Monitor buying advice needed

[ppargen]

You have to increase the screen resolution setting on your video card to avoid the "squashed" look. This may mean buying a new video card after getting a bigger monitor. You will just have to try it and see if you have performance issues with the video card you currently have.

[107thCav]

On my 22" widescreen monitor, the CM splash screen looks a little distorted but the game itself looks perfectly fine. I'm running an ASUS EN8500GT graphics card.

Depending on the situation, maybe take your tower to the shop and see if they would be willing to hook up the floor model for you?

[McIvan]

Seeing as its an older game, I was worried it wouldn't be able to handle a widescreen monitor.

Mick, proper widescreen support means the game software shows a wider panoramic view of the game without distortion....ie its a "true" wide view, not simply expanding the normal 4:3 view.

The evidence from 107th Cav and Col T is that CM can handle it....so give it a try should you wish.

[Antoni Chmielowski]

I play on a 19inch widecreen monitor Mick, and I have no problems playing CM on it !.

[PoorOldSpike]

Okay guys i hear what you're saying but i'm still not sure i understand some of the basics..
Look at this mocked-up pic below, CM looks great and perfectly normal on the square screen on the left, and notice the circle is perfectly er... circular..
But surely the same pic on a widescreen is going to be stretched out like the pic on the right isn't it, and look unrealistic?
Look at how the circle is crazily stretched out on the widescreen!
Are some of you telling me that the pic on the right looks fine and normal to you??

[RedDevil]

Wide views take a bit to get used to, but after a while you'll never go back to a normal sized monitor..

PC gaming rocks on 19" and larger!

[Antoni Chmielowski]

Dont worry Mick,

Your eyes will get used to the new screen !.

[kineas]

The problem is not (only) the distortion, but that LCD monitors can only display sharp image in one resolution (called the native resolution). If you display CM's 1024*768 pixel on an 1280x800 pixel LCD the resulting image will be very blurry, unusable.

I play it on an 1280x800 laptop LCD, and I have black bars at both sides of the screen, playing it essentially in 1024x768, so I have sharp images by wasting screen area.

Since CM will refuse to start in widescreen mode, make sure your video card driver can produce sharp pictures in a resolution what CM knows too.

I think the best is if you ask for model types/numbers from players who own a modern LCD monitor and play CM on it without problems.

[PoorOldSpike]

LCD monitors can only display sharp image in one resolution (called the native resolution)..

Yes I can see i'll have to buy something only if the shop agrees to let me exchange it for a different type (or refund) if it won't work for me.

PS -Hamlet apparently had the same trouble -

"But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought"..

[kineas]

More on the topic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_resolution