels just look good until your eyes adjust and then it's all the same.
For me, it's about screen real estate, not looks. More pixels is more usable space, until you have to start scaling things up for comfort. I find a 27 inch 4k monitor to be comfortable without scaling, but I think it's just about the limit for me, and I expect that the PPI limit varies from person to person.
The problem with multiple monitors for me is that you have to turn your head very wide to look onto the adjacent screens' center, which is definitely not ergonomic and healthy.
That being said, it is still my current setup as this wide turn holds me off from looking at the second screen, where slack and other distracting stuff is placed.
The actual "ideal" rotation for maximum line length would be closer to 23° rather than 22°, right? Because Atan(9/21) = 23.20°.
Also... could we go further? If we're treating the screen's content as an arbitrary plane, what about tilting the content of screen away from you like SNES Mode 7 or the Star Wars text crawl? Infinite screen height!
Does character height affect that calculation? The longest line possible wont be able to render at the ends, so is it possible there is a shorter line on a different angle that can render more text?
No need to limit to 100 cols - VT100 with AVO (Advanced Video Option) or VT102 could do 132 columns!
Would have been cool to pair up a terminal like this with a BBC micro or other similar vintage computer for code editing, although the terminal would have been more expensive than the computer.
On a similar note, I once again wish more displays were 3:2, and more people knew about it. The human central (not peripheral) vision’s ratio is very close to 3:2, yet due to economics of scale 16:9 is marginally cheaper and much more common.
And if someone is wondering, no, rotating 16:9 vertically for more vertical space doesn’t help because it makes it very narrow - for me IMO a square display would be the best. (There are also minor subpixel rendering issues, along with viewing angle issues if using a TN panel but those are still more minor.)
I have 3 of these that I bought new back in 2018, that I'm considering selling in the Houston area.
I haven't used them in 2 years, but coincidentally, earlier today I thought about setting up a new workstation that will use all three. So this comment is to gauge if there is any interest.
I'm an Air Traffic Controller, and I discovered these monitors because we used them in a simulator. At the time, the screens we used for controlling traffic were 2048x2048 (that our tech-ops said cost 20k), but recently we switched to larger rectangular monitors (also Eizo).
If anyone in Houston is interested, email me at thomas@(username).com
Unfortunately, unusual screen sizes and OLED aren't as available in combination. And since I spend all day in a terminal, having the black background be off is wonderful. I would love 3:2, but I get more value from OLED.
Oh nice, thanks for this! I was disappointed when I went to buy EIZO one, only to find it was discontinued. 1:1 and OLED would be awesome, if such a thing existed of course. Not only for writing, but also for emulation purposes - close enough to 4:3 and 3:4 (yoko/tate modes) not to have to rotate the screen, just a bit of black on the sides.
If you’re very interested and have the time/inclination, you can DIY a similar monitor using the panel and its driver from Aliexpress. Let me know if you want more info.
> The human central (not peripheral) vision’s ratio is very close to 3:2
That's irrelevant, though, when monitor size is much larger than our central vision.
What does matter is neck strain. The reality is that you want to keep your head level while moving it right/left. Right/left doesn't have to work against gravity, while up/down does.
This is why wider is better than taller for something monitor-sized.
I’m aware about this monitor but unfortunately it seems that production has either stopped or slowed down, while it was available to buy some months/a year ago, now it’s not.
yesss... I discovered how wrong the widescreen displays are after I had found an old IBM Thinkpad in my basement and tried it. To add to what you said, I will also point out that it's the vertical space that often gets pinched by toolbars and such, effectively squishing your working area to an even wider ratio. And when working with text (reading, writing), the left and right edges of my screen are just slabs of emptiness. Given all that, a taller display feels more roomy for the same surface area.
The only disadvantage though is that putting two windows/panes/buffers of anything side by side would no longer be as convenient?
At least on OS X, using a free utility, I can set two apps to exactly split the screen with two key presses and one mouse click. ON a 16:9 it comes back to being an actually decent aspect ratio for reading text.
> the vertical space that often gets pinched by toolbars and such, effectively squishing your working area to an even wider ratio. And when working with text (reading, writing), the left and right edges of my screen are just slabs of emptiness.
Absolutely agree, and it’s amazing/infuriating when people/companies don’t realise it. My mom’s old Asus could barely fit a few lines of text on its small screen after all its toolbars in chrome. You shouldn’t need to scroll multiple times to read a 3-paragraph email on a display where it fits if it were the only text! (And of course about 60% of the space on the sides was wasted.)
I don’t have a 3:2 display yet, though I do have an old 16:10 21” monitor which is alright. My ipad (10.9”) is okayish as well, but I’m planning to buy a 16” 3:2 portable monitor soon. Do you have an 3:2 screens?
No, I was only aware of the Eizo models, too expensive for me, but am at this moment looking at various recommendations people are sharing in this thread.
For laptops definitely. Screen above ~24"? I don't really think this is that relevant and if have multiple windows open side by side it's the opposite (16:9 is more ergonomic than 3:2,).
Yawn. Get on with the times. I've been using ultrawide (21:9) for years, and would definitely not want to go back to peeking through a square'ish hole.
UW is fine if you’ve got a 28” or more desktop (or maybe larger even), but I’d take a 28” 3:2 like the Huawei Mateview over a 28” UW any day of the week. The UW probably has 20 or 30% lesser screen area.
Ultrawides only start to make sense at about 34" and up, corresponding to 1440 pixels vertically. Anything less than that would be worthless for productivity (ie. not movies or first-person gaming) given today's UI trends of massive horizontal bars/ribbons sized for small touchscreens.
Likewise, a monitor in portrait usually needs to be at least 1200(w)x1920(h) (ie. a 24" 16:10) to be usable for browsing today's web without getting served up a mobile-specific layout too often. A reasonably-sized 1080p display in portrait can be great for stuff like text editors and terminal windows.
I just purchased a 48" monitor as my primary monitor. No need to worry about rotation, I just have a massive screen in front of me.
I think that for some people people are scared of large monitors in front of them, but once you use one, you realize that using small monitors (e.g. 27 or 32") in single or dual or triple arrangements is just ridiculous complex. One big monitor is way way better.
Large monitors are the future, it is just that people are not yet comfortable buying them for some reason.
I am on MacOS so I use RectanglePro. Simple but it works.
My main layout is 3 vertical panels, one with vscode, one with web browser and debugger and the last is utility (another vscode or browser or slack or discord etc.)
I've got a 48" monitor, too. I also have 2 27" monitors, one one each side in portrait mode. But I'm not sure why you think multiple monitors is complex - plug them in, drag windows over to the side as needed, and go about your work.
I mean managing space on small multiple screens. The technical aspects are not complex but having to manage a small amount of screeen real estate is annoying, especially across multiple screens.
I am uncomfortable buying them because I find working at a desk with a large monitor uncomfortable and I don't see any personal advantage to the extra real estate for coding. I have plenty of space on a 16" laptop for three vertical terminal panes: One for editing, one for docs and one for shell commands. If I need to search something on the web, I can cmd-H to switch spaces and cmd-L back to the terminal. Since my workflow works on my laptop, it works _anywhere_ I go.
Obviously, my workflow is not for everyone, but I pretty strongly doubt that large monitors are the future for most people and am almost positive that they aren't the future for me.
I don't always want to use the full screen of any monitor so I find I prefer smaller so I can switch off the other monitors when needed. That presents its own challenges but I like to use fullscreen for web browsing and such like. That doesn't work on massive screens.
I haven't seen this config mentioned yet, but I have two displays; a LG SDQHD 28" 8:9 2560x2880 on the left, and a LG 49" 21:9 55120x2160 ultrawide curved on the right, with a slight angle joining them in a "hinge."
I use multiple virtual desktops, for dev I have a terminal on the left and the IDE on the right. This was the best config I could find where I had enough on the screens I didn't need to flip between panes frequently, yet it wasn't overwhelming and lets the actual window view behind the displays through, and I can comfortably focus on key areas and look around with craning my neck too much.
If the displays were backing a wall, I might try an 8k 65" display, but I would mainly use the comfortable part of it, and let the rest be ambient info. That could be magnificent with an OLED display. Though I think it would make sense to be curved and they aren't common anymore. Who knows, maybe a VR headset will be a better choice in a few years.
I've been working a lot on the idea of ambient info. I use KDE's html wallpaper feature to provide a dynamic graph view of my environment.
I love this. It reminds me of the two vs 4 spaces. And some dude will inevitably say 3 spaces fuck you. My point is... We need this in the office so that every time I turn on video chat I have to explain why I'm slanted.
+1 to that. Also get 120Hz if you can (but has it's own headaches to solve, including e.g. HDMI 2.1 isn't supported in open source drivers).
I recently started using a LG 42" C2. Coming from two 27" monitors at 2560x1440, the 42" 3840x2160 is about the same pixel density and only 12.5% more pixels total
(3840*2160/(2*2560*1440))
The 42" screen is like portrait mode on demand. Whenever I tried portrait mode on the 27" screens, it was nice sometimes but usually felt limited in width. With the 42" a quick tile of a window to either side (Super+Left/Right) gives you the height of portrait mode, plus more width (and adjustable to your liking).
Also for those now spare 27" monitors kicking around, I grabbed a vertical monitor mount to stack them (both landscape, stacked vertically) next to the 42". This has proven to be even better and I love having the zones this creates.
It might be worth checking the modes available, perhaps cinema or eyecare modes may help if available. Not a monitor but on our Samsung TV some modes flicker visibly while others don’t. Fiddling around the settings accidentally turned it on for me.
Look for an in-depth review of your display model. Just checked for my Asus VG278QR and I found out that the background illumination isn‘t reduced by PWM.
That's what I do. Not with that specific product, but with a sub-$300 television from Amazon.
I've done the separate monitors thing, I've done the "portrait monitors for text" thing. Really the best solution is just a big flat plane that subtends ~60 degrees horizontally and just about (9/16)*60 vertically, which is enough to put the top just above eye level and the bottom just above the table. Plenty of space to put your windows where you need 'em without all the fussing about optimizing layout.
I worry about all the code I don't know about. Who knows what other software I can't control relies on RGB layout. Maybe irrational, but I don't want to risk it. Especially since you gain nothing in return.
I think it's completely orthogonal issues, no? You probably refer to OLEDs superior black levels etc. But this thread was about subpixel rendering. One can be bad while the other can not. It's unrelated.
They're related because many OLEDs use a non-RGB pixel layout, so it's necessary to turn off sub-pixel anti-aliasing, and the net result seems worth that tradeoff now that screens are high-resolution enough that sub-pixel anti-aliasing makes less of a difference.
I used a 30hz 4k tv as a monitor back in the day, it was not enjoyable with substantial input lag making photoshop etc impossible to use. Be patient, it will happen eventually.
> I used a 30hz 4k tv as a monitor back in the day
I used that exact same monitor!
I'm hopeful, but I'm a little less sanguine than you.
A big part of the reason why 4k got so popular is because there was so much 4k content available. And because it was easy to see how much better 4k looks than 1080p.
because its full of features I actively don't want (smart tv apps, integrated IoT hub, voice assistants, etc etc) and only a 60hz VA panel. Spending money on spyware while having a relatively low end panel.
Right now, I have four 16:9 monitors at 1080p each. Previously I used some of them in vertical orientation which is great for reading code, but window snapping used to be a bit weird sometimes.
It's not too much of a problem on Linux, but on Windows I absolutely needed FancyZones: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/fancyzon... (hold SHIFT and drag window to snap, supports custom zones, like vertically splitting a monitor into two etc.)
As for larger resolution monitors, I had one at work and it was nice, but my own GPU would struggle with most fullscreen stuff and games in my free time, so maybe 1080p isn't all that bad (especially when wanting to record something without downsampling or struggling with DPI making things unreadable at anything below 1080p in the video file).
I wasn't aware that PowerToys had that, so thanks for pointing it out. In general I've been satisfied with the built-in Snap feature but since getting a 49" 32:9 1440p monitor I've been wishing the 3-column options offered horizontal splits.
I have three 2160x3840 27inch screens in a H layout, with the side screens vertical. I use FancyZones windows PowerToy to create drop zones on the side screens, and so can just drop terminals/slack/browser windows there.
It's been a transformative layout for coding and managing machines.
I don’t know about the ideal orientation, but i prefer my monitor to not spin relative to my desk. :) Which of course means that it should slowly rotate around once a day to keep it in sync with the Earth (when seen from an innertial fixed coordinate system).
But that made me think. Maybe the optimal solution is one with a circular table (rotating in sync with the Earth, thus appearing motionless) and a monitor which spins around the normal axis of the table to force me to chase it around. Maybe it could have different tempo settings. A slow one which makes the user reposition every half an hour or so, a faster one for cardio, and an even faster one for volumetric persistence of vision applications.
Ever since I got presbyopia a couple of years back, I have lost tolerance for large screens. You constantly have to move yourself to have things in focus. Alt-tabbing on a smaller screen is much easier.
Really wish we had options for 16:10 and 4:3 monitors in 4k-8k resolutions in 2024. Personally, I think the ultimate monitor is somewhere around 36” wide with a ~1.6x “golden ratio” (aka 16:10) so around 22-24” tall (for reference, a 42” 16:9 TV is about 36.6Wx20.6H; 16x10 would be 35.6Wx22.3H; 4:3 would be 33.6Wx25.2H). Right now I’ve got a 55” LG G1 OLED and it’s nice at 4K120hz, but ideally it’d be 8K120hz and a little smaller in width. It seems like it wouldn’t be too terribly hard to make such a panel using an 8K 55” screen as a starting point, then just omit a few inches of width. Ooh, and please make it a 10-bit (or 12 but there I’m really dreaming) 4:4:4 120hz native panel.
Upon returning to the office for a few days a couple of months back, I noticed that my desk had been moved and I was given a standard setup with a 21:9 curved ultra wide 60hz Samsung. I HATE it. I have no idea what kind of person thinks these are superior. It can’t open two A4-size PDFs next to each other, and with macOS menu bar and dock (even auto-hide), toolbars in IDEs, terminals, and browsers took up far too much of the screen. Add to that the tendency of most websites these days to add their own pointless toolbars and cookie warnings and subscribe junk and again I just don’t see who would enjoy this for any type of work or gaming. I’ve tried dual portrait, I’ve tried quad, I’ve tried triple-wide with 1920x1200 16:10s as my “curved” setup way back in the late 2000s, and I still think that one single large high-res high-quality FLAT monitor is the way to go, hence my current LG setup. Everything else feels like it’s missing a piece. Multiple monitors just means bezels in your view and even though support is tons better now than it was a dozen years ago, toolbars and OS trays / docks still need some helper software to work really well across multiple monitors, especially where n>2.
This hits home as an topic of interest. Last week, I build a new workstation. Now I am confronted with the monitor decision.
My current workstation has side by side 24" 1920x1200
Things I'm considering:
Stick with side by side 24" 1920x1200 - Asus PA248QV
~$400 total
Two LG DualUp
~$1000 total
One 5k2k such as Dell U4021QW or LG 40WP95C-W
~$1800 total
One UHD 4K like LG OLED 48GQ90B-B
~$900
While I'm accustomed to the gap between my two monitors, I've never much liked it. The Asus gap will be smaller than with my current Dell.
But I do like having each computer "full screen". With one big monitor I loose the gap but I also end up with computers that float in the space of that large monitor. Not sure if that'll bug me.
While 1200px height is enough most of the time, I do want more - like 50% more would be great.
Much of my work is RDP based. I just Googled to find that the maximum vertical resolution is 2048, which is less than the DualUp vertical resolution. Is Google correct?
Curious how others resolved these competing visions (pun intended).
For whatever it's worth, I often use my work PC via the default Windows 10 Remote Desktop client on my laptop (old 15" Macbook Pro, running Windows via Boot Camp): 1 x 2880x1800 hi-DPI display, 2 x normal-DPI 1440x2560 portrait displays. Remote Desktop seems to have no problem using every pixel.
A lot of stuff does get confused by the mixed-DPI setup, but it's not obviously different from running the same programs locally.
I've had a handful of setups, a classic single monitor from 4:3, then 16:10, than 16:9 and now 21:9. I've added a second vertical monitor, two twin large vertical, main vertical, secondary horizontal... Well in the end I'm happy enough with a single 21:9 FLAT WQHD. Game devs might not like the aspect ratio, but with EXWM, Firefox with tab-center reborn, casual simple split view etc it's good enough.
I prefer avoid curved ones because they feel strange if we are not "at the right distance" and I like to be distant a bit and I use a standing desk with a magnetic treadmill for the standing part so my distance vary, but the real conclusion is: a good monitor is a LARGE one. Rotation does not matter much if the overall dimensions are large enough.
One 43" 4K monitor (or TV) has been my go-to for the last 4 years. Plenty of screen real estate without the physical limitations of dual monitors in different orientations. And at 43/42 inches, PPI is just right for me - no scaling necessary.
It hasn't been an issue in my experience. rtings.com rates input lag on tvs (as well as how well they work as monitors).
Most modern units have game mode and/or PC mode which I assume disables some processing to drive down lag. On my LG C2 OLED, changing the input type to "PC" results in a visible flicker (just one flicker) when the display is shifting into some new mode.
Thank goodness. I was wondering how to achieve this when I first started messing around with xrandr back in ~2016 and saw that the rotation option wasn't limited to the four orthogonal directions, but would get a black screen any time I went for something unsquare. Didn't know you had to mark out the edges.
Another fun xrandr feature is not needing to have your display areas touch at the edges, so you can make your screens space accurate and lose your cursor and parts of windows behind bezels. You can have them overlap too, so you could have part of your screen shown on multiple displays.
I'm glad this functionality wasn't hampered by questions of necessity.
Whatever a diagonal rotation essentially is the same like using a big display of classic aspect ratio with two corners blocked. What is the benefit of not having these corners present? Why not just buy a 45-inch 4k display, put it right in front of you (instead of a TV-like distance) and use it with 100% (or close to it, maybe also tweak some fonts) scaling? I actually do it this way and I fail to understand how can a wide&low display placed diagonally feel better.
I'm using 3 monitors currently (one vertical) and I'm used to utilizing keyboard shortcuts for moving windows between screens - for example I can move window onto vertical screen and then into bottom half of it, all using keyboard.
The question for people using single ultrawide screen instead of multiples - is something like this possible to achieve? are you able to define virtual "regions" on the screen space to move windows there?
I think a servo motor should be behind the screen and it should rotate depending on whether I look up or down or sideways. Added benefit: if you spin the screen fast enough you get a circular display! Of course this means you have to precisely time screen refresh rates and invent a new type of rotation resistant power and video cable.
>>invent a new type of rotation resistant power and video cable
That should not be difficult, plug cables into the base instead of directly into the screen and have circular donut shaped plates connecting the base and the screen instead of cables. The plates do of course have to have a spring to put the correct pressure to give a good connection even after some wear on the plates
Instead of mechanical slip-rings use fiber-optic rotary joint so you avoid awkward bandwidth limitations. You could probably make do with plain off-the-shelf components here
The early 90s - even the glorious VGA didn't have much large than 80 columns, it took VESA to bring the 132×43 text mode. Then early '00, with whoever managed to come with the extreme anti-pattern of having extremely long class names in Java, 1024x768 was not enough by far (and 800x600 was a joke).
The irony in my case is that I have a 4k 32" where my window apps
live in the center of the monitor never maximized and the stickies go on the 2 black bands on each side.
It makes for a 3D texture monitor with task and reminders that I pull off and crush with my hand.
I've been using the CRG9 for 3 years without issue. I use fancyzones to create 3 "window" areas - a thin chat window, the main middle window, and a side research/reference/video window.
When I'm not working it makes for amazing ultrawide gaming. A video card to push the resolution is actually possible without a new mortgage. I don't understand the whole too wide thing tbh.
Only thing I wish is that it had better HDR with more zones, but it was a pretty early example of this kind of thing I think so can't have everything.
Maybe if I find an LG c2/c3 43" OLED for a good price I'll get that instead, but for now this thing is awesome enough.
I just found I spent more time battling the aspect ratio than anything else. It isn't that it was too wide (though it was, for me) ... it's that it wasn't tall enough (pixel wise) for the width. This meant I never quite had enough height for ANY comfortable IDE/document/web usage.
Being able to have 4 or 5 non-ideal height windows side-by-side was just 4 or 5 times as annoying for me.
The LG solves all the issues I had with the Samsung. I get the same width in pixels, in a smaller dimension (so reduced head movement) and I get more pixel height.
For those benefits, as I am not a gamer, I happily sold the CRG9 and accepted lower (but still fine on the eyes) refresh rates.
Couldn't be happer. I used the CRG9 for a few years, it had to go.
> So this here I think is the best monitor orientation for software development. It provides the longest line lengths and no longer need to worry about that pesky 80 column limit.
Author optimized for this metrics. If you dont need this, no need to try :D
If the author is serious, and works in a team, they would still need to worry about that "pesky" line length limit, though.
I really don't get the argument against short line lengths, and that they're somehow a relic of old display resolutions. I find them genuinely helpful.
Having to glance horizontally to read code is suboptimal compared to keeping my eyes fixed on a relatively narrow block. Being able to fit more documents open side-by-side without arbitrary line breaks is always helpful, especially when merging, even on ultrawide displays. This is why I still prefer shorter lengths, and try to keep it near the traditional 80 as much as possible. I compromise when working in a team and if someone has a different preference, but I never got the appeal, honestly.
Agree. Shorter lines are more readable the same way narrow paragraphs in multi-column layouts are more readable, as it's easier to follow to the next line.
I'm not strict on the 80 column rule. Readability for code is a balance in intent for me first and foremost, but I also do try to keep lengths close to it.
I used to follow 2 source files side-by-side easily on a 16:10 monitor. I'm struggling to do that on my 16:9 now due to how long the lines are on my current codebase with a regular editor.
Comparisons are hourly occurrences for me. Long lines require scrolling or word-wrapping, either of which is just horrific. If I try the same on github, which wastes even more horizontal space, two source files are barely fitting side-by-side even with 80 columns.
I'm kind of surprised authors writing these long lines, which also will review those long lines in the future, and not put off by the inconvenience they're doing to themselves.
I use two monitors.
A 28" UHD for running the code editor and (sometimes) a few terminals.
A 24" FHD for one or two browsers.
They are set side-to-side, not aligned to somwhow mimic curved displays.
They are set at 0 degrees.
What is the correct terminology for "monitor rotation"? I want a monitor that can rotate, but using "rotation" as a keyword does not bring up many relevant results.
+1 for team separate monitors for webdev. Although I am on macOS, I use 2x 24" (with thin bezels put next to each other) plus laptop screen. The handling of the OS "window manager" is just smoother for separate screens as opposed to ultra wide: separate workspaces per screen, shortcuts (via BTT) to move windows to a specific screen and maximize etc.
Too bad apple decided that using two external monitors is a "pro" feature and requires at least an "Pro" M1/M2/M3 processor. Even though my 2x 24" run at 1080p and I have been using them every since with my original MacbookPro from 2014 without issues...
I've used mbpro ~2018 before and must say that wtf was going on when apple decided that multiple monitors is pro feature... I have windows pc and have been using 4 monitors with it for years, and with windows laptop 3 is smooth..
Osx still has really weird functionalities when it comes to multi-monitor setup. Like it was not meant to be used more than 1 monitor
To be fair, since Wayland allows nested sessions, you can probably implement a Wayland compositor that can only display a single app full-screen with a given rotation, and then use that to launch any other Wayland session (eg. gnome)
These weren't ultra-widescreen displays; they were relatively standard aspect-ratio displays, rotated at an angle.