Does that happen independently of selecting between OpenGL and DirectX?

And how about fullscreen and windowed modes?

Glidos wrote:

Does that happen independently of selecting between OpenGL and DirectX?

And how about fullscreen and windowed modes?

Yes, totally independently of OpenGL vs. DirectX.
Windowed modes are fine, it's only fullscreen that's distorted.
And I'd say the blame is on the video driver thing (ATI Mobility Radeon X1600), it won't really take any resolution change aside from 1280:800 native (which btw is 16:10 and not 16:9 as I incorrectly stated in the post subject, I'm sorry 😢 )

Uncertain. It may be a driver problem, but one that OpenGlide and psVoodoo should be able to work around. I'll try to find some time to look into that sometime soonish.

Thx Paul.

The point here is, these days it seems if you want a new laptop you can either have a 16:10 widescreen or a 16:10 widescreen if you prefer, so this nasty stretching feature is bound to gain momentum.

I think I read somewhere that Nvidia cards should sport a "aspect ratio anti stretch fix" feature so to speak in their driver panel, but I'm not sure.
This laptop has an ATI Radeon, as I said, and all the screens I've always had and have were/are good old 4:3 formats so when a GeForce card was present, if there ever was a Nvidia tweak in there I never had to try it out.
Someone using a GeForce Go something on a widescreen should report if possible.

gidierre wrote:

(which btw is 16:10 and not 16:9 as I incorrectly stated in the post subject, I'm sorry 😢 )

I have take the liberty of changing the subject line. Hopes it makes you less 😢

MiniMax wrote:

I have take the liberty of changing the subject line. Hopes it makes you less 😢

😁 😁 thx for your sympathy. 😢 for being 😢 (now how will you arrange for that ? 😜 )

back to stretching & other physical, oops... graphical fitness exercise,
I'll become less 😢 😵 when a solution comes up.

I've been looking around a bit on such places as this site
http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/wiki/ind … title=Main_Page
and it seems some kind of tweaking is viable, especially with Nvidia adapters.
I mean to also try a shareware called Powerstrip to see what happens and then we'll see.

Surely this kind of trouble is far from being one that Glidos has a responsibilty to address isn't it. It is just a driver manufacturer matter imho.

Here's the "cure" I found.
For Nvida cards, no direct experience. I only have to recall what iirc Snover already pointed out, i.e. the "Fixed aspect ratio scaling" trick.

But I have an ATI Radeon X1600, so what I needed is called :
"Scale image - maintain aspect ratio" and it can be found in Control Panel | Graphics settings | Notebook panel properties | Attributes.
It works. Glidos is great with it 😎

This thread on ATi & fixed aspect scaling
http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/forum/vi … 8ce1f521a678c9c
and this page
http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/wiki/ind … Pillarboxing%29
have been useful to me.
It seems not all ATI driver/card combo's will show the same behaviour on this...

Incidentally, I will mention here that I did read this :
DosBox and Widescreen monitor(16:10)
about the aspect=true trick in dosbox, but this simply failed by me.
To have it unstretched I need to use the aspect tweak in Catalyst panel, the dosbox.conf settings didn't succeed.

As the laptop / desktop pc sales ratio increases, and so does the widescreen / (narrowendian?)screen diffusion ratio too, more users are bound to face this aspect distortion issue.

The missing numeric keypad at least in 15" laptops (OK, it can usually be fetched by hitting Fn+F11 or something, but it's a pain) has forced me to remap numpad #0 to look around in Tomb Raider... I've chosen Tab as a replacement and now I must say it's even better than the default was 😉
The widescreen will have players do with black margins, but 1024x768 over 1280:800 is no big deal, besides I just hate playing in windowed mode 🙄
it's disturbing isn't it, especially for those of you who have a distracting wallpaper of your favorite sex star dressed in sunglasses... 😎

The problem is not in the laptop but in the LCD.

LCD screens are great for productivity work but they suck big time when it comes to (retro)gaming. Scalability on an LCD is doomed to look like crap. The same problem will arise when you'll want to play at a console game with a fixed resolution on a HD screen which doesn't natively support that resolution. On most screens, it will just look horrible.

But many allow you to chose between scaling and using a subarea of the screen, and the latter can look fine. My laptop has a special sequence of keys that toggle between those modes.

In any case, I might be able to make Glidos use a subarea so we don't have to rely on the hardware supporting it.

Gidierre, when you look at Settings under Display Properties, what choices are offered?

Glidos wrote:

Gidierre, when you look at Settings under Display Properties, what choices are offered?

well, there's the res. choices,
1280x800 (default)
1024x768
800x600

the last two being useless if you don't resort to the tweak I wrote about.

Then, in advanced, the usual Catalyst Ctrl Center, which letting alone the language 😀 is identical to :
http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/wiki/ima … _aspect_ati.jpg

I think I have a solution to this without people having to mess around with the screen settings. Here's a new version of psVoodoo that has the option of leaving the screen mode unchanged and displaying on just the subarea required. The option is hard-wired in this version.

You should unpack the archive and place the file Glide2x.dll in
C:\Program Files\Glidos\psVoodoo, then select Direct3D in the Glidos settings.

This version of psVoodoo also uses 32bit color, so its the best looking psVoodoo yet.

Scratch that. Some changes are needed in Glidos aswell. I'll release a new version.

v1.36 just released

1.36 grabbed & tried : it works, thanks Paul.

One comment, if you're not gonna call me too hard to please 🙄

I noticed the new widescreen mode feature effectively corresponds to what the ATI CCC defines as "centered timings"
as shown in http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/wiki/ima … _aspect_ati.jpg

Now I feel the top notch to be the "Scale image - maintain aspect ratio" option.
This is no nitpicking, because of the scaling no-stretch feature allowing to go fullscreen with only vertical black margins, and sparing the horizontal
ones.
I hope I make myself clear enough. Some screenshots would surely help.
It's understood the new mode is fine, it's the centering that might cause an inverted telescope effect, so to speak, particularly at the highest TFT resolutions.
If feasible, a scaling tweak in Glidos 1.37 (?) would enhance the widescreened users' satisfaction 😎 especially the impossible to please ones 😉

Yes I get what you mean. Actually that might be possible, although image quality would suffer.

> although image quality would suffer

not necessarily, well maybe on a 1440x900 screen it might, but as far as I can tell a 15.4" 1280x800 arrangement won't surely look worse if it's scaled vs. centered timings.
Imho the less outlined the picture, the more natural the look and feel.

This hopefully is no sterile arguing, since Glidos itself is all about enhancing visual pleasure.