4:3 aspect images on a 16:10 aspect screen

[Cyber Akuma]

I solved the "problem" with my 16:9 aspect 1080p monitor, by finding the option to display 4:3 aspect ratios at 4:3 instead of stretched to 16:9.

But now I have another problem.

My laptop's screen is designed to run at the odd resolution of 1280 x 800, which from what I understand is the nonstandard aspect of 16:10 (8:5?)

One thing I want to know is about playing games, especially older ones or freeware games, with 4:3 aspect resolutions.

Many of my older games only have 4:3 aspect resolutions, and I have run into some freeware games designed for 4:3 aspect but force fullscreen as well. Considering the image completely fills my screen anyway, I can only assume that they are stretching the image.

I really hate it when an image or video is displayed at the incorrect aspect and squished/stretched, I would much rather have blank/black areas of the screen than to have the image stretched.

Is there anything I can do about this? Any feature built into any OS that allows you to force display an image at 4:3 aspect on a screen that isn't 4:3 aspect? Or is there any software I can use to do this?

[ReDFoX2200]

In most cases this should be an option that comes with software for your display driver.

Some monitors offer this option in the monitor OS itself.

what is the brand of your laptop graphics card?

Edit: For me with Nvidia Quadro NVS 140M

Nvidia Control Panel -> Change flat panel scaling -> Use NVIDIA scaling with fixed aspect ratio

should be there for all nvidia cards

Edited November 22, 2009 by redfox2200

[Cyber Akuma]

In most cases this should be an option that comes with software for your display driver.

Some monitors offer this option in the monitor OS itself.

what is the brand of your laptop graphics card?

ATI, Windows 7 installed the drivers itself, I don't see any option for this kinda thing, or any ATI icon in my systemtray.

[John.D]

You may have to install the ATI drivers for the videocard before you see the icon in the taskbar / so you can configure the settings. The drivers Win7 installs are just generic drivers. It wont have all the options the ATI drivers has.

[HyBry]

fyi 16:10 has been standard widescreen resolution on PC for years ;) 16:9 is a tv thing and new to PCs

and many games (specially older ones) store settings in a text file that can be edited to support your required resolution. Google ofr wide screen support for each game... most of them have it one way or another.

and as said above, install ati drivers from ATI site as the ones that come with win7 are not very good ;)

[giantpotato]

Install the ATI drivers and the Catalyst Control Center. Unless your graphics chip is really old there should be the option to "maintain aspect ratio" in the control center.

[Andre S. Veteran]

In several cases, the "Maintain aspect ratio" option in the CCC does the trick (it works for me in Starcraft, Myst III at least), but often the best solution is to "hack" the game to go widescreen. See http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/wiki/...x.php/Main_Page .