I can get any game to display with fixed aspect ratio

[gamepad]

Does anyone know why?

I have an 8800gts 640mb on Windows XP with 169.21 and a Dell E207WFP (native res 1680x1050). Does anyone know how to get WC3 to display in a 4:3 ratio??

Edit: "Do not scale" just makes a smaller stretched image... 1280x1024 is a full screen stretched image...

 

[gamepad]

I switched to forceware 96.89 and it works perfectly. Fuck you nvidia for making me use a driver that's years old. I'm never buying an nvidia product ever again.

 

[Lithan]

Why not just force wc3 to run 1680x1050?

run regedit

HKEY_CURRENT_USER
software
blizzard
wc3

Set resheight to (decimal) 1050
and reswidth to (decimal) 1680


You're on a svga monitor right?

Im pretty sure nvidia doesn't support card-driven scaling except through dvi. One of many reasons not to buy analog LCD's.

edit: hmm.. google says it's digital.

Im on a 2007fpw and have zero issues scaling WC3 with the most recent drivers. Gofigure. (edit: I see now, if you adjust with ingame it screws it up). My guess is WC3 tries to force what it thinks is right over the nvidia settings, and nvidia old drivers said drivers were the boss but new ones let the game be the boss... and cause the game's old and doesnt support widescreen (officially) it cant recognize aspect differences.

 

[gamepad]

Originally posted by: Lithan
Why not just force wc3 to run 1680x1050?

run regedit

HKEY_CURRENT_USER
software
blizzard
wc3

Set resheight to (decimal) 1050
and reswidth to (decimal) 1680


You're on a svga monitor right?

Im pretty sure nvidia doesn't support card-driven scaling except through dvi. One of many reasons not to buy analog LCD's.

edit: hmm.. google says it's digital.

Im on a 2007fpw and have zero issues scaling WC3 with the most recent drivers. Gofigure. (edit: I see now, if you adjust with ingame it screws it up). My guess is WC3 tries to force what it thinks is right over the nvidia settings, and nvidia old drivers said drivers were the boss but new ones let the game be the boss... and cause the game's old and doesnt support widescreen (officially) it cant recognize aspect differences.

The forced resolution doesn't increase the field of vision, so it's still stretched.

It works fine with this old driver. I don't think Nvidia is willing to ever fix what they broke. This is a known issue for 8 series on windows XP.

 

[Continuity28]

169.21 is not so great.

Try out a newer (174.xx) beta and see if the problem is resolved. I'm not saying it will be, but it's worth a try. I use 174.74

 

[gamepad]

Originally posted by: Continuity28
169.21 is not so great.

Try out a newer (174.xx) beta and see if the problem is resolved. I'm not saying it will be, but it's worth a try. I use 174.74

Tried it; didn't fix it. Also my system kept crashing.

 

[Lithan]

Yeah. I'm having HUGE lag spikes in HGL (goes from 60fps to <1fps for several seconds while doing absolutely nothing) on 174 beta's. Im about to roll back to the 169 officials to make sure it's drivers and not the latest HGL patches.

This is what I don't get:
Minor problem
Exclusive to WC3, a game which doesnt support widescreen
Fixed in 5 seconds with a simple reg hack
Response: OMGWTF NVIDIA SUCKS!

 

[gamepad]

Originally posted by: Lithan
Yeah. I'm having HUGE lag spikes in HGL (goes from 60fps to <1fps for several seconds while doing absolutely nothing) on 174 beta's. Im about to roll back to the 169 officials to make sure it's drivers and not the latest HGL patches.

This is what I don't get:
Minor problem
Exclusive to WC3, a game which doesnt support widescreen
Fixed in 5 seconds with a simple reg hack
Response: OMGWTF NVIDIA SUCKS!

The problem is nvidia not wc3. It should just be able to display with a fixed aspect ratio for everything. The 5 second reg hack doesn't work, it just displays a higher resolution stretched image. And yes, Nvidia sucks for this.

 

[Lithan]

... that's how Warcraft 3 displays all resolutions. WC3 doesn't give you a larger FOV with higher res. It never has.

And no, the image isn't stretched even slightly. It's perfectly clear.


http://s268.photobucket.com/al...urrent=Stretched-1.jpg

 

[gamepad]

Originally posted by: Lithan
... that's how Warcraft 3 displays all resolutions. WC3 doesn't give you a larger FOV with higher res. It never has.

And no, the image isn't stretched even slightly. It's perfectly clear.


http://s268.photobucket.com/al...urrent=Stretched-1.jpg

OK, it's probably not a big deal that the driver is unable to put render war3 in 4:3 (although it really bugs me). What is a big deal is that the other games that I can use a fixed aspect ratio on, require me to use this overscan utility, which requires constant rebooting of my computer (basically everytime I want to load a game). Drivers created over a year ago stopped supporting fixed aspect ratio natively and they don't appear to have even bothered to fix it.

 

[Lithan]

Huh? I've never had to reboot my comp, and I run all kinds of old games in forced reso's. Nvidia fixed aspect has not once caused any kind of glitch or problem for me.

 

[gamepad]

Originally posted by: Lithan
Huh? I've never had to reboot my comp, and I run all kinds of old games in forced reso's. Nvidia fixed aspect has not once caused any kind of glitch or problem for me.

Do you have an 8 series card?

I have read on other forums that this only happens for Geforce 8 cards.

 

[Lithan]

Yeah, 8800gts, before it an 8800gt which had its share of problems, but scaling was not one of them.

 

[Piuc2020]

I think I understand what his problem is, it's not Warcraft 3 running on a 4:3 resolution (it looks like **** on a 16:10 resolution anyways, black borders are the best for this game) it's that the "NVIDIA Scaling with Fixed Aspect Ratio" option is not working on his system, I have this problem too but on Vista and a 8800GT, it's really rare but your problem with XP and a G80 card is much more widespread, I'd help you if I still had the link but they are not very hard to find, just google around and you'll find the fix.

 

[Lithan]

I'm running xp... and that SS is how it looks @ 1680x1050. It looks like a game running 1680x1050.

 

[gamepad]

Found this thread: http://forums.anandtech.com/me...id=31&threadid=2074628

This problem has not been fixed in any of their drivers (at least for me). Their only solution is to enable overscan compensation which gets reset during an in-game cinematic or watching any video. It requires many resets for me.

Lithan, do you use a CRT or does your monitor have built in scaling? That's odd that it works for you.

 

[Zap]

gamepad, I know exactly what you're talking about, and it has caused me headaches too. I'm using driver version 169.21 and I can play WC3 on a widescreen monitor (Soyo 24" and Dell E207WFP like yours). Have used 8800GT and 8800GTS G92. I'll try to describe how to set it.

In NVIDIA Control Panel, click on "Change flat panel scaling" under the "Display" section. Select "Use NVIDIA scaling with fixed-aspect ratio." Voila - that should fix it. If it doesn't...

In NVIDIA Control Panel, click on "Manage custom resolutions" under the "Display" section. If "Treat as HDTV" is unchecked, try checkmarking it. If it is already checkmarked, try unchecking it. THEN, try to change the scaling to what I mentioned above.

I've also found out that it dosen't work with certain monitors (but should with your Dell). For instance I had a 22" (or 21.6") Hanns-G monitor that I could not get fixed aspect ratio working, but the same system works fine with two different Dell monitors (E207WFP and E2005WFP).

The other thing is that Nvidia seems to occasionally "break" this, because seems like certain driver versions didn't work with this setting even if the setting was there.

At least Nvidia had it as an option, working or not. ATI just barely got it into their latest drivers.

 

[Lithan]

Originally posted by: gamepad
Found this thread: http://forums.anandtech.com/me...id=31&threadid=2074628

This problem has not been fixed in any of their drivers (at least for me). Their only solution is to enable overscan compensation which gets reset during an in-game cinematic or watching any video. It requires many resets for me.

Lithan, do you use a CRT or does your monitor have built in scaling? That's odd that it works for you.

edit: 2005fpw not 2007fpw.
I have a 2005fpw and I use Nvidia's scaling.

And smearing the game is 100% absolutely based on the game's inability to scale. Driver has nothing to do with it. WC3 can scale. Sacred cant (and therefore must be run @ fixed aspect ratio). The simple fact that wc3 has the capability to support keyed in reso in the registration indicates that it won't smear when properly configured (within a degree of reason). Something's wrong with your config if it smears @ 1680x1050.


I have absolutely everything nvidia does set to defaults by drivers, except I leave it on fixed aspect ratio for Sacred and a few other games (has no effect on anything I run @ 1680 of course).

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: Lithan
And smearing the game is 100% absolutely based on the game's inability to scale. Driver has nothing to do with it. WC3 can scale.

When you manually key in the widescreen resolution for WC3, if there was a circle displayed by the game would it then become an oval? If so, then I believe that is not what the OP wanted. For instance, Flatout2 natively supports widescreens, but the cars end up looking... well... wide. Sure, it is displaying 1-1 pixels on the screen, but the aspect ratio of the picture is still wrong even if everything is picture perfect clear and sharp.

 

[Jax Omen]

Lithan, you're not listening to them AT ALL.

Warcraft 3 scales perfectly to 16:10 resolutions. BUT THE GAME IS STILL STRETCHED. It's just native-resolution stretched. All the peons are fat, it is HORRIBLE. It took me a year to find a way to hack Kitty's driver settings to force aspect-ratio-scaling on her 7600GS, it's a major driver issue and I don't anticipate it ever being fixed.



On the other hand, on XP with 174.74 I have Nvidia aspect ratio scaling working perfectly on my 8800GTS... and on Vista it won't save my selection if I set that. Fortunately, I learned from Kitty's experience and bought a monitor that offers internal scaling. **** Nvidia's scaling.



OP: http://www.widescreengamingfor...pic.php?t=11474#105900

that's what I used to hack Kitty's drivers so it'd run 1200x900 with black bars on her 1440x900 monitor. Maybe it'll help you? Just make sure you use the drivers that offered scaling where you had black bars but it was still stretched. That's the symptom Kitty had where this fixed it.

 

[Lithan]

Jax look at my screenshot. It's not stretched. And it isn't even USING scaling of ANY sort. The game is set to 1680x1050 with absolutely zero scaling involved.

http://s268.photobucket.com/al...urrent=Stretched-1.jpg


That is a screenshot of wc3 @ 1680x1050. The ONLY thing not default in that picture is the reg edit to support that reso.

 

[Lithan]

Originally posted by: Zap

Originally posted by: Lithan
And smearing the game is 100% absolutely based on the game's inability to scale. Driver has nothing to do with it. WC3 can scale.

When you manually key in the widescreen resolution for WC3, if there was a circle displayed by the game would it then become an oval? If so, then I believe that is not what the OP wanted. For instance, Flatout2 natively supports widescreens, but the cars end up looking... well... wide. Sure, it is displaying 1-1 pixels on the screen, but the aspect ratio of the picture is still wrong even if everything is picture perfect clear and sharp.

No man, The circle stays a circle.

http://s268.photobucket.com/al...urrent=Stretched-1.jpg


That is a screenshot of wc3 @ 1680x1050. The ONLY thing not default in that picture is the reg edit to support that reso.

 

[Jax Omen]

Yeah, that IS stretched. You've obviously never played War3 at 4:3 aspect ratio. Or you're so used to that widescreen setting that you don't notice it's faults.

WARCRAFT THREE DOES NOT SUPPORT WIDESCREEN AT ALL. The registry hack you refer to merely forces the game to render at your widescreen monitor's native resolution. The game engine is still rendering a 4:3 ratio image to a 16:10 monitor, resulting in stretching, fat characters, rectangles instead of squares, etc. There's no scaling "blur", what you're looking for, because it is rendering at 1680x1050. now scale the game to 1400x1050 (4:3 at your native res) and see how the game is supposed to look. Your screenshot is WRONG.

 

[Lithan]

Are you kidding? Your complaint is that the gui looks fat? No offense, but pick your battles better. The game looks better @ 1680x1050 than it does at 1400x1050. The rendering quality is what matters. If you want to maintain the gui perspective, run it in a damn window. Hey guess what, you don't need scaling for that.

 

[Jax Omen]

XD, it's not just the gui. The gui is just the easiest to point out. Everything is fat.

I'm not at home, but when I get home I'll make a pair of comparison screenshots. One at 1920x1200 (my native res), one at 1600x1200 (native 4:3) and show you how the game is supposed to freaking look.