Can you letterbox a 4K display for super-wide aspect ratio?

[KingFatty]

My calculations show that if you use a horizontal strip of 800 pixels tall, on a 4K display, you will achieve an aspect ratio equal to three 16:10 displays being used in surround/eyefinity, but with *NO BEZELS YEAH!*. This would appear as a letterboxed middle strip across the entire width of the display, with two black bars of 680 pixels on the top and bottom. So 3840x800 active pixels to display the game, and two 3840x680 black bars.

If you just split the screen into thirds, then you could have a strip of 720 pixels tall for display, equivalent aspect ratio of three 16:9 displays being used in surround/eyefinity with no bezels.

You gotta think, if you have a 50" display or bigger, this would look very similar to using three 720p displays in surround mode, but with zero bezel issues, perfect color matching, everything awesome.

Please tell me this is possible?!

 

[EliteRetard]

If no bezels is the goal me thinks 3x projectors is the way to go.

 

[KingFatty]

Has anyone with a 4K display ever tried to run a resolution different than 16:9?

What does the 4K display do, how does it handle a different aspect ratio - does it letterbox, does it stretch, or can you choose how it handles that? Can Nvidia let you customize this - I remember doing it with my last Nvidia card to letterbox a 4:3 display into a 16:9 viewable portion with black boxes on top and bottom.

 

[Deathray2K]

There's no reason that shouldn't work. Depending on the specific monitor, the scaler might do different things with different resolutions. But if you tell the GPU to handle scaling it should work just fine regardless, just as it would on any monitor (albeit at a lower resolution). I would suspect though that it wouldn't actually look very good, since it would still be significantly smaller than three monitors in a row, and have a compromised vertical resolution.

 

[KingFatty]

Hmm, good question: how big of a screen size of a 4K display would be needed to achieve pixels big enough to make the 800 pixel strip on the 4K correspond to approximately the vertical size of a 20 inch 16:9 display?

Just doing some dumb approximation, if you have a 60 inch display, then one-third of the pixels (720) would be about like a 20 inch display right? So if you go with 800 pixels on a 60 inch 4K display, that might be like using three 20 inch displays in surround?

 

[Schmide]

You can make a projection matrix for any view you want on a 3d scene, what games allow is a different story. A 3840x800 projection would be trivial. It is more complicated to produce 3 views rather than 1. (but not not by much) You're basically scaling and transforming the projection matrix for the 2 side views.

 

[Deathray2K]

Yeah, 60" would be close. Of course you'd still have a bit of a problem of fairly extreme angles to the sides if you're looking at it as close as you would a 20" display. You can fix that by turning the outside monitors towards you with a 3 monitor setup. A curved display would fix this too. Of course either of those "fixes" distorts the video output, so the video card would have to know to compensate for this (I don't think this is possible without building it into the game currently, but I could be wrong).

In short, yeah a 60" 4K display would be awesome. But if you've got that, why throw away two thirds of it?

 

[KingFatty]

I'm thinking more of doing this through the video card driver. I recall that for my older display, NVidia let me create a "custom resolution" that was a smaller vertical number of pixels than the display, but the same horizontal. This resulting in the intended "letterboxed" effect, and the Nvidia driver was smart enough to inform the software that my display was simply that reduced resolution.

So ideally I could have my video card driver treat the 4K display as a single 3840x800 display, and all my games would detect the resolution that way. Sort of how eyefinity works when it clumps displays together, but instead you are chopping off the top and bottom of your existing display to get a wider aspect ratio.

I mean, I'm hoping you can vary this and maybe go for 3840x1080 or something, sort of like the aspect ratio of triple screens in portrait mode?

The question is what happens when you define a custom resolution on a 4K display. I think the video card would just go insane for this, because the 4K display is treated already as 2 sub displays? Maybe this will be impossible until the 4K displays mature into a single driver thing, where it's treated as one big display and not 2 sub displays?

 

[KingFatty]

In short, yeah a 60" 4K display would be awesome. But if you've got that, why throw away two thirds of it?

To get the wider aspect ratio. If you have the two thirds there, your aspect ratio shrinks for most games, so you miss out on all the stuff going on to the sides. This of course depends if the game is vert+ or horiz+ and how it treats wide aspects, but usually it's to your benefit to go wide aspect, not tall.

 

[tolis626]

To get the wider aspect ratio. If you have the two thirds there, your aspect ratio shrinks for most games, so you miss out on all the stuff going on to the sides. This of course depends if the game is vert+ or horiz+ and how it treats wide aspects, but usually it's to your benefit to go wide aspect, not tall.

Why would you want to spend an outrageous amount of money on a huge 4K TV and then use 1/3 of it?There are displays out there that are 21:9 or bigger aspect ratio.I don't know what their resolutions are,but I bet you can expect them to follow in the ultra high resolution thing.Buy such a screen and you'll be happy.Plus,16:9 is already wide enough to not miss much from what's going on.

That said,it should be possible to force the GPU to render in a specific resolution (3840x720?) and make sure it scales properly by deactivating any scaling mechanisms the TV WILL have,not may have.However,I think 4K TVs are treated as two separate monitors by GPUs now.I don't really know how this would affect you,but keep that in mind.

Still,such a waste of money what you're planning there...Unless it's just theoretical.

 

[KingFatty]

No, I do not plan to get a 4K solely for this purpose.

This is more like buying an SUV and asking if you can also put snow tires on it. Here, being able to emulate eyefinity/surround resolutions is like being able to put snow tires on it. So I would get a 4K display because it's a 4K display.

However, if I know this is also possible, then I would get a slightly bigger 4K display than usual, knowing I could also do this. Like getting an SUV with slightly higher suspension to accommodate snow tires better?

 

[tolis626]

No, I do not plan to get a 4K solely for this purpose.

This is more like buying an SUV and asking if you can also put snow tires on it. Here, being able to emulate eyefinity/surround resolutions is like being able to put snow tires on it. So I would get a 4K display because it's a 4K display.

However, if I know this is also possible, then I would get a slightly bigger 4K display than usual, knowing I could also do this. Like getting an SUV with slightly higher suspension to accommodate snow tires better?

Hmm...Car analogies never disappoint!
The way you put it,I could agree.Although I still think that you can't enjoy a 4K display in all its glory like that.I would,however,wait a bit if I were you.Not only for the prices to drop,but also for better solutions to drive these resolutions (Single cable something).Oh,and in your case,I would definitely get one of the curved ones.A flat panel would be...trouble.