widescreen - to be or not to be ???????

[whisperclaw]

Gentleman,

I am about to purchase a 20" widescreen monitor and I wish to know definitively if CMBB and CMAK can handle the resolution which is 1680x1050.

Will the game give me the opportunity to use this resolution like it did previously with my 1600x1200 resolution ?

If yes, will the picture appear properly in this resolution i.e round wheels etc etc.

It would be greatly appreciated if anyone can help me on this matter since I have been playing these wonderful games for many moons now and do not wish to stop - no way .

But I also wish to move ahead and enjoy these games in the glory of widescreen - can you help folks.

Thanks

Whisp

[MouseBert]

Originally posted by whisperclaw:

Gentleman,

I am about to purchase a 20" widescreen monitor and I wish to know definitively if CMBB and CMAK can handle the resolution which is 1680x1050.

Will the game give me the opportunity to use this resolution like it did previously with my 1600x1200 resolution ?

If yes, will the picture appear properly in this resolution i.e round wheels etc etc.

It would be greatly appreciated if anyone can help me on this matter since I have been playing these wonderful games for many moons now and do not wish to stop - no way .

But I also wish to move ahead and enjoy these games in the glory of widescreen - can you help folks.

Thanks

Whisp

It works fine on my 20 inch screen on my 4+ year old Mac, and that is under OS 9. I am not sure the max res I got (1600 x 1024) since I have not played it in a while, but it looks great.

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by whisperclaw:

I am about to purchase a 20" widescreen monitor and I wish to know definitively if CMBB and CMAK can handle the resolution which is 1680x1050.

Will the game give me the opportunity to use this resolution like it did previously with my 1600x1200 resolution ?

No, unfortunately all CM first engine games have a hardcoded limit of 1600x1200, for each dimension separately. For no reason but it's there so the above will not work.

[Schrullenhaft]

As Redwolf pointed out, 1600x1200 is the maximum resolution, which is a bit higher in the vertical than the 1600x1050 of your widescreen. To my knowledge the current CM series only utilizes a few resolutions, typically 800x600, 1024x768, 1152x864, 1280x1024 and 1600x1200. There may also be an odd resolution or two between 1024x758 and 1280x1024 (other than the listed 1152x864).

So I don't think that you'll specifically get a 1600x1050 resolution out of CM. The closest match would end up being 1280x1024 for CM. With an LCD monitor, that may not end up being the "optimum" resolution (the 'native' 1600x1050), but it should still be serviceable. However I don't know how your particular monitor will handle it a non-native resolution, either cutting-off some of the edges to maintain the aspect ration or stretch the entire image horizontally to fit the screen.

[Pirx]

I just bought a new widescreen laptop (native resolution 1680 by 1050). I can confirm, as the others have said, that CM does not support that resolution. By default the picture was stretched horizontally to fill the screen. This widened everyting by 10%. This was just enough to make it look slightly strange, but liveable.

I found this other post (attached below) and learned how to set my computer graphic card (Nvidia) to "fixed aspect ratio scaling", which scales up the picture without stretching. I also had a centered option, which displays the lower resolution picture in the center without any scaling.

"Thanks! Found it under the nVidia tab right where you suggested. 3 options are available for display of lower resolutions:

"Display adapter scaling" [stretched to fill screen]

"Centered output" [stretched to screen aspect ratio but centered, with border all around]

"Fixed aspect ratio scaling" [bingo! with that setting CMAK fills the screen top to bottom with black side borders and no distortion.]

Thanks for the pointer - My ACs have round wheels again!"