I love playing games on my big widescreen monitor. The higher resolution and wider field of vision is so much more immersive and enjoyable than the 4:3 resolutions of the "olden days". However, sometimes it seems that widescreen is detrimental to the game, especially with games as old as some of the ones GOG sells.

For example, one of the first things I did after buying and installing Arcanum months ago was install all of the unofficial patches and graphical improvement mods out there, including the widescreen patch. I played it for about five minutes and quit in disgust and with a bad case of eye strain. At 1680X1050, the game is just too "small" to play. I found myself leaning in to squint at my monitor, just to try and follow the gameplay, read text, etc. and was having no fun at all. Extremely disappointing, considering all the good things I had heard about this game since I missed/skipped it the first time around. Today, however, I re-installed the game, with all the patches and mods except the widescreen one. Oh my, what a difference. I could lean back in my chair and actually enjoy the game at its old 4:3 resolution (fixed aspect ratio scaling enabled, of course). The gaming "purist" in me says "this is the way it was meant to be played", but at the same time, I am thinking "who cares if it was meant to played this way, this is simply more fun".

This got me thinking: is widescreen really better? With games designed for the "widescreen era", the answer is obviously "yes", but what about older games like the ones GOG sells? With few exceptions, I am finding that "upscaling" these games to widescreen resolutions just makes them look small and crappy. What good is covering all of my monitor real estate if it make the game suck balls?

Thoughts, opinons?

Your problem is solved by using a smaller widescreen resolution with the same aspect ratio.

Yeah I agree, provisionally.

That provision being 2D pixel based games... 3D wireframe seems fine from any era, but 2D games are very much a thing of low res square pictures...

I tried Planescape with all of the mods and res fixes and couldn't play it.. however didn't quit in disgust, I just reinstalled it and re-played in blissful satisfaction :D

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This. I've had the same problem with Planescape on crazy high resolutions, but the lowers possible 16:9 the game was as fun as it was before. Also, size of the screen does a lot: If you have a hugeass screen, Fallout will be as much fun at 1920:1080, just because everything will be physically as big as it was at tiny 4:3 monitor.

Anyway, it depends on the game, for what it was designed in the first place. If it's designed for widescreen monitor, it's probably gonna be better widescreen, if for 4:3, well...

Of course, often you can use a widescreen resolution lower than your screen's native resolution. That way you can fill the screen and get a slightly larger game area while still keeping stuff nice and large.

Arcanum is made for running in 800x600, no? Try setting the widescreen resolution mod to 1024x600 (not 16:10, but fairly close), or 1280x800. If it normally runs at 640x480, try 800x480.

Personally, I have two pretty nice 20-inch LCDs at 1600x1200, so I'm in no hurry to switch to widescreen.

Yes, ninja'd by PhenixWright.

I'll make an addenum that everything is small at 2560*1600 :P

I love my 30" :D

(Please excuse my shameful boasting :) )

Both my screens together have a lower resolution than your single does. If I were to turn pivot them, I'd get a total of 2400x1600. 'Tis okay though, I'm not jealous, honest, *grumble*

It's the only case I've had personal dealings with where smaller was better XD

720p or similar is definitely a good place to start. It's always been perfect for me.

Not so much, in fact, only very rarely. With games originally designed around a 640X480 resolution, even some as high as 800X600, I have yet to find a res my monitor supports and still looks as good (well, "good" is probably not the right word) as the original res scaled up with a fixed aspect ratio.

The point is that you are complaining about the "small" look, but that is because they are pixel-based and when you use a massive resolution like 1680x1050 it just adds a shit load of pixels and makes everything small. Use a smaller resolution like 1280x800 and it will be widescreen, the correct ratio, and also not small.

That would be great if my monitor actually supported that res, which it doesn't.

Your monitor/graphics card can't upscale the image? Did you actually try and fail to use such a resolution?

That would be very odd, all monitors should scale common lower resolutions. Perhaps it is not on your GPU driver's list of resolutions, check that and add it if it is not.