Display Size and Targeting Performance: Small Hurts, Large May Help
Which display size helps gamers win? Recommendations from the research and PC gaming communities are contradictory. We find that as display size grows, targeting performance improves. When size increases from 13′′ to 26′′, targeting time drops by over 3%. Further size increases from 26′′ through 39′′, 52′′ and 65′′, bring more modest improvements, with targeting time dropping a further 1%. While such improvements may not be meaningful for novice gamers, they are extremely important to skilled and competitive players. To produce these results, 30 gamers participated in a targeting task as we varied display size by placing a display at varying distances. We held field of view constant by varying viewport size, and resolution constant by rendering to a fixed-size off-screen buffer. This paper offers further experimental detail, and examines likely explanations for the effects of display size.
