Games not being preserved at aspect ratio - being stretched to fill my 21:9 screen

heartburnron · 1 Jun 2017 at 19:32

Ok, so some more data for the picture. If I change my resolution in the Windows settings for the display, it will display my desktop at whatever the selected resolution is so I guess that means that the monitor is capable of recognising and displaying the settings in Windows. Why then is it stretching the games? It's as if it isn't acknowledging the settings in the driver settings to either 'preserve the aspect ratio' or 'centre' under scaling mode - you would expect this stretching to happen only if 'full panel' was selected, which it never has been...

As a side note - I noticed in the display settings on windows that it doesn't provide an option to set the desktop resolution to 2560x1440 - it goes from 3440x1440 down to 1920x1200. If as a workaround I wanted to set my desktop resolution to 2560x1440 and then launch the game, as I think Amnesia was suggesting a few posts back, is there a way to add a custom resolution in the windows display settings? I can see an option for custom scaling, but not for resolution. If I select 1920x1080 - I get a small desk top in the middle of my screen framed in black, which makes sense given that is the area of pixels being used for that resolution I guess.

FloppyPoppy · 1 Jun 2017 at 19:45

heartburnron said:
Ok, so some more data for the picture. If I change my resolution in the Windows settings for the display, it will display my desktop at whatever the selected resolution is so I guess that means that the monitor is capable of recognising and displaying the settings in Windows. Why then is it stretching the games? It's as if it isn't acknowledging the settings in the driver settings to either 'preserve the aspect ratio' or 'centre' under scaling mode - you would expect this stretching to happen only if 'full panel' was selected, which it never has been...

As a side note - I noticed in the display settings on windows that it doesn't provide an option to set the desktop resolution to 2560x1440 - it goes from 3440x1440 down to 1920x1200. If as a workaround I wanted to set my desktop resolution to 2560x1440 and then launch the game, as I think Amnesia was suggesting a few posts back, is there a way to add a custom resolution in the windows display settings? I can see an option for custom scaling, but not for resolution. If I select 1920x1080 - I get a small desk top in the middle of my screen framed in black, which makes sense given that is the area of pixels being used for that resolution I guess.

If your sig spec is correct then i believe that you are using an Fury X? if so then IIRC the AMD control panel has the ability to do this.

heartburnron · 1 Jun 2017 at 19:57

harry5522 said:
If your sig spec is correct then i believe that you are using an Fury X? if so then IIRC the AMD control panel has the ability to do this.

Ah yes, I noticed that before come to think of it. Cheers for that. I might use it as a last resort although I'd really like to get to the bottom of what the hell is going on...

Amnesia · 4 Jun 2017 at 12:27

heartburnron said:
Thanks for the suggestion. What exactly do you mean? Do you mean in set up in Windows? For any game, regardless of what resolution I select from the in game options, it stretches what ever the selected resolution is across the 21:9 display.

yea make sure that you are capable of displaying the resolution with borders so not stretched in windows itself first. if you do then stay in that resolution and launch the game

JTrickle · 4 Jun 2017 at 18:33

I had this problem until I worked out how to create a 2560 1440 Windows desktop res. Easy with nvidia, not so much with and catalyst.

That way if you have a game that won't do 21:9, it will have a 2560 option.

heartburnron · 4 Jun 2017 at 19:01

JTrickle said:
I had this problem until I worked out how to create a 2560 1440 Windows desktop res. Easy with nvidia, not so much with and catalyst.

That way if you have a game that won't do 21:9, it will have a 2560 option.

Amnesia said:
yea make sure that you are capable of displaying the resolution with borders so not stretched in windows itself first. if you do then stay in that resolution and launch the game

Yeah thanks guys - I can probably do that ok as a workaround but I never had to do this before a few weeks ago - it would always have provided the black bars if the resolution was not 21:9. I just tried another couple of older games that I knew I played at either 16:9 or 4:3 with black bars and they are now being stretched across the screen too. It's not that big of a deal really - over 90% of my games either support 21:9 or I've found some form of fix or mod to get them running in 21:9. The remaining 10% of games I haven't been able set to my resolution tend to be older games where the graphics are dated anyway so it doesn't look so bad stretched across the screen, it's just doing something it isn't supposed to and doing my nut in that I can't figure out what is causing it!

Some games list 3440x1440 in the screen resolution options but display the game in 16:9 with black bars at the side anyway - South Park The Stick of Truth and Godeater Resurrection do this - for all PCs, they are supposed to that and it's not my issue. I was just experimenting with South Park and when I select the 3440x1440 resolution for the options it displays the black bars at the side as it always did - however when I select 1920x1080 or any resolution below that, it stretches the game across the whole screen. So the issue is definitely that something is telling my PC to do this but if it isn't the settings in the monitor or driver settings then where else could it be?