widescreen monitors w/ older games?

U

ufo_hunter

First time out of the vault
I am planning to buy a new monitor, maybe 17 or 19 " since the screen in my new laptop is quite small, only 12'1".
How do older games behave with wide screen monitors? Games like FO2, xcom-series...?
I mean will it strecht the picture so it will look rediculous or what? Will I have to find away to play those games windowed?

I am asking because many local stores only have wide screen monitors.
 
Mostly, if you've got an Nvidia card; you're allowed to change the scaling to "fit aspect ratio". The result will be that on the older games, those with 4:3 resolutions - Fallout being a prime example, you will end up having two black bars on either side of your screen, but the image won't be streched.

For newer 3D games, you will have to go to the ends of the Earth and find applications to fix their locked in FOVs, and etc. One good example: Battlefield 2. It requires a FOV hack, and a resolution hack.

So while widescreen is very nice, it's simply a standard that hasn't been fully adopted yet, and ignored by some developers (EA Games, I'm looking at you).

As per recommendations: I recommend the Samsung 226BW. It's currently the largest and best widescreen LCD on sale.

1680x1050, 22" and 2ms refresh? At $260? Come on. Awesomeness.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824001096R&Tpk=226bw
 
Geh, widescreen is a cop-out because they can't make LCD monitors any taller without having the center start to warp, I'd rather have a 4:3 monitor to a widescreen any day.

-edit-

I know it's off topic, sorry, but why would you buy a widescreen in the first place, I could understand if it came with your comp but they're just so bloody useless really.

As far as standards go, I think that widescreen is a preference over a standard really...
 
Widescreens are useful for watching widescreen movies. That's about it.
 
the human field of view is more suited for widescreen.

however, nearly all human crafted computer interfaces (be they games or web pages) are not made to take advantage of widescreen.

not to mention a 21" 4:3 normal screen has a bigger field of view than a 21" 16:9 widescreen...
 
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