Are wide screen monitors supported?

[flintlock]

ORIGINAL: Txema
...but one modder released an utility that allowed the player to run the game at the desired resolution (even with 16:9 aspect ratio !!!!).

I'm well aware of the the d3d9.dll hack you're referring to. While it allowed you to set widescreen resolutions, it stretched the image to get it there so you still ended up with oval shaped dials, periscope and other distortions. In the end, there's no substitute for official widescreen support designed into the game.

[Marc von Martial]

ORIGINAL: Temple

ORIGINAL: Marc Schwanebeck

Just for the record, you guys do not have to end up with "strechted looks" on your widescreens. You can always set your panel to keep the original aspect ratio (you will have a letterbox left and right then; or top and bottom like you would have on a 4:3 TV running a 16:9 movie) or you can set this for you graphic cards drivers. Consult your monitors / panels manual or the settings of your graphic card drivers.

While not using the full width of your screen you definetly get a better look since the monitor now only has to interpolate in a given aspect ratio.

I do this for all my widescreen panels. Even for my LCD-TV when the respective TV channel is sending a 4:3 signal. Way less artifacting going on.

Sadly my ATI Radeon doesn't support altering the aspect ratio, only Nvidia cards have this in their control options. And my cheap but rather nice KDS LCD 22' monitor also doesn't do aspect ratio reseting. We had a nice long discussion about this on another forum (not Matrix). However, I'm ok with this, I didn't even know it was possible before I got my widescreen.

Hmm, my older Laptop, running with an ATI card, does support this in the driver options.

[flintlock]

ORIGINAL: Marc Schwanebeck
While not using the full width of your screen you definetly get a better look since the monitor now only has to interpolate in a given aspect ratio.

Marc, this certainly is an option open to some. While I concede options are definitely a good thing, it still remains yet another compromise on something which needn't have been required in the first place. Titles like BoA and CotA provide the best middle ground. While neither officially support true widescreen resolutions, they offer more of the map to be viewed while introducing zero distortion. Thus both can be enjoyed at your monitor's native 16:9 widescreen resolution.

Regardless, I'm not here to bash Battlefront. The game looks like a very enjoyable title, and I hope it enjoys much success. I've expressed my disappointment with the lack of widescreen support, and won't keep flogging the poor horse.

[Temple]

ORIGINAL: Marc Schwanebeck

Hmm, my older Laptop, running with an ATI card, does support this in the driver options.

Yes, I should have been more specific. Laptops with ATI graphics do support aspect ratio changes, but the control center for the desktop cards (like mine) do not. This was one of the the issues that were upsetting people in that discussion, since people had been contacting ATI for more than a year asking for the ability for desktops, but for some reason it can't be done.

[Gregor_SSG]

OK, here is the deal on wide screen monitors. Supporting resolutions higher than 1280x1024 would require a major rewrite of the game engine which would take a large amount of programming time. We might find that to achieve everything people want on the display front requires a totally new engine.

We already took a large amount of programming time to rewrite the game elements of the engine (the new AI alone took several months). In essence, we had a choice between better game or more display modes and we chose better game. I think that's the right choice.

To anticipate your next question, what happens now that Battlefront is out? Well, that makes the choice one between new game and more display modes. Being realistic, we're never going to get rich making wargames, so hard economic choices are a fact of life. We will have a look at what can be done but I don't think the hard choices are going to go away in the short term.

Gregor

[FlyingElvis]

Just a small point. Widescreen PC monitors run an aspect ratio of 16:10, not 16:9.

So you want support for resolutions like 1280x800, 1680x1050 or if you are lucky to have a 24"+ widescreen, 1920x1200. [:D]

[flintlock]

ORIGINAL: Gregor_SSG
...so hard economic choices are a fact of life.

Fair enough.

I'm sure you can understand the disappointment from users who would enjoy playing Battlefront at an undistorted native widescreen resolution. That being said, I understand the rationale behind the decision and can appreciate the constraints during the development cycle. It is what it is.

PS. Best of luck with a successful release.

[TheWombat_matrixforum]

Just my two cents: I have had a 20" LCD for a couple of years now. It's native resolution is 1600x1200. Other resolutions look better or worse depending, but nothing is as clear and sharp as native. I really rather hate having to run at lower resolutions, especially for 2D games that don't exactly tax the GPU. Yeah, I bought Battlefront (and it looks like it's well worth the price). And yes, I understand and sympathize with the problems inherent in taking what is at its base a game engine from an earlier era of display technology and updating it within time and budget constraints. But still, it's 2007. Even wargamers, crusty lot of Luddites that many of us are, are pretty much putting CRTs out to pasture. And 15 and 17 inch LCDs are following fast on their heals. Widescreen and higher rez LCDs are emminently affordable at the moment, and getting cheaper.

It's not something that can be changed for this title, but I would seriously encourage SSG and any other developer to build their next engine with full Windows scalability in mind. Does the low rez display of Battlefront have a serious impact on the game? Nope. Does it make it look chunky and somewhat hard on the eyes at times? Yes, even though the graphic design overall is rather good.

[flintlock]

ORIGINAL: FlyingElvis

Widescreen PC monitors run an aspect ratio of 16:10, not 16:9.

Indeed, the vast majority of PC aspect ratios are 16:10. Although not the norm, there are the odd 16:9 aspect ratios around (1280x768 etc).

[Temple]

As I said before, I'm just going to have to sneak out and get that second LCD monitor, a standard 4:3 format one. The prices are dropping quickly. Staples has their own branded 19-inch LCD monitor for about $200. It's almost exactly what I use at work and 19 inches is plenty for Battlefront, methinks.


BTW, I'm not saying you can't play Battlefront stretched a bit, I'm sure I probably could. But I have enough older games that aren't widescreen to allow me to rationalize getting a second monitor. The rest of you will have to make up your own excuses [:D]

[Sarkus]

ORIGINAL: bink

Erik,

Are you looking at 1600x1200 as current share of monitor market, or share of wargame purchases?  I would point out a couple of things:

1.  With widescreen LCDs taking a large share of new purchases (majority of consumer laptops, as well as low cost LCD monitors from 17" up), my opinion is that you are ignoring new users and acquirers of new systems.
2.  I would hazard a guess that wargame buyers have better education and higher incomes than average PC buyers, and would be more likely to have a monitor capable of greater than 1280x1024 resolution (i.e. 1600x1200+ or widescreen).

You need to differentiate between widescreen and higher resolutions. They are not the same. I can see wanting to see widescreen supported.

Also, I think we can all agree that FPS fans are usually on the cutting edge when it comes to hardware. Valve, makers of the Half-Life series, run a hardware survey on their site. Their most recent numbers, based on over a million responses, say that almost 90% of users are using 4:3 monitors and that 88% are running 1280x1024 or less. These numbers support the economic reasons behind the decision not to support higher resolutions at this time.

[Marc von Martial]

ORIGINAL: flintlock

ORIGINAL: Marc Schwanebeck
While not using the full width of your screen you definetly get a better look since the monitor now only has to interpolate in a given aspect ratio.

Marc, this certainly is an option open to some. While I concede options are definitely a good thing, it still remains yet another compromise on something which needn't have been required in the first place. Titles like BoA and CotA provide the best middle ground. While neither officially support true widescreen resolutions, they offer more of the map to be viewed while introducing zero distortion. Thus both can be enjoyed at your monitor's native 16:9 widescreen resolution.

Regardless, I'm not here to bash Battlefront. The game looks like a very enjoyable title, and I hope it enjoys much success. I've expressed my disappointment with the lack of widescreen support, and won't keep flogging the poor horse.

Hi, I'm not denying that. I just gave advise to work around it. I'm a strong advocate of flexible GUI designs. Sometimes it just don't happen. That's is up to the developers.

[Marc von Martial]

ORIGINAL: FlyingElvis

Just a small point. Widescreen PC monitors run an aspect ratio of 16:10, not 16:9.

So you want support for resolutions like 1280x800, 1680x1050 or if you are lucky to have a 24"+ widescreen, 1920x1200. [:D]

Yes, I know. Just referenced to 16:9 (TV) because stating the real aspect ratios of computer monitors would have confused people even more [;)]

[TheWombat_matrixforum]

ORIGINAL: Sarkus

ORIGINAL: bink

Erik,

Are you looking at 1600x1200 as current share of monitor market, or share of wargame purchases?  I would point out a couple of things:

1.  With widescreen LCDs taking a large share of new purchases (majority of consumer laptops, as well as low cost LCD monitors from 17" up), my opinion is that you are ignoring new users and acquirers of new systems.
2.  I would hazard a guess that wargame buyers have better education and higher incomes than average PC buyers, and would be more likely to have a monitor capable of greater than 1280x1024 resolution (i.e. 1600x1200+ or widescreen).

You need to differentiate between widescreen and higher resolutions. They are not the same. I can see wanting to see widescreen supported.

Also, I think we can all agree that FPS fans are usually on the cutting edge when it comes to hardware. Valve, makers of the Half-Life series, run a hardware survey on their site. Their most recent numbers, based on over a million responses, say that almost 90% of users are using 4:3 monitors and that 88% are running 1280x1024 or less. These numbers support the economic reasons behind the decision not to support higher resolutions at this time.

The Valve numbers include a whole slew of CounterStrike (not CS Source) players who have ancient hardware and who have been playing a free game for years; while interesting, I would not call them authoritative for anything else than the population of people playing, well, stuff on Steam. Your point is still valid, to an extent--making a game that relied on resolutions higher than 1280x1024 would not be wise. But that's very very different from supporting higher resolutions. The vast majority of Windows games support a whole panoply of higher resolutions. The issue here is that SSG had an engine they (probably logically and rightfully) had no incentive or in fact means to dump and that engine doesn't support high resolutions. My point is that while we can live with the situation, it's not optimal, and attempts to pass this fault off as a virtue are disingenuous at best. It's not a good thing; it's something we have to live with. That's all.

[bink]

Sankus,

I disagree with your conclusion from the Valve data. I have seen this as well, but the monitor data reflects the desktop resolution, not the monitor resolution. FPS players downscale the resolution to achieve faster frame rates. If you look at the percentage of video cards that would support playable frame rates at 1600x1200, it is only 6.6%. See my extract from the Valve survey below.

Look at the fact that only 6.6% of users are running cutting edge video cards - the majority of new games are built to run optimally on these cards, even though they are used by a small minority of users. Developers don't say "Well, only 6.6% of our customers have the latest video cards, let's use the original Quake engine".

Also, I would say the demographic (i.e. age and income) of FPS vs wargamers is different. Wargamers are older and more affluent.

Bink

Valve Survey

Nvidia GeForce:
7950 1.16%
7900 3.05%

Radeon:
X1800 0.53%
X1900 1.20%
X1950 0.66%

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: bink
Also, I would say the demographic (i.e. age and income) of FPS vs wargamers is different. Wargamers are older and more affluent.

That's probably true, but wargamers tend to spend less of their money overall on system upgrades, from what I've seen. Take our latest 3D Panzer Command title for example. Many saw the minimum requirement of a 64MB non-integrated video card as being a bit too steep in 2006.

Regards,

- Erik

[bink]

Erik,

Ironically, I find one of the relative advantages of wargames are the low system requirements, which means they can run on a laptop, but now most new laptops have widescreen resolutions!!

Bink

[TheWombat_matrixforum]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

ORIGINAL: bink
Also, I would say the demographic (i.e. age and income) of FPS vs wargamers is different. Wargamers are older and more affluent.

That's probably true, but wargamers tend to spend less of their money overall on system upgrades, from what I've seen. Take our latest 3D Panzer Command title for example. Many saw the minimum requirement of a 64MB non-integrated video card as being a bit too steep in 2006.

Regards,

- Erik

Not to continue to beat a horse that has expired, but that sort of video card statistic is much more relevant to 3D graphics; for 2D graphics, even relatively high resolution graphics, pretty much any integrated or separate GPU from the past, oh decade and a half can run a variety of high resolutions without much hassle.

And no one is saying make games that ONLY run in high resolution; they're saying code the things so that they can support high resolution natively. There are reasons Battlefront doesn't comply, but there are very very few compelling reasons for any new projects not to.

[Marc von Martial]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

ORIGINAL: bink
Also, I would say the demographic (i.e. age and income) of FPS vs wargamers is different. Wargamers are older and more affluent.

That's probably true, but wargamers tend to spend less of their money overall on system upgrades, from what I've seen. Take our latest 3D Panzer Command title for example. Many saw the minimum requirement of a 64MB non-integrated video card as being a bit too steep in 2006.

Regards,

- Erik

Time to move on ; seriously the specs of PZC are pretty low for a 3D game [;)]

And the sooner even wargamers get their rigs to a decent level the sooner developers can up their system specs and dedicate more CPU and RAM power to the AI [:D]

[Marc von Martial]

ORIGINAL: bink

Erik,

Ironically, I find one of the relative advantages of wargames are the low system requirements, which means they can run on a laptop, but now most new laptops have widescreen resolutions!!

Bink

And even run decent 3D chips if you don't aim for an "office" machine.