Hi just wanted to share this with you guys, I just upgraded my kit a little, and decided to go for a 4k tv instead of a monitor, the tv in question is the Samsung ku6400 40", with a good hdmi cable (£5) and setting source to pc on first menu button on the tv, Now tweaking xplane to get decent frames in 4k with all planes (payware) has been a bit of a royal pain. I have small amounts of orthoxp in also which I wanted to keep. To cut a very long story short, I turned off anti aliasing, didn’t notice any more jagged bits as was expecting as it always used to on the old monitor, and achieved 50-60fps, I could even turn reflections to full only loosing a couple of fps, I am going to experiment turning other items up tonight but most things are on high not full . I am not sure if the tv sorts jagged bits out but I have always been happy with 24-30 on other sims so I am over the moon. only downside so far of 4k on a big tv is the tiny txt (in game) but its good. infact the quality exceeds my sons acer 27 inch normal monitor which I didn’t expect such a crystal clear screen
pc specs are
20gb ram ddr3
i7 2700k cpu oc to 4.6
ssd hard drive
1080 nvidea 8gb card
Samsung ku6400 4k uhd tv
I do run a second screen all the time also which has my gplan
Pro-tip: Never use a TV for gaming. It’s ok for movies, series and consoles. But on pc gaming… they are pretty much crap. Doesn’t matter if its 4k or not. They are not designed for gaming and usually have their own graphics processor that interferes with your GPU.
If you want cheap 4k that is pretty decent for your money than this is it: Philips BDM4350UC Review | PCMonitors.info
It will do a better job displaying your games than your tv
Hi sargoth I’m more than happy with it , I’ve tried lots of different games including first person and so far it’s been great, I’m not after more than 60fps which I was getting with player unknown and lots of others I’m more into flight, sims on the pc and strategy games like sudden strike I like i the odd consol game ps4 and it does look Good with them guessing it up scales. , have you actually tried one as I’m surprised you could say they are that bad as the reviews on the web are good , And it’s 50% cheaper than the Philips. I must admit I was a little concerned but actually can say it one of the best upgrades I’ve done as well as the option for pip if I had the money I would have went for the Philips, well spotted as have not seen it before and agree with your post . Perhaps one day I will swap out the tv in one of the other rooms and get one, but wife says holidays come first lol.
Here’s a bit more indepth on the why it shouldn’t be used.
Response time.
a.) A typical tv has a response time between 17-40 ms. Thats typically how long it takes for the TV to either show black-to-white pixel changes (or grey-to-grey).
First problem with high response time is ghosting. The faster the scene, the more prominent and distracting the ghosting is. This problem only gets worse the higher the refresh rates gets. Much more prominent on 60~144hz refresh rate displays.
b.) Input lag is how long it takes for you to react to whats happens on the screen. If you have to wait ~17 miliseconds (typically where samsung tv’s responsetime is) + rendertime to get the information on the display and still another second to response to it, in a game where every timeunit counts, you’ll always be worse off than a person with a monitor.
2.) Overscan
Overscan refers to the practice of not displaying all of an available image on the actual screen. It’s a holdover from the pre-LCD era when there was no way to guarantee that every television set would display content in precisely the same fashion. The solution to this problem was to zoom the final output slightly, creating a small border around the edges of the screen. Ultimately, modern LCDs don’t have much use for overscan, but it’s still enabled by default on many displays. Whether or not you can disable it depends on what kind of TV you have — some older LCDs may not offer the option to disable overscan at all. Graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia can compensate for overscan in software, but this may result in less-than ideal text and font rendering.
TV’s does not support vsync technologies like Freesync/Adaptive sync and G-sync. That might change with HDMI 2.1.
So to sum up:
-The faster the response time of a display is, the quicker it can display an image. The quicker it does that, the quicker you can react to it.
-Input lag is basically the time it takes for all the image processing that happens + response time of TV.
-Overscan makes text and fonts hard to read.
You might be able to turn off Overscan. I would do that ASAP. You also might set the TV into a gaming mode lowering the response time. I would also do that.
Using the TV as a second monitor is better to watch any videos though, as it will offer a much better color display than monitors.
Thanks for the info, I must admit I agree in principle, but in reality with the screen I have the picture is great txt is very crisp better than I expected colours great, response time ok, not the ghosting I was expecting, I have uhd enabled through the HDMI 2.0a port and don’t have it in gaming mode which I did try last night, but reading on the overclockers forums and reading tips on there, I have a set up I am pleased with . I read countless for and against, but in the end opted for this and am over the moon.
I tried total war last night in 4k looked great for a old game and played ok, just got to get used to the mouse travelling so far as used to play it on a 22" as for flight simulation its a dream with track ir no more straining to see the dials.
If I put them side by side I am sure I would notice the difference, but the qual looks as good if not better than the 22" monitor it sits next too at home. I have a 55" ks7000 also in the lounge which is supposed to be better still but a little large to sit 2 feet from would get a neck ache looking about lol.
will try your suggestions to see if can see any difference.
I switched from playing on TV to playing on a monitor. It was such a contrast and improved my gaming experience vastly. I do however have to admit that the TV I was using was one of the first HD ready TV’s and I couldn’t really do anything with it to improve it for PC gaming. It’s ok for consoles. I aim to grab that Philips for “TV” purposes though. I feel as though 5ms (grey-to-grey) is not that great for gaming.
But my own personal reason for not buying a TV and grabbing that Philips instead has a bit more to do with how Norway taxes TV’s and not monitors (The broadcasting license fee is a legal requirement which anyone who has a television receiver is required to pay.) I think its up to $350 now, yearly. Just too much for my taste. And I’m more interested in gaming than watching actual TV.
An increase of 10ms response time ads a mere 1% to the input lag. This may make a difference to a fast shoot-em-up type game where the players reflexes are on a hair trigger, but for a civil aviation flying sim like x-plane it is unlikely to make a significant difference.
The same goes for ghosting. If you’re firing an automatic weapon in a dark environment in a shoot-em-up then the ghosting from the muzzle flash would be very distracting. But the only situation where you are going to get serious ghosting in x-plane would be something like strobes at night where the scene is relatively static and the strobe interval is measured in seconds, so it probably won’t be very noticeable.
As for overscan, the Panasonic TV’s I’ve owned all disable this for PC input.
And lastly, most TV’s have some inbuilt anti-aliasing that smoothes the picture out, sort of like a mimic of the old CRT screens, which could help with x-plane jaggies and reduce the need for processor hungry AA image processing.
So if your only aim is flight simming with pretty graphics and a reasonable frame rate a 4kTV might not be such a bad idea. It all depends on how versatile you want the system to be as it’s never going to cut the mustard for fast action type games.
I agree @HavlokUK, TV fits great for my filght siming. I actualy dont play any other type of games on it. So all the points you mentioned @Sargoth are not relevant for me.
But if you are also FPS gamer, or want to be the top dogfihter ACE in IL2 for sure PC monitor is better option.
Yes and getting on with it fine, I have tweaked xplane with some great plugins, , fsxse ran well but i have stopped using it now as loving xplane 11, dcs is great so is cliffs of dover ,i have tried other games also like ghost recon wildlands, grand theft auto 5, even a bit of battlefield 3, I have not had one regret and when vulkan API comes out I expect even better frames. And i now don’t have aa turned on as makes little difference in 4k but get a few more frames. How about you?
Ive had my pc hooked up in the cabinet under my living room tv for years. I use flight sims, ARMA, some Battlefield etc., all from the couch about 10 feet away from the 60" Vizio. I understand the technical shortfalls of doing it, but I have never experienced one issue. I do increase the text size on the desktop and web pages, but gaming at 1080p is smooth as glass, no issues. I run a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, and pull out the “extension cord” USB for HOTASOTC (on the couch).
I guess it’s all about how close you sit to the screen I have a 40 " and sit at a 600 wide bench with the tv on its own stand which is very low and it sits at the back , I have my track ir sensor on top which is about the right height , I also have a 22" next to it , only one downside is some in game text ( chat ) and the odd onscreen map like in world of warships become very small. I used to use a normal hd tv (1080) it was ok but dials where very soft when sitting close. Where as 4k is pin sharp. I do also have a 55 4k tv which is in another room but that seemed to large to have that close , but Saying that i also thought the 40" was huge to start with, So I’m sure that would be fine.
Good to hear that @caisterwoods. I was really satisfied with my 40" FHD TV but moved it to bedroom for watching movies… and now… I am eyeing for an upgrade
