Aspect Ratio 16:10

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3dfxer
Posts: 45
Joined: Thu Jul 29, 2010 8:38 am

Aspect Ratio 16:10

Post by 3dfxer »

Hopefully I'm not bothering you. If I do, please simply ignore this post.

While tinkering with nGlide 0.97 I just remembered something that I found missing from nGlide for some time now: forced 16:10 like it's possible to force 4:3 at any resolution.

Why does that make sense, there are plenty of 16:10 resolutions available? That's right, but unfortunately the two that would allow 16:10 with 1:1 pixel mapping on most 16:9 HDTVs aren't. These would be ~1232x768 for 1366x768 panels and 1728x1080 for FullHD panels. Despite nGlide not offering these resolutions, they aren't available in any driver by default too, so easiest thing from a users perspective would be to set nGlides resolution to the displays native resolution and nGlide would do the aspect ratio correction. Should be pretty easy to implement, I would think, since nGlide can handle 4:3 this way already.

Another question one might ask is: why 16:10 on a 16:9 monitor? Quite simple: There are actually games that look quite wrong when using (their proposedly original) 4:3 aspect. One perfect example for this is Screamer 2 (most likely all Screamer games). In 4:3 one can clearly see that some supposedly circular HUD elements and the wheels of the cars aren't circular at all. In 16:10 on the other hand everything looks perfect. The same, btw., is true for quite some DOS games that where made for a 320x200 (16:10!) resolution. Making 320x200 pixel games look correct at 4:3 requires an uneven pixel aspect ratio. Something that, I guess, many artists and programmers didn't care about (or didn't think of) back then.

Bottom line: 16:10 is needed to make some games look right and implementing it as an additional aspect setting would be the easiest way to handle this from a users perspective.
Gamecollector
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Re: Aspect Ratio 16:10

Post by Gamecollector »

16:10 is needed to make some games look right
Err... 320x200 and 640x400 are always 4:3. All glide games are 4:3. There were no others monitors in the glide times.
So why do you need stretched and inproper visuals so badly?
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3dfxer
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Re: Aspect Ratio 16:10

Post by 3dfxer »

Gamecollector wrote: Err... 320x200 and 640x400 are always 4:3. All glide games are 4:3. There were no others monitors in the glide times.
So why do you need stretched and inproper visuals so badly?
Simply try, as I said, for example Screamer 2 and you'll see what I mean. Take a good look at the HUD and the cars wheels (ideally while watching a car from the side) at both 4:3 and 16:10. After you did this, tell me again that the game looks stretched in 16:10. ;)

The opposite is the case. The image is compressed horizontically when displayed in 4:3.

Of course, the game was played on 4:3 monitors back then, but (in this case quite obviously) the devs didn't take some essential considerations into account regarding displaying 320x200 (=32:20=16:10) pixels fullscreen with the correct AR on a 4:3 display. Many devs did this correctly back then, the Screamer devs and many others didn't.

On a sidenote: I'm working in the field of computer graphics for about 15 years now. Believe me, I know a bit or two about aspect ratios.
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ochentay4
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Re: Aspect Ratio 16:10

Post by ochentay4 »

I checked what this guys says and he is right. Game is compressed horizontal when 4:3 and looks fine when 16:10. So it would be good to have 16:10 option.

Here is a pic of 1650x1050 (16:10)
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Matt619
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Joined: Sat Sep 14, 2013 6:30 am

Re: Aspect Ratio 16:10

Post by Matt619 »

Why does that make sense, there are plenty of 16:10 resolutions available? That's right, but unfortunately the two that would allow 16:10 with 1:1 pixel mapping on most 16:9 HDTVs aren't :mrgreen:
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