In my last blog post, I talked about how the WSGF got started. In those early days we often found that games had zero support for widescreen. We weren't debating issues of "good" or "bad", or "Hor+" vs. "Vert-". We were trying to get widescreen resolutions to just show up in the game options. Fast forward a few years, and as widescreen displays became more prevalent, the issues became fewer. We still fought the good fight regarding increasing the horizontal FOV, and ensuring that the HUD remained unstretched.

Have a sit, and I'll tell you the tale of how the WSGF came to be...

Back in September 2003 I was looking to buy a new laptop. I wanted to do some gaming, and knew that I wanted to go widescreen. I was torn between the 15.4" Presario x1000 and the 17" Pavilion zd7000, both from the newly merged Compaq/HP. In my research I found two forums (both now defunct), x1000forums.com and zd7000forums.com. I ended up buying the x1000, but then returned in and exchanged it for the zd7000. Ah, the early days of a 9+ pound 1440x900 17" notebook with a full keypad....

Believe it or not, many games at the time didn't support widescreen. It was common for widescreen resolutions (listed in your desktop properties) to be completely missing from game options. And, even when you could get the game to load, there were often issues. In scouring the x1000 and zd7000 forums, I saw that members were working diligently to find solutions to the popular games of the day - but those two groups weren't talking together. If two communities that were closely aligned (many members were users on both forums) weren't sharing information, what about all the people with Dell, Sony and Toshiba laptops? Or, people who owned or built desktops.