Gaming with Black Bars (Pillarboxing)
What are we talking about? We're talking about playing a non-widescreen game, on a widescreen monitor, without it stretching. For example: Sid Meier's Pirates! does not support widescreen. It will support a resolution of 1600x1200. How do you play it on a 1920x1200, at a 1600x1200 resolution, without stretching? The same thing goes for Warcraft III, or any other game that doesn't support widescreen.
How Do I Do It?
What you're looking for is "Aspect Scaling." This tutorial can't cover every particular option found in every driver set, or monitor firmware, but what you are looking for is an option that mentions "Aspect Scaling."
Monitor Settings
Scaling within the monitor is often your failsafe. It can produce the desired effect, if your video card does not. Many monitors offer three scaling options: Full Scaling (stretch, zoom, fill or some such), Aspect Scaling, and 1:1
- Full Scaling will stretch the image to fill the panel
- Aspect Scaling will stretch the image to fill the vertical, while maintaining the proper horizontal aspect. This would allow a 1400x1050 or 1280x1024 image to scale to a "square" image and fill at 1920x1200 panel.
- 1:1 will only utilize the pixels specificed. A 1400x1050 or 1280x1024 panel would produce an image in the middle of a 1920x1200 panel, with black bars on all four sides.
Video Card Settings
Video card options are found the "Panel Properties" (inside the advanced portion of the display settings). Rather than step through the different mouse clicks, screenshots are included. This is a somewhat moving target, as control panel layouts can change with driver versions (particularly between card generations).
