SHIII wide aspect screen monitor - how2fix?

[94cruiser]

I have purchased a wide screen monitor and I was under assumption the game would shrink the display to 4:3 aspect ratio, however that is not the case.

Anyway to fix this?
I am running a clean install of SHIII on a clean install of XP Pro.
Sure when hitting F12 all the waves look pretty, however the controlls, persiscope, and ships are all stretched out.

Help

[danlisa]

SH3 does not support widescreen display or high rez. However, if you look here - http://www.communitymanuals.com/shii...lay_Resolution you will find the tools & method for changing the display resolution. I suspect that you will still be stuck with squashed dials & munchkins though. You'll need to play with the rez dimensions to find the 'best fit' but it will never be as good as a 4:3 monitor. It's worth a try.

[Kpt. Lehmann]

Danlisa is right, and knows I've gone through that pain as well.

To make the story really short... I sold my brand new 19" widescreen LCD and went with a 19" full screen LCD.

My advice to PC gamers who intend to run games older than one year:

Get a full screen monitor fast. The industry is moving away from them fast.

[nikbear]

what do you mean when you say "full screen" I was going to get a wide screen monitor and now you've really put me off,do you mean old style LCD monitor and keep a wide screen LCD for other applications

[Telgriff]

Strange. I have a 22" Wide Screen LCD and dont have that problem. If you had configuration software for your LCD/Graphics card, maybe run that to see if it will fix the aspect ratio for you. I run GWX SHIII and have played SHIII stock aswell and both fit perfectly on the widescreen format.

[fredbass]

I don't notice any problem with my widescreen LCD. There are two things I have set. One is with the video card which I have the image scaling set to "Scale to Full Panel Size" and the other is with the settings in my monitor which I have the scaling set to "Fill".

[nikbear]

I'm confused so SHIII does work with wide screen monitors,or not,depending,ummmmm,not sure

[Jimbuna]

My 22" LCD Widescreen came this morning.......fingers crossed for unpacking tomorrow :hmm:

[Telgriff]

Originally Posted by nikbear

I'm confused so SHIII does work with wide screen monitors,or not,depending,ummmmm,not sure

It works, at least on some screens. By the looks of it its also dependant on the graphics card. My card had a display setup when I installed it to set the output to 22" Wide screen format. Maybe it depends on the type of output? My card runs through erm...DVI format straight to the screen.

[Kpt. Lehmann]

Originally Posted by Telgriff

It works, at least on some screens. By the looks of it its also dependant on the graphics card. My card had a display setup when I installed it to set the output to 22" Wide screen format. Maybe it depends on the type of output? My card runs through erm...DVI format straight to the screen.

That may well be the case. Some of the options described above simply weren't available to me.

Sounds quite promising given the right setup.

[JScones]

OK, seems a lot of widescreen LCD users are having this problem.

Before going to the trouble of installing the resolution fix (which is a pita for XP SP2 users and may not solve this problem anyway), simply check out your video card settings (via your video card's control panel). nVidia card users (and presumable ATI card users) who have correctly installed their monitor should have the ability to adjust flat panel scaling settings. The usual choices are:

1. Use scaling (default setting)
2. Use fixed aspect scaling
3. Use monitor's in-built scaling (your monitor may have scaling options of its own for you to tinker with)
4. Do not scale

Using #2 or #4 will see SH3 running in 4:3 format. The difference being that #2 will scale the image as large as possible to fill your monitor, but still maintaining a 4:3 ratio.

#1 (and #3 depending on your monitor's scaling settings) will stretch SH3. You'll find that #1 is usually the default setting.

I use #2 with my 22" LCD monitor (with the highest AA and AF to compensate for any up-scale "jaggies") as default for everything and have never experienced visual distortion with any application or game (granted not too many as I've only had this computer for a few weeks) - things that should display widescreen do, and things that shouldn't, don't.

FYI an example of my nVidia settings screen...

[XanderF]

Agreed with JScones comment...for nVidia cards.

Yes, it's true, ATI cards lack one of those options. Amazingly, the most useful one.

"2. Use fixed aspect scaling"

It's just not there. ATI users have been bitching about this for (product) generations, with no progress.

[Jimbuna]

Way to go JS
Just installed my 22" widescreen yesterday and you've confirmed my 'tweaking/adjusting' was correct.
Cheers

[Hitman]

This is a very annoying problem in many "old" games My current LG 1915 TFT runs at 1280x1024 with an aspect ratio of 5:4 instead of the previously common 4:3, and SH3 is stretched vertically Looks really weird. But with SH4 the 5:4 screen mode gives errors in stadimeters ranges , so I have decided to move to a very different style of monitor: I', going to buy a flat TV that can be used for a PC. Why? Because I can get all quality I have in a normal monitor (If it has a good maximum resolution and DVI plug), and I can also with a simple key in the remote control black out the sides of the screen and see it as 4:3, at the expense of losing some size. Plus I can watch TV in the bedroom

I have already taken a look at Samsung models, there are some specifically created as "TV for PCs". I recommend anyone to try that route, as it allows playing games that accept widescreen format and also older games.

[JScones]

Actually, I have a question (one of the rare few) that perhaps someone more up on graphics card settings can help me with.

I currently run SH3 using an nVidia 7950GT card with AF at 16 and AA at 8xS.

Now, my q is, there are many other settings which I can tweak. For example:

Anisotropic mip filter optimization (Off)
Anisotropic sample optimization (Off)
Conformant texture clamp (Hardware)
Extension limit (Off)
Force mipmaps (None)
Gamma correct antialiasing (On)
Hardware acceleration (Single display)
Ignore OpenGL errors (Off)
Negative LOD bias (Clamp)
OpenGL threading (Auto)
Texture filtering (High quality)
Transparency antialiasing (Supersampling)
Trilinear optimization (Off)
Triple buffering (Off)
VSync (Use application settings)

What are the best values for these settings? Performance isn't an issue - I want best graphics quality.

Any help appreciated.