Aspect ratios

[Diabetic]

Hey all, I've just been playing the game Armed Assault, and was fiddling with the options and noticed that in the resolution settings there were many more aspect ratios than is usual.

I'm used to seeing 4;3, and 16;9 and thats about it. However, in the options of ArmA there is a 5;4, and several others that I cant remember. Thinking "Ooo, whats this?" I set my display mode to 5;4 and noticed that my display seemed to 'become different', but I couldn't pick out what it was that was different. It seemed that I was able to see more than I used to in 4;3 (running at 1280 x 1024).

What I'm wondering is this, whats the difference between 5;4, and 4;3, and how come many games / programs dont make mention of these aspect ratios. Also, how does Windows work out your aspect ratio, and can you modify it? I may be asking stupid questions here, but my knowledge of aspect ratios is almost non-existant.

Cheers.

 

[asus7300gs]

5:4 is used for SXGA, or projectors.

http://www.unitedvisual.com/2tips/2tvp115.asp

 

[Diabetic]

Right, the specs for my monitor are shown below. Does this SXGA malarky mean I should run all the games / programs I can in 5;4 over 4;3 then? (what is SXGA anyways?). I appologise if my questions are answered in that link, but it wont load for me.

17 Inch Multiscanning LCD Monitor
- 17 Inch Viewable SXGA(1280x1024) LCD
- Brightness 300 cd/‡u
- Contrast Ratio 700 : 1 (Typical)
- Response Time 8ms
- High quality screen rescaling capability

 

[asus7300gs]

You should be aware that you need to think about screen aspect ratio if you plan to project SXGA computer graphics, wide-screen or HDTV video. The SXGA standard uses a 5:4 aspect ratio and wide-screen video a 16:9 ratio, while standard video, VGA, SVGA, XGA and UXGA use 4:3.

The three aspect ratios are shown in the drawing at right. Here we've sized the images so that the width is the same for each, which is the situation you'd have if you were using a native SXGA projector and a 5:4 screen. You can see that if you switch to a 4:3 image, it won't be quite as tall as the 5:4, and the 16:9 image is significantly shorter.