Run a low-resolution game in center of a high-resolution LCD?

Question

I want to run my Warcraft 3 (resolution 1024x768) in the center of my 23" LCD screen (resolution 1920x1080), I want to keep Warcraft 3 in the center of my LCD, and outer region are all black rather than stretch the game to full screen.

(It's just like you run a Iphone app on your Ipad, you can set the app to be at the middle of the screen, the outer all black.)

Is there a way to do so? (in windows 7)

Thank you :)

Answer 1

The obvious first and easiest step is to see if the software runs in windowed mode: this involves no changes, hacks, or workarounds, but might result in poor performance. The performance issue may be a non-starter though, because the problem implies OLD software.

The term you are looking for is aspect scaling and/or image scaling and the method depends upon the software and the hardware drivers.

There is a way to pick unsupported display resolution for that game ( http://www.widescreengaming.net/wiki/Warcraft_3 ), but it does stretch.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Blizzard Entertainment\Warcraft III\Video
reswidth = 1920 resheight = 1200 

The driver scaling depends on the hardware and the driver VERSION, but for ATI/AMD catalyst drivers: ( http://techreport.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=68072 )

Set your resolution to anything below your usual resolution.
- Right-click your desktop, and go to the Catalyst Control Center. Set it to advanced mode if it's not already.
- At the top left, click the "Graphics" menu, and then "Desktops & Displays".
- For your desired display, click the little black triangle in the bottom part of the screen, on the LITTLE picture, not the BIG one, and click "Configure".
- The scaling options will now be selectable, check the "Enable GPU scaling" box and select "Maintain aspect ratio". Hit Apply.
- Set your old resolution back. Even though the forementioned scaling controls are greyed out and you can actually see "Scale image to full panel size" grey-selected, don't worry.
- Go play your games!

Note that the above steps worked for me in one case, but then at another time, with a different version of the catalyst drivers, this did NOT work.

I don't know about nVidia.

Answer 2

Some video drivers offer the ability to change the scaling option when using a different resolution than the monitor's default. You may be able to change the driver to use no scaling, and then run Warcraft 3 in full screen mode. Many older laptops didn't support LCD scaling, so this is exactly what would happen if you used a lower than maximum resolution.