Anyone know how to set 1280x960 in Call of Duty?

[VIAN]

This resolution is not available in the graphics menu.

 

[Nebor]

Er... Dunno. I'm a 1280x1024 man myself. Non-standard resolutions rule.

 

[VIAN]

that is a standard resolution

 

[kylebisme]

i don't have cod but i'd imagine it is just like any other q3 engine game. try:

/r_mode -1
/r_customwidth 1280
/r_customhight 960
/vid_restart

 

[VIAN]

/r_mode -1 wasn't a good command and the rest didnt work

 

[Viper96720]

open your config.cfg in the main folder with wordpad. Use these
seta r_customheight "960"
seta r_customwidth "1280"
seta r_mode "-1"
seta r_customaspect "1"

Those should work since I'm using 1280X768

 

[Pete]

FYI, 12x9 will offer the same geometry as 12x10 in a 3D game. Maybe fixed-pitch text will change, but ovals won't turn into circles by changing res.

 

[kylebisme]

i hate to argue with you Pete, and maybe cod does things differently but most games simply don't accommodate such things. to illustrate the issue i made an animated gif of rtcw with 1280x960 and then a shot at 1280x1024 which i shrunk to 1280x960 to simulate how it is displayed on a 4:3 aspect ratio monitor, check it out here.

 

[Excelsior]

Originally posted by: TheSnowman
i hate to argue with you Pete, and maybe cod does things differently but most games simply don't accommodate such things. to illustrate the issue i made an animated gif of rtcw with 1280x960 and then a shot at 1280x1024 which i shrunk to 1280x960 to simulate how it is displayed on a 4:3 aspect ratio monitor, check it out here.

Maybe it's cause I havent had much sleep lately and mabey I am completely wrong, but how is that a valid example. You just simply stretched the image in a graphics editing program. Personally, I haven't ever noticed a difference like that in-game between the two resolutions.

 

[kylebisme]

lol ya, i'll put my money on the lack of sleep.

i didn't strech anything, as i explained above i simply shrunk the 5:4 aspect ratio image to show how it looks when displayed at a 4:3 aspect ratio as on a standard crt monitor.

 

[rbV5]

Originally posted by: TheSnowman
lol ya, i'll put my money on the lack of sleep.

i didn't strech anything, as i explained above i simply shrunk the 5:4 aspect ratio image to show how it looks when displayed at a 4:3 aspect ratio as on a standard crt monitor.

Actually Pete is correct. The aspect ratio of the viewing window is independant of the 3D objects in the scene. Take any 3D graphics program with a freely resizable window, no matter what aspect ratio you make the viewing window...the object doesn't change shape..round spheres stay round.

 

[kylebisme]

ok rbV5, i am going to give you the benifit of the doubt and assume that you suffering from lack of sleep as well.

what you explained, while true, is compleatly irrelevant to the topic at hand. don't play with the window aspect ratio of your 3d app, play with the resolution in windows and you will see that spheres do not stay round when diverging from the aspect ratio of your monitor; or fire up a game like rtcw and see for yourself there.

or just look at the .gif i posted above which shows the issue very clearly (disregarding the breathing movment of the hand and the flickering light anyway).

 

[VIAN]

the commands work great viper thanks.

My monitor is 4:3, but the optimal resolution is 1280x1024, which is 5:4. How can that be? When I use that resolution it displays as 4:3. Is that the same thing that Pete is talking about?

 

[kylebisme]

why do they tell you a 5:4 resolution is optimal for a 4:3 monitor? shear ignorance of the subject is my best guess. that is the same reason i atribute for microsoft calling 60hz optimal even when the monitor supports flicker free refresh rates.

as for what Pete was talking about, his claim was that games render 3d at 4:3 aspect ratio regardless of the aspect ratio of the resolution they are run at; which i assure you is not correct, at least for the great many of games i am familiar with.

 

[Zephyr106]

 

[BFG10K]

/r_mode -1 wasn't a good command and the rest didnt work

Snowman's commands are exactly the same as the ones I use.

The aspect ratio of the viewing window is independant of the 3D objects in the scene.

That's true but the issue is with 2D objects that are not bilinearly interpolated (such as text, HUD icons, etc). Such objects will be distorted on a non-standard aspect ratio.

that is the same reason i atribute for microsoft calling 60hz optimal even when the monitor supports flicker free refresh rates.

Microsoft calls it optimal because it's the safest option as it can't damage any monitor.

 

[Pete]

Well, that's odd, Snowman. Strangely enough, CoD just seems to maintain the same dpi between the two resolutions, rather than render the same image at a higher dpi with 12x10. Note how the HUD text stays the same, another oddity. I guess different games may handle unique resolution request differently. Maybe CoD accepts custom resolutions by cropping and stretching a standard res, rather than just rendering everything at the custom res? If you can you benchmark CoD, does it show a difference in performance between 12x9 and 12x10? Or maybe CoD just expects fixed-pitch LCDs, not variable-pitch CRTs?

I thought that in 3D geometry is independent of resolution. A circle at 12x9 should still be round at 12x10, just with greater vertical resolution. Apparently that's not the case with CoD.

BTW, it's 4:3, not 3:4. Maybe that's why the picture is weird? Seriously, can you check if 16x10 is similarly (vertically) stretched?

VIAN, from what I've read most monitor/video card makers just stuck with 12x10 as "standard" for 4:3 CRTs because that res happened to make the most of standard memory sizes. 12x10 fits perfectly into 1.25MB, whereas 12x9 uses ~1.17MB. Apparently programmers went for maximal efficiency over correct geometry in the age of shortening years to two digits (the Y2K problem). Seems reasonable, I guess.

 

[kylebisme]

na, Pete ya got me wrong there a few times. first off i don't have cod so i used rtcw, but i'd imagine cod is the same as is every other q3 based game i have played and most other games as well. also, it isn't maintataining the same dpi, it is useing the dpi of the resolution requested. i'll throw together two more .gif files to illustrate the situation more clearly.

 

[Pete]

I thought it looked like RtCW, but for some reason I glanced at your post one more time, saw CoD, and replaced all my mentions to the latter.

And I'm using incorrect terminology again. I didn't mean dpi--forget I ever said that. I just found it interesting that instead of 12x9 showing the same amount of info as 12x10, it shows less. I've been assuming otherwise. I'd appreciate the extra pics, as I may have been misleading some people. I wouldn't have thought that 12x9 would show a part of 12x10's image. I'd like to see if 16x10 is a horizontal slice of 16x12.

I'm not sure how this implementation of non-standard resolutions works in officially sanctioned competitions, though. Is it fair for one person to be able to see more than another? Curiouser and curiouser....

 

[kylebisme]

first off, hopefuly this makes everything perfectly clear for everyone:

gif of orignal images rendered at at 1280x768, 1280x960 and 1280x1024

gif of images rendered at 1280x768, 1280x960 and 1280x1024 with the first and the last resized to fit a 4:3 aspect ratio as the images would show up on a standard crt monitor

-----------------------------------------------------------

Pete, sorry i didn't want to mess with 1600x1200 and 1600x1024 as i only have a small bit of webspace to use and i felt the comparison of all three 1280x resolutions would be more descriptive. also, oddly my current setup doesn't want to give me 1600x1024 full screen and instead just runs the game at the top of the screen with an extra 176 pixels of desktop showing at the bottom. however, in that view the aspect ratio was proper so obviously it was simply a horizontal slice of 1600x1200 and would have been stretched vertically if running fullscreen. as for the fairness of such things in competition, i'd say that if they restrict people from altering fov then they should place equal importance on running a standard 4:3 resolution, as 5:4 gives an extra 6-2/3% of vertical visibility.

 

[VIAN]

Weird.

I'm just gonna run it at 12x10 without stretching the screen which leaves me with maybe about 1/10th of unused screen. Stuff like this puts a plus in LCDs.

 

[JonnyBlaze]

thats weird. i never noticed the difference before in games. i see it tho.

i like 1280x960 better anyways cause my monitor will do 100hz compared to 85hz at 1280x1024.


JB

 

[g3pro]

wait, so what you're saying is 1280x1024 is the same as 1280x960 is the same as 1280x600 is the same as 1280x480???

come on, guys, get realistic.

 

[JonnyBlaze]

thats not what hes saying. 1280x1024 shows more than x960 and so on.

JB

 

[kylebisme]

actually my point was that a 5:4 aspect ratio resolution (like 1280x1024) makes things look short and fat, and a 5:3 aspect ratio resolution (like 1280x768) makes everything look tall and skinny; when viewed on a 4:3 aspect ratio screen that is. however, that is a simply a side effect of the fact that you are displaying a smaller or larger vertical fov.