Quick Review of 21:9 Dell Ultrawide Monitor with FSX

Hi all,

Just wanted to share some short information on a 21:9 Ultrawide Monitor, which I ventured out and purchased.

Summarised in one word: "AWESOME".

The model i purchased (impulse buy to the max, as a self-birthday gift :P) is Dell's U3415W 34" Curved Ultrawide monitor.

There are couple more alternatives I believe, primarily from LG which produces the original panel.

The advantage of Dell model in my opinion is:

- Curved!! Great thing to show off to friends and others.

- Matt display, easy and soft on the eyes. (This is personal preference though..some do prefer glossy LCDs)

- Colour calibrated. I am an amateur photographer of a sort, and I can tell this does really good colour reproduction.. (but then, LG might also be calibrated...someone can correct me anytime.)

A bit of general review:

- Native resolution is 3440x1440. Dell calls it the "3K" monitor, slightly short of 4K.

- This monitor would not exactly replace a triple monitor setup as the length is not sufficient. It is approximately 2 monitors wide.

- Size-wise, if it's any help, the monitor is approximately 2x size of typical 24" 1080p Monitor side by side.

- The display is sufficiently curved yet when you look from front you don't notice it much. It really does add some nice "wow" factor.

- You must use DisplayPort for a full image performance (resolution and refresh rates). If you use HDMI, there are chances that you won't get full resolution, or stuck with 30Hz refresh rate which is quite laggy. The monitor comes with HDMI and DP cable bundled, so as long as your graphics card has a DP output, you are ready to go.

- U3415W has both MiniDP and DP ports available.

- Your desktop becomes ridiculously wide that it takes a while for you to adjust your eyes. Also, due to how most desktops are typically used, the start button and key icons are sometimes "too far away left". You will adjust pretty soon though.

Now some FSX review:

- FSX has no issue recognising the resolution right away.

- The immersion factor is... just amazing. It's basically having two monitors without bezel.

- Viewable area of VC is significantly increased (well..of course), to a point you don't need to shift your viewpoint to control MCP or Autopilot.

- I was very happy to find out the viewpoint distortions at edge is minimal. Make sure WideViewAspect is turned ON inside FSX.cfg.

- Running native 3440x1440 will be a strain on your PC.. so you may force yourself to upgrade some of your PC components to match. I do struggle for good fps..

Some other games:

- World of Warcraft....looks...beeeaauutiful. The increased perspective really gives you a enjoyable scenic experience.

- Many First-person shooters do not support 21:9 ratio, particularly multiplayer games. This is because wider monitors give you unfair advantage against other players. There are some tools that can force single-player games to support 21:9, google will show you.

- For those games that doesn't support ultrawide by nature, you can run programs at 4:3 or 16:9 resolution (i.e. 2560x1440) with black bars on the side, so you still get 1:1 pixel matching for clarity without getting your video stretched abnormally. You can change this from monitor On-screen setting menus.

My verdict:

- At the moment ultrawides are not really cheap.... especially Dell.. so you may want to wait until the price comes down a bit.

- Otherwise, BUY IT, NOW. :) I highly recommend it.

Hope this has been useful for some who might have considered ultrawides..

I have been eying this and the similar LG monitor, waiting for some competition to bring the huge prices down - and they have started. My main concern is the extra load on the computer, because I currently run FSX just about perfectly at high settings with sharp, smooth graphics at FPS limited to 24 - which rarely drops below - and no strain or crashes. This is the result of a couple years of tweaking.

Your review has jerked me and, while I realize I will need a new video card, I would hate to disturb anything else. I would be interested in hearing about your computer and get some idea of the effects of the additional workload.

CPU I7-960 @ 3.8 Ghz, Asetek Water Cooler

Asus P6T X58 MB, 6Gb RAM Corsair Dominator DDR3 1600Mhz

EVGA nVidia GTX 570, 1.28Gb DDR5 RAM

1 Tb SATA II HD, Kingston 128Gb SSD (FSX only)

Apevia 800W PS, Win 7 64-bit Acceleration

OrbxFTX Global BASE, OrbxFTX Global Vector, OrbxFTX open LCEurope, FS Genesis World Mesh, DX10 Fixer