[alisbin]

hey mates,
i might be switching to a widescreen monitor and i wanted to check to make sure that FSO won't go ballistic on me when i do. do i need to put in special command line codes? will it not work properly at all?
(monitor will be 1920 x 1200 if that matters)

[Echelon9]

I answered a very similar question on the Beyond the Red Line (which is a mod for FS2_Open) forums recently about widescreen support. I've copied it below:

The FS2_Open engine (which is behind BtRL) supports pretty much any resolution you throw at it.

However, there was a slight alignment issue with widescreen resolutions and target boxes when the target was located on the extremity of the screen; which has since been fixed after the last BtRL patch. It doesn't affect gameplay, just looks a bit weird.

Expect to see it resolved when BtRL moves to 3.6.10 of the engine.

If you get a build of FS2_Open from the Recent Builds sub-board, this alignment bug (and many others) will be fixed. The resolution is set in the config files.

[MP-Ryan]

Do remember though that the interface art was designed for a 4:3 aspect ratio, so it will appear oddly stretched on a 16:10 monitor.  The general solution is to turn off monitor scaling and use a 4:3 resolution.

[chief1983]

Would you believe that I've never seen a widescreen monitor that lets you disable scaling?  Or any lcd for that matter.  Like if I want 1024x768 to only fill up a portion of a 1280x1024 monitor, so it's not stretching it across any pixels, I've never seen a LCD that can do that.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Wonder if that is why I can use wide screen in 3.6.9 without a problem on one PC but not another. 

[Mongoose]

Would you believe that I've never seen a widescreen monitor that lets you disable scaling?  Or any lcd for that matter.  Like if I want 1024x768 to only fill up a portion of a 1280x1024 monitor, so it's not stretching it across any pixels, I've never seen a LCD that can do that.

I've never had an LCD monitor to try it out myself, but from what I understand, it's usually accomplished by tooling around in your video drivers' control panel.

[chief1983]

That makes more sense, although I don't recall seeing it in nvidia's recently.  Haven't looked though either.

[Mehrpack]

hi,
yes a lot of lcd monitor doesnt have a option to chance the scaling and thats bad.
how lower the price of the monitor, so greater is the possible that there is not option to chance the scaling.
but there are monitors there have option for the scaling. the most of this monitors have only as option full ration or aspect ratio, but some has 1:1 pixelmapping too.
i have a monitor with all 3 options. some of the hp, hyundai, ezio, samsung and LG monitor has scaling too, for example: hyundai w241d (16:10, aspect, 1:1) and HP w2207h (16:10, aspect).
i would prefer a monitor with option for scaling, because the scaling over the driver do in some cases not work and so you lost picture qualtiy if you have a card they didnt strong enough for the nativ resoultion.
and 4:3/5:4 resoultion so doesnt look strange.

but back to topic: i has tried last time a 16:10 resoultion, work so far good, but the images of the planets wasnt round, they form was like a egg, and the nebulas look a bit strange in the form too.
the rest looks fine and shooting work 
i mean if you can in the moment live with egg planets, play with a 16:10 resoultion .

Mehrpack

[alisbin]

i'm getting a very high end screen (i'm upgrading to a high end desktop replacement laptop, sager 9262, screen is a WUXGA LCD at 1920 x 1200) so i bet i will able to scale it to 4:3. all it'll mean is black bars on the sides right?
hmm, also, i'm gonna have vista on this thing, will that affect it?

[chief1983]

Ah.  Nvidia's control panel seems to have something like that under the Manage Custom Resolutions options, if you create one by hand it looks like I could define a 1600x1200 desktop inside a 1920x1200 active pixel display.  Pretty neat, I'll have to try that sometime.