Wide Screen support for games.

[zappsweden]

Some ppl are complaning that my game shows a streched view when they run with a wide screen display. I am wondering is there any way for me to detrmine that they are using a wide screen display? Is there any resolution (for instance 1440 x 900) that only widescreen display has so that i can determine this and run the game in windowed mode instead?

[Riven]

float ratio = screen.w/screen.h;

if(ratio is about 4/3) // 1028x1024 is a nasty one
...
else if(ratio is about 16/9)
...
else
...

[zappsweden]

ok, there seems to be some nice stuff in Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit() to get the dimension of the screen

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[Riven]

java.awt.GraphicsEnvironment.getDefaultScreenDevice().getDisplayMode() getWidth() | getHeight()

java.awt.Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getScreenSize() width | height

[oNyx]

>1028x1024 is a nasty one

Thats 5:4. <edit>Or a stupid res used on a 4:3 crt.</edit>

The popular ratios are 4:3, 5:4, 16:10 and 16:9 (rare).

[zappsweden]

>1028x1024 is a nasty one

Thats 5:4. <edit>Or a stupid res used on a 4:3 crt.</edit>

The popular ratios are 4:3, 5:4, 16:10 and 16:9 (rare).

Currently i am using this

if(ratio<1.4) goto fullscreen;
else run in windowed mode;

Just so that those 16:9 screens wont get odd graphics.

[Riven]

Is 16:9 really rare?

It's the ratio humans see the outside world

that's why they invented the wide-screen in the first place

[blahblahblahh]

Currently i am using this

if(ratio<1.4) goto fullscreen;
else run in windowed mode;

Just so that those 16:9 screens wont get odd graphics.

Or ... just write your GUI properly so that it uses a layout manager and doesnt arbitrarily stretch the screen? [/facetious]

Seriously, though, you should always use a layout manager, even if its just a very simple one that adds borders to the sides or top/bottom and keeps fixed ratios internally. IME its pretty easy to write your own manager that will cope with *any* resolution, and then you dont annoy the people whose large monitors you're wasting .

[oNyx]

Is 16:9 really rare?

It's the ratio humans see the outside world

that's why they invented the wide-screen in the first place

Yes, widescreen PC displays are usually 16:10. Not really sure why... guess it makes sense in this context to have at least that much height.

[erikd]

Can you really reliably determine the screen aspect ratio from the resolution? I suppose this makes the assumtion that pixels are of a fixed aspect ratio, which I think they aren't. What if your drivers support 1024:768 on a wide screen?
I suppose you can do a guess at best, but you might still need an option to manually switch between 4:3 and 16:9 displays.

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[darkprophet]

Look at the maximum resolution from the display modes. That is indicitive of the ratio of the screen. Do not look at the current resolution...

DP

[oNyx]

Oh yea... I made some images a while back to visualize things a bit:
http://kaioa.com/k/ar1.png (scaled to same height)
http://kaioa.com/k/ar2.png (scaled to same width)