25" monitor vs. 40" TV

[Hoksu]

So I'm currently racing with my Dell U2515H 1440p 25" monitor. I have a 10 year old but fully functional 40" 1080p 60Hz TV lying around. I have thought of using that for sim racing instead. Thoughts? Is bigger better? Image quality and resolution will be worse, but it's bigger.

Reason I haven't tried it yet is because I'd need to buy some longer cables, move some furniture to make room for my rig and such. And get a wireless mouse for AC.

 

[Elaphe]

Inmersion is more important than image quality, so go for the TV and place it as close to you as possible.

 

[R8pilot]

Personally, I'd find a 1080p resolution to be lacking, but I'm fussy about visual quality.

My guess is that, as the above post suggests, you would like the TV due to increased immersion. You can lose yourself even on a small screen, but bigger is definitely better in sim racing. Maybe set up something temporary to see how it works out for you before committing.

 

[Wilko Jones]

What the Dell's refresh rate?

Just looked it up. 60hz.

You'll gain more visibility if the screen is as close as your Dell monitor is and your FOV is correct. You'll loose a crap ton of sharpness. That is if the 10 year old TV doesn't introduce any latency.

 

[RasmusP]

As the others said. Image quality and probably latency might be an issue, nobody knows.
Overall 25" behind your wheel is pretty small..
With triples it's okay but not a single monitor.
Sitting behind my 27" monitor, 80cm away vs 55" TV, 3m away was a massive difference.
The TV was miles better for immersion!

Currently I'm racing on a 34" ultra wide at 80cm distance. It has the same height as a 27" standard monitor.
The TV still wins with immersion but the monitor is great too and "enough for me".

My 34" ultra wide is probably the same width as a 40" TV though...

 

[Hoksu]

Thanks for the posts. Yeah, the small monitor is kinda why I'm considering switching to the TV for simracing. Was just wondering if the increased size is worth it.

The latency is a good point, hadn't thought of that before. Is there a way to accurately measure/compare it?

 

[RasmusP]

The latency is a good point, hadn't thought of that before. Is there a way to accurately measure/compare it?

Easiest way to quickly test it would be to plug in a laptop with a mouse attached and test if you see/feel input lag when you move the cursor quickly around.
Best is to go quickly left & right so you get a turn around point.

Our brain is great at filling in stuff so you won't feel it when drawing circles on the monitor.
But when you change the direction into the same path you came from, the brain will expect the cursor to change direction, while with too high input lag, the cursor will continue to move into the old direction for a short moment.

A tiny bit of input lag is okay but with some TVs, it feels really awful!

 

[Sascha Reynders]

Of course image sharpness, latency, response time etc are important, but it all depends on your goals. Ask yourself: am I racing competitively where every 1/1000th of a second counts, or am I racing to have fun ? If it's the latter, by all means: switch to the 40" TV if you can place it close enough.
I used a cheap 200€ 1080p 60hz 40" TV for simracing for a couple of years and it did just fine. Switched to a 35" 100hz 3440x1440 G-Sync monitor after that, and even though that monitor was technically superior in every way, immersion took a bit of a dive... If it hadn't been for the G-Sync functionality, I would have really regretted that purchase.

And depending on which graphics card you have, there are ways to make 1080p look better. I used Nvidia's DSR back in those days to upscale the output resolution to near 4K and it looked great.

 

[RasmusP]

I used a cheap 200€ 1080p 60hz 40" TV for simracing for a couple of years and it did just fine.

I agree with you up to a certain amount of input lag.
I guess your cheap TV didn't have all the "2000 hz fake soap opera super smooth and fake hdr ultra vision fake lighting effects"

I have a mid range Samsung TV from 2015 and luckily it has a gaming mode. With it enabled, the input lag is okay, even for some casual shooter games, but you can feel the lag already with your hand.
But when I turn the gaming mode off and all the shenanigans are enabled, it's already extremely annoying to just click on the correct desktop icon. It's like pudding...
Driving is impossible, when correcting a slide, the virtual wheel and the real wheel would probably be more than half a rotation overlapping/lagging behind.

Sadly there are a lot of more expensive, great TVs, that don't have a mode to disable all this stuff..

 

[Sascha Reynders]

I agree with you up to a certain amount of input lag.
I guess your cheap TV didn't have all the "2000 hz fake soap opera super smooth and fake hdr ultra vision fake lighting effects"

Nope, none of those shenanigans, just a screen and a remote
Never experienced disturbing input lag though, in fact: I used to be faster on that 40" than I am nowadays in VR...

 

[Hoksu]

I just gave it a try. First felt awful and looked awful, but after calibrating the TV, actually switching it to 60Hz mode, changing game settings to suit it better, I started to like it a lot. I notice no input lag compared to my monitor. As you guys said, image quality is worse but immersion is better. And immersion seems to be pretty important since playing on TV feel a LOT more like driving a car than playing on a small monitor. And I haven't even corrected FOV yet. I'm thinking on building an extension to the (I don't know what it's called in English but it's where my TV sits, along with a huge amount of other stuff) just so I can get the TV a bit closer to where I'm sitting.

So, seems awfully lot like I'll be committing to playing on TV from now on. Thanks for the helpful posts.