[Axem]

Because people are passionate about how to best present this game to newcomers. There's nothing wrong with debate like that, but lets still try and keep all comments as constructive as possible.

[NGTM-1R]

Why is this still being argued about?

A poll majority does not always reflect a good idea, though in this case I'm sympathetic to it. Though not the to suggestion we should be putting stuff in the pillar boxes.

[AdmiralRalwood]

I'm one of the ones who voted for pillarboxing for default (for reasons I think Lykurgos88 enumerated quite well already), but I am also dead-set against any crap getting put into the pillarboxes.

[chief1983]

If that _were_ to happen, it would probably only be on debug builds.

[swashmebuckle]

So my suggestion would be that we have the game naturally default to pillarboxed because most people prefer that, then we let mods override to stretched if they want to (So if I were a noob that didn't set any flags I would play Wings of Dawn stretched and JAD pillarboxed as their creators preferred), and then we have mega-overriding launcher flags to force stretch-o-vision or force pillarbox for the people who just can't look at menus any other way.

It would also be nice if the mod option to override to stretched could detect if the user's aspect ratio was >3:1 and not do the stretch in that case. I think this would allow everyone to present their work in the way they think is best while allowing the user to override either way if they don't like the mod creator's decision.

[mjn.mixael]

So please stop trying to convince me to change my preference with *FACTS*.

Please stop being a martyr when absolutely no one is threatening your personal *PREFERENCES*.

Yay hostility. I shall use my nerd powers to move on. How about we go with the vote, move on, and work on modern interface modability? Because screw being involved in lame hostile threads.

[zookeeper]

It would also be nice if the mod option to override to stretched could detect if the user's aspect ratio was >3:1 and not do the stretch in that case.

Could(n't) that be simplified to just "never stretch across multiple screens"? I can't think of any situation where anyone would want that to happen, and I doubt people have screens with aspect ratios anywhere near 3:1 anyway.

[swashmebuckle]

Yeah that sounds good to me. Is this a proposal that seems reasonable to everyone and can actually be executed?

-Default is pillarboxed
-Mod.tbl option (or something like that) to revert to stretched (except for on multi monitor setups)
-Launcher flags to override in either direction

[Lykurgos88]

How about we go with the vote, move on, and work on modern interface modability? Because screw being involved in lame hostile threads.

Agreed 

[niffiwan]

Yeah that sounds good to me. Is this a proposal that seems reasonable to everyone and can actually be executed?

-Default is pillarboxed
-Mod.tbl option (or something like that) to revert to stretched (except for on multi monitor setups)
-Launcher flags to override in either direction

It should be doable, although it may be a bit more complicated than it seems at first glance because I'm pretty sure that command line options (aka launcher flags) are processed before mod.tbl options are. And the absence of a launcher flag wouldn't be able to override anything so you might need either two params (e.g. -force_stretch & -force_nostretch), or switch the current flag to accept a parameter (e.g. -stretch_menus no and -stretch_menus yes). In other words we need 3 states rather than the 2 currently provided.

1) use default (default can be set in mod.tbl with multi-monitor exclusion if stretch is the default)
2) force yes
3) force no

My only other concern is karajorma's 1st point:

1) People are going to run the game, get the pillarboxes and think they set the game up in the wrong resolution.

That's about the only thing the current proposal doesn't cover. While we have had a number of instances of this occurring within the community when this change was introduced, I believe that's more of a result of past expectations rather than 1st impressions. So I don't think that this will be a problem for new users.  *BUT*, I'd like to hear other peoples opinions on this as well and have a healthy debate if there are contrary opinions.

[Mongoose]

Another thing to keep in mind is that whatever is planned will (as I understand it) just be a stopgap measure anyway, because at some point we'll have true widescreen mainhalls anyway, which will render the whole thing moot.  It seems like it'd be wasted effort to pour too much complexity into such a system.

[deathspeed]

Although not addressed here, I think the blurriness of the low-resolution opening cutscenes and mainhall interface blown up to modern resolutions is going to do more to make new people think they have the wrong resolution set than whether the mainhall is stretched or pillarboxed. 

Although stretching bothers me when watching tv/movies because of everyone's fat heads, the mainhall stretch does not bother me at all.  For instance, in FS2, you only see one person whose face is slightly stretched (and even then it is only when you hover over him and he turns to you), but most of the mechanical bits look OK stretched.  I wouldn't even notice without seeing side-by-side.

[Droid803]

I don't see how pillarboxing would give the impression of running in the wrong resolution.
The fact that the window it's running in is the correct resolution should give the correct resolution right away.

Fullscreen is so last decade.

(and since people cannot into jokes, I'm just going to make it clear that I'm saying this in jest)