Widescreen Gaming Forum

Those of us with widescreen plasmas that have a native resolution of 1024x768 (rectangular pixels) get a stretched picture when playing games that don't come with an aspect ratio option. Here is an example:

Stretched Horizontally


PROPER Widescreen (increased horizontal FOV)


Recently many games let you change the aspect ratio regardless of the resolution you choose so you can fix the streteched picture (this way you can have a 4:3 resolution with a 16:9 aspect ratio) but there are still many others that don't support the aspect ratio option (Dead Space, Left 4 Dead, Crysis, GTA IV...).

So do you guys know of any kind of universal FOV hack that would let you gain more horizontal FOV in any given game? For Far Cry 2 I was able to get a proper widescreen using Racer_S' FOV Hack (X FOV 1,33, Y FOV: 1,333) but do you know if it would be possible to have a hack like that but for any game you wanted? I've tried contacting Racer_S but I got no reply yet.

Regards.

There's no real universal hack. Each game is fixed on a case-by-case basis.

^ And would it not be possible to have an utility just to gain horizontal FOV? Because that's the real problem in this case :roll:

The man said no :oops:
Take a look at the Master Game List, each title requires specific attention. Official game patches may require an updated fix. Even two games using the same engine are not guaranteed to behave samewise in widescreen !
Just because you intuitively know what a "narrow" game would look like with a proper FOV, doesn't mean it's easy to make it work... You can't just "add FOV" to any game. That's the very reason for the existence of the WSGF ;)

^ Yeah, I know what you mean but I'm not asking for widescreen support for any given game that doesn't support it natively (that's what you guys do here and I really appreciate it).

What I ask is to be able to add horizontal FOV to a 4:3 resolution just to compensate for the rectangular pixels my plasma has. I guess all we need here is to be able to increase the pixel count on both sides of the picture (like in the examples I posted above) but I have no idea how to do that myself or where to start.

Don't some nVidia drivers allow you to render one res and output another?

What? Where? When? How?

I remember reading about it on these forums, someone used it to get 1:1 pixel mapping on their display.

I don't remember that at all. I know alot of this has to do with the engines used and the way people code games. Some games like Console ports normally are easier to get to widescreen because they already do it for the console counterparts.

---edit---
Wow, just read up on plasma displays a little. Rectangular pixels, non-true HD resolutions - nasty stuff. Didn't know some of them had those (rather big, IMHO) downsides.

For games that support widescreen natively, if you're connected via DVI/HDMI, you can setup 1360x768 as a custom resolution, and then use video card scaling to downscale to 1024x768. Then you'd select 1360x768 in game. Basically when scaled to 1024x768 you'd end up with a squashed image, that when then stretched out on your TV would look correct. You're definitely going to get some fuzziness due to the interpolation though.

If you're using VGA, unfortuantely you're out of luck as video card scaling is only enabled with DVI.

---original---

There are widescreen TV's with a native res of 1024x768 - I've never heard of such a thing. It would have rectangular pixels, how would that not look terrible?

Are you sure the resolution isn't 1366x768? That's the true native res of the vast majority of "720p native" HDTVs.

There's still a caveat though, 1366x768 isn't a VESA standard resolution, 1360x768 is. Most TVs with VGA input will report 1360x768 as the highest supported res through the DDC. Depending on the TV when using 1360x768 you'll just get an unnoticable, unused 3 pixel border on either side of the screen (good), or it'll stretch it to 1366x768 (bad, because interpolation over such a small span can be ugly).

What model TV are you using?

The plasma TVs more than likely have rectangle pixels because they're meant for TV and media, not computers.

DVDs use rectangle pixels (720x480). This means that he should be able to watch a DVD without any kind of scaling or interpolation needed.

Interpolating 1280x720 or 1920x1080 to rectangle pixels might result in some better quality, too (versus DVD on a square pixel display), since you already have a higher resolution source.

You certainly do need scaling and interpolation to transform a 720x480 frame into a 1024x768 frame. Those extra pixels don't come from nowhere. In addition, DVD pixels and plasma pixels aren't even the same shape. DVD pixels are 1.186 times longer than they are tall, while plasma pixels are 1.33 times longer than they are tell.

The only way you could watch a DVD fullscreen without any scaling or interpolation is if the screen had 720x480 resolution.

And 1080p on a wide pixel display might look better than DVD on a square pixel, but 1080p on a square pixel display would look best.

I had meant that there would be less interpolation overall since the pixels aren't square. Not sure why I said it wouldn't need any. Either way, it would look better than interpolation on a square pixel since less is needed.

And of course 1080p on a square pixel would look best.