[nagromme]

The new TiBook's Radeon 7500 GPU sounds like a very nice improvement. But I have a concern that the unit's new high-res screen may actually be very BAD for portable gaming. (And portability is what I'm after: not lugging a keyboard and display over to my friend's house.)

According to the new PBG4 tech docs, ALL 4:3 screen modes (640x480, 800x600, 1024x768) scale to fill a 1024x768 area in the MIDDLE of the 1280x854 screen. That means that you have black margins on ALL 4 SIDES of any gaming screen: leaving a tiny view equal to a 12" iBook. (Older TiBooks would scale to fit the hieght, leaving black only at the sides: a much larger view.)

BUT TiBooks (old and new) can also "stretch" these 4:3 modes to fill the WHOLE display with no margins, as long as you don't mind things looking too wide. That would be (sort of) a solution for the tiny-view problem, and might push me to buy a new TiBook.

My question is--for owners of ANY TiBook: how do you activate "stretched" modes? (In Mac OS 9 mainly: I want to play UT and Descent 3.)

I am worried that games don't understand these stretched modes and thus can ONLY play in a small part of the TiBook's screen. But if games can be made to go "stretched" without having to explicitly support that, then I'm set!

Anyone game in stretched mode? How? (Same question applies to owners of Cinema Displays, actually.)

Thanks!

[Osirisis]

Originally posted by nagromme:
<STRONG>The new TiBook's Radeon 7500 GPU sounds like a very nice improvement. But I have a concern that the unit's new high-res screen may actually be very BAD for portable gaming. (And portability is what I'm after: not lugging a keyboard and display over to my friend's house.)

According to the new PBG4 tech docs, ALL 4:3 screen modes (640x480, 800x600, 1024x768) scale to fill a 1024x768 area in the MIDDLE of the 1280x854 screen. That means that you have black margins on ALL 4 SIDES of any gaming screen: leaving a tiny view equal to a 12" iBook. (Older TiBooks would scale to fit the hieght, leaving black only at the sides: a much larger view.)

BUT TiBooks (old and new) can also "stretch" these 4:3 modes to fill the WHOLE display with no margins, as long as you don't mind things looking too wide. That would be (sort of) a solution for the tiny-view problem, and might push me to buy a new TiBook.

My question is--for owners of ANY TiBook: how do you activate "stretched" modes? (In Mac OS 9 mainly: I want to play UT and Descent 3.)

I am worried that games don't understand these stretched modes and thus can ONLY play in a small part of the TiBook's screen. But if games can be made to go "stretched" without having to explicitly support that, then I'm set!

Anyone game in stretched mode? How? (Same question applies to owners of Cinema Displays, actually.)

Thanks!</STRONG>

On my cinema display there is an option to run my screen in stretched mode. In OS 9 with displaysprocket based games they would stretch and fill the screen. In OS X they just fill a portion of the screen with black lines around it. Games that specifically support the screens resolution will be full screen in OS X. Civ III is a good example of this.

[nagromme]

A ray of hope... maybe?

Do you mean that games by DEFAULT stretch in 9? That's the opposite of what I've been told. What games stretch? UT? Descent 3? That's a nice sprockets feature if true--but it seems odd since most people wouldn't want stretching (not until this new TiBook issue anyway).

I've been told that a few games can be hacked to stretch, but basically it can't be done unless the game is truly aware of the wide mode--which 4:3 FPS games are not. (I even wrote to the folks porting UT to X and they didn't think wide support could even be added in the port.)

Without stretching, the new TiBook runs games in a little 12" window! Hands-on reports, anyone?

Originally posted by Osirisis:
<STRONG>

On my cinema display there is an option to run my screen in stretched mode. In OS 9 with displaysprocket based games they would stretch and fill the screen. In OS X they just fill a portion of the screen with black lines around it. Games that specifically support the screens resolution will be full screen in OS X. Civ III is a good example of this.</STRONG>

[Osirisis]

Originally posted by nagromme:
<STRONG>A ray of hope... maybe?

Do you mean that games by DEFAULT stretch in 9? That's the opposite of what I've been told. What games stretch? UT? Descent 3? That's a nice sprockets feature if true--but it seems odd since most people wouldn't want stretching (not until this new TiBook issue anyway).

I've been told that a few games can be hacked to stretch, but basically it can't be done unless the game is truly aware of the wide mode--which 4:3 FPS games are not. (I even wrote to the folks porting UT to X and they didn't think wide support could even be added in the port.)

Without stretching, the new TiBook runs games in a little 12" window! Hands-on reports, anyone?

</STRONG>

I can only comment on the range of games I play. Diablo II and Alpha Centauri both stretched to fill the screen. There is also an option in my monitors control panel to run 600*480 and 800*600 stretched. I can't comment on what to expect in laptops.

[nagromme]

Thanks for the details. Will report back here if I find concrete user reports from a new TiBook.

[x user]

I believe that you can modify the .cfg file for RTCW to make the widescreen work. I would assume this would be the same for Q3.

[Leonard]

What a bad title for this thread. If anything the Radeon 7500 is good step forward for mobile gaming.

I can understand your concern over the full use/benefit of the wide screen.

[maximage]

UT can be modified in the "UnrealTounrament.ini" file to support wide resolutions. Ive been running full res wide screen on my Cinema Display for the past 6 months. This is both in OS 9 and OS X. The 7th block of text is headed "[MacDrv.MacClient]", go to the 4th and 5th lines down (excluding the header) and alter the lines to "FullscreenViewportX=1280" and "FullscreenViewportY=854" in your case. Good luck!