[wumeng]

Dear all,

Does anybody know which games on the market currently take advantage of non-standard resolutions such as those on the Powerbook G4 (1152x768) and Cinema Display (1600x1024)?

[NewOldbie]

Well, I've been playing Q3 on my Cinema Display for a long time now...must admit it looks a little wierd on "other" screens

Deus Ex & Oni both ran well with the larger screen settings.

SimCity 2000 (SC3000 looks too PC-like to me so I never played it).

If you mean taking FULL advantage of the screen, I have not found any

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If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent him.

Voltaire

[wumeng]

I wonder why these constraints exist in games and other applications -- surely it would be trivial to code for nonstandard screen sizes? Or maybe it's a flaw in the OpenGL system, such that OpenGL (in the form that it comes) does not support such screen sizes.

[NewOldbie]

There are several reasons these constraints exist.

1) Physical (memory and CPU) Constraints...consider Quake 3 at 1600 x 1024, if you have a less than 400 MHZ G4, forget it. . . too darn slow.
2) In most games, programmers must address the hardware directly to get the performance they need. When you bypass "programming guidelines" as set out by Apple, you may have problems later down the pipe (heck, even when you *DO* follow Apple Programming Guidelines, these problems exist!). However, writing your own optimized routines to take advantage of hardware is a necessary evil. . .it also locks your software into a particular generation of hardware (of course, updates are always possible).
3) Limited resources for publishers/programmers. How big is the market for games that will run on a Cinema display? If I were still programming, I would only do so as a personal challenge. . .I'd go bankrupt to spend months working on video routines just for 2% of the market.

You must also keep in mind the sophistication of many of the top games today...they are just too darn complex (must be a nightmare to debug) without hitching on "bonus" features.

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If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent him.

Voltaire

[Dogma]

Tomb Raider : Last revelation plays very well on the Cinema display, although unless you have the nVidia or Radeon card, you might want to step the resolution down a bit.
That's the only one I've actually found.
More will probably on their way since the TiBook has the same Resolution ratio (I think) and that has sold a lot more than the Cinema display.

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"If you can't stand the flames, get out of the bulletin board!"

[Dogma]

Sorry, the Cinema and TiBook screens are slightly different ratios.
TiBook 1152x768 (height/1.5)
Cinema Display 1600x1024 (height/1.5625)
Anyone how to word these ratios properly?

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"If you can't stand the flames, get out of the bulletin board!"

[Mad Frog]

Just one word to say that your video card must be very powerful to work with this trivials resolutions...
A GeForce 3 with Apple cinema Display (22") in 1600*1024 run at 80+ fps (I don't remember exactely), It's very fun, trust me! But...blurp it make me ill... too large and too fast !!
I really thinks that a 17" is hte best screen to play (or three 17" : multi head gaming...)

Just my advice...

Sorry for my english ... frenchy frog

[godzappa]

So you CAN play Quake 3 in Widescreen? I had heard you could play Quake 3 on Cinema Display, PB G4 etc but with "black bars" to fit the wide screen.

This is sweet... I need that Powerbook bad

[wumeng]

Originally posted by NewOldbie:
There are several reasons these constraints exist.

1) Physical (memory and CPU) Constraints...consider Quake 3 at 1600 x 1024, if you have a less than 400 MHZ G4, forget it. . . too darn slow.
2) In most games, programmers must address the hardware directly to get the performance they need. When you bypass "programming guidelines" as set out by Apple, you may have problems later down the pipe (heck, even when you *DO* follow Apple Programming Guidelines, these problems exist!). However, writing your own optimized routines to take advantage of hardware is a necessary evil. . .it also locks your software into a particular generation of hardware (of course, updates are always possible).
3) Limited resources for publishers/programmers. How big is the market for games that will run on a Cinema display? If I were still programming, I would only do so as a personal challenge. . .I'd go bankrupt to spend months working on video routines just for 2% of the market.

You must also keep in mind the sophistication of many of the top games today...they are just too darn complex (must be a nightmare to debug) without hitching on "bonus" features.

All this would make a great deal of sense, but for the fact that Quake 3 clearly supports widescreen configurations -- a fact I discovered while looking at the display settings in the Quake 3 Team Arena demo.

So it's clearly possible; just a question of why not?