Custom Resolutions - Widescreen?
 

Hi! I'm new to these forums, but have been a die hard combat flight sim enthusiast, dabbling with great other military sims like Silent Hunter and way back in the day 688(i).

I have an Eee PC which is a subcompact laptop with modest hardware specs:

7" LCD
800x480 resolution (emulation for 800x600 and 1024x768)
Intel Celeron M 900MHz (Dotham core)
Intel GMA 900 (128MB)

This thing has been amazing actually playing older and lower spec games. The only problem is that the native resolution is 800x480 widescreen. I'd like to be able to run the game at that resolution if at all possible. Or even 640x480 - is that possible? Widescreen would be preferable but 640x480 would work fine too.

Thanks.

I do not think there is a way to display in a other than preset display resolution.

I wish there was a way to get it to go to 1680x1050, or heck.. let me get it to go to a WINDOW so I could play it in without the visual distortion. I have not been successful in either endeavor.

Hmmm, I noticed the "windowed" option next to the resolution is grayed out. I went into the "DangerousWaters.ini" file and changed the value for "RunInWindow" to "Yes" from "No" and it worked in a window! But it is still limited to 800x600, 1024x768, or 1280x1024.

To have it run in a window you need to set your Desktop Color to 16Bit Colordepth, then the window button wont be greyed out anymore. If you change your colordepth back you will get an error message when starting Dw in windowed mode.

DW does not support widescreen resolution.
If you want to play on a widescreen display without the visual distortion then you have to use your video card driver ability to scale the game to a 4:3 resolution (800x600, 1024x768, 1600x1200) putting black bars on the left and right side of the screen.

Ok, time to learn something new.

I have an Nvidia 7600GS. How do I accomplish this?

You have to go into the nvidia forceware control panel, and find an option called scaling. You can choose different kinds of scaling, what you are after is the 4:3 fullscreen aspect ratio scaling.
By setting this the game is automatically scaled in fullscreen keeping the 4:3 aspect ratio correct (this means that in dw options panel you have to choose a 4:3 resolution, so 800x600, 1024x768 or 1600x1200 bit not 1280x1024).

But otherwise .. does it run on EEE with no problems ?

Thank you. I take it you are talking the scaling command in the custom resolutions tab? advanced settings on the very bottom?

I could not make it work. I will play with it and see what I can figure out.

Here is an in INTERESTING note. This option exists in Window XP but NOT in the Vista drivers. I have two machines at my desk with a KVM to share the monitors and such.

Main machine is running Vista 32 bit SP1 with a Nvidia 7600gs 512 meg ram card in it.

Backup is a Dell 4550 running XP Pro SP3 with a Nvidia 6200 128 Meg card in it.

Both have latest Nvdia WHQL drivers installed on them.

Very interesting...... but then again, that is why I have two seperate machines in the first place.

I just fired an e-mail off to Nvidia asking why this option is not included in the Vista drivers. Lets see if they ever answer me

Bubblehead Nuke,

Unfortunately Nvidia is screwing around with the options since several months. They take out options without reason from the Vista version, and then put them back in some time later. The point being is that the two versions (xp and vista) are not feature equivalent. :nope:

Edit : here is thread that discusses the problem : http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33920187
you can also visiti : http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?act=idx

I've had the nvidia scaling option for over a year now, what version of drivers are you using?

I'm quite likely buying a new widescreen monitor soon, I'm guessing there are no cfg files hidden away that allows you to muck around with the aspect ratio?

None whatsoever.
Every other resolution that is not 4:3 just distorts the images more or less.
The only viable solution is for the graphics card or the monitor to enforce 4:3 even though that means that a part of your screen will display only black bars.

I just updated to the beta version of the Nvidia drivers for 32bit Vista. Version 7.15.11.7512. Scaling is not in this one either.

Am I looking at the right place in the Nvidia Control Panel?

Its strange for a simulation to have such limited resolutions. DW is only a few years old, and widescreen monitors were very much on the increase. Seems a shame to leave something so simple, yet so important out.