Some additional AE information...

[moose1999]

How do you guys find those screen options?
Is it by some software you have installed or is by manipulating the buttons on the screen itself?
I can't for the life of me find any "force aspect ratio" option on my SyncMaster 226BW 1680x1050 screen.

[Lützow]

ORIGINAL: briny_norman

How do you guys find those screen options?
Is it by some software you have installed or is by manipulating the buttons on the screen itself?
I can't for the life of me find any "force aspect ratio" option on my SyncMaster 226BW 1680x1050 screen.

Some displays have this option, others do not. You also can look if your graphic driver allows something like 'image scaling'. Unfortunately this still not included in Catalyst for Win 7.

[TalonCG2]

ORIGINAL: briny_norman
How do you guys find those screen options?
or is by manipulating the buttons on the screen itself?
I can't for the life of me find any "force aspect ratio" option on my SyncMaster 226BW 1680x1050 screen.

In my case that's exactly what I wound up doing. I used the buttons on the monitor. In the case of my monitor which is a 23" Hanspree model HS237, I used the menu button and scrolled to image setting. Then clicked on aspect ratio and selected fit. Check the manual for your monitor to see if you have anything similar. If you don't have that, I'm sure you can find info on the website for your monitors manufacturer.

[TalonCG2]

Here's what I see now. Much better than before.

Before (full):


After (fit):


In these two shots you can also see how things are stretched out in full mode.

[Akos Gergely]

Don, this is a contradiction in terms.....full screen with two huge black bars on the sides is not full screen to me; it's full height in the best case.


BTW people consistently misunderstand me and Talon. As mjk428 pointed out this is all about viewable map area and utilising the big screens to full potential. The flashy part of the graphics is fairly OK for this type of game and we agree that gameplay is the most important. So it's not about graphics quality but about how that given graphics quality can be viewed.

jwilkerson: unless you run it in full height with black bars on the sides instead of full screen as you claim I highly doubt you can avoid distortion on a TFT screen with a non 4:3 aspect ratio....IMHO that's technically not possible due to the mismatch of physical and rendered pixels.
Would you be able to post a screenshot please?

[mjk428]

ORIGINAL: FAsea


We can come up with countless good things but in real life priorities are necessary and dependent on the type of game. I rate the priority for higher resolutions low comparative to everything else that has been improved in AE and according to the type of game it is. (compared to historical accuracy, play balance, and AI for instance)

Sure, different strokes for different folks.

Since I can't play the game without looking at a monitor I consider the video hardware presentation important.

OTOH, play balance is completely unimportant to me. Make the game a reasonably accurate representation of the Pacific War and then set the victory conditions accordingly. For those that want a balanced game there are plenty of fictional options to choose from. Red vs Blue, with one base each, and the same number/type of units for each side.

Different strokes for different folks.

[myros]

I play on a native 1680x1050 resolution widescreen monitor, I have to say playing witp you get used to it very quickly. I dont even notice any stretching and in fact I find the small text a bit easier to read at a glance as the spacing is a little wider.
 
I'd say by now Id find a 'normal' aspect screen wierd to play witp with.

[Barneyrubb90]

My only issue was switching from my widescreen on my desktop to my laptop when I was on the road; that was the only time I would even remember the difference.

[bradfordkay]

That first screenshot is what I see when I play WITP on my laptop, but it has never really bothered me. As Barney mentioned above, the only time I notice is when I switch back and forth between the two computers. 

[jwilkerson]

ORIGINAL: csatahajos

jwilkerson: unless you run it in full height with black bars on the sides instead of full screen as you claim I highly doubt you can avoid distortion on a TFT screen with a non 4:3 aspect ratio....IMHO that's technically not possible due to the mismatch of physical and rendered pixels.
Would you be able to post a screenshot please?

I don't run with black bars - yuck!

But, unfornately my "screenshot process" ... ctrl-printscreen-paint ... "adjusts" the "distortion" a bit ... and hence doesn't totally represent the situation as I see it on the screen. I won't say there is zero distortion at the angstrom/super-string level ... but certainly nothing I would call "substantial".

Note that a "hex" in WITP(and AE) terms is 42 "pixels" high and 38 "pixels" wide ... so the default "pixel" is already "distorted" a bit ... and on non-widescreen monitors ... the hexes will show as "taller and thiner" than on widescreen monitors. But at least in my case - I do experience even a noticible difference - and I do have two laptops that I use all the time - that are very different in terms of their physical screen aspect ratio - even though both are 1920x1200.

And finally, I don't play with the hexes turned on anyway - so this probably reduces my "sensitivity" to the issue a bit. But I still think there must be something else different beteween what I am seeing and what a few others are seeing. I'll spend a little (not much) more time on this when I get home and see if I can post something that looks like what I see.

[Akos Gergely]

Thanks, I appreciate this. I have Full HD (so pretty close to 1920X1200) and I do play without hexes usually, but in real full screen the game is badly stretched with flat iron like ship side arts etc. I won't say it can not be recognside but for me it is way too much distortion. Even the text looks funny, though thanks to the magnification it's readable. My visual experience is quite colse to the first pic in Talon's #184 post, (for me it's without hexes).

[Reg]

It's interesting how the same topics keep coming up.

Check out this link....

BTR on a Big Monitor

Joe: as your monitor is 1920x1200, it doesn't distort as much as a 1920x1080 monitor (see comparison in the link above) so that might explain the confusion in the previous posts.