4:3 Resolutions on Widescreen Monitor

[Andy Mahood]

I'm wondering if any of the Qt3 hardware gurus can weigh in on this conundrum. I recently upgraded to an LG L204WT widescreen LCD monitor (which I love) and everytime I play a game with no widescreen support - e.g. NFS: Carbon - I wind up with a stretched screen that looks like crap.

I thought I could correct this by hooking up a DVI cable between my Radeon 9700 Pro and the monitor and then selecting the "use centered timings" option at the Catalyst Control Center menu but – no go. The monitor still distorts any 4:3 resolution I select into 16:9 widescreen mode. Am I hooped with this particular monitor or is there any way to introduce vertical black bars on older 4:3 games and eliminate this annoying distortion?

[Brad Grenz]

Your monitor should have several display modes including full, 1:1 pixel mapping and aspect. Start pressing the buttons on your monitor and see what you can find. It's not something you can fix in software.

[Andy Mahood]

I've hit every button on the back of the monitor and I'm limited to the following:

- Language
- OSD position (horizontal & vertical)
- White balance
- Power indicator
- Factory reset
- Brightness
- Contrast
- Gamma
- Clock
- Phase
- Sharpness
- RGB settings

No aspect changes or 1:1 pixel mapping.

[Brad Grenz]

Son of a gun. Looking at the manual for you monitor, it appears it does not allow such adjustments, which I find really change for a widescreen LCD this day in age. Lame.

[Chris Nahr]

Wow, that sucks. Return that monitor if possible. Like Brad said that's a feature you can reasonably expect.

[Andy Mahood]

It was a birthday gift that, apart from the scaling issue, boasts some very sweet features (a razor-sharp 1680x1050 display; 2000:1 contrast ratio; 5ms access speed; 3-year warranty). Tough to give up some of that stuff.

[Union Carbide]

1680x1050 display;

That's 16:10, just to further confuse the issue. My LCD has the same native rez.

[Winterrain]

16:10 is the standard with TFTs.

[steve]

Meh, I play a lot of games stretched on a widescreen monitor. You get used to it.

[grahamiam]

Check the game's forum for info, but usually you can either set the resolution from within the game and get black borders all around with a squarish screen in the middle. That's what I have to to with BFMEII.

Another thing you could try is to add" -xres 1400 -yres 1050 " as a suffix to your game's shortcut on the desktop. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't.

[unbongwah]

16:10 is the standard with TFTs.

16:10 is the new 4:3.

You ought to be able to use either the "center image" or "fixed aspect ratio scaling" options in your video card's display settings so it doesn't stretch your image like that. Unfortunately, as I recently discovered, this doesn't always work the way it should.

[Andy Mahood]

16:10 is the new 4:3.

You ought to be able to use either the "center image" or "fixed aspect ratio scaling" options in your video card's display settings so it doesn't stretch your image like that. Unfortunately, as I recently discovered, this doesn't always work the way it should.

ATI's Catalyst Control Center doesn't provide those exact options (once I hooked up a DVI cable it added a Scale Image to Full Panel Size and Use Centered Timings option but the latter setting doesn't do anything with this monitor).

Another thing you could try is to add" -xres 1400 -yres 1050 " as a suffix to your game's shortcut on the desktop. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't.

Doesn't work for me unfortunately.

Meh, I play a lot of games stretched on a widescreen monitor. You get used to it.

Yeah, I'm probably going to have to. Most games do look pretty good (Grand Prix Legends for instance) but NFS: Carbon just looks like ass.

[grahamiam]

sorry if this is completely unrelated, but widescreengamingforum.net has a solution for NFS: Most Wanted -> http://www.widescreengamingforum.com...pic.php?t=2276

maybe it works for NFS: Carbon?

[grahamiam]

ah, another solution from the same forum (lurk there for all the good widescreen solutions :)

I got this info on another forum. It works ok for me.

"Do this to fix Carbon for widescreen...

http://www.widescreengamingforum.com...itle=Downloads

1.Download the program called Universal Widescreen (UniWS) Patcher
2. Go into your Need for Speed Carbon directory and name the exe file speed2.exe
3. Open up the program you just downloaded and select Need for Speed Underground 2 from its game menu
4. Enter the resolution you want in the program
5. Locate the directory for Carbon in the program and click "Patch"
6. Launch Carbon and select the 640x480 resolution
7. Finished!

Notice: Make sure to backup the original Carbon exe for updating your game later with official patches!

Enjoy!"

posted here -> http://www.widescreengamingforum.com...ght=nfs+carbon

[Coca Cola Zero]

It is pretty ridiculous that so many new PC games don't have real widescreen support out of the box. Jesus Christ, developers, the 90s are over!

[RickH]

ISn't widescreen support part of the spec for the "Games for Windows" logo?

[Andy Mahood]

ah, another solution from the same forum (lurk there for all the good widescreen solutions :)

posted here -> http://www.widescreengamingforum.com...ght=nfs+carbon

If it were just about personal gaming preferences, I'd use that option in a heartbeat. I'm still reviewing the game though so I don't really want to screw around with any exe files at the moment.