Any Reason Why my Laptop Screen Looks Like Crud?

[Caveman]

I just got a Compaq laptop and have installed MS Train simulator on it. Although the 1 GHz Athlon runs the program much faster than my old 300 MHz PII, my graphics look horrid and blocky -- the detail just isn't there. All things being equal, is an LCD screen not capable of producing detailed images or is it just a function of my video card? Any ideas?

 

[Jeff7]

Possibly the resolution. Laptop screens tend to run best on their native resolution. Also, your laptop might not have a powerful enough video chip to render the graphics at normal resolutions.

 

[Yomicron]

sounds like a resolution problem, run MS Train at your desktop resolution and hope you have the processing power to handle it.

or you could set the resolution to 1/4 res of what you are running at. eg if you are at 1600X1200 run the program at 800X600

 

[corkyg]

LCDs always look crummy at anything but native resolution. That is fixed - a finite number of pixels horizontally and vertically. Anything else is interpolated. Set it at native - usually the max allowed.

 

[ShadowDJ]

I second all of those. New laptops, though, should have a better way of dealing with the lower resolutions, most just look fuzzy now. My OmniBook 900's screen has a spaz attack at anything lower than 800x600 with screen stretch. Is it running at full screen? if it is, try disabling screen stretch in the BIOS. that will make anything at a lower res use the right amount of pixels instead of stretching across the screen. Hope this helps.

 

[fr]

Could it be the program? I know Microsoft Flight Simulator 2002 isn't any eye candy on my PC, even with everything set to high.

 

[Woodchuck2000]

Could be a lack of 3D features on the graphics board. LCD screens are capable of excellent images in games - I use one on my desktop. It's likely to be a problem with the graphics card - make sure you have the latest drivers installed and the latest version of directX

 

[jschuk]

See my reply to your other post. Though it looks like some of my answers have already been discussed here.

 

[Caveman]

Hey all, thanks for the ideas. I'll look into all the suggestions and see what I can do...