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Paddy the Wak wrote:
>Just choose your widescreen resolution from the video setup menu ...
I'm kind of in the same boat as the original poster. Unfortunately, I don't get a choice of desired resolutions from the options in the video setup menu. I can choose from 640x480 in the 4:3 menu, 1440x540 in the 16:9 menu, and 720x480 in the 16:10 menu, and that's it.
I started out with the 1440x540 option (which was what I was using to play DOOM 3)... and it looked really boffo, with the caveat that the display was really pinched. I mean, everybody was really thin, like on the Karen Carpenter diet. Moved down to 720x480, and the game objects are displayed correctly, but it's not the hi-def experience I was hoping for.
I'm running a P4 3.2 Ghz processor, a gig of DDR RAM, and an ATI Radeon X800 Pro. I'm running a DVI-I cable to my 65" monitor (a JVC I'Art Pro). I have Powerstrip configured to deliver resolutions of 640x480, 720x480, 960x540, 1440x540, 1280x720, and 1920x1080. Ideally I'd like to play Half-Life 2 at 1280x720, but I can't figure out how to get it done.
Considering how closely ATI worked with Valve, I would have thought using an ATI product would've given me a leg up on choosing my poison. Maybe I was wrong. So if anybody has a solution, I'd love to start sharing the love.
UPDATE:
I found the solution after visiting the Home Theater Gaming sub-board in the AVS forums. Someone suggested my monitor driver was the culprit, and yup. That be it. Snipped:
Not knowing exactly what I was looking for, I did a search for "custom monitor driver" on Google and got a dead link here on the AVS forums. Luckily it was Google-cached, and the fellow there had used a utility called DXCapsView to determine his system's display functionality, which showed he was woefully underpowered. I managed to track DXCapsView down on an FTP site (why the heck isn't this functionality built into Windows or DXDiag???) and see that I was suffering from the same shortage of resolutions.
His solution was to use PowerStrip to write a new custom monitor driver, only instead of reading the info from the registry, he used the specs in the back of his projector's owner's manual for resolution, scan rate, etc. I thought I'd try that, though the manual for my I'Art didn't seem to specify this info, so that was a no go. Hmmm. (Anyone know where I could get the specs on the JVC AV-WP series?)
But I noticed that the monitor driver that I'd previously written had topped out at a height of 540 pixels. I got the new Catalyst drivers, downloaded the latest version of Powerstrip, had it read info from the monitor, and found it was maxing out at a much more palatable 720 pixels. Much progress. Much niceness. Wrote and installed the new driver, and found I was suddenly playing both Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 at 1280x720.
Further update: I just wrote another custom monitor driver, this time with a max height of 1080... didn't change anything else, and was able to play HL2 in 1920x1080i and access a very wide variety of resolutions. Now I've got a bunch of other games I have to try out...
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