Page 1 of 1

Adding black side bars to 16:9 monitor

Posted: 04 Aug 2011, 12:22
by Das Bruce
Some things don't have wide screen resolutions available, is there any way to make my monitor act like a 4:3, so any programme running will assume only the middle segment exists and not stretch out?

Re: Adding black side bars to 16:9 monitor

Posted: 04 Aug 2011, 12:46
by Hoi
I can't answer your question, but I recommend you search for a "widescreen hack" for the game you're playing. There are many games, even very old ones, that support 16:9 after a bit of editing, and this is very easy to do with the correct program.

What are you playing?

Re: Adding black side bars to 16:9 monitor

Posted: 04 Aug 2011, 13:17
by mmisc
the NVIDIA X Server Settings tool has some settings for this. but im not sure if this is option is given @windows/ati too
Image

GPU Scaling Method is the important part there

Re: Adding black side bars to 16:9 monitor

Posted: 04 Aug 2011, 14:24
by Das Bruce
Hoi: Transarctica.

mmisc: Thanks, I've got an nVidia card so I'll look at it.

Re: Adding black side bars to 16:9 monitor

Posted: 04 Aug 2011, 17:00
by rattle
I'd either pick centered and put the ingame resolution at the highest possible (i.e. 1280x1024) and avoid scaling entirely or use GPU aspect scaling.

On windows in older nvidia drivers you could pick the option there, current revisions seem to miss that option, but you can add custom resolutions which describe the active x/y coords. Very old versions had this option to be enabled with nvidias overscan registry fix to turn overscan on or off. Look it up on the internets if you want to know more about it, I'd give it a try none the less.

Re: Adding black side bars to 16:9 monitor

Posted: 05 Aug 2011, 03:22
by momfreeek
aww i love that game! this related to your alien railway musings bruce?

dosbox must have some option for waht you want?

Image

Re: Adding black side bars to 16:9 monitor

Posted: 05 Aug 2011, 04:21
by Das Bruce
No relation. Sometimes I think they should remake transarctica but they'll probably just fill it with chest high walls.

Re: Adding black side bars to 16:9 monitor

Posted: 07 Aug 2011, 00:30
by rattle
In case of dosbox you can just rtfm and edit the dosbox.ini to use the native 4:3 resolution of your monitor, i.e. 1440x1080. nVidia driver should not stretch this resolution but "add" black bars to the sides