Planescape Torment on Widescreen Monitor?

[Herbert West]

So I joined the bandwagon and aquired a shiny new 16:9 22" 1680x1050 TFT monitor. I decided to give Torment a try on it and fuck, there's a problem.

If set to fulscreen in it streches 640x480 to the whole screen and as you may have guessed, looks like shit.
If set to windowed mode I get a window the size of a CD case, ARGH!!!

There's a widescreen and hi-res hack for infinity engine games but it doesn't install for me, and anyway, it's beta so Torment crashes when entering zones smaller than the screen itself.

What can I do? Yesterday I put my trusty old 17" CRT back on my desk but its liek not nexst-gen...

Is there any way to reasonably play PST on a hi-res widescreen?

 

[Lumpy]

http://www.gibberlings3.net/widescreen/

 

[Gwendo]

BTW, 168x1050 is for 16:10 monitors.

Anyway, you can configure your display options so that the computer will respect the aspect ratio, not stretching the image.


Edit: Lumpy, what does that patch do? Increase the view area?

 

[Herbert West]

http://www.gibberlings3.net/widescreen/

That's the mod that doesn't install for me, as I mendtioned above

BTW, 168x1050 is for 16:10 monitors.

ima noob, right you are

And I seem to have found the solution- forcing 800x640 through the graphic card controll pannel and running the game in windowed mode works just fine. Thanks for your help Lumpy, Gwendo. Back to playing i guess!

 

[MountainWest]

Check if you can change the aspect in the menu of your monitor. I can change between full screen, format and "off" (which makes older games the size of stamps) on the fly on my widescreen monitor. I guess "format"is what you're after since it stretches the game in its natural ratio.

 

[Herbert West]

Edit: Lumpy, what does that patch do? Increase the view area?

During setup that didn't complete succesfuly, it asked me for X and Y resolutions. It seems to scale the resolution up, without streching. In other words, it should increase the viewing area. Shame that, it love would enjoy torment in widescreeen galore [graphixwhore!1]

 

[Jasede]

why do you idiots buy shitty huge monitors no one can look at without sitting 30 yards away from the screen anyway

viva 13"

 

[CrimsonAngel]

My 20W 1680*1050 is made of PURE AWESOME...

You are only unhappy because you can't Handel some thing this big.

 

[Jasede]

damn right. my roommate has a huge-ass laptop with 21" and you can't see shit without sitting on the other end of the room. fuck big screens, the eyes can only focus on a rather small area anyway.

 

[Lesifoere]

why do you idiots buy shitty huge monitors no one can look at without sitting 30 yards away from the screen anyway

viva 13"

I wonder that too. Big screens are nice, sure, but after a certain point it's not very practical.

*stares at own 17'' laptop screen*

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Mine is 19", it's not wide but its HUGE and I have to sit back sometimes to take it all in. Like Jasede, my eyes can only focus on a tiny area at one time.

Oh, you guys are talking about monitors?

 

[Herbert West]

damn right. my roommate has a huge-ass laptop with 21" and you can't see shit without sitting on the other end of the room. fuck big screens, the eyes can only focus on a rather small area anyway.

Indeed, the focus is restricted to a relatively small area, however human eyes have wide field of vision, so widescreen provides very good gaming experience, especially in first person games. Also, while playing a strategy game, I'm able to see more of the battlefield. And I'm sitting close to the screen. However for watching movies it's better to sit further away.

 

[roshan]

http://www.gibberlings3.net/widescreen/

That's the mod that doesn't install for me, as I mendtioned above

BTW, 168x1050 is for 16:10 monitors.

ima noob, right you are

And I seem to have found the solution- forcing 800x640 through the graphic card controll pannel and running the game in windowed mode works just fine. Thanks for your help Lumpy, Gwendo. Back to playing i guess!

If you have a decent video card, you should have a setting to maintain aspect ratio for full screen programs. Just go to display properties, click settings then advanced, and mess around there.

 

[Herbert West]

Done that, thanks for the tip, however forcing the card to maintain the aspect ratio in 1680x1050 had no results, while this setting in 848x480 made the picture have huge black band on the bottom and the mouse cursor was behaving strangely.
Anyway, desktop on 848x480 and PST windowed results in the window filling the whole height and that solves the problem

 

[obediah]

damn right. my roommate has a huge-ass laptop with 21" and you can't see shit without sitting on the other end of the room. fuck big screens, the eyes can only focus on a rather small area anyway.

You'd like my new laptop, 15.4" and 1920x1200. It's awsumsauce for work, and no one more than 3' a way has any clue what I'm doing even if they look right at the monitor.

 

[Noceur]

why do you idiots buy shitty huge monitors no one can look at without sitting 30 yards away from the screen anyway

viva 13"

I wonder that too. Big screens are nice, sure, but after a certain point it's not very practical.

*stares at own 17'' laptop screen*

For games, you've got a point. However, for programs bigger is always better because it allows for more interface. In a 3D program you can fit a Graph Editor, Surface Editor etc and still have a rather big preview window open. You're not looking at the whole screen anyway in a situation like that. This is also why some people have two screens or more. It's not to get a bigger viewing area in games, it's to get more windows open at the same time.

EDIT: As Obediah says, it's more about resolution, but with a bigger screen you don't have to stick your nose to the screen to be able to read it.

 

[VonVentrue]

Hmm... I suppose that I'm one of the few people here who still use CRT monitors (17", 1600x1200 maximum resolution at 75Hz refresh rate)... One of the strengths of the CRT that I am fond of is its flexibility with resolution and good color rendition.

Based on your experience, do LCDs really feel much easier on the eyes?

 

[Herbert West]

Indeed they do. At least samsung sm226bw that i have. It's somewhat subjective I guess, but my eyes don't get strained nearly as fast as they did with the good old CRT.
Color rendition is nigh-flawless in that model, I checked with sites that use proffesional colirimeters, reaction time is a non-issue, contrast is simply superb... I can't think of a single thing that my old crt did better.

edit: It's the next-gen [and all that crap], baby!

 

[VonVentrue]

Thanks, Herbert.

 

[suleo]

Indeed the samsung LCDs are made of win. I own a 19'' one and a 21.6'' widescreen and they are very very good. Excellent response time, fantastic colors and definitely easy on the eyes.

I think 22'' widescreen is just about perfect for gaming purposes, if you place the monitor at a normal desk (<=1m depth). Beasts such as the Dell 2407 or even some 30'' widescreens shudder are very good for work but in terms of gaming they are not as good unless you sit WAY back. But 22''w is right at the sweetspot.

One thing that's very important for LCDs and gaming is vsync (or you'll get dizzy with all the tearing). In a sense this means that you can never go higher than 60FPS but who needs more?

 

[Herbert West]

One thing that's very important for LCDs and gaming is vsync (or you'll get dizzy with all the tearing). In a sense this means that you can never go higher than 60FPS but who needs more?

QFT. Having more FPS than your refresh rate is pointless in any situation, be it crt or lcd. You will not see more frames per second than your monitor can display. Vsync can make a huge difference in most games on LCD. Should be enabled by default, and tripple buffering too.

 

[aweigh]

I use a 22" Mitsubishi Diamondtron. Best CRT monitors ever made, barring the beastly Sony FWP 24", the only widescreen CRT rolled out. No desktop LCD yet matches a top-tier CRT's black levels, response time and color fidelity, and the majority of sub-$300 LCD's are quite lacking in all of these areas and in more important ones like contrast and brightness.

I suggest anyone who is interested in fixing screen tearing and utilizing VSync to download the newest version of RivaTuner which comes with the essential D3DOverride programa. This program allows you to enable a global Direct3D triple-buffering flag so that every game you start up will always have D3D triple-buffering enabled by default. This allows you to use VSync without a noticecable performancec hit.

(Yes, yes, I know VSync has nothing to do with performance but rather with the way frames-per-second are calculated and refreshed and that it can slice a good chunk off your framerate but it's not because it's a "demanding" feature, it's just because of the way refresh rates work. I also know that enabling d3d triple-buffering incurs an increase in memory bandwidth consumption so someone with limited video and system RAM may possibly experience a slight 2-5 FPS penalty. For all intents and purposes, though, it's simpler for the layman to understand if you simply say that enabling d3d triple-buffering allows VSync usage without a performance hit.)

For anyone asking for a RivaTuner link: www.google.com

 

[Spectacle]

QFT. Having more FPS than your refresh rate is pointless in any situation, be it crt or lcd. You will not see more frames per second than your monitor can display. Vsync can make a huge difference in most games on LCD. Should be enabled by default, and tripple buffering too.

There is however, a very noticable difference between a game running at 60fps on a 60hz monitor, and running at 120fps on a 120hz monitor. The latter looks so much more fluid and realistic. This is the main area where LCD's can't match the best CRTs yet. Of course, you have to turn graphics quality all the way down or play old games if you want to see 120fps, even the very best hardware won't run the latest games at that FPS.

Most gamers have never experienced gaming with really high fps rates, it's a shame I don't have a CRT anymore either, so these days I just crank up the graphics and am satisfied with 30fps.

 

[The_Pope]

I will use this thread to brag about my 30" 2560x1600 screen.

 

[DarkSign]

Damn. Here I was worried that I'd be bragging about my 28" screen oh wait...I can hook up my computer to my 61" plasma

did this just turn into an e-penis contest?