Widescreen Gaming Forum

Hi Folks,

This is my first post. I searched a bit but was unsure of what I read so I thought I would ask.

My question is :

If I see a game on the master game list that supports 16:9 resolutions but I don't see my exact resolution mentioned then I should assume it is not supported - correct ?

Here are the details:

I am considering buying a 17.3 inch screen laptop which has an HD+ 1600 x 900 screen resolution as the default. Two of the games I own ( Rise of Nations and Cossacks ) say they support 1280 x 720 and 1920 x 1080 but not 1600 x 900.

My experience with LCD screens is that if you play games in resolutions outside the default the scaling the panel has to do may be very noticeable. It doesn't seem as bad when I play first person shooters but it always looks blurry or less then optimal when I play strategy games.

Any advice on insight would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance - jg1234

If your current monitor doesn't support (or Windows doesn't think it supports) 1600x900, then games most likely won't even list it as an option. That doesn't necessarily mean it won't be listed when you put the game on your new laptop.

Oh and I wouldn't assume that a resolution isn't supported just because it's not specifically mentioned in the Master Games List articles. That may mean that the particular resolution hasn't been tested, but it could still very well be supported.

BooTx,

Thanks very much for your reply. That is good information to know. I appreciate you passing it on.

-jg1234

The reason its more blurry and less sharp when running non-native resolutions, is that LCD's and Plasma screens are "fixed pixel displays". That means they always have the same number pixels. So, if you buy a laptop with 1600 x 900 resolution and display a 1280 x 720 image full screen, it will use 1600 x 900 pixels to display that image, resulting in a less sharp image.

But, you can always run it 1:1, meaning you get a 1280 x 720 image and the screen will use only 1280 x 720 pixels to display that image (the rest of the pixels will be shown as black, giving you black bars around the image). Then it will be as sharp as it can be, but not full screen though.

Often, the game looks well enough in "scale to aspect" mode to be a compromise, where the game will be stretched until it fills the height of the screen, leaving only black bars on the side and it keeps the aspect ratio avoiding stretch.

Games usually pulls the resolutions available from what is available in windows. Many of our solutions gives you an option to manually force a resolution as well, if its not supported by the game.

Rise of nations is one of those games. There you can edit the rise2.ini file to desired resolution (with a lower limit of 1024x768). The solutions can be found under games in the top menu here. For the Rise of nations example, here's that one:
http://widescreengamingforum.com/dr/rise-nations