A Guide: What Size Monitor For Sim Racing
If you want to elevate your sim racing experience by a significant level, knowing what size monitor for sim racing is best will allow you to step your game up. This piece of equipment is the main thing. You’ll be staring at it for hours, so make sure it is as per your needs.
The monitor allows you to get the racing feel. It gives you a clear picture of the race track, the competing cars, and all the essential technical information you need to ensure you have a penalty-free race. A lack of a good monitor will dull down your overall performance.
So how do you decide: what size monitor for sim racing? This guide will walk you through the process.
The Most Vital Decision Point for Sim Racing Monitors
There are a variety of monitors available in the market today. However, not all will work in your favor and not all are made to complement sim racing.
When you’re deciding what size monitor for sim racing to use, you need to find a specific monitor with the required hardware features. This will significantly impact your overall experience.
Even though sim racing has been increasingly popular, it remains a niche. Hence, finding a monitor in the perfect size is a challenge. If you start from the basics, what should a monitor provide? A great view at everything essential, and that brings us to the field of view (FOV).
Field of View
Field of view is how much of the game you can observe via your monitor throughout. The bigger the monitor, the better the sim racing experience will be. When it comes to sim racing, you need a vast field of view for a complete experience. You want to feel just the same as if you were on the race track in reality.
When you’re in the driver’s seat of a real car, your field of view is approximately 180. This means that you will most certainly need a monitor similar to that where you can see the entire windscreen, along with what’s beside and behind you.
You should be able to involve yourself in the game entirely. And a monitor plays the most crucial part in allowing you to do so. It should be wide enough to give you a natural feel and grasp all your attention towards it, giving you access to any/every kind of information needed to win the game.
To achieve this field of view level, sim racers have a few options available in the market to choose from. They can either go for the much-recommended ultrawide/super ultrawide monitors or use a triple screen set up.
The ultrawide monitors don’t offer as much field of view as a super ultrawide monitor will. However, a 34-inch monitor will allow you a good display for the sim racing and give you just enough of the side windows to let you see the side mirrors and spot the cars running beside you. It is safe to say that anything below 34 inches will not allow you to perform your best.
Single, Triple-Screen, Or Ultrawide Sim Racing Monitors?
Whether you choose to go for a single, triple-screen, or ultrawide sim racing monitor is your choice. The only thing we’d like to highlight over here is that a triple-screen monitor setup helps enhance your immersion and awareness of your environment simply by boosting the field of view around you.
Before you get down to the purchase, it is essential to ask yourself what you want. Imagine the screens in front of you and how you would perform in all of them, compare all the screens to the one you have right now, and based on that, judge what will allow you to complete the best.
Define Your Needs
If you have a single monitor that is not cutting it for you, it is time to upgrade. The single-screen will not allow you to get a complete view of the racers and the information needed to be on your A-game.
However, if you add two more monitors to that single screen, it will all of a sudden seem much more natural and almost as if you’re driving the car (in reality). You’ll be able to see the side mirrors and get a much more advanced sense of your surroundings. However, everything extra comes with an additional cost.
If you’re comfortable with a single screen, you can also choose to expand your view by deciding between an ultrawide or a super ultrawide monitor. Remember that the monitor size will offer you a high or low resolution (based on whatever you choose to go with). Along with the field of view, you need to consider a few other factors: panel type, refresh rate, resolution, G-Sync, response time, and FreeSync.
A steady frame and refresh rate will allow you to play a smooth game. As for the response time should not be above 1ms as it is considered unacceptable in the sim racing world. You must ensure that whatever monitor you select must have FreeSync or G-Sync as these are proprietory card communication protocols that will impact your refresh and frame rate.
So, What’s It Going To Be?
The ideal monitor for sim racing would offer you the highest resolution and screen size in your budget. You also want a higher refresh rate and a low response time with FreeSync or G-Sync, which will be perfect. When selecting a monitor for sim racing, you must know that split seconds can make a huge difference.
It’s often better to invest in the best and enjoy your sim racing experience. Enjoy single screens? Opt for an ultra-wide or a super ultrawide monitor that will best suit your needs.
Want a complete experience? Passionate about the game? Want to be the best at it? There’s always the option of a triple screen that will allow you a better view and ensure peak performance.
We hope our guide on the what size monitor for sim racing is best will help you make a sound, thought-out decision to up your game.
