Widescreen Gaming Forum

MaxC,

I have had a few instances where I have had a horizontal line go right across the screen about a 3rd of the way down when using DScaler. At the time, I could not get rid of it so I exited DScaler and restarted it and it was gone. Since then I have not seen anything except for some minor sparklies from my 9m long DVI cable. I am investigating a new cable to see if that would fix the sparklies. Could you tell me how long your DVI cable is and if you have any sparklies on very dark scenes (i.e. more then half of the scene is black)?

I use MoComp2 with a setting of 1 or 2. If I increase this too high all my diagonal lines start to go jaggy. I use it as the deinterlacer, and Chroma filter and sometimes the sharpness filter. Since the majority of my viewing is via DVD, there isn't much problems with the deinterlacer. If your using video sources such as Satellite or TV, then it would be more important I believe. I'm working on that with the Beyond TV, but that has not worked out well so I think I'm going to drop it. I did play with DScalers Capture abilities but didn't like the fact that I couldn't choose my resolution to capture at. I will be trying Showshifter soon and maybe VirtualDub for Satellite captureing.

I found this forum through TigerDave's Web Site. I have no doubt that the game works with widescreen modes, I'm just frustrated that I am experiencing this issue with my setup. I suspect some driver is screwed up, probably from trying Beyond TV and having it crash on my 4 or 5 times while setting it up. Not a good thing.

Like I said, I will redo the HTPC this weekend and install each card one at a time, making sure CMR4 runs with each add on. I really want to use my HTPC for 85% DVD watching, and 15% games, mostly being driving games. I gave a few FPS a try, but on a huge screen I was feeling sick after 1 half hour. On a little monitor, no problem but Halo on a 95" screen was a little too much after a half hour. That or I was overly tired at 2am in the morning when I was trying it out. Who knows. A good driving game is what I really want so when the buddies come over we can all heckle each other on our driving skills.

Before taking your computer apart, try another game at 1280x720. If you don't have one on the list download UT2004 demo!

I have a 30ft DVI cable that I got with the Bravo D1 player. I have not had any sparkle problems on either the DVD player or HTPC once properly set. It is hard to see if it is the cable unless you have another player to test. I once got sparklies when my HTPC was not properly set and the 1280x720 was not a true 1280x720. It would do it on dark scenes constantly and on the wider 2.35 aspect ratios. This is why you should test your cable with another source if possible. You could bring the cable to a store and try, because they are not cheap! If it is the cable, I recommend the one that V inc sells with their Bravo.

I never knew you could change a setting on Mo Comp2. How do you and what do they do?

To change the settings of MoComp2, go to the De Interlace Menu and go down to the bottom where it says "Video Method Settings". In this list, at the bottom you will find the MoComp2 settings. I believe the default is 4 or 5. Change this to a 1 and you should get much better results. With it set to 5, I found the screen jumped around quite a bit. With it at 1, it was a huge improvement in picture quality due to the lack of screen jump (judder?).

In this same menu you can adjust a whole slew of things for the deinterlacing. You can also go into the filters menu and play with the different filter settings, giving you much control over how they work on your DVD screen.

I understand your push for me to try a different game, but I firmly believe there is something wrong with my drivers. I have VNC installed in my HTPC and I have tried running CMR4 with the projector turned off, meaning there was no video display device connected to my HTPC at all. This should allow me to change my resolution to anything I want without question as there is nothing there to argue with. Running the game, sure enough, I get the same error saying it can't support that mode. Something is wrong and a quick reinstallation of the OS and drivers would not hurt to see if that fixes things. Like I said before, I was playing with Beyond TV and it was just blue screening my system to h#ll, so I am sure it did something nasty to it.

Good idea about the DVI cable. Its funny because I have a sharp eye for things like that, but when I first watched a movie (2001 Space Od.), I did not see anything. Not that it wasn't there, the sparklies could have been, but I am sure I would have seen something. Then I went and started installing different things and before you knew it, I saw sparklies so I figure something has screwed up one of my drivers to the point that sparklies are there and CMR4 will not run in widescreen mode. It will take less than half a day to re-do everything which will make me happy any ways as this time I know how to get PowerStrip up and running on the first try, as well as the other drivers. Once it is all done, then I will Ghost the OS partition so I can easy jump back to it when ever I want too.

Finally found some time last weekend to format my system and reinstall Windows XP.

When I was done updating all of my drivers, I installed CMR4 and gave it a shot at 4:3 res which worked as expected. I then editted the reg to 1280x720 and it came up with the same error. At this point, I stepped back and looked at what was happening. It appeared to me that CMR4 was trying to set the video resolution, but was not finding a supported resolution.

At this point, I installed PowerStrip and setup my computer monitor for a 1280x720 resolution. The screen was small, being on my monitor and not my projector, but good enough for my testing. I then tried CMR4 and it worked at the widescreen resolution.

In summary, in order for this game to work at the widescreen resolutions, you need to be sure that resolution is selectable via the display options. In my first attempts, the resolutions I wanted were avaliable, but not working properly due to my previous crashes of my system. The reinstall of the OS, PowerStrip and CMR4 worked to get it going.

Darren

Finally found some time last weekend to format my system and reinstall Windows XP.

When I was done updating all of my drivers, I installed CMR4 and gave it a shot at 4:3 res which worked as expected. I then editted the reg to 1280x720 and it came up with the same error. At this point, I stepped back and looked at what was happening. It appeared to me that CMR4 was trying to set the video resolution, but was not finding a supported resolution.

At this point, I installed PowerStrip and setup my computer monitor for a 1280x720 resolution. The screen was small, being on my monitor and not my projector, but good enough for my testing. I then tried CMR4 and it worked at the widescreen resolution.

In summary, in order for this game to work at the widescreen resolutions, you need to be sure that resolution is selectable via the display options. In my first attempts, the resolutions I wanted were avaliable, but not working properly due to my previous crashes of my system. The reinstall of the OS, PowerStrip and CMR4 worked to get it going.

Darren

Glad to hear that!....I think the first thing I wrote was to make sure that the resolution was working and if not use Powerstrip or Rage3D.;) You would have figured it out, if you tried another game! :D So now that you got everything working, please visit my thread for other games or to inform me of other games that work. My list is slightly different, in that I am looking for games AND menus that can be set since some people have a problems with menus being stuck to a specific resolution.

Thanks for the help MaxC.

As I mentioned before when I was having issues, I was using PowerStrip and I was in 1280x720 mode all the time, but due to my system crashes, something was not quite right with how my computer was controlling the system resolution. Even though I could change it via PowerStrip, the game was unable to access that same mode and change it for its own purposes. So the resolution was being used, as I mentioned before, but the game was unable to change to it for some unknown reason. Now that I have re installed my OS and everything is in prime condition, the game has no problems changing to the 1280x720 mode that I've setup in PowerStrip. The reinstall of the OS cleaned up the hidden issues.

I noticed you have played with Need for Speed Underground. How do you find that game compared to CMR4? Is the game play pretty good (on par with CMR4?). I might go and get that one if its pretty good. I also have my eye out for Code Masters new racing game coming out soon called TOCA Race Driver 2. It looks pretty good, and hopefully it supports widescreen as well.

Darren

First, I only have the demo of Colin McRae Rally4. That being said, the graphics and 3D EAX surround sound is better on Colin. The handling is a bit better in NFS and it seems more fun because I like being able to mod the car (from paint to parts) so that it really is YOUR car.

Have you checked out this new up coming rally game? Looks pretty cool.

http://www.xpandrally.com

Darren

Looks like CodeMasters just released another version of CMR4 with multi-player support over the net.

On top of this, they have given the demo three new tracks to run on. Pretty cool!

I wish the force feedback was better on this game.

Darren