Gamma and monitors (!)

[seven87641]

Hello!

This question is not directly related to SOMA; I've played though, and now that I've bought Amnesia too, the same concept applies.

What is believe is my monitor [quality] is giving me problems related to gamma.

When I adjust it to have the X element (box in Amnesia, and something I don't remember in SOMA) to be "barely visible" (this happens around the +1.3 level), I generally can see sharp gradients in the dark areas, for example, the Abyss in SOMA.
When I lower the gamma, the color range/exposure feels much more "tuned" to the atmosphere, especially in SOMA, but I can't see the gamma detail box (or the other thingy in SOMA).

My monitor is a relatively old TN, from Samsung (245B).

Now, the question is - is there any suggestion for which monitor to go for, or at least, a general guideline?
Are IPS monitors much more suited to (Frictional) horror games?

My current setup is quite spoiling the experience.

[psxpetey]

Hello!

This question is not directly related to SOMA; I've played though, and now that I've bought Amnesia too, the same concept applies.

What is believe is my monitor [quality] is giving me problems related to gamma.

When I adjust it to have the X element (box in Amnesia, and something I don't remember in SOMA) to be "barely visible" (this happens around the +1.3 level), I generally can see sharp gradients in the dark areas, for example, the Abyss in SOMA.
When I lower the gamma, the color range/exposure feels much more "tuned" to the atmosphere, especially in SOMA, but I can't see the gamma detail box (or the other thingy in SOMA).

My monitor is a relatively old TN, from Samsung (245B).

Now, the question is - is there any suggestion for which monitor to go for, or at least, a general guideline?
Are IPS monitors much more suited to (Frictional) horror games?

My current setup is quite spoiling the experience.

I can't see anything either unless I turn up the gamma high enough that it looks like crap. Sony monitor. How high is your brightness

[seven87641]

Now, the question is - is there any suggestion for which monitor to go for, or at least, a general guideline?
Are IPS monitors much more suited to (Frictional) horror games?

My current setup is quite spoiling the experience.

I can't see anything either unless I turn up the gamma high enough that it looks like crap. Sony monitor. How high is your brightness

I've done a lot of research, and I've also purchased a new monitor.

The issue is the color resolution of the monitor[s]. On the difficult dark frames, my old monitor wasn't capable of rendering enough colors to make the grandient smooth in the dark areas, which is the same problem you've experiencing.

I've bought a much better monitor, and, although it also suffers from banding at low gammas, I now have banding-free frames starting from a bit lower than the mid gamma point.

Curiously, while performing the tests, I've found that on the old monitor, on those frames, I get banding even at the highest gamma.

So, the summary is: either you get a better monitor, or you live with banding/bright gamma.

Which type of monitor to choose is another subject :-) But in short:

- VA monitors (the ones immediately available; there are interesting upcoming models) have severe ghosting;
- IPS monitors have the best color resolution, but any time you buy one, you're gambling on the amount of backlight bleending and IPS glow you're going to get, and this is not related to a model, but to pure luck;
- TN monitors have lower color resolution, but lower risk of backlight bleeding; note that there are very recent, available models, which have a higher color resolution (8 bit) - I have one of those.

You may want to gamble and buy an IPS. I didn't want to, so I bought a TN, and while I'm aware that I don't have top colors, I don't have any bleeding at all.

[Kein]

This is not really a display forum but VA suffer from so-called "black crush" which or some peopleis worse than ips-glow.