Hi,

There are some myths around widescreen resolutions since LCD panels are more popular among gamers these days. I got simple question: should one see more on the left/right side of the screen if he uses 16:10 widescreen resolution instead of regular 4:3 ? Many people claim so and for a moment I also thought so but then I made some testings...

For example: 4:3 is 800x600 and 16:10 is 960x600. Since 960 is 160 pixels of width longer than 800 I though there should be similiar effect as when you increase fov and in the result you should see more on the left/right side of the screen. But I made some checkings and it showed otherwise:

800x600: http://img457.imageshack.us/img457/5827/ezquake104yt4.jpg (con 400x300)
960x600: http://img157.imageshack.us/img157/689/ezquake103ay6.jpg (con 480x300)

As you can see there is nothing more on the left/right at 960x600 than at 800x600.

So am I right when I say:
1. If you use fullscreen 800x600 at 16:10 panel your view will get streched making your game to look 'fat'. It's possible to disable that and have unstreched game but with two black strips on the right/left side.
2. If you use fullscreen 960x600 at 4:3 panel your view will get squeezed making your game to look 'thin'. You could add two black strips on the top/bottom to make it look normal again.
3. If you use fullscreen 960x600 at 16:10 panel or 800x600 at 4:3 panel it should be the same and looking natural, no streching/squeezing needed.

?

If I'm not right please put me on the right track :E.

You are not right. If the image is geometry/fov corrected you will get to see more from the sides and this can be done with ezQuake's fov and conwidth/height. So:

What did I do there? First I needed to correct the aspect ratio for 16:10 resolution. It can be done via ezQuake's vid_conwidth and vid_conheight. 640/400 = 16:10 where 640*480 = 4:3. Now you have correct geometry but you are lacking information vertically. You can fix that by correcting your fov according to this formula (meant for changing fov from 4:3 to 16:10):

2 * atan((48/40) * tan(fov/2))


Example images: (save and compare or open in two browser windows 4:3 and 16:10

OK, so you HAVE TO change FOV. But how do you calculate new proper FOV? What's the formula?

Added the formula for 4:3 to 16:10.

You also HAVE TO change the conwidth/height otherwise it won't work. for 16:10 you can use 640*400 or if you want to have height at 480 then it's 768*480

Your formula can't be right...

2 * atan((48/40) * tan(fov/2))

fov=110

2 * atan(1.2 * tan(55)) = 2 * atan(1.2 * 1.4281480067421144) = 2 * atan(1.7137776080905371) = 66.84495

?

OK it finally works:




But I had to use INVTAN in the formula instead of ATAN, which should be the same... weird.

2 * invtan(1.7137776080905371) = 119.47233997126645796960024830604

And that's my new fov. Thx man .

One more thing... shouldn't I also change sensitivity or m_pitch (m_yaw) ?

this guide should be added to the qw wiki

Absolutely not. Changing resolution/aspect ratio(=conwidth/height)/fov should not have any effect on your input.

but why fov 110 is a standart ? it is calculated too ? i use 112.5 but have no idea why exacly ... ;K
i mean if fov 90 was designed for 4:3 on 16:10 we have 100,3888578154696119874410203614 (useing Renzo's formula)

I were using fov 110 in 800x600 (4:3) so I recalculated new fov for 960x600 (8:5) by taking 110 as base fov.

Standard fov (by standard I mean 'out of the box') is 90 for 4:3 I think, so yes, standard fov for 8:5 is around 100.

rather than requiring ppl to manually calculate, should have something like r_aspectratio 1 (a'la doom3/quake4) that adds the additional multiplier to fov internally

and perhaps a con_size_multiplier so people use like 0.5 to use half of their resolution as their consize, or whatever.

oldman and empezar: great ideas

Just remember that you need to consider both conwidth/height values and fov when playing around with qw-settings. There are only so many games that has two different things to be changed for aspect ratio correcting (I know only qw, check widescreengamingforum for other if you think you can find any).

yeah definatly! i would be happy to gather any information and wiki it up if it could be of any use.
but im drunk as fuck rigtht now just pm me on irc or whatever tomorow and i will be of as much help as i can!

I think most people expect to see more to the sides when they change resolution to wider aspect ratio. It would be better if fov relates to vertical resolution rather than horizontal.

"r_fov_vertical 1"?

uh.. why setting 1650x1050 doesnt work? no choice in the video menu and 'ezquake-gl.exe -widht 1650 -height 1050' doesnt work either.
the result is a 1400x1050.

using nvidia 7900gs with win xp, ez 1.8. stable(1917) on a 22" screen(samsung 225bw).

theres no 1650x1050, its 1680x1050.

Not very good idea. :: incorrect, it's a great idea to give people the change to correct geometry on their 16:10 monitors
These all are one big HACK. :: and noone cares, so?

Aspect ratio must changed not only by con_width/con_height values but by some options in client.
Like gl_aspect_ratio "4:3"
or gl_aspect_ratio "16:10". :: Preferrably.

If one man like conwidth 320, its not good to force him to change it to 360. :: incorrect. 4:3 320/240 looks EXACTLY THE SAME as 16:10 360/240 geometry wise. Get it?

Plus if u change conwidth and conheight, it will be some "artefacts" while drawing graphics. :: incorrect. only "artefact" you will get is the corrected geometry.

// Edited by Renzo

thanks (blush), but still the same result...1400x1050

vid_mode -1
vid_customwidth 1680
vid_customheight 1050
vid_restart
cfg_save

I also do not recognize 1400x1050 - its 4:3 not 16:10 more like 1440x900

well anyway check here

thank you, i will try this stuff when i get back home

BR,
Oldgeezer

you're right, it's better we have no guide and help everyone wanting to do this individually instead.

we need to waste time, cause we have too much of it.

Why there is nothing about vid_customwidth and vid_customheight?

It worked very well for me - running QW in 1680x1050, conwidth 420, conheight 262 (1/4 of resolution). Leaves a few artifacts on the letters in the console (every 30th or so letter becomes one pixel wider than the others), and the overall FPS dropped quite considerably (from perhaps 900 to ~300). Not a problem though, since I capped it on 154 FPS and then FINALLY managed to make QW smooth by setting cl_nolerp 1 (a bit off topic, but I'm so happy right now I could cry).

Now I feel like starting a new thread just to whine over flatscreens in games. Even though I have a very fast one (2 ms), there is noticable ghosting. It's playable, but I no longer need my DX9-compatible graphics card to generate motion blur... :/

Edit: The FOV went from 110 to 119.47 if anyone is using the same and doesn't feel like doing the math.

I don't know, but now there is.

This was posted on quakesrc.org some time ago: http://www.quakesrc.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=5787
to correct the aspect ratio of the FOV based on the screen aspect ratio... that way fov 90 on a 16:10 monitor would resemble the same as a 4:3 monitor.