When using viewsize < 100 most quake clients that I tried (proquake, joequake, fodquake and others) display a brownish texture in the background. However, ezquake (and darkplaces too) just display black bars. This is quite ugly. Is there some cvar or command to restore the old behaviour? (I am not the only one finds this uncomfortable).

I don't really think they added a cvar to restore the brownish texture, sorry...

Anyway, why do you want to play with a vs inferior to 100? That's quite weird to play like that...

Well, you can do nice things with the hud: (careful, its q3 pic http://nantaises.free.fr/pics/jibo.jpg

I don't use it atm because I play on a CRT but when using the samsung 120hz monitor it feels sometimes too big so I often use viewsize < 100 there. I decided to make this thread because it has annoyed me in the past and today I saw someone else complain about it on #qwrookie.

You can define a picture and size for hud items group1-9. So with some effort you can cover the black area with those.

i think its about backtitle.png file in ezquake\gfx , or other gfx in mod/gamedir , try delete it . original file is in gfx.wad and you can export it to png ; or if there is more than one gfx.wad try replace them with original.
orginal background have better contrast and its good for eyes

Oh, yea, I see then, reducing the viewsize can be useful for some people having a too huge screen...

Well, due to boredom, I'll try that solution hal.frost said above, and report if it does really something.

EDIT : nope, I don't think it's that particular file.

Though I am convinced that this issue can be worked around with lots of time and qw/ezquake knowledge, I have to confess that I'll rather see the original behaviour restored. Someone knows the reason why it was changed in the first place?

You could check what you get in software build becouse it can be refresh issue in gl.
then try :
-gl_clear 0
-scr_newhud_clear "0"
it can be also someother refresh settings ( ztrick or tripplebuffer proccesing)

gl_clear "1" is needed to make the hud working with viewsize < 100. Otherwise all number stick and overwrite each other.
Nevertheless I tried and it didn't help.

heh i misstyped that filename its BACKTILE , anyawy what you get in software build ? i also noticed it could be affected by gl_texturemode2d , will check that later .

heres original file http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/706/backtile.png/ but not shure what clients do first - load from gfx.wad or from pics in ezquake\gfx

ezquake.x11 displays the correct background.

I unzipped base.pk3, put it away, removed box_mm.png and box_mm2.png from gfx/ and now it displays the old brown background.

Actually, that is all wrong. Seems to be impossible to get the brown background without using the "old" HUD (scr_newhud 0 or 2).