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Gaming on normal vs. wide screens

post #1 of 10
12/2/03 at 12:27pm
Thread Starter 
How does gaming work on a wide screen? I have heard some games support wide screens. What does this mean? Does it mean that on a 17"WXGA, I am effectively gaming at 1024x768, but stretched out (proportionally of-course).

Also, any perspectives on the quality of gaming on a 17"WXGA (i.e., Sager 4780) vs. a 15" UXGA (i.e., Sager 5680). While I like the idea of a bigger screen (mobility and batteries are not an issue), I am worried about 1) the loss in resolution on the WXGA and 2) the larger pixel size on the WXGA (even if you game at the same resolution on each computer).

BTW - are any of the following games designed for native widescreen?
- BF1942
- RTCW
- Halo
- MOHAA

If you can't tell, I am a FPS kinda person! Any other FPS designed for native widescreen?

Thanks for your help!

jim
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post #2 of 10
12/2/03 at 12:35pm
I can't speak to gaming experiences on the Sagers, but I can talk about widescreen gaming in general on widescreen notebooks. Basically, if the game was developed for widescreen and is played on a widescreen notebook it will look simply amazing. For example, Madden 2004 can be played widescreen and you can see the outside wingers! Screw 4:3 ratios eheh. Anyways, because widescreen developed games are the minority at this point in time the majority of games are developed for regular ratios; thus when you play most games on a widescreen notebook you get the black bars on the sides of the game which looks like You can stretch the image but that looks even worse. Basically the moral of the story is more games will be playable in widescreen native so it's not a waste to buy a widescreen notebook now...
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post #3 of 10
12/2/03 at 12:42pm
Go to this post:
http://sagerforums.com/showthread.php?t=7298
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post #4 of 10
12/2/03 at 12:55pm
I'm talking about native widescreen resolution running on native widescreen notebooks. Obviously any game can probably be stretched to fit 1440x900 but the game wasn't specifically developed for widescreen. Games DO need to be specifically programmed for NATIVE widescreen playback. Just as I mentioned, take Madden 2004. Of course you can stretch it to fit 1440x900 but that's not true widescreen gameplay. Switching the modes allows you to see your outside receivers where if you merely stretch the game to fill 1440x900 you don't see them.

The key word here for you widescreen n00bs is NATIVE WIDESCREEN RESOLUTION. If you can't choose widescreen in the game settings menu and have to manually edit anything or if the game automatically files the screen that's NOT native. So I'm talking OUT OF THE BOX widescreen and not stretched or modded.
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post #5 of 10
12/2/03 at 1:13pm
Thread Starter 
Element - when you say that you have a black border on the left and right if playing a non-native widescreen game on widescreen, what resolution are you playing the game at?

I can think of two options for resolution:
1) XGA, or 1024 x 768, which would create a top and bottom black border as well (given 900 vertical resolution of WXGA).
2) SXGA, but shrunk from 1280x1024 to 1200x900, which would fill the screen vertically, but not horizontally.

If #2 is the case, is there any quality loss in the "shrinking" process?
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post #6 of 10
12/2/03 at 1:16pm
I should change the statement about most games putting bars on the sides to some games do that cause obviously they all don't...like i said any game can be stretched to fill the screen but that's not native widescreen resolution..
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post #7 of 10
12/2/03 at 1:27pm
Get owned AlkalineX

http://www.widescreengamingforum.com
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post #8 of 10
12/2/03 at 2:05pm
Does anyone run FFXI on a widescreen? How does it run and look?
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post #9 of 10
12/2/03 at 2:07pm
www.widescreengamingforum.com might have some
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post #10 of 10
12/2/03 at 2:39pm
Thread Starter 
It sounds like widescreens handle gaming very well. Still, I am curious about perspectives on is it better to have bigger & lower resolution (and bigger pixels if same resolution) or smaller and higher resolution (and smaller pixels if same resolution).

Thoughts?
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