# Widescreen Gaming Question? Letterbox?



## 1Strive (Jul 14, 2007)

*So is there any way I can get my widescreen monitor to display black bars on the side instead of streaching the image to fit? Like a widescreen movie does on a regular tv.*

This is an example of what I want. I made it in ms paint, and yes I know it looks bad. lol

Edit: We have the solutions below. Load your Display Driver (windows update wroked for me.) Then use the setting in your graphics card driver. See below for nVidia setting. And ATI setting.


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## Wile E (Jul 14, 2007)

If you figure it out, please let me know. lol. On OS X on my iMac it does it, so I'm gonna guess it's driver related. That stretching drives me crazy.


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## kwchang007 (Jul 14, 2007)

why not set it up to widescreen mode?  or are there no options for widescreen?


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## Wile E (Jul 14, 2007)

kwchang007 said:


> why not set it up to widescreen mode?  or are there no options for widescreen?


Some games won't let you. NFSMW and C come to mind immediately.


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## 1Strive (Jul 14, 2007)

Wile E said:


> Some games won't let you. NFSMW and C come to mind immediately.



yes, most games have poor widescreen support. Rainbow 6 Vegas, BF2, BF2142 and so on.

Edit: BF2 and BF2142 you can hack by adding something on the properties of the game's icon.
RB6 Vegase you can hack by going to Guru3d.com and downloading the widescreen hack then installing it. But still Lost Planet Demo DX10 has virtuall no support for good resolution settings.


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## Wile E (Jul 14, 2007)

Ahhh man. You just disappointed me. I just got R6V for free with my new cpu.


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## Jonnycat (Jul 14, 2007)

I think it's a monitor thing; do you have any controls on the monitor to adjust horizontal screen size?


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## 1Strive (Jul 14, 2007)

*Fix for some people. Maybe.*






Doesn't work on my display 22" Acer but this might work for some people of course you have to have an nvidia card.

Keep posting if you have a solution.

Thanks,
1STRIVE


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## xylomn (Jul 14, 2007)

Even if the game doesn't support widescreen resolutions in the options screen is often still possible to do...

Often you can pass arguments/parameters/variables (whatever you wanna call them) to the game on startup...

just something you may want to investigate (i know it can be done with most modern games...  not sure about older ones though)


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## 1Strive (Jul 14, 2007)

xylomn said:


> Even if the game doesn't support widescreen resolutions in the options screen is often still possible to do...
> 
> Often you can pass arguments/parameters/variables (whatever you wanna call them) to the game on startup...
> 
> just something you may want to investigate (i know it can be done with most modern games...  not sure about older ones though)



Yes, I can do that for most games BF2, BF2142, and so on but it is usually pretty weak and still looks bad. Thanks, that is a good point.

Edit: That is actually a great point. Thanks again. Got a mod for RB6 from Guru3d.com and now running in widescreen. Looks great too and w/ FRAPS 2.9.0 able to take videos in widescreen.





When I was playing in Letterbox or Fullscreen and it was scaling/streaching it look bad. Now it works great.

Still would like a program or driver support to provide the functionallity to do what I first mentioned.
Keep posting here if you can help.

Thanks,
1STRIVE


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## wolfblitz1979 (Jul 14, 2007)

I know I have only been able to change mine to do that since connecting my LCD via DVI, then its possible to open up the Ati CCC and go to 'Digital Panel Properties' - 'Attributes' and then selecting 'Use centered timings'.

Maybe that will help, if using an Ati card on DVI of course.


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## 1Strive (Jul 14, 2007)

wolfblitz1979 said:


> I know I have only been able to change mine to do that since connecting my LCD via DVI, then its possible to open up the Ati CCC and go to 'Digital Panel Properties' - 'Attributes' and then selecting 'Use centered timings'.
> 
> Maybe that will help, if using an Ati card on DVI of course.



That is helpful. Thank You.

Does it have black bars on the side of your screen when playing at say 1280x1024 or 1600x1200? If so I may get an DX10 ATI card this November instead of another 8800GTS.


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## Chewy (Jul 14, 2007)

Thank you for this thread.


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## 1Strive (Jul 14, 2007)

*nVidia Fix*



Chewy said:


> Thank you for this thread.



Your Welcome.

===========================

*INSTALL THE DRIVER FOR YOUR DISPLAY!!!* <-- Shouting to the world.

The new guy above w/ the ATI fix ^, got me thinking. nVidia should have that same fix and I had alread tried it. But  the problem wasn't nVidia's driver it was that I hadn't install a driver for my display. Now it work great. This helps me play the Lost Planet DX10 demo that has crappy or no widescreen support.





So again, install your monitor driver then use the ATI or nVidia drivers to make it stop scaling/streaching.

Edit: *Also set your resolution in windows to what you want then launch the game. Otherwise it may still try to scale/streach.*

===========================
ATI guys can you post a screen of how you can do it w/ ATI?

Thanks,
1STRIVE


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## 1Strive (Jul 14, 2007)

So again, now Lost Planet DX10 Demo looks great. It didn't have any resolutions that would work for my display they all would streach or scale. Now I have it at 1152x864 and it is in "letterbox" you know w/ the black bars on the sides of the display.

Looks alot better.

1152x864 @ 15 to 20 FPS
4x AA
16x AF 
HDR = High
Everything else = High

Edit: see below post on how to almost tripple your FPS in lost planet by changing one setting.


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## 1Strive (Jul 14, 2007)

Chewy said:


> Thank you for this thread.



If you like it then rate it. That will help it earn a sticky post. lol 
And that way it won't just die and have the info lost forever to the black hole of "not new".


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## Kursah (Jul 14, 2007)

Yeah, I'd like to see this thread stick around as I'm planning on getting a 19" widescreen monitor shortly here and giving my G/F my 19" CRT. I have heard of issues with games that don't support widescreen, but it seems you guys have good solutions for both ATI and NV. Good job! I will rate this tread!


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## 1Strive (Jul 14, 2007)

Kursah said:


> Yeah, I'd like to see this thread stick around as I'm planning on getting a 19" widescreen monitor shortly here and giving my G/F my 19" CRT. I have heard of issues with games that don't support widescreen, but it seems you guys have good solutions for both ATI and NV. Good job! I will rate this tread!



Thanks.

==============================
And yes IMO this makes it worth having a widescreen.
1. More games are going to support it in future
2. Most games can be hacked or modded to support it well now.
3. If you can get the game to support it you load your drivers and set them not to scale or streach and that puts you back to Fullscreen or Letterbox or 4:3 ratio (or whatever you want to call it.)
==============================
I am now offically happy w/ my 22" Acer $300 and 8800GTS 640mb $500 (Nov06) and DX10 w/ the first DX10 Game Demo Lost Planet.
Now I will work on tweaking Company of heroes w/ the DX10 patch (1.7) keep ya'll posted on how that goes.

Also in Lost Planet turn "Shadow Quality" to "Medium" and that will boost up your FPS by 3 times.





Later,
1STRIVE


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## 1Strive (Jul 14, 2007)

*DX10 Video*

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?p=392347#post392347


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## wolfblitz1979 (Jul 15, 2007)

Here is an image of the ATI Catalyst setting 1STRIVE






- James.


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## 1Strive (Jul 15, 2007)

wolfblitz1979 said:


> Here is an image of the ATI Catalyst setting 1STRIVE
> 
> - James.



Thanks now our thread is complete.

- John


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