Playing games in widescreen on a 4:3 display?

S

Sparrow_69

Gawd
Joined
Jan 20, 2004
Messages
776
Is it possible to play a game in widescreen mode on a 4:3 display? I've been trying to get this to work for a while now, but without any success. HL2 recognizes my display as 4:3 and therefore no widescreen res. are available. I also tried setting the resolution manually in the .cfg file of D3, but it won't accept it either. In the Nvidia display properties, there is an option to add a custom resolution. However, when I try to add 1280x720 (the native res of my lcd is 1280x1024), I get an error saying it cannot add it. I only got widescreen to somewhat work once, which is when I had my lcd and 16:9 HDTV connected to the pc at the same time. Only then were widescreen res. available to me in games and win. However, on my lcd, the image was stretched vertically to fill the whole screen. I would want to try the games out with the black bars on top and below the image. Is this possible?
 
I've added widescreen resolutions using Powerstrip on my 4:3 LCD. Works fine.

The other thing you can do is edit nv4_disp.inf to add resolutions, and then reinstall the drivers. nvidia has some "compressed modes" documentation on their site if you need help creating custom resolutions.
 
Creating the res. in powerstrip works fine, but the res is still stretched vertically to fill the entire screen. How do I keep it from stretching the res?
 
Sparrow_69 said:
Creating the res. in powerstrip works fine, but the res is still stretched vertically to fill the entire screen. How do I keep it from stretching the res?
Click to expand...
Select "Fixed aspect ratio scaling" in the nvidia display properties.
 
Teukka76 said:
Just one question: why?
Click to expand...
I did it for 2 reasons: 1) FOV is wider in some games and 2) a lower widescreen resolution allows turning up AA/AF.

Don't knock it until you try it. :p
 
Ok, imagine a screen the same width but taller (4:3) would you want to play games in widescreen on that? :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top