Forcing games to run in 4:3 res on 16:10 monitor

Many times I download game demos from BigFish to play on my old computer. These games are usually created to run on a 4:3 resolution, but I have a monitor with aspect ration of 16:10 and the game stretches all over the screen which looks very ugly. Is there any way I could force them to run in 4:3 on a widescreen monitor. I have a MSI HD3650 512mb graphic card. Any help would be appreciated.

Btw I don't want to run them in Windowed mode.

E

Right click on desktop go to Graphic Properties,
from here change resolution to aspect ratio 4:3, means change to 800x600 or 1024x768
apply Ok

now right click on desktop, go to Screen Resolution, from here change your resolution to default what it was before, now your game will be played without being stretched, in such case, there will be Black strip on both side of game

I had that setting in my monitor (LG). In the monitor control panel, there is an option to fit to screen for lower resolutions. When I turned that off, it became normal.
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In Amd CCC you cannot change the aspect ratio for some weird reason, while playing cs 1.6 i have to manually change the the ratio from my monitor control panel.

None of above solutions seems to help me. And my monitor doesn't even have manual setting for 4:3. Newer Bigfish games seem to have a Widescreen option built in them, but it does not seem to run on my PC, I think it has something to do with the fact that my monitor is 16:10 and not 16:9.

as enVolt suggested, did you try changing screen resolution to 1024x768 and then running the game ?

What monitor do you have?
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@icebags Changing the resolution does not help as I mentioned earlier.

@DeSmOnD dAvId Monitor is LG L194WT, it's pretty old model.

E

Right click on desktop, go to Screen Resolution, from here change your resolution to 800x600 (means any size with ratio 4:3)

Now Right click on desktop go to Graphic Properties, or (Display Properties)
it will open MSI Utility for managing display, change your resolution back to what it was before.
NOTE- u r changing resolution to 4:3 using win7 display properties, and back to 16:10 using MSI display properties, work fine with NVIDIA, INTEL HD, ATI graphics card, but never tried for MSI, hope it solve your issue

J

Go to the ATI CCC, if I recall correctly, you can find options for screen scaling setup in it. Set it to force the resolution you want. You can probably do this via the profile manager too.

Sorry, I can't be any more specific because I haven't used CCC in quite awhile.

jaysatish said:
Go to the ATI CCC, if I recall correctly, you can find options for screen scaling setup in it. Set it to force the resolution you want. You can probably do this via the profile manager too.

Sorry, I can't be any more specific because I haven't used CCC in quite awhile.

CCC has no such setting. Its in nVidias control panel.

enVolt said:
Right click on desktop, go to Screen Resolution, from here change your resolution to 800x600 (means any size with ratio 4:3)

Now Right click on desktop go to Graphic Properties, or (Display Properties)
it will open MSI Utility for managing display, change your resolution back to what it was before.
NOTE- u r changing resolution to 4:3 using win7 display properties, and back to 16:10 using MSI display properties, work fine with NVIDIA, INTEL HD, ATI graphics card, but never tried for MSI, hope it solve your issue

Nah, it still doesn't work.

jaysatish said:
Go to the ATI CCC, if I recall correctly, you can find options for screen scaling setup in it. Set it to force the resolution you want. You can probably do this via the profile manager too.

Sorry, I can't be any more specific because I haven't used CCC in quite awhile.

I think you are talking about "Enable GPU scaling" in CCC, but I don't want that, it's as good as playing in windowed mode. Bocz the game runs in a small window like thing, I want it to touch the upper and bottom frame with left and right having black strips. Just like watching an 4:3 movie on widescreen monitor without scaling.

6Diablo9 said:
@DeSmOnD dAvId Monitor is LG L194WT, it's pretty old model.

Sorry, but your monitor does not have that setting. (Ref)

The setting you are looking for is called "4:3 in wide" under the Setup tab, something like shown here.

I am not sure, but if you can flash another firmware the problem might get resolved.

J

DeSmOnD dAvId said:
CCC has no such setting. Its in nVidias control panel.

Yes, you're right. My bad.

This is a capture from the user manual of LG 177WSB (which I own). This states the setting that you are looking for:

*i.imgur.com/gK96g.png

However, I couldn't find this setting in the manual of your monitor.

E

can you upload screen shot of your MSI Graphic Controller Utility, there should be an option like "Scale with Fixed Aspect Ratio" if u could find urself,, otherwise plz upload screenshot of MSI utility. because in google image search there are many different type software for configuring properties