Widescreen monitor

[Hans_Petter 1]

I bought a 24 inch monitor yesterday. Its native resolution is 1920 x 1080. While more recent sims can be set up with a graphics resolution that will fit my screen FU III gets badly distorted. Evidently, the reason is that there are no resolution alternatives that provide widescreen proportions. So, I figured a windowed mode might do. I realize this has been discussed before (FU3 on wide screen monitor---s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d) but it doesn't hurt to look into it again. The thing is, if you buy a monitor these days you're likely to get widescreen proportions while FU III was created in the days 800 x 600. How do we go about setting up a windowed mode that will retain the correct proportions?Hans Petter

[agtim 0]

Hi Hans Petter,Did you try the DDFIX solution, see the pinned enty above. With DDFIX you can set the screen to other resolution than defined in FU3Good LuckAndre

[Hans_Petter 1]

I tried it and it works to some extent. 1920 x 1080 does not work while 1024 x 768 does work. However, the monitor size ratio is still 1.33 with this one while my monitor is 1.78. Result, I lose a lot in panel sharpness as well as losing terrain texture quality. It would be better if ddfix could force a windowed mode that retains the original aspect ratio of 1.33. I know that other older games can be run in windowed mode but it may require native support of windowed mode. If everything fails I can hook up my old monitor before running FU3.

[Hans_Petter 1]

I've spent my sim time today looking into ways to make this work. There are a few applications (loaders, hacks) that are reported to work for most vintage games. The only one that seems to (sort of) work for FU3 is D3DWindower. I managed to make the sim run in an 800 x 600 window but the colors were awful. I might have been able to tweak the configuration if it weren't for the fact that the interface is written in Japanese. All the "English" downloads that I found were actually the same Japanese version as far as I can tell. Since I haven't installed Japanese fonts all of the menus look like hex code. Provided somebody comes across a version in some kind of Western language version this application may seem to be a promising approach.

[juvat 0]

Well,I don't own a wide screen monitor (an old CTXPL7 4:3 ratio crt). I notice in my ATI control panel it supports 2 monitors. Looking at the ports of my Sapphire hd3850agp, it has 2 hdmi ports. Am wondering if Hans' nvidia card also supports 2 monitors natively? Does it have 2 hdmi ports, a dvi port or combination there-of? Hook up both monitors at once and disable one or the other within nvidia control panel depending on which flt sim is running?Another idea is adapt the methods created for the Dark Engine that enables fov and wide screen. Upon reading the posts, the gurus seem to of started out with a tool created for modifying old 4:3 Infinity based games that enable fov and widescreen. Astonishing I think. Here are links to a discussion of the mod for the Dark game engine. Further into the discussion is a link to the tool itself with explanations within it's zip file on what they created.http://www.ttlg.com/...ad.php?t=121240jimb

[Hans_Petter 1]

This looks like something that might work. However, it's designed to patch the main exe of the following games only,SHOCK2.EXETHIEF.EXE THIEF.EXE (Gold) THIEF2.EXE DROMED.EXE (SS2) DROMED.EXE (T1) DROMED.EXE (T2) The program is looking for these and aborts when none are found. I tried to rename Flight3.exe into thief.exe and thief2.exe but there's more to it than changing the name. Thus, we'd need to tailor this program to look for and modify Flight3.exe. It could be as simple as entering Flight3.exe (with a hex editor) and instruct the program to treat it as it would treat Thief or Thief2. Does anyone know if there's a perfect match in terms of rendering engine?

[juvat 0]

This looks like something that might work. However, it's designed to patch the main exe of the following games only,SHOCK2.EXETHIEF.EXE THIEF.EXE (Gold) THIEF2.EXE DROMED.EXE (SS2) DROMED.EXE (T1) DROMED.EXE (T2) The program is looking for these and aborts when none are found. I tried to rename Flight3.exe into thief.exe and thief2.exe but there's more to it than changing the name. Thus, we'd need to tailor this program to look for and modify Flight3.exe. It could be as simple as entering Flight3.exe (with a hex editor) and instruct the program to treat it as it would treat Thief or Thief2. Does anyone know if there's a perfect match in terms of rendering engine?

I opened "DarkWideScreen.tp2" with Crimson Editor and it looks like we would have to edit that file. We'd have to find/determeine the resolution table offsets for Flt3. I've searched about the web on how to do that task but have come up with nothing. I read the TecnicalDocumentation.txt that came with the zip file and it gives a bit more information for the Dark game engine resolution table; but doesn't say how they discovered or determined the values.jimb

[Hans_Petter 1]

Well, if we could set it up to process flight3.exe (add it to the list) we could try the values that are provided for the various Thief versions. These are contemporary EA games and are likely to share similar rendering engines.

I hooked up a secondary monitor yesterday, an older 19 inch monitor that is closer to the 4:3 aspect ratio. When I choose this one as my primary monitor I can use it for running FU3. For other computer actives I use the widescreen monitor as my primary one and use the secondary one to achieve a larger work space whenever several applications are running at the same time. I'd still be very interested in making FU3 look good on a widescreen monitor though, since that's what we'll all end up with eventually.

[gmcc 0]

I know this thread is a bit old now but I've been a reader of this forum for quite a long time and I signed up for an accout today just to share a small discovery I made. I too just purchased a wide screen monitor and was presented with the stretched out version of FU3. I know this will be pretty specific to my hardware I wanted to post it in case it might help someone else.

My NVidia video card has both a VGA and an HDMI output and my monitor has both types of inputs. I found that if I used the VGA in/out then the monitor could be set to a 3 x 4 ratio and the monitor (I guess) will do that ratio and place it in the center of the screen with black bars on the sides which works perfectly for FU3. I used 1280 X 1024 although 1024 X 768 works just as well.

So I now have both the VGA and HDMI in/out connected and I can use the NVidia control panel to select which monitor I want to use (even though it's the same physical monitor) and each remembers its own settings. I found a command line to make the switch which is NVidia specific.

So in case you haven't tried this and have the hardware to do so, it might be worth a shot.
 

[Dave Morgan 68]

Hi.

 

I've been having minor trouble with a 'tall screen' VGA-only HP Compaq LE1711 monitor that my employer was throwing out. The darned thing won't do letterbox or pill-box (the black bars thing) and I can't force an aspect ratio in my Nvidia control panel either as the monitor just stretches everything to fit it's own 1.25:1 aspect ratio (it makes very ugly 2-d panels).

 

So... since my graphics card has VGA and HDMI out, if I'm going to replace the monitor with one for which I must pay... what monitor are you now using?

 

Cheers,

D

[gmcc 0]

 

 

what monitor are you now using?

 

The one I just purchased that works as I noted in my message is an Acer H226HQL bid 21.5-Inch Widescreen LCD Monitor. And because I don't know if all NVidia cards will have the same effect on the monitor, my card is an older GeForce 7300 GS.