Single Screen, Triple Screen, or VR for PC Sim Racer Gaming?

Ultrawide curved gaming monitors go perfectly together with sim racing titles, much more so than triple flat screens or even VR. Take a closer look at why that’s the case. 

While simcade and arcade racing games are very popular and have made major inroads on console, hardcore sim racing titles remain best on PC. And that’s a good thing, because PCs are still more versatile and offer you far greater flexibility when choosing your display setup. VR sets prove quite popular, but they’re not for everyone. High speed flat screen gaming monitors make for superb multi-display arrangements, with three being the magical number for most users who seek to create a “surround view” monitor wall. But in this article we’ll quickly look at what we think is the perfect median, in the form of a single curved gaming monitor. This class of display sort of gives you the best of multiple worlds. The simplicity of one screen but with a curved viewing surface to add depth and an ultrawide form factor to increase your field of view to something much more similar to real world driving.

Curved and ultrawide must go together here. There are curved screens out there that aren’t ultrawide, but they’re rare. You should make sure to get that combination, though. Don’t settle for less, curved and ultrawide is the secret to sim racing thrills. 

Not to brag, but the EX3415R really does cover everything we mentioned. You get a nice 34” IPS panel with 98% DCI-P3 and 10-bit colour, resulting in every track and car looking mighty fine. The sweet spot specs are in full force here, with an ultrawide 21:9 3440 x 1440 resolution and native 144Hz refresh with no overclock needed. The field of view is at least 40% wider than a 16:9 2560 x 1440 monitor on the horizontal axis, so you take in a lot more of the environment in each frame without having to turn the camera so much.

The EX3415R uses the 1900R curve we described above, has super-responsive 1ms MPRT, and includes AMD FreeSync Premium, though from our experience it will work with NVIDIA G-Sync.  From typical desktop viewing distances, this is the ultimate sim racer monitor, balancing resolution with size, response, framerate, and added features. What added features? Twin speakers and a subwoofer for 2.1-channel audio, for one. While headphones will work better for that immersion factor, if you do want to output to speakers, the EX3415R has enough audio oomph to make dedicated external speakers an unnecessary expense. 

In short, a curved ultrawide monitor would make the most sense if you want a setup that shows sim racers in the most realistic way currently possible. Triple monitor arrangements may be too costly and complex. VR’s a very subjective experience still. But a single, finely-tuned curved monitor is the way forward.