Fair enough, so then, I've never experienced the ratio of a game graphics being altered for it to "fit" my screen.

Most likely, there was some clipping or padding that I was oblivious about.

Uhm, you're doing it wrong. The aspect ratio should not affect the graphics at all, other than determining the shape of the viewable area. If you are experiencing distorted graphics, it's because you are squeezing/stretching an image from one aspect ratio into another.

Weird question... I have a 16:10 monitor so I use that. If a game does not support it and can't be modded to support it I use 4:3 with black bars, so the image is not distorted.

As Wishbone just said it sounds like you are distorting the image somehow.

I do resolution by year, most DOS games where designed with very small resolutions, and I usually don't go past 640x480, if it even lets you choose in the first place. Early Windows games are usually 800x600, games from 2000 up to about 2005 or 2006 are usually 1024x768, and anything past that seems fine with my default resolution of 1920x1080.

Just my own general rule of thumb.

Well any other aspect ratio other than 4:3 and resolution other than 1024x768, the characters look like martians. Really tall and really skinny. Their necks are stretched out too. Some people like it like this, though. Very strange. I prefer my characters to look like human beings. And this is with the current laptop I have which has a widescreen and the previous laptop I've had with a widescreen.

My laptop is 16:9, so preferably that, but if the game doesn't support widescreen or looks weird then it would be dependent on that.

Me too.

Always go for whatever the game was designed for, if given a choice (without stretching) I go for the aspect ratio of my monitor (16:9 on my laptop, 5:4 on my desktop). I'm very fussy about aspect ratio distortion (I can't watch a film at someone else's house with it stretched, drives me mad).

I use whatever aspect ratio the games supported resolutions require. I can't stand looking at a stretched image.

I have the same problem. Friend likes downloading those shitty quality movies downloaded from the internet. Always asks me to watch a film in that shitty quality. No Thanks, I will wait until I see it in the theater or on my 1080p set with awesome surround sound, not shitty quality, shaky camera, mono sound. Not to mention normal movies cut or stretched to fit the screen.

I'm not sure how you could be getting slender characters with 4:3. Most older games would have a 4:3 aspect ratio so if you were distorting the aspect to fill a 16:9 or similar widescreen form factor then the objects should make things look wider not thinner. Thinner would only present if you were taking a widescreen image like 16:9 and trying to cram it into a 4:3 space. Which might happen if your monitor is a 4:3 shape and you were setting it to use a 16:9 resolution (which some will allow you to do)

Distortion only happens when a bad ratio is in the mix, and is suggestive that something is wrong. By default your monitor should be set to a resolution with the same aspect ratio as your monitor's shape. Then when possible stick with that resolution for everything. On older games that use old 4:3 screen resolutions your options may vary depending on the application, and monitor settings, but 4:3 resolutions belong on 4:3 monitors, and 16:9 resolutions belong on 16:9 monitors, etc. My guess is your monitor is 4:3 and that is why 4:3 resolutions look correct, because they are.

When it comes to personal taste I am a big fan of the modern 16:9/16:10 form factors over the older 4:3. It feels like a much more natural arrangement. And when gaming it's useful to have good visual room on the horizontal axis. I wouldn't step back to 4:3 if you paid me.


Agreed. Though it was part of my job to know when aspects were out of whack for a good while there, so I may be a bit stricter than the norm.

This for me as well. I can eventually get over it, but I really hate stretching.

So whatever the default is, for me. Widescreen mods are always good, but I don't really mind not playing in widescreen.

With what games? Have you tried any Source engine games for example, such as Half-Life 2? Those should work perfectly if you pick your laptop's native resolution within the game and the appropriate aspect ratio.

Do the screenshots on this page look bad to you? http://store.steampowered.com/app/220/

I guess the question is, when you use 1024x768 w/4:3 on your widescreen laptop, do you have black bars on the side or not? If you do not and the image fills the screen, then you like all your games stretched horizontally to make everything and everyone fat. Well, to each his own I guess....

Depends on what the game allows me to choose. My main monitor is 4:3 (1600x1200) but I usually play games windowed, so if the game allows freely choosing the resolution (which isn't common) the ratio might be close to 4:3 but not exact. If I play the game on my Nexus 7 through Kainy (which due to Kainy's state rarely happens) then I try to go for 1280x720.

Of course I play more natively on my Nexus 7, and then I use its native resolution (which is between1280x720 and 1280x800).

16:9 for 1920x1080 if the game offers widescreen support. Older ones where it stretches it I play at 4:3 1440x1080 or the highest possible, usually 640x480, 800x600 or 1024x768.

Aestatically and technically I think widescreen (16:9 or 16:10) has always been superior to 4:3, 4:3 is way too close to a 1:1 square format and that doesn't feel as natural as a rectangle.