Widescreen Gaming Forum

Can you use the widescreen view for online gaming?

Depends on the game. Which do you have in mind?

The games I play are COD UO, HL2, Doom 3 and Farcry.

I run the COD server, so if it needs a setting changed on there, it could be done. Can advertise in game that we run with a wider FOV for widescreen if needed.

Widescreen might work in online games if the server OK'd it. For the most part, it seems as if changing the FOV messes up because it's considered 'cheating'...

Something to look into. Maybe create a dedicated game for widescreen gamers. I am sure there are more people out there that would love it.

I can see where the FOV being wider for some and not others could be construed as cheating, but if advertised that widescreens are welcome and what was done, that would be up to whoever is playing on the server to decide if it is cheating or not and to play there or not.

I thought you only need to change FOV if the game doesn't really support widescreen. You know, if it stretches 4:3 into widescreen.

All the games you mentioned should play fine online widescreen.

As a general rule, i think the two are independent and if it supports widescreen and if it supports multiplayer, it automatically supports widescreen multiplayer. There may be some games which restrict fov but if they exist they are competition mods to games like q2/q3. HL2, Doom3, COD (havent tried but that engine supports it), UT2K4, FarCry all those support widescreen online (although some need patches and ini tweaks).

It's the .ini tweaks that are considered cheating.

Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 probably won't be a problem with the relevant patches, but CoD: UO almost certainly will be. Not sure about Far Cry.

Thanks for the responses. Will look into it.

I would also like to know, My monitor is native 1920x1200, and I only play CoD online. I cant run it in 1600x1200 because even though i have it to play fullscreen, it doesnt fill the screen up at all, and i can still see my desktop, so i play at 1280x768 and it stretches it big time. Im just getting used to it, but I really wanted to mess with the .ini to get my native res. going. I use punkbuster and my question is this: Will it kick me for cheating if I just change the resolution settings in the .ini? And if not, will it force me to use the default FOV with 1920x1200? And if so, How bad does 1920x1200 look with a default FOV? Thanks!

I'm not sure about kicking you for cheating if you change the res, but almost certainly for changing the FOV.

i will second that