Re: Does Quake 4 Support 1680x1050?

steamless gamer schrieb:

a thing of the _past_ (who plays games in 800x600 any more).


i don't know if 800x600 and 1024x768 are a thing of the past,

Sorry, maybe I said it misinterpretable. I mean that these resolutions are really old, they became standards long ago, so it's understandable that after being available for over 15yrs that they are supported by current games.

what i know is with my current system i need to use lower
resolutions to have a good frame rate which i need for
accurate aiming cause otherwise it is almost impossible to
beat the enemies on screen
i don't choose to run pc games at 800x600 i simply need to use
it cause of hardware limitations
not everyone has the money to upgrade his pc every two years
and buy the most expensive high end hardware

I understand that point, and I'm sure there are lots of people that share the problem. But these resolutions don't look ugly only on a widescreen display, they also look ugly on a generic TFT if it's not one of the older models that still have them as native resolution...

However, some time you will probably buy a new computer that will do better in higher resolutions...

long are widescreen displays available at prices attractive 


i haven't seen them
i still see widescreen monitors as expensive and with very
limited availability

The first widely available widescreen monitors were the Sony GDM-W900 (originated ~1993/1994, Trinitron tube, a bit like a fish glass, with horrible convergence problems) and later (from 2000 on) the Sony GDM-FW900 which used a Flat Trinitron Tube and unlike its predecessor was (and still is!) one of the best crt displays that have ever been made. It's out of production, though.
Both monitors were sold from OEMs like Sun, SGI, Dell, Elsa, and much more.

Around 1997 the first commercial widescreen (17,3" TFT, 1600x1024) came out, the SGI 1600SW. It was useable on PCs and Macs and for a very long time was one of the most brilliant TFT displays available. The problem was that this display originated before the DVI standard has been available, and for connecting it to something other than a SGI 320,540, O2, or one of the few PC gfx cards that had LVDS transmitters (i.e. the #9 Revolution and the 3DLabs GVX) you needed the ultra-expensive multilink adapter that offered DVI and VGA inputs.

Then the Apple Cinema displays followed, and also Dell with the 2005FPW (20" 1680x1050) and later with the 2405FPW (24" 1680x1050), both really great displays at a really great price. In the near future Dell will also offer a 30" display (3005FPW) and a improved 24" display (2407FPW)...

again this is my perception cause for me anything higher than
500 dollars for a monitor is not affordable

I spend around 650EUR on my Dell 2005FPW in Jan. this year. Unlike other hardware a good monitor lasts for many years and overlives several computer generations. So IMHO it's not worth to save on a good monitor...

There already are standardized resolutions: 1280x800 


i really like these 4 resolutions you talk about and all with
a single aspect ratio... but is 16:10 the right aspect ratio
for widescreen pc games? and is this a done deal?


yes and yes.

Here is a good list of standardized resolutions:
<http://www.millertech.com/specs/computer_display_standards.htm>

All these resolutions are standards, standardized by the VESA organization...

i still don't know if 16:10 will be the chosen one when we see
16:9 being supported in lots of different devices outside the
pc

The difference between 16:9 and 16:10 are because a computer should have square pixels while TV sets operate with lines. That's why widescreen in the computer world always has been 16:10 (and that for ~12 years now!) while for Television (and devices connected to TVs like DVD player etc) 16:10 is the format of choice...

Everything other than a TFTs native resolution looks like *** 


that is why i complain about the switch to a different aspect
ratio like the one used in 17"/19" lcd monitors cause many pc
games released this year still don't support 5:4 aspect ratio
so let the pc not repeat the same mistake now with widescreen

Which somewhat recent games doesn't support 5:4 (means: 1280x1024)? The only one I found is FEAR, and thats because it's artificially limited to 1152x864 (I'm already in a debate with support about this, besides the fact that the shitty copy protection scheme prevents the game from recognizing the original DVD)...

All other games do fine in 1280x1024...

notebooks for example, or also the increasing number of 


if desktops are still not widescreen i don't see how you can
expand widescreen in pc games only with notebook support

Desktops _are_ not widescreen-dominated, but they _are_becoming_ it. Same is valid for notebooks. Simply because the advantages of widescreen displays (which are _not_ better suitability for watching movies!) are that great...

The only thing developers have to do is to include the 


i don't see it like that
for me developers are struggling to be profitable in a pc
game market suffering from lower sales and high piracy
lets not make the life of developers any worse
lets stick with a single aspect ratio and a limited set
of widescreen resolutions like the one you talked about

Sorry, but developers are certainly not the poor underpaid people you seem to have the impression of. Yes, they do loose money because of piracy, but "loosing money" in this context does mean like "the profit is not i.e. 20 Mill USD but only 19.5 Mill USD" and not "we didn't earn any money so we barely can pay the rent for our houses".

We (buyers, or better customers) are not a stupid crowd that exists to make life easier for producers/manufacturers (or developers in this context). The customers want something, and it's the job of the developers to deliver what _we_ want. It's definitely _not_ our job to pay for something that doesn't fullfill what we expect. If a developer can't do a project with a given budget, he has failed, and the market laws will probably remove him from business. Since he didn't deliver what the market requested there is no reason to feel sad about that.

A good example is FEAR: I paid 49EUR for a game that even doesn't work on my computer because of a crappy copy protection. Besides that, I would have to run a brand new title that was supposed to have ass-kicking gfx on a shitty resolution of max. 1152x864 on a real highend system, simply because the developer for no reason locked other resolutions higher than that in the configuration tool.

It's the job of a developer to develop games, and sadly there are more and more examples on the market that show that the developer didn't do it right for what he has been paid.

I see no reason why gamers should ignore modern technologies like widescreen that has it's advantages just because there are a bunch of developers that are too incompetent to deliver a somewhat useable product in time...

i have no problem at all developers coding for your specific
high end hardware as long as they also support the low end
affordable hardware like mine

Sure they will do, since doing that not means cutting itself of from a certain percentage of the market. As long as support for older hardware means no irregular high efforts new games will definitely run on older hardware - with less eyecandy, sure, but they will run...

so why there are still pc games released this year that don't
support the 5:4 aspect ratio?


Can you name a few? The only example I know of is FEAR...

cause of this i see it as a problem computer displays having
different aspect ratios

Nope, it's no problem. As long as the aspect ratio is compatible with the resolutions so that in the end the pixels stay square and not longitudinal...

Even w/o widescreen there never was a _single_ aspect ratio. 


15" has the normal 4:3
then for some very strange reason 17"/19" became 5:4
and 20" are back again with the normal 4:3
for me 5:4 was a mistake so it should not be given as a good
example cause what we want is widescreen done in the right way

First, screen diameters have no resolution, period. The resolution of flat panels comes from the number of pixels. Second, 5:4 (1280x1024) is one of the oldest standards in the computer world and not specific to 17"/19" displays.

The reason why 15" TFTs usually use 1024x768 (XGA, 4:3) and 17"/19" displays usually use SXGA (1280x1024) is that these resolutions offer the best dpi (dots per inch) for most people. XGA on a 17" is too low as 1280x1024 on a 15" usually is just too high for most desktop users (notebooks are a different story due to the different ergonomic factors). It's no problem hardware- and software-wise to use both 4:3 and 5:4 aspect ratios...

Because we already had two ratios, and adding a third one
is no problem.



i want a single aspect ratio for standard screen and the choice
is obviously 4:3 and not the weird 5:4

Again, 5:4 might be weird for you, but for people that are a bit longer in the computer industry it's a well-known standard...

and as for widescreen you
decide what is better 16:10 or 16:9 but do stick with a single
one please


You can be sure that widescreen in PC world will stay 16:10...

if you ask me i would choose 16:9 cause all others are using it
so why should the pc be alone and be different with 16:10?


See above. It has technical reasons.

FEAR is a great example of ass-stupid development where 


you are being very unfair with monolith
first i don't know why you can't use a resolution bigger than
1152x864 when i see in the fear configuration utility many
more choices bigger than that like:
1152x864
1280x960
1600x1200
1792x1344
1856x1392
1920x1440
2048x1536

Well, my configuration tool only shows resolutions up to 1152x864. Since you seem to have more resolutions I strongly suspect they use some kind of hardware recognition and hide resolutions they think the computer can't handle. Which is fucking stupid since I'm quite sure my computer (2x XEON 3GHz, 10GB DDR2, Geforce 7800GTX) should handle much more than the poor 1152x864 the stupid config tool is offering me...

probably there is some issue you must check cause fear does
support lots of very high screen resolutions
ok no widescreen but i would not expect them to support it
as for no 1280x1024 that is really a hard decision to take
but i can't blame them...

Well, if they don't support 5:3 then they never will support widescreen since both would mean changing the FOV (Field ov View). Doubtless the game engine can do it easily, but it seems that they simply had no interest of supporting it. But then, they are an exception with such a stupid behavior, and I for sure will think twice before buying a Monolith game again...

for me 5:4 is a freak of nature in the pc world
so we have to blame the people that decided to change aspect
ratio in pc monitors with no valid reason

Again, there are valid reasons, and 5:4 is no "freak of nature in PC world" as you believe.

As to Quake 4, I don't have it but widescreengamingforum 


please buy quake4
it is a fabulous game and it must be protected cause it does
not have any copy protection
like in the past id is still giving us all the freedom for
us to play pc games the way we choose
please buy quake4 and if possible buy the collectors edition
cause i know you can afford it and id deserves your money

Maybe, if I'm through with GTA VC. Yes, Rockstar is one of the few stars in the game industry. Widescreen support even in old GTA III, works like a charm, great gameplay with many hours of fun and not a short-sighted techno demo. Can't wait for the next GTA game...

I'll think about Quake4. At least it's a singleplayer game...

And FYI: if you look for widescreen resolutions in games
while you don't have a widescreen monitor - forget it! Most
games don't show widescreen resolutions if you don't have a
widescreen display. Same is valid for ATI and Nvidia



that is a very important info
i will try and remember it cause that is probably why i have
such a different perspective of widescreen in pc games

It's also often confusing people that plan to buy a widescreen display (i.e. the Dell 2005FPW which uses 1680x1050) but are afraid that the display won't work with their computer because they can't see the resolution listed. Well, as long as they don't have the display they will never see the resolution listed in the drivers...

Benjamin
.