[Kie99]

On XP, 1680*1050 resolution, how will FS2Open run on that, are there any problems I should be aware of?  If yes, would it be possible to set the game to run in 4:3?  Also, how would Retail run on it?  I've never so much as seen a widescreen monitor before, never mind played FS2 on one.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

As long as you set 1024x768 retail should work.  Open will work in 4x3 up and all recent 3.6.10 builds should support just about any resolution. 

[haloboy100]

Yeh, you can even play FSO in 16:9 resolution (1280X720 or 1920X1080) if you're outputting to a HD TV.

[Herra Tohtori]

4:3 would be possible to run on a window.

Cropped fullscreen 4:3 on a widescreen monitor might be a worthwhile feature as long as there are still some widescreen issues (I'm not sure we've seen the last of them yet). The sun parallax bug is gone, the elliptical planets seem to be fix'd in latest builds, but there might still be some things creeping in, waiting to be noticed...

[Kie99]

So what happens if I try to play in proper widescreen on FSO?

[Herra Tohtori]

So what happens if I try to play in proper widescreen on FSO?

It works, marvellously.

...at least, on the latest nightly builds. Some HUD elements have some stretching apparent, but all in all it works reasonably well. Perhaps the only thing that's really telling is some head animations, which are a bit disproportionate, but otherwise it's cool.

[Rodo]

It works fine for me also, just make sure your screen resolution is the same as the one you've got on the game.

[CaptJosh]

Which HUD elements? I haven't exactly noticed anything.

[Nuke]

i just bought a laptop with a 1280*800 screen. its probibly gonna suck and get in the way of my script deving, assuming its not fixed yet.

[haloboy100]

Which HUD elements? I haven't exactly noticed anything.

Me neither.

[Herra Tohtori]

On most elements, it doesn't really matter, but with careful examination it can still be seen... What I was referring to is that the aspect ratio of the head ani's change.

Some might not care about that (and most of the time I pay no attention to it either) but it's there nevertheless.

[haloboy100]

On most elements, it doesn't really matter, but with careful examination it can still be seen... What I was referring to is that the aspect ratio of the head ani's change.

Some might not care about that (and most of the time I pay no attention to it either) but it's there nevertheless.

Come to think of it, I do notice some stretching on the center reticule around the speed gauge...

[portej05]

I'm not sure if it's related to this, but I've noticed some font stretching going on - the background of the font is slightly different to the background that it is placed on, and so when the characters don't line up exactly, some of the background shows through.

[MP-Ryan]

I've found the stretching on widescreen to be bad enough that I just set the FSO resolution to 1280x960 and disable monitor scaling.

[Admiral LSD]

I have FSO set to 1280x800 on the MacBook and 1680x1050 on the XP machine and I can't say I notice anything glaring with respect to aspect ratio scaling on either of them.

[Echelon9]

Close inspection will show planets on the skybox get skewed - starting out circular in the centre of your screen, then elliptical when you move such that the planet approaches the edge of your widescreen.

[Herra Tohtori]

Close inspection will show planets on the skybox get skewed - starting out circular in the centre of your screen, then elliptical when you move such that the planet approaches the edge of your widescreen.

That's caused because of the wide default field of view setting, not because of the aspect ratio of the screen. It happens on retail too, on 4:3 resolution. The default FOV value is 0.75, which apparently translates to almost exactly 60 degrees field of view. By using command line value of -fov 0.45 or 0.55, the fish-eye effect on the sides of the widescreen display is reduced significantly (and capital ships and all ships in general start looking much more imposing and hugemungous).