Widescreen Gaming Forum

Patience grasshopper. Your answer will be coming. But I still want you to check something.

1. Accurately measure the height and width of your Samsung monitor screen. Is that ratio really 1.25, or 1.33?

2. If the centered output is doing what you say it does, you should see small black bands on all four sides when you choose 1024 x 768 in game, but keep your monitor resolution set on 1280 x 1024. Is this what happens?

1. I will measure when I get home from work. :)

2. That is exactly what happens, and the way I like it. :D

13 5/16 wide x 10 11/16 tall (viewable screen)

=

13.3125 wide x 10.6875 tall

so...

13.3125 / 10.6875 = 1.2456140350877192982456140350877

~1.25 = 5:4 aspect ratio :wink:

Very interesting! Thanks for doing that measurement. The FOV you want to use to fit your game exactly to a 5:4 aspect ratio is 86.304779 degrees. This assumes that the default FOV of your game for a 4:3 aspect ratio is 90 degrees. It also assumes that you will actually display the game at 1280 x 1240 (or other 5:4 resolution.) If you actually display the game at say 1024 x 768, then stick with the FOV of 90.

I don't have time right now to describe the calculation. But I will try to explain it later.

I found this on another thread. Thanks again for your help!


FOV2 = 2 * inv_tan [ ( W2 / W1 ) * tan ( FOV1 / 2 ) ]

where W2 and W1 are screen widths for equal screen height.

So if you've got a game with FOV of 80 in 4:3 and you want to game on 5:4;
4:3=16:12, 5:4=15:12, so W1=16 and W2=15 and FOV1=80
FOV2=2*inv_tan[(15/16)*tan(80/2)]=76.3811378...

Their example uses Painkiller with default FOV of 95 going from 4:3 to 16:9;
4:3=12:9, W1=12 and W2=16 and FOV1=95
FOV2=2*inv_tan[(16/12)*tan(95/2)]=111.0025355...

Your need is to go from 4:3 to 5:4 with default FOV of 90;
W1=15 and W2=16 (see first example) and FOV1=90
FOV2=2*inv_tan[(15/16)*tan(90/2)]=86.3047794...

That's exactly right! Glad you found that thread. That saved me some trouble. :)

P.S. I'm glad my number matches yours.
P.S.S. What's the link? I'm glad others are using exact FOV determinations.

http://www.hardforum.com/

Under the Display section.

I posted my question and someone answered pretty quickly.

Thanks for all your help.

This might be a little off topic, but do you guys know if there is any DVD software players out there that display DVD movies with an exact 1:1 pixel ratio?

For instance, I run my monitor with 1280x1024 native resolution. If I play a DVD using nVDVD, it shows black bars on the top and bottom, but the movie fills the screen horizontally. I know darn well that DVD movies are not encoded with 1280 lines of horizontal resolution. I think most are like 720x480 or something.

Anyways, I want to see the movie with exact resolution (just like games display when using a lower resolution and the nVIDIA centered output setting).

Any thoughts?

DVD players...

Surely the default window size is the actual size of the DVD video stream? When I open WinDVD, the window resizes based on whether it's 16:9 or 4:3 ratio... and it's pretty small on the screen. Given that my screen is 1680x1050, I assume that that is the right size.

Not sure, though.

Anyone have any other thoughts? :)

Yeah I am pretty sure the aspect ratio is preserved, but I think the software scales the image (makes it larger) so it uses your whole screen.

Again I believe most DVDs are currently a maximum of 720x480 resolution. If that is the case, then a movie displaying on a native 1680x1050 display *should* appear as a smaller rectangular image at the center of the screen with black bars on the top, bottom, and left/right sides. This isnt the case though...every software DVD player I have seen actually uses the whole horizontal screen and just puts black bars on the top and bottom.

My goal is to eliminate any sort of scaling, and achieve 1:1 pixel ratio (as this should theoretically be the best image possible).

EDIT: I think I have proven my theory. I got World of Warcraft Collectors Edition. It comes with a DVD that includes the opening cinema movie. Playing the DVD to watch the movie with nVDVD shows the movie like any other DVD movie (fills the screen except black bars at top and bottom). Then I watched the movie via the actual game itself. It displays the movie with black bars on the top/bottom AND the sides! Again, I use 1280x1024 native with centered mode turned on.