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| Thread: Windows 7 and HoMM 3 aspect ratio |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 · NEXT» |
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted December 15, 2012 12:19 AM |
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Edited by artu at 00:20, 15 Dec 2012.
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Windows 7 and HoMM 3 aspect ratio
This is the fourth machine using Windows 7 that i tried to play Heroes 3 with and the aspect ratio is wrong again. There are black bars on each side (which i don't care about), yet the screen is still pressed (opposite of stretched). Here's a bunch of things I tried:
- Not using the HD mod.
- Changing the HD mod's resolution, color mode and stretch filter settings in every possible combination.
- Changing monitor resolution smallest to biggest including 4:3 ratios.
- Switching to 16-bit color mode.
- Setting the compatibility mode of H3 (h3era.exe) to XP service pack 2, 3 and Windows 98
- Checking compatibility mode's boxes. Run in 256 colors, Run in 640x480 screen resolution, Disable display scaling on high DPI settings.
- Combinations of all of the above. Not every combo maybe, but a lot!
Does everyone who play Heroes 3 under Windows 7 accept the wrong aspect ratio or am i missing something here? The black bars are gone in some settings or when you use HD mod but the aspect ratio is always wrong and what you see is always vertically pressed visuals. In my iMac the problem was immediately solved when i went back to XP on boot camp instead of Win 7. Also a rar file of the game displayed correct when i decompressed to a laptop with XP installed but the same rar file displayed wrong when decompressed to another laptop with windows 7.
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JimV
Responsible
Supreme Hero
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posted December 15, 2012 03:20 AM |
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Edited by JimV at 03:24, 15 Dec 2012.
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Heroes 3 was of course designed for the old 4:3 monitor size, whereas most monitors these days are wide-screen (16:9). As I have mentioned before, when I first installed H3 on my Windows 7 laptop, it ran as 4:3 with the full height of the screen and black bars on the sides, but after playing with the desktop resolution one day it switched to full-screen. I like the full-screen version (the bigger the better, for my eyes). It's a fantasy world anyway, who is to say the proportions of Dragons are broader or narrower?
Googling "Heroes of Might and Magic 3 screen resolution" I get hits about video cards, drivers, and monitor settings, nothing about Windows 7 vs. Windows XP (on the first page, anyway).
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted December 15, 2012 11:43 AM |
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Edited by artu at 11:44, 15 Dec 2012.
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Quote:
It's a fantasy world anyway, who is to say the proportions of Dragons are broader or narrower?
Well, you can easily tell the game wasn't supposed to look this:
As you can see this is hd mod full screen and 16:9 yet the display of images are still narrowed.(Not stretched, that would be normal and handled with black bars.)
I've done my part of googling too,I guess most people don't realize it's a problem related to OS because they only use a single OS and can not compare. Nothing I've read helped the situation, one guy wrote he downloaded a graphic card drive and its software had a lock ratio option which solved his problem but i could find no such thing. Maybe my graphic card was incompatible.
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JimV
Responsible
Supreme Hero
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posted December 15, 2012 02:50 PM |
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Edited by JimV at 14:57, 15 Dec 2012.
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I can't see anything wrong with the picture posted above, but I suspect any screen-capture from Heroes 3 in 800x600 mode from any computer would look the same on my screen (they all contain exactly 800x600 pixels so they would all display the same way, i.e. whatever way my setup displays 800x600 pixels).
One last idea: find an old 4:3 monitor and use it to display Heroes 3.
Edit - no, I see that picture was taken in 640x359 resolution (or perhaps cropped slightly). It still looks okay to me, but I would think it loses definition that way since I believe the Heroes graphics were developed for 800x600.
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted December 15, 2012 03:56 PM |
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Edited by artu at 15:59, 15 Dec 2012.
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Well, it seems slightly cropped looking at a minimized screenshot but the difference is more disturbing while you're actually looking at the monitor. Here's another strange thing i noticed, i was going to take two close-up screenshots but although in XP the display is correct, the screenshot image is cropped (pressed) just like Windows 7, so the screenshots are identical, although the display is not. I dont know what that means technically but it sure can be a clue.
Btw, are you telling me everybody who uses Win 7 plays with that cropped view, that it's something people finally decided to go along with?
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master_learn
Legendary Hero
walking to the library
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posted December 15, 2012 04:22 PM |
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I am using Windows 7 and here is one of my screens as I see it in the game:
Actually I havent tried HD mod yet.
____________
"I heard the latest HD version disables playing Heroes. Please reconsider."-Salamandre
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted December 15, 2012 04:50 PM |
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yes, you play with pressed display too. normally the town icons are wider for example, one of the easier things to notice. just open the game in xp and see the difference.
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master_learn
Legendary Hero
walking to the library
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posted December 15, 2012 04:57 PM |
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My screen is very different from yours,right?
For example,if you look at the resourses in your screen,which take the left side and mine are along the line.
Are you saying both screens are pressed,so we need third normal example?
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"I heard the latest HD version disables playing Heroes. Please reconsider."-Salamandre
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JimV
Responsible
Supreme Hero
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posted December 15, 2012 05:02 PM |
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In my (old) version of h3wog.exe_HD.exe, the HiRez.ini file is at the default setting of 800x600. At full screen, it fills my 16:9 monitor and looks identical to plain h3wog.exe.
Master_learn's screen capture is 800x583, so I believe he has the same standard 800x600 resolution but has cropped the screen slightly (just as I think Artu's 640x359 was taken from a 640x360 resolution screen).
As I said, a Heroes 3 screen-capture of the same resolution taken on 20 different computers has the same number of pixels (as the resolution) and all will look identical on the same computer (pixels are pixels; how each machine choses to display the pixels with the colored dots it has available may differ from machine to machine, but the pixels themselves are not different).
If you force a Heroes 3 graphic that was created for a 800x600 pixel full screen to display on a set of 640x360 pixels, it will have much the same effect as taking an 800x600 picture in Paint or Photoshop or GIMP and scaling it down to 640x360.
I myself have never used less than 800x600 resolution for Heroes 3, whether on XP or Windows 7. And I have not noticed a difference between XP and Windows 7.
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted December 15, 2012 05:14 PM |
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Edited by artu at 17:34, 15 Dec 2012.
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Quote:
My screen is very different from yours,right?
For example,if you look at the resourses in your screen,which take the left side and mine are along the line.
Are you saying both screens are pressed,so we need third normal example?
Yes, i am talking about the shape of objects themselves. Look how wide is the town icon and portrait in this real photo:
JimV, my screenshot is 1366x768, i just minimized it to fit the forum.
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master_learn
Legendary Hero
walking to the library
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posted December 15, 2012 05:38 PM |
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I got an idea,artu!
We have in the library a thread with funny screenshots,taken from different people and maybe some of them are as they should look like.
Such other thread is TEW4(with lots of screens).
Would you point to such screen as an example of normal look?
I admit as I havent tried HD mod,so maybe dont know what I am
missing,so I would like to know.
Edit:really wider than I have seen.Does that mean lower resolution?
____________
"I heard the latest HD version disables playing Heroes. Please reconsider."-Salamandre
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted December 15, 2012 05:55 PM |
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I told you: The screenshots are not in the same aspect ratio as the game display in XP, they are identical to Widows 7 display, so your idea wont help us. HD mod or resolution has no effect on what i am talking about, read carefully, i am talking about the aspect ratio. Windows 7 display is like a 16:9 film pressed to fit 4:3 (historically, the case should be the opposite but it's not.) This is Windows 7 screenshot and display, compare it to the photo of XP display above:
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JimV
Responsible
Supreme Hero
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posted December 15, 2012 06:00 PM |
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Edited by JimV at 18:09, 15 Dec 2012.
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I'm still not sure what the issue is, but of course a graphic designed with a screen aspect ratio of 4:3 will look wider at 16:9. 4/3= 1.333..., 16/9 = 1.777..., which is 33% wider.
I went from 4:3 (my previous XP laptop screen, with black bars on the sides) to 16:9 (the same laptop with an external wide-screen monitor, since the laptop screen back-lighting died) and things looked wider - but as I said who knows how wide the Towns are in Fantasy Land anyway, and I got used to it. The main thing was that in both cases the screen consisted of 800x600 pixels, so there were no glitches introduced by scaling them to a different aspect ratio. (The pixels themselves were displayed wider.) And the wide-screen XP version looks the same (well the colors are a bit different, on different screens) as my current W7 laptop.
Edit - I wrote that without seein Artu's last comment - not sure how I would have known the photo was from an XP screen before that, anyway I didn't. Maybe much later today after I get back from a Christmas party I will set up both my XP and W7 screens and see if I can take a picture of both of them together with a cheap digital camera - probably the result won't be very good.
As usual, my pyschic powers are not telling me what settings are used on screen-captures shown here, what mods are in use, etc., I can only see screen-captures at the resolutions they were scaled to and as they appear on my PC with my settings.
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gnollking
Supreme Hero
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posted December 15, 2012 06:02 PM |
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I have no problems with Win 7, and I even have the same resolution as you, 1366x768. In windows the resolution is set to the 1366x768 (recommended), and then just click the set desktop resolution in the HD mod settings and it fills the screen perfectly. I have no idea what you've done with your PC to display it like that.
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted December 15, 2012 06:12 PM |
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Edited by artu at 21:44, 15 Dec 2012.
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Quote:
I'm still not sure what the issue is
Well, i dont know how to put it any simpler, just look at the photo (not screenshot) of the intro scene above. That is the display (the size) of castle icon or orin portait in every XP using machine I had and it looks natural.
Then look at the uploaded screenshot of the same scene under windows 7, that is the display under every windows 7 using machine no matter what your resolution settings are, black bars or not. It does not look natural no matter what things look like in fantasyland.
If you cant see that the town icon in Win7 screenshot is much closer to a square compared to XP version's wide rectangle, i dont know what else to say.
Edit:
Quote:
but of course a graphic designed with a screen aspect ratio of 4:3 will look wider at 16:9. 4/3= 1.333..., 16/9 = 1.777..., which is 33% wider.
As you can see and as I said before, that would be the case if the display was stretched, it is the opposite, it is pressed.
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted December 15, 2012 09:37 PM |
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@gnollking
full screen or not, does your castle icon look like the one in post 10 or does it look like the one in post 12?
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JimV
Responsible
Supreme Hero
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posted December 16, 2012 04:33 AM |
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Edited by JimV at 04:34, 16 Dec 2012.
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Back from a family gathering and seeing "The Hobbit", I have measured the width/height ratio of the Hero (small) portrait in your XP photo as 3.7 (rough estimate using a ruler with fine graduations (50 per inch) against my screen). The "true" H3 ratio should be 48/32 (the small portrait pixel size is 48x32) = 1.5. On a wide screen it would appear 1/3 broader (16:9 versus 4:3), for a ratio of 2.0. Conclusion: your XP photo, as it appears on my screen, is much wider than it should be.
Check: I did the same measurements for an Advanced Options Menu portrait on my laptop (Windows 7, wide screen) and got a ratio of 1.9 for the measurements, an error of 5% versus the expected value of 2.0, probably due to inaccuracy in my measurements. Then I captured that screen, pasted into Paint, zoomed in on a portrait to make the measurements more accurate, and got a ratio of 1.5 (actually 1.496, but who's counting?) - outside of Heroes so the picture was no longer distorted to make a 4:3 screen fill a 16:9 screen.
So if I had to make a guess, it would be that your XP screen is the one that distorts the H3 graphics the most - more than twice as wide relative to height as the original H3 graphics. (Load a small Hero portrait into GIMP or Photoshop to see it look the way it was designed to look.) (Actually on my system I have to zoom in GIMP to about 200% to see what the H3 screen image would look like since the Heroes screen has lower resolution; on your system it might be 300%.)
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted December 16, 2012 11:34 AM |
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That horrible idea crossed my mind yesterday, like the ending of the Sixth Sense in a way, that it was the XP version which was wrong.
I thought it was unlikely though:
- First of all keep in mind that we are not comparing 2 machines, I tested this with many machines. The XP display is always wider no matter what your settings are. The game came out in 1999 and kept developing through early 2000's, XP came out in 2001. The natural platform of the game is XP not Windows 7.
- The wider display really really looks more natural, the Win 7 display is like a 16:9 movie pressed into a 4:3 TV. But nevermind that, let's just say I feel that way simply because I'm used to the wider display. Is there still a way to achieve that display in Windows 7?
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JimV
Responsible
Supreme Hero
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posted December 16, 2012 03:45 PM |
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Edited by JimV at 15:56, 16 Dec 2012.
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The easy (but unhelpful) answer is that whatever you are doing on the XP machines to distort the screen, do the same thing on the W7 machines, because be clear on this: the natural, intended width-to-height ratio of a small (48x32) Hero portrait is 1.5, and this will appear as 2.0 on a wide-screen/full-screen display; 3.7 is right out (as Monty Python would say). You can measure for yourself to see what you are getting on various machines. I was used to seeing the 1.5 ratio on Windows 98 and on Windows XP before I saw the wide-screen version, and have since gotten used to the 2.0 ratio on Windows XP and Windows 7 (actually, I had 1.5 on W7 also for a while until it re-adjusted itself). I grant you, from 3.7 down to 2.0 or 1.5 is a much bigger change than I had to adjust to. Anyway, don't assume that everyone with an XP is seeing a 3.7 ratio - we aren't.
I suppose if I wanted to distort my Heroes picture I would try some distorted resolution in the HD mod settings, such as 1320x360. I don't know if this would work. I think the best solution is to get used to something closer to the way Heroes 3 is intended to look.
P.S. Another way to check how H3 was intended to look is to open H3Manual.pdf to page 11. Zoomed to 800%, the small portrait of Orrin has a 1.47 ratio by my quick measurements (which had a 2% error - not bad for engineering work).
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted December 16, 2012 05:22 PM |
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The only explanation I can come up with is, maybe it has something to do with the computers running in NTSC or PAL. Because I did nothing to distort the scene in XP and it would be a huge coincidence that all the XP machines I ran into would somehow be set up to distort it. I have this dvd player and when I change the settings from PAL to NTSC the aspect ratio of the movies also change. I live in a PAL region and you guys in a NTSC region. Maybe OS XP handles that differently than OS 7 when your region settings are done. I will look into it. Thank you for the feedback.
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