Best options for widescreen gaming?

[Marscaleb]

So I'm wondering what the best options are for playing Q3 with a widescreen monitor.

I found a post int he Steam community where someone mentioned how you can easily edit your config file to give you a custom resolution. They also mentioned how to adjust the FOV to get it to look right. Their suggestion didn't really make the FOV look right.
First of all, the cutscenes outright would not play; I hear the sound but see only a black screen. Next thing is that the HUD is stretched; everything that appears on the screen including the crosshair is stretched oddly because of the aspect ratio being different. And another really annoying thing is that the weapons are all being cut off; I see only the tops of them. Honestly I suspect that this is happening to the whole screen, but I am not familiar enough with Q3 to be sure. Supposedly adjusting the FOV *should* give me a proper view of the world so I can see everything I see normally, but with added peripheral vision. But honestly I don't know if that is happening, and I suspect the FOV they suggested is actually not correct to match the default view in 4:3.

So next I downloaded ioQuake3. Afterall, I found a bunch of source ports of Quake 2 that let me play Quake 2 properly in widescreen. But ioQuake3 did not seem to have any options to improve the situation, and everything looked exactly the same. The only difference was that now the cutscenes were visible, although the aspect ration was stretched, making them look horrendous.

So you know what, screw it. I give up. What do I have to do to play Quake 3 so it looks proper on a widescreen monitor?

[Ganemi]

seta r_customheight height of your fancy screen

seta r_customwidth width of your fancy screen

seta r_mode -1 (means instead of using the options in the setting, it will use whatever parameters you set with the cvars above)

And it should work.

[Levee44]

As the previous user said, you should use certain console commands. You can create an 'autoexec.cfg' file in your 'baseq3' folder, and put the commands there.

set r_mode -1 //This allows custom resolutions. If you change anything via the in-game menu video options, it will go back to some other value instead of -1
set r_customwidth 1980 //or whatever your resolution is
set r_customheight 1020 //or whatever your resolution is

These will set the widescreen resolution.

Then you should change the field of view to get a real widescreen experience.

set cg_fov 100 //Or greater. Default is 90.

BTW the reason I didn't like ioquake was that the antialiasing wouldn't work, even if I forced it through the nVidia Control Panel.
Vanilla Q3 has no problems with AA, but it doesn't like Supersampling AA of transparent textures.

[Levee44]

I forgot to mention that if you use a custom resolution, the movies may not work. That's why I just play in 1280x768.

[Marscaleb]

My problem wasn't getting it to actually "draw" in widescreen, but these other problems that popped up once it was rendering widescreen. The weapons models are cut off, the HUD is stretched, and I really don't know what the proper FOV should be. Also the cutscenes.
Has someone made a source port or a patch or something that fixes these problems?

[Levee44]

Can you give us a screenshot?

[Marscaleb]

Original 4:3



Running at a 16:9 resolution
(After some tweaking and comparing the screenshot above, I managed to find the FOV of 110 matches the same view of the original 4:3 image without cropping the top and bottom off.)


In the original 4:3 image, you can see more of the weapon in your hand. You can clearly see the edge of the barrel whereas in the widescreen view you cannot. (Furthermore, the adjusting of the FOV has changed the angle at which the weapon is seen. It's a bit nit-picky, but still it is a thing.)

The other big thing is that the HUD is stretched. Just look at the crosshair; it isn't even a circle. That looks horrendous.

Here I did some super-cheap photoshoppery to give an idea of what this should look like:

[Levee44]

This is how mine looks like. I don't see anything wrong in your first screenshot.

[Levee44]

This is what it looks like in 1280x1020

[Bacon]

1820x1024? wtf?

1920x1080 with 140 FOV seems to work for me.

[Marscaleb]

Yeah, and the pics you are showing of how your game looks are showing EXACTLY the same issues I was talking about.

Here, I made some comparison shots to make it easier.


Notice how you see significantly less of the gun. You only have this tiny piece of it sticking up, losing sight of a lot of the craft and design that was put into it.


Everything on the HUD is stretched. That's supposed to be a circle on the right. It's not.

[SmileTheory]

Try this patch:

Code: Select all

diff --git a/code/cgame/cg_draw.c b/code/cgame/cg_draw.c
index cb914c95..47cc2d9a 100644
--- a/code/cgame/cg_draw.c
+++ b/code/cgame/cg_draw.c
@@ -1891,9 +1891,10 @@ static void CG_DrawCrosshair(void)
 		h *= ( 1 + f );
 	}
 
-	x = cg_crosshairX.integer;
-	y = cg_crosshairY.integer;
-	CG_AdjustFrom640( &x, &y, &w, &h );
+	x = cg_crosshairX.integer * cgs.screenXScale;
+	y = cg_crosshairY.integer * cgs.screenYScale;
+	w *= cgs.screenXScale * 4.0f / (3.0f * cgs.glconfig.windowAspect);
+	h *= cgs.screenYScale;
 
 	ca = cg_drawCrosshair.integer;
 	if (ca < 0) {
diff --git a/code/cgame/cg_drawtools.c b/code/cgame/cg_drawtools.c
index c0ce1ef8..2121c4c6 100644
--- a/code/cgame/cg_drawtools.c
+++ b/code/cgame/cg_drawtools.c
@@ -31,10 +31,14 @@ Adjusted for resolution and screen aspect ratio
 ================
 */
 void CG_AdjustFrom640( float *x, float *y, float *w, float *h ) {
-#if 0
-	// adjust for wide screens
-	if ( cgs.glconfig.vidWidth * 480 > cgs.glconfig.vidHeight * 640 ) {
-		*x += 0.5 * ( cgs.glconfig.vidWidth - ( cgs.glconfig.vidHeight * 640 / 480 ) );
+#if 1
+	// adjust for different window aspect ratios
+	if (1) {
+		float adjust = 4.0f / (3.0f * cgs.glconfig.windowAspect);
+
+		*x *= adjust;
+		*w *= adjust;
+		*x += 320.0f * (1.0f - adjust);
 	}
 #endif
 	// scale for screen sizes

You'll have to run with sv_pure 0 or put the VMs in a pk3 though, and this won't work on multiplayer servers since they have different VMs. Trying to fix this in the executable would probably break compatibility with mods.

Also, to adjust your gun position try cg_gunX/cg_gunY/cg_gunZ.

[Marscaleb]

Ahhhh!
I have literally no idea how to use that code you posted.

[SmileTheory]

Right.

I've made some more modifications in the meantime, so here's a convenient pk3:

http://smiletheory.ioquake3.org/zzz-cg_aspectHack.pk3

Put this in your baseq3 directory, launch ioquake3, open up the console and set cg_aspectHack 1 then all the problems should be fixed.

Diff here:
http://paste.debian.net/906134/

[Marscaleb]

MUCH better!
The guns still seem slightly cut off, but not as bad as it was before.

Thank you very much!