Why 16x10?

Ken Burkstrum · 06-03-2006, 10:45 PM

Question #1: Why 16x10, instead of 16x9?

Because it's a better mix between 4:3 and 16:9?

So you can watch movies at their native resolutions while still having menu bars on top and bottom?

Because monitor manufacturers are jackasses?

For some compatibility issue I dont know about?

Question #2: Why can windows display any resolution your monitor/video card supports? Apparently the graphics and everything arent stored like image files so how does it work and why cant movies work that way?

I heard all you have to do to get a PC game to support a resolution is edit a certain file, what is that all about?

Ken Chan · 06-04-2006, 05:58 PM

Quote:

why cant movies work that way

But they do. With any decent DVD player program, you can tell it to fill the screen, and it will (preserving the aspect ratio, so you may get the "black bars"). Works for whatever resolution you're using at that moment.

Chris · 06-04-2006, 06:14 PM

(1) there are lots of different reasons for 16x10, but one of the better reasons I've heard is that a 16x10 display allows for full viewing of 16x9 media while allowing for the task bar interface to stay visible.

(2) No, that's not true. There are some games which will support any reasolution. Some games also only support set fixed resolutions. This is all up to the gamemaker and really fits the way the game is designed. Some games can, some games can't.

Ken Burkstrum · 06-04-2006, 06:52 PM

"But they do. With any decent DVD player program, you can tell it to fill the screen"

Yea but the picture quality doesnt increase with movies. With games, when you increase the resolution the picture quality gets better. Which is what confuses me. With DVD movies, your watching the source pixel ratio scaled to the TVs ratio, so the picture quality doesnt get any better. With games, you can bump it up from 800x600 to 1920x1200 and the picture gets better. My question is why the heck can games do that but not movies?

nolesrule · 06-04-2006, 07:25 PM

Because the game graphics are rendered on the fly by the game engine, so they can be custom-rendered to the resolution of the screen.

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MarkHastings · 06-04-2006, 10:18 PM

Quote:

For some compatibility issue I dont know about?

I've heard that monitor resolutions work best when divided by 16 evenly. That's why they went with a height of 1200 and not 1080 (when the width is 1920).

Quote:

With games, you can bump it up from 800x600 to 1920x1200 and the picture gets better. My question is why the heck can games do that but not movies?

With video, the resolution is set (i.e. DVD is 720x480) so increasing the monitors resolution only makes the pixels bigger - like the difference between a 13" TV and a 30" TV...the 30" TV doesn't have more resolution, it's pixels are just larger.

But with a 3D video game, the textures are high resolution, so (for example) if you have a 3000x3000 texture and you view it on a low res monitor, the game downsamples the image (or uses a lower res image) to display the texture.

Bumping up the monitors resolution allows the game to use the higher quality texture.

As Joe exaplains, the graphics are rendered in real time and can be rendered out at low res or at a much higher res, whereas a DVD has already been prerended to a specific dimension.

Kyle McKnight · 06-05-2006, 08:35 AM

If you're looking to see which games will support the different methods of getting 16x10, check out WideScreenGamingForum.com.

Ken Burkstrum · 06-05-2006, 09:13 PM

So is it true that all you have to do is edit some file on a game and it will play at what resolution you want?

There's a program called Fraps that records your game footage. I have a question supposing fraps could record higher then 1280x720. If I'm using a 1920x1080 LCD monitor, and I edit a game so it plays at 3840x2160. That resolution will be scaled down to 1920x1080, so there'd really be no reason to have it that high in the first place. My question is if I did set it to 3840x2160 on a 1920x1080 and tried using fraps to record it, would it record what my screen is displaying or that 3840x2160 information in the background?

To sum it up, can you do real time recording of a higher resolution then what your monitor displays.

Ken Burkstrum · 06-05-2006, 09:33 PM

To follow up on my question. I just took a screenshot of a 1920x1080 video, but the window was real tiny, occupying probably no more then 200,000 pixels opposed to 2,000,000. It still captured it as 1920x1080 with all of it's quality there. This leads me to believe that I can capture things at a higher resolution then I can view them, yes? Any educated thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

nolesrule · 06-05-2006, 09:38 PM

I'm not sure I understand the screenshot question. You don't explain how you are taking the screenshot. If you use print screen to take the screen capture, you'll get a 1:1 capture of your screen. If you are doing a frame grab of a DVD image, it depends on the software doing the grab.