Actually did alot of testing between 3dfx and dx7. The 3dfx nglide does not display in 32-bit. If you want to check it out yourself load the default party in the load game screen. You start off in the beginning area. Look at the clouds with 3dfx totally 16 bit . Delete the 3dfx glide garbage, and open 3d settings in the program files. Select dx 7 or whatever you want to use. Select resolution 1024 x 768 x 32. This preserves the original aspect ration and allows 32 bit colors. Load the default party again and check out the clouds. Nice smooth 32 bit clouds.

Yes, the game only runs in 16-bit with a Glide renderer since that's what those supported back in the day. nGlide outputs the 16-bit image as 32-bit for compatibility reasons; it doesn't actually make the game render in true 32-bit.

You can have both 32-bit color and a 4:3 aspect ratio with the DirectX 7 renderer by enabling GPU scaling and making a 4:3 custom resolution. My monitor is 1440x900 so I used 1200x900; you can use Paint or whatever to scale up a 4:3 resolution to work out the correct dimensions for your monitor.

The new resolution showed up automatically in the Wizardry 8 setup tool for me but if nGlide is present you'll need to set it manually by editing 3DVideo.CFG. The custom resolution will also work for other games but many won't list it automatically so you'll have to edit some file or other to set it.

Okay, so for us idiots out there...

If we have a 1650x1080 default resolution on our system and would like the game to run in such, what are our options exactly?
What do we change?
Can we have it "wide screen" without messing up the resolution or do we have to use non-wide screen for it to look "right"?

You either use the Glide2x renderer, setting nGlide to output as 4:3, or set up a 4:3 custom resolution and use that with the DirectX 7 renderer.

The custom resolution method requires initial setup but is preferable overall since that then allows the game to render in 32-bit color whereas Glide is only 16-bit (resulting in some textures being noticeably dithered).

FYI there is a widescreen mod coming: http://steamcommunity.com/app/245450/discussions/0/846965882672993132/

Ooh, he has an alpha release now! Very nice to see him finishing this mod.

Appears to work just fine with GOG version.

I asked about this earlier; the reason is that 1366x768 is not mathematically valid for that aspect ratio.

How come the widescreen mod works fine for me for 1366x768 resolution? I use OpenGL with 1366x768 and run on Linux with Wine.