1280x1024, is this 5:4 or 4:3?

[Skrying]

Are you sure about that?

I'm gonna have to argee with him. 1280x1024 has always felt and looked more natural and in place on any 4:3 monitor I've tried.

 

[zurich]

I've heard of an interesting "test" of sorts to demonstrate how 1280*1024 is an abomination.

Set your CRT monitor to 1024*768 and properly calibrate it, if necessary. Next, open up MS paint, and draw a perfect square (ie: each side 4 inches). Go back to the display properties and set the monitor back to 1280*1024. Not so square anymore eh? I did this back when and have never dared touch the "heretic" resolution!

 

[MPI]

I'm gonna have to argee with him. 1280x1024 has always felt and looked more natural and in place on any 4:3 monitor I've tried.

You two are clearly posessed by the devil and his corruptive aspect ratio. Please check with your local exorcist.

 

[t0y]

I'm gonna have to argee with him. 1280x1024 has always felt and looked more natural and in place on any 4:3 monitor I've tried.

Because most CRTs auto-adjust to 1280x1024 and not to 1280x960 ?
I always have to do a bit of stretching to make it look good since my (old) monitor doesn't have built in settings for "weird" resolutions. In the end, it always looks better than 1280x1024 and I can use 75hz instead of 60hz. Some ATi drivers in past had a lot of trouble setting the proper v-frequency btw, the monitor always reported 60hz despite what the ATi control panel said. I had to disable DCC to make it work, another indication that it's not recognized as a standard resolution by the industry.

One thing I never figured out properly is how to detect a display's aspect ratio (independently of resolution).
It's stupid to assume the pixels to be square all the time like games do...

 

[Xmas]

One thing I never figured out properly is how to detect a display's aspect ratio (independently of resolution).
It's stupid to assume the pixels to be square all the time like games do...

On Windows, the right thing to do would be to use GetDeviceCaps with either HORZSIZE/VERTSIZE or ASPECTX/ASPECTY. But that only works if the monitor is
recognized properly.

Most games today do not assume anything about pixels really, they just assume the aspect ratio of the monitor is 4:3, which is even worse an assumption to make.

 

[Nappe1]

Yes, I owned a Tandy TRS 1000 laptop, with that weird 320*200*16 resolution. Squashed view. But, thanks to the 320*200*256 VGA resolution, anyone could make a game without having to do arcane things like bank switching and bitplanes. (I did as well, or at least a very extensive 2D game engine.) It's probably one of the best reasons why PC's are as popular today as they are.

But all other resolutions were just as bad to handle, so 640*480 was not more difficult than 640*400. SVGA (1024*786) with the lineair mapped display buffer was the next step that made it easy once again.

Edit: the Tandy laptop had an aspect ratio of about 1*2, which made it even worse. No square pixels there, either, but in the wrong direction.

320x200x8bpp with 256 color modifiable palette (10 bits per each color value, IIRC) is MCGA mode, which was included to VGA spec. VGA again included so called X-Modes that used video memory much more efectively. most used X-Modes were 320x240x8bpp (2 pages) and 640x400x8bpp (single page). Also wierd 640x350x8bpp was used ocasionally (Pinball Fantasies for example)

320x200 isn't really that wierd... the standard EGA mode is much more "fun" to work with: 640x350x4bpp with 64 color palette and 4:3 aspect ratio.

Also, all modes going beyond 256KB video memory limit (640x480x8bpp goes over it.) were called SVGA (or EVGA depending chip manufacturer.) until VESA came and created a standard accessing video memory beyond 256KB limit. XGA again was IBM's own sollution to make higher resolutions available. XGA incorporates modes like 640x480,800x600, 1280x1024 (but no 1280x960) and 1600x1200. first two ones have 8 and 16 bit modes available, 1024 has 8 and 4 bpp modes and for the last one I am not sure if it supported 4bpp, but 1bpp was available.

 

[Xmas]

320x200x8bpp with 256 color modifiable palette (10 bits per each color value, IIRC) is MCGA mode, which was included to VGA spec. VGA again included so called X-Modes that used video memory much more efectively. most used X-Modes were 320x240x8bpp (2 pages) and 640x400x8bpp (single page).

The VGA palette had 256 RGB666 entries. The most popular "mode X" resolution was actually still 320x200x8bpp. It differed from mode 13h (standard MCGA/VGA mode supported by the BIOS) in that the memory was organized in bitplanes which complicated writing pixels a lot but gave access to the whole 256 KiB of video memory. The standard modes were restricted to linear access to 64 KiB.