For games, Wide screen vs. Standard Monitor?

[BKSinAZ]

I plan on buying a new monitor to enjoy my games on.
Many people are warning me against buying a wide screen LCD monitor because they say it makes all the games,screen images, documents and web pages stretch out of perspective. Is this true? How is it on games?

If wide screen does stretch everything, then why are people buying them?

[tosh9i]

It is NOT true. It does not "stretch". It's possible that the resolution that they set on their monitors causes it look stretch, but as long as you choose the right one it'll be fine.

[tosh9i]

Keep in mind, there are a lot of webpages that weren't designed for wide screens. I have a wide screen, and sometimes when I visit a webpage, such as www.betanews.com , it looks like a quarter of the screen on the left and a quarter on the right are blank, sometimes it seems like a waste.

[mephistophilus]

i use a wide screen monitor for gaming and its so much better for start you can see more of your surrounding have more room for your interface (WoW) and i generally find it more comfortable to look at

[ebackhus]

I use a widescreen to game and play and I am absolutely loving every bit of it.

[1 g0t 0wn3d]

Yes me to my friend has a nromla monitor and it restricts me (not a wide enough angle for shooting games...)

[Cellus]

It is possible for it to stretch if you use a widescreen monitor (eg. with an aspect ratio of 16:10) and use a game that uses a regular 4:3 resolution (eg. 1024x768) and your video card settings in regards to aspect ratios are not set properly.

I recommend you take a look at the WSGF (Widescreen Gaming Forum) which includes a continually expanding list of games and how to get them to display a widescreen resolution, even if they do not have such an option readily apparent in the game's video settings. I've found it personally to be very handy with my widescreen monitor.

[Damion]

I just purchased a new computer with a 24 inch widescreen HD monitor and my games look so real they make me jump when i play them in the dark i would definatly recomend one all of my games look great on it

[Wisey!]

I have a 17" widescreen laptop. And nothing is every streched. Windows and most games are disigned to run in lots of different resolotions. Mine is 1440 X 900 and it looks pretty damn cool. Becuase of this, you can have a slight advantage over none widescreen players becuase your feild of view is wider. This is particualarly good in FPS games. As tosh9i says, some websites looked totaly dwafed by your screen. But this dosn't really matter, because it reminds you that your screen is better than most people viewing that site...

[pharoah]

i have to agree with my fellow widescreen gamers it rocks.most of the newer games support widescreen resolutions.some of the older games may have that stretched look,but even then in most cases there is a way around it.ive manually adjusted resolution in game config files before with great results.