djkc

I am lucky enough to have a 21" trinitron.

I run at 1600 - 1200

About 2-3" on the top and the bottom of my screen is unused by GPL, its just blank? only when driving, every other screen in GPL fills up the screen.

Is there a patch to fill the screen up?

David

Rob Bakker

No, this is the way it has always been in GPL.

djkc

Dam, thanks for the reply.

david

1cuervo

I have the same problem, with GPL on a 21" monitor - even when I stretch the monitor dimensions to the max, I still can't fill the screen.

Surely there must be a way of tweaking the 'letterbox' style of the picture?

Cheers.

Pete Gaimari

Nope.

__________________
Pete

GPL for life. When i'm sliding, i'm smiling..:-)

Rob Bakker

I don't understand what the problem is with this screen.
Do you think you can see more if the screen is higher?

Terry Welch

Letterbox is the only style supported in GPL, and nobody has tried to change yet that because the top and bottom of the screen are used for connection information, GPL game text info, and messaging in VROC. Most of the guys who are really into development work in GPL are also very much into online racing, too.

If you crank your monitor to remove the letterbox borders, you either are severely cutting off the right and left sides of the view with the horizontal stretch, or distorting the image with a vertical stretch.

Terry Welch

Crunch! We all tackled him at the same time! Hope he survives....

Insecto

This sort of reminds me of that talk about films that are broadcast on TV preserving their original wide format. Some people ask "Can't we remove those black bars?!".

That's the GPL format, djkc. I found that a bit odd at the beginning, mainly because I have a 15" monitor, but one gets used to it pretty quickly. And, strangely enough, you'll soon find that format to be more natural because its height to width ratio is closer to the human field of view.

Cheers.

Roger W

Theres one little thing one can do to reduce the letterbox effect slightly and still keep the aspect ratio looking right: use a 1280x1024 res.

The 1280 res isnt a 4:3 aspect ration resolution, so you'll have some extra res for the y-axis so to speak... So one can increase the vertical size of the pic somewhat and thereby reduce the letterbox format slightly while still retaining the proper aspect ratio!

A nice compromise for most except those which crave higher res's or those which doesnt have a monitor/video card which cope with 1280x1024.

__________________
Which is worse: ignorance or apathy? Who knows? Who cares?

/Roger W

sieg66

roger, i never noticed what you say (i use 1280), do you mean that with your screen set for windows desktop, you have a more compressed view in gpl in 1280?

Niels_at_home

lol

Bob Simpson

 

This comes up often. I've added it to the GPL FAQ (see the link in my signature)

__________________
GPL Troubleshooting FAQ
FILSCA
VOR

Roger W

Im not sure what you mean, but anyways:
If GPL itself doesnt somehow in the code adjusts the for the fact that 1280x1024 isnt a 4:3 res, then the image should normally be a bit squeezed together. If you compensate for this with the monitor settings, you will also use more of the screen.

__________________
Which is worse: ignorance or apathy? Who knows? Who cares?

/Roger W

Guru

 

Prompted by this thread I just did some checking, and you do indeed get slightly more pixels for the driving view at 1280x1024. Here are the percentages of the vertical pixels given to you in each resolution:

1024x768 - 608 pixels - 79.167%
1152x864 - 684 pixels - 79.167%
1280x1024 - 812 pixels - 79.297% (+0.13% oooo)
1600x1200 - 950 pixels - 79.167%

But then I thought - hey, GPL can do different aspect ratios, hmmmmm

Get the hex editor out, open up rastd3d7.dll and see what we can find. Ahhh there we go- screen resolutions. Where's 1280x1024, why's that different? Hmmm one value was 94 vs. the others at 100, is that aspect ratio? Why yes it is

On a roll here so I continued. What resolutions does my graphics driver support... 848x480 (16:9 ratio) let's try that!

Back to the hex editor, put in the values 848,480,133(aspect ratio difference to the normal 4:3),16(bpp).

Run GPL, wheee 848x480 available! Widescreen GPL !

Next question- does this give more available width, suitable for 3-screen setups? Will have to compare images and see if there's anything extra visible- might need to do some FOV adjustments too...

Attached Images

gpl848x480.jpg (106.5 KB, 762 views)

__________________
.:GPL Track Creating:.
.:GPLEA:.
.:The Racing Line:.:GPLAnim:.:trk23do:.:GTKMaker:.:GTKAlt:.

Guru

 

Hmmm FOV adjustments needed

The darker parts are the 16:9 ratio screengrab, the other is a 4:3 (800x600) grab.

Attached Images

gpl800x600-vs-848x480.jpg (122.9 KB, 692 views)

__________________
.:GPL Track Creating:.
.:GPLEA:.
.:The Racing Line:.:GPLAnim:.:trk23do:.:GTKMaker:.:GTKAlt:.

PMik

<---this dude wonders...a utility with multiple custom settings for screen seize, could be a very nice tool

__________________

Malc

Looks promising Guru ;-)

Can it be taken the other way to increase the height? With some monitor tweaking that would help reduce the size of the black bars.

Malc.

Niels_at_home

Nice going Phil! how about 1280x960, the proper 4:3 1280 res?

Guru

 

Okay, I'll see about doing that. In the meantime, what are the programs for changing FOV called nowadays?

__________________
.:GPL Track Creating:.
.:GPLEA:.
.:The Racing Line:.:GPLAnim:.:trk23do:.:GTKMaker:.:GTKAlt:.

Gringo Hairpiece II

Isn't FovED one of them?

__________________
a.k.a. Jonathan Wells

sieg66

Exactly what i wondered, thanks roger an guru
very nice if we could add resolutions with a little tweak.
gplshift for realtime fov adjusting, or foved to set it before launching gpl and also modify the f10 view.

nardin

yes it is. The most useful I know, BTW : open the editor, select the angle you'd like to use, and click Apply, that's it

EDIT - I'm adding a small precision, as sieg posted just while I was typing, and as his post may cause confusion : the editor I'm talking about is FOVeD, not gplshift

__________________
"The hero is the one who wins and survives. There's no dead hero." Fran?ois Cevert.

GPL Rank : -60.454
Monster Rank : -234.310

GPL65Rank : -19.688
GPL65Rank v2 : -19.350
Monster of 65Rank-v2 : -55.605

Roger W

*edit*

I reread Guru's thread after posting, and in retrospect my response to it probably didnt make sense

Gotta try this myself I think first.

__________________
Which is worse: ignorance or apathy? Who knows? Who cares?

/Roger W