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I installed BF2142 the other day when it was released then today I went out and bought a Samsung 225BW Widescreen LCD monitor, it's a fantastic monitor and all of my games are working thus far, except for BF2142, I understand that the game doesnt natively support the 16:10 aspect ratio and it's supposed to just stretch the 4:3 resolutions to fit the widescreen but for some reason when you click on the shortcut the game doesn't even load, the splash picture appears, the monitor flashes for a second and then it returns me to the desktop. I've tried using the standard shortcuts and also creating shortcuts FOR widescreen mode, info I found here:

http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33820626

Nothing seems to work, has anyone else had any problems with getting a game to load? I havn't re-installed the game yet.

Using the command line settings in the shortcut still works for me as it did in the demo.

HOWEVER, since it looks stupid/doesn't help see crap at all and my nvidia card can 1:1, I'm forced to do 1600x1200 on my 24" LCD. $#%$^%$&#@!#@

This plus the whatever spyware...bleh, I think this is the last EA game I bother with, even running as a limited user. Its been a long downhill run since DC 0.6 or so

Someone needs to hurry the hell up with a HL2 mod thats large groups and vehicles...the engine being 'dated' (but still looks better than many 'new' ones) will help it do the large maps on modern pcs. Plus its still getting tweaked slightly with every episode I think.

I'm starting to worry great mods are a freak of nature that might not be able to exist now that its all been mainstreamed and under the thumb of trash like this.

PS those lazy tools (EA/DICE/Satan) have actually said somewhere the reason they dont do widescreen is "its an unfair advantage" yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight, and sos my lower ping from not living out in the middle of kansas too!

Bauxite wrote:

PS those lazy tools (EA/DICE/Satan) have actually said somewhere the reason they dont do widescreen is "its an unfair advantage" yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight, and sos my lower ping from not living out in the middle of kansas too!

Giving people with certian hardware a wider field of view is damn well an unfair advantage. Give everyone the same perspective.

mattsteg wrote:

Bauxite wrote:

PS those lazy tools (EA/DICE/Satan) have actually said somewhere the reason they dont do widescreen is "its an unfair advantage" yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight, and sos my lower ping from not living out in the middle of kansas too!

Giving people with certian hardware a wider field of view is damn well an unfair advantage. Give everyone the same perspective.

Well 1600x1200 is an advantage over 1024x768 because there's more information on the screen

Usacomp2k3 wrote:

mattsteg wrote:

Bauxite wrote:

PS those lazy tools (EA/DICE/Satan) have actually said somewhere the reason they dont do widescreen is "its an unfair advantage" yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight, and sos my lower ping from not living out in the middle of kansas too!

Giving people with certian hardware a wider field of view is damn well an unfair advantage. Give everyone the same perspective.

Well 1600x1200 is an advantage over 1024x768 because there's more information on the screen

Mostly it's just clearer presentation of the same information. Widescreen, on the other hand, changes your angle of view which can be huge.

mattsteg wrote:

Usacomp2k3 wrote:

mattsteg wrote:

Bauxite wrote:

PS those lazy tools (EA/DICE/Satan) have actually said somewhere the reason they dont do widescreen is "its an unfair advantage" yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight, and sos my lower ping from not living out in the middle of kansas too!

Giving people with certian hardware a wider field of view is damn well an unfair advantage. Give everyone the same perspective.

Well 1600x1200 is an advantage over 1024x768 because there's more information on the screen

Mostly it's just clearer presentation of the same information. Widescreen, on the other hand, changes your angle of view which can be huge.

But people have different hardware all the time. If you have the RadeForce XX9900 GTXPE 2 GB GGDDR5 dual CrossSLIre you can shoot me from distances which are way beyond what my 9800 Pro will show me on screen; so it makes it a moot point.

Besides, it was DICE themselves which set up retarded frame-per-second based stun effects, effectively nullifying ANY argument they'd have for "unfair hardware advantage".

mattsteg wrote:

Giving people with certian hardware a wider field of view is damn well an unfair advantage. Give everyone the same perspective.

The same can be said for all kinds of computer and non-computer hardware then, eg, my X-Fi and 7.1 Surround Sound gives me better audio cues as to what's happening on the battlefield and my razer diamondback mouse gives me an edge because of it's got a better optical sensor and is more responsive and my 6x Antialiased and 16x AF settings and 1600x1200 resolution give me an advantage and ,oh hell, even the chair I sit in gives me an advantage because I can concentrate on the game for longer.

These devices/peripherals are all designed for one thing and for a company to say, "oh, hey, yea, widescreen monitors, naaaaah no one will go for it so why should we support it in our games?!" is like saying, well, simply saying something truely retarded. Most every forum you go to there's somebody dissing EA and rightfully so, I'm just adding to it, I hope EA's marketing drones read TEH_INTARWBEB.

Giving people with certian hardware a wider field of view is damn well an unfair advantage. Give everyone the same perspective.

Let me give you some more clues:

The guy with a 47" hdtv @ 3' can recognize targets easier and quicker than the guy with a 15" old bubble-butt CRT.

The guy in timbuktu trying to snipe another guy that plays on his college dorm's server is probably going to miss 3 times and get knifed in the back.

I can probably dig up a couple dozen other examples, hell lets complain about newer high speed tracking mice! Since they artificially slow down the movement on the anti-tank ground turrets, my laser mouse can do a 360 real fast if I sling it across the desk at high DPI. Good luck on anything else, enjoy the knife in the back.

Widescreen is everywhere, its simply a better (gaming) experience and for something trying to be a tier 1 product in late 2006, there is no true excuse but lazyness. Don't pee on me and call it rain damnit.

BF2 engine is barely optimized at all to begin with, "requiring" people to upgrade for decent framerates...so whats a few hundred for a widescreen LCD to be 'on the top' ...or getting to use what you paid for.

Anyways, a 90 degree FOV is so far from realistic to begin with (even worse when they trim it more in the scopes/viewports) like walking around with one of those dog collars from the vet on. I remember changing it even with quake 1.

Well if I decided to play this POS game on my 13.3" laptop then I'd be putting myself at a huge disadvantage, thus I propose that this game run maxed out at 10FPS with a viewable area of 13.3" max without any type of scaling.

The game should also come with a small-ass keyboard so everyone has to deal with pressing the wrong key almost constantly, then perhaps the playing feild would be level. These things are a huge disadvantage compared to playing on my main rig (in sig)

I don't think you guys are quite getting the sort of advantage widescreen would be. With the same hardware and ping, widescreen people would have a greater viewing angle than the people without. That's an advantage you can never hope to compensate for.

I'll even go further on saying that even with mid-range hardware, someone with widescreen graphics would easily beat someone with the same skill in higher hardware. It would be particularly devastating in tanks and choppers.

As a side-topic, Jon, can you do a very length review of that monitor? I'm very inclined to buy it now and it seems to be excellent value but for the backlight problem. However, I suspect that most people complain about the backlight *before* adjusting brightness, which is almost always cranked up max in every monitor by default.

Also one thing I'm particularly interested in is input lag delay (not response time). Basically, the time that elapses between you doing something in the PC and the monitor reflecting it. It has become an issue of late, particularly but not restricted to 23 and 24-inch monitors, with some of the worst offenders in the 30 to 50ms range, which is totally unacceptable.

In my opinion if you are serious about gaming then you should be able to get a widescreen monitor. If you are not serious, then it shouldn't matter that other, more serious players have an advantage over you.

Oh well, Guild Wars allows for wide aspect gaming, and that does give an advantage over people with 4x3. Less of an advantage then in this BF game i'm sure, but when a game has a grand prize of $50,000 for the world champions once every ~6 months, you better believe that advantages like this mean something.

On that note, most games look crappy at a 4x3 aspect ratio on a 16x10 monitor. That's enough to keep me from playing said games.

morphine wrote:

I don't think you guys are quite getting the sort of advantage widescreen would be. With the same hardware and ping, widescreen people would have a greater viewing angle than the people without. That's an advantage you can never hope to compensate for.

I'll even go further on saying that even with mid-range hardware, someone with widescreen graphics would easily beat someone with the same skill in higher hardware. It would be particularly devastating in tanks and choppers.

You're on crack

Going from 640x480 @ low detail/22khz sound on the minimum system requirements with wildly varying fps of 5-30 on a 64k wannabe isdn line in china (technically the game 'requires broadband') to say 1600x1200+ @ high detail/full surround with fps always capped at vertical refresh rate of 60+ on a fiber-to-the-curb with a server on the same subnet is an advantage so far beyond belief, its not funny.

Widescreen is a piddle in the can compared to that difference. Many other major engines and derivatives have managed to acknowledge other resolutions and FOVs besides 4:3, including quake from the start. (it was considered good to have a 17" bubble-butt CRT then)

But there is nothing at all in the game to account for any of that.

Maybe a slight bit of hit detection around the corner stuff, not sure if they do that retarded stuff in the BF series though. ("the server knows I'm already around the corner, but their worthless and possibly hacked/cheating system says it hit me 1200ms ago, so time to send my client a death message") If they do, its pretty slight since I've yet to notice it, though many servers autokick people with high pings/packetloss/AOL dialup IP blocks/etc.

It's all about seeing more of the things to your sides than a regular 4:3 player would. Hardly think I'm "on crack" because I can pretty much imagine it would make a hell of a difference to me. In any case, your comparison was pretty much unfair, I only stated that given similar hardware, widescreen would be a great advantage to a player, and more of an advantage than a modest upgrade in hardware.

morphine wrote:

As a side-topic, Jon, can you do a very length review of that monitor? I'm very inclined to buy it now and it seems to be excellent value but for the backlight problem. However, I suspect that most people complain about the backlight *before* adjusting brightness, which is almost always cranked up max in every monitor by default.

Also one thing I'm particularly interested in is input lag delay (not response time). Basically, the time that elapses between you doing something in the PC and the monitor reflecting it. It has become an issue of late, particularly but not restricted to 23 and 24-inch monitors, with some of the worst offenders in the 30 to 50ms range, which is totally unacceptable.

The monitor is gorgeous, at 1680x1050 everything and all games are perfect........that support it. 4:3 games stretch but don't look as bad as people say they are, I played some Warcraft3 in 1280x1024 and it looked really decent, there was none of this blurry or fuzzy pixels crap you get at low res like 800x600.
The backlight bleeding issue, hardly noticeable, even in dark games, it's like the Aperture Grille lines in those high-end CRT's except that it's not so in your face (in fact you can't see it), you actually forget that it's there, in other words, it's not as big a deal as everyone's makes it out, it looks just fine actually and I don't think anybody with half a brain would complain about it. Okay you will get those dumbasses that will hate it just because it's something to hate but really, nothing is 100% perfect but this comes a close 99.99999%.

Widespread advantage = 100% BS. In fact it is a better emulation of the human vision IRL. The crux of the problem is that you might see more, but your eyes and brian can only focus so much area on the screen.

I guess the people complaining about 'widescreen advantage' also limit themselves to lowly hardware specs so that they get as close to the avg setup as possible... you know, to not give themselves an advantage.


[ps i have a bridge for sale]

sativa wrote:

I guess the people complaining about 'widescreen advantage' also limit themselves to lowly hardware specs so that they get as close to the avg setup as possible... you know, to not give themselves an advantage.


[ps i have a bridge for sale]

It's one thing to present the same information better, and quite another to get more info in the first place.

What about 5:4? one thing that pissed me off about all battlefield games is EA's insistence that 1280x1024 doesn't exist. When that's your monitor's resolution, and that being every 17" and 19" LCD, WTF???

Just seems they were too lazy to code anything but 4:3, as if that would kill them. Quake 3 had 5:4 FIVE YEARS AGO.

Airmantharp wrote:

What about 5:4? one thing that pissed me off about all battlefield games is EA's insistence that 1280x1024 doesn't exist. When that's your monitor's resolution, and that being every 17" and 19" LCD, WTF???

Just seems they were too lazy to code anything but 4:3, as if that would kill them. Quake 3 had 5:4 FIVE YEARS AGO.

5:4 doesn't deserve to exist. It needs to be excluded more so that bastard of a resolution dies.

My guess is that it is much more of a technical issue with the engine than anything that PR spins out. Speaking of spin, how much is BF2 used in competitive play anyway?

Many people still seem to enjoy it a lot.

Too bad the public play still has too many retards around a few cheap moves. But that's open to discussion.

drsauced wrote:

My guess is that it is much more of a technical issue with the engine than anything that PR spins out. Speaking of spin, how much is BF2 used in competitive play anyway?

There is no technical reason they don't add support for widescreen resolutions and FOV. Changing the FOV is trivial in any 3d application as it only requires changing a value in the projection transformation. At worst it might make them rework how the HUD or other UI elements are placed on the screen so they don't appear stretched.


Personally i always use the command line shortcuts to force widescreen in BF2/2142. I may be loosing a little in top/bottom view but the extra resolution more than makes up for it.

Jon wrote:

morphine wrote:

As a side-topic, Jon, can you do a very length review of that monitor? I'm very inclined to buy it now and it seems to be excellent value but for the backlight problem. However, I suspect that most people complain about the backlight *before* adjusting brightness, which is almost always cranked up max in every monitor by default.

Also one thing I'm particularly interested in is input lag delay (not response time). Basically, the time that elapses between you doing something in the PC and the monitor reflecting it. It has become an issue of late, particularly but not restricted to 23 and 24-inch monitors, with some of the worst offenders in the 30 to 50ms range, which is totally unacceptable.

The monitor is gorgeous, at 1680x1050 everything and all games are perfect........that support it. 4:3 games stretch but don't look as bad as people say they are, I played some Warcraft3 in 1280x1024 and it looked really decent, there was none of this blurry or fuzzy pixels crap you get at low res like 800x600.
The backlight bleeding issue, hardly noticeable, even in dark games, it's like the Aperture Grille lines in those high-end CRT's except that it's not so in your face (in fact you can't see it), you actually forget that it's there, in other words, it's not as big a deal as everyone's makes it out, it looks just fine actually and I don't think anybody with half a brain would complain about it. Okay you will get those dumbasses that will hate it just because it's something to hate but really, nothing is 100% perfect but this comes a close 99.99999%.

No monitor aspect scaling controls like those on the Dell?