Steam deck 16:10 display is big mistake! Change it to 16:9 Valve!

[v00d00m4n]

16:9 is most common standard for game, movie and tv industry (except for those pretentions freaks who loves to make movies in ugly 21:9 super wide format, and except for mobile phone freaks that use camera and button space for display and ruined 16:9 aspect ratio standard and also screwed up many games that used to be designed for 16:9 ) for around 15 years.

SInce shift from 4:3 to 16:9 from around 2005 year wast majority of DISPLAYS, movies and games was made with 16:9 aspect ratio, devices with 16:10 aspect was not very popular and for this reason wast majority of games was designed for 16:9 without any tests for 16:10.

And i was unlucky guy who from 2005 up to about 2015 used 16:10 display... and i know what a painful expirience 16:10 was!

Many games and not some indies but major AAA games like Need For Speed, Metro, GTA and so on has problems on displays with native and maximal available resolution from EDID other than 16:9! And to solve this problem i had to use EDID editor (gladly Windows allows to use cached EDID so you can edito a copy take from display and use it instead of one from display ROM, not sure linux and steam OS allows and not sure that EDID editors i used on windows exist on linux) to turn my 16:10 display virtually into 16:9 at the cost of unused and letterboxed 1\10 of screenspace with shift towards upper part of screen.

I had to delete all the 16:10 resolutions from EDID and had to set custome native resolution of 1680x945 instead of 1680x1050.

You may wonder why selection of 16:9 resolution was not a solution?

Well, maybe games, if you did not know, use NATIVE RESOLUTION or MAXIMUM AVAILABLE RESOLUTION to asume aspect ratio of display! Yes its stupid idea and its a mistake made by stupid programmers, who should have used only current resoluion to asume aspect ratior of display, yet you cant imagine how many of programmers did this mistake and how many of AAA games suffered from this!

So even if you choose 1280x720 in game and your native display resolution is 1280x800 many games would asume you have 16:10 aspect ratio and all of their internal calculations of UI, for 3D scenes, for 2D overlays such as CGI prerendered cutscenes, for letter or pillar boxes (which games should really stop to use !!!), for frame buffer effects and even for FOV!!!

This is why EDID editing was necessary as well as termination of any 16:10 resolution above native resolution and why native resolution was need to be set at 16:9 ratio, to make sure that games that uses NATIVE and MAXIMUM resolutions both getting 16:9 resolution and does all the calculations right.

Most of games with problems like that will have vertically stretched UI and prerendered cutscenes, forced letterboxes or even pillarboxes in cutscenes, sometimes UI will be cut at sides as it will be rendered in virtual 16:9 space which is wider than 16:10, sometimes instead of perfect aligne into corners of 16:9 you will have ui shifted vertically towards centter and you will have weird empty spaces above and bellow. Games could jump to different aspect ratio in various scenarios.

Sometimes in some cutscenes or UI elements you will have some part of scene cut or opposite - shown what supposed to be hidden, like some clipping or characters that appears outside of screenspace at some point but was waiting a scripto to make them move right behind your screen.

FOV could be screwed up all way around it could be zoomed in or out dependin on how devs calculated it.

There are aslo odd cases where games that has its 3d geometry rendered properly could have frame bufffer or render target effects such a DOF, BLOOM, AMBIENT OCCLUSION misaligned and stretched or squished because they are rendered in fixed resolution witch is mostly 16:9 and then stretched vertically to native 16:10 resolution, or it could be opposite if you play in 16:9 resolution on 16:10 display games may have buffer effects rendered at native resolution ot half of native resolution and squished into 16:9 or overlayed above it with all sorts of distortions.

And some weird and poor japanesse ports from consoles that only have hardcoded 1280x720 or 1920x1080 resolutions may not start or crash at any other resolution as they dont expect it or expect native resolutio and maximum resolution and current desktop resolution to match and if they dont match - they may be screwed around in many ways i described above.

Trust me, i was there i saw this 16:10 with my own eyes for many years, and i dont want to go back there.

And from a dev stand point i know that many devs never test 16:10 displays and even steam deck would not force them to do so, only minority will have their games scalled up properly, and thats only news games, old games would never be fixed for steam deck, and majority of them will have problems, because they never was tested on 16:10 displays!!!

So having native and maximum resolution of dislay 1280x720 and aspect ratio of 16:9 is the only way to go VALVE!!!

Please change displays and its specs or at least arificially limit its native and max resolution via EDID to 16:9 1280x720 and remove 1280x800 16:10 resolution if you already started mass production, Valve and realign Steam Deck UI for 16:9 untils its too late!!! And even if you can do a software fix for SteamOS dont forget that many users prefer Windows and will install it instead and you cant fix it, so solution of problem must be hardware - it should be replacment of displays to 16:9 or EDID should have maximum and native resolution 1280x720 at 16:9 (but displays with 1\10 of empy space will look weird, so its better to replace them with 16:9 and cover up 1\10 of space with case.

Seriously Valve, what was you thinking when you choose 16:10 display despite all the steam stats shows its very unpopular aspect ratio? Dont you even do a research of markte and game problems in this aspect ratio before making such a mistakes???

Damn, even popular games like GTAV, Witcher 3, RDR2, METRO EXODUS and so on has problems at 16:10 displays, how come you did not test them and did not notice those problems before deciding to use most unpopular aspect ratio for display that will surely cause problems in many games???

FIX IT PLEASE UNTIL TOO LATE - change display to 1280x720 native and max resolution, or lock it to it via EDID in display ROM and remove 1280x800 support and mask unused space with case to make it look less ugly!!!

[the imaginer]

did you really have to write an entire essay to say "some games might have issues on a 16:10 aspect ratio"

[Scott, President of Dominos]

16:9 is a cancer inflicted upon display technology that should never have happened. It was invented as a "halfway point" between 4:3 and ultrawide.

[the imaginer]

Originally posted by Makise Kurisu:

16:9 is a cancer inflicted upon display technology that should never have happened. It was invented as a "halfway point" between 4:3 and ultrawide.

what the heck did 16:9 displays do to you

[Scott, President of Dominos]

Originally posted by <u>Zed:

what the heck did 16:9 displays do to you

Took over the display market and made finding 3:2 impossible or are killing 16:10 (also ♥♥♥♥♥♥ compromise, but better than 16:9)

Am I not allowed to dislike 16:9? When most content before the mid 2000's was made for 4:3 screens and am forced to have most of the horizontal space wasted for content, or if you prefer a cinematic experience, have horizontal space wasted.

It's a lame format that should never have existed.

[ReBoot]

Get lost! 19:10 is a win over 19:9 when it comes to, let's say, managing your game library. Or doing anything desktop (which the Deck will run too). Since that thing will run 16:9 games in their native aspect ratio as well, there's no downsides to 16:10, only upsides.

[v00d00m4n]

Guys are you blind? I used 16:10 and 90% OF GAMES had problems with wrong aspect ratio, because they are all mainly designed for 16:9 consoles and HDTVs of 16:9 ratio and never was even tested on 16:10.

Like it or not, but standard is 16:9 and everything works fine in it, but when you move to other less popular formats everything that was designed for 16:9 getting destored some way or another!

You going to have problems with vertical stretching, UI missaligment, FOV calculations, buffer effects misplacement and so on.

I know what im talking about i was there and 16:10 was pain in was majority of games and im glad i ditched it and moved to 16:9 HDTV and it was such a relief.

Remember my word - if Valve would not change display to 16:9 - we will have tons of people on steam crying about all sorts of problems with aspect ratio of DECK in many many games!!!

[Big Doniel]

Damn, if only PC games came with the option of choosing from multiple resolutions. What a world that would be.

[ReBoot]

Originally posted by v00d00m4n:

Guys are you blind? I used 16:10 and 90% OF GAMES had problems with wrong aspect ratio, because they are all mainly designed for 16:9 consoles and HDTVs of 16:9 ratio and never was even tested on 16:10.

Run the game(s) in 16:9 then. Problem solved.

[v00d00m4n]

Originally posted by Big Doniel:

Damn, if only PC games came with the option of choosing from multiple resolutions. What a world that would be.

Originally posted by ReBoot:

Originally posted by v00d00m4n:

Guys are you blind? I used 16:10 and 90% OF GAMES had problems with wrong aspect ratio, because they are all mainly designed for 16:9 consoles and HDTVs of 16:9 ratio and never was even tested on 16:10.

Run the game(s) in 16:9 then. Problem solved.

Learn to read and understand what you just read before rushing to reply!

IT DOES NOT SOLVE THE PROBLEM, 90% OF GAMES ARE POORLY CODED AND HAS ALL SORTS OF STUPID

I explained that it does not work because many games USE MAXIMUM AVAILABLE RESOLUTION and NATIVE RESOLUTION to asume aspect ratio of display!

ill try to explain it simple:

Your NATIVE resolution of display is 1280x800 and aspect ratio is 16:10 or 1.6!
Your MAX resolution of display is 1280x800 and aspect ratio is 16:10 or 1.6!

You ran game in lower and non native resolution 1280x720p which is 16:9 or 1.777f !

Game asumes (YOU CANT IMAGINE HOW MANY GAMES DOES THIS STUPID THING!) that despite you have 16:9 resolution, your aspect ratio is 16:10 because max res is 1280x800 and native res is 1280x800!

Game renders everything or part of things in aspect ratio of 16:10 and than trying to fit it into 16:9 resolution which could cause all sorts of distortions - vertical or horizontal stretching or squishing of 3d scene, UI or prerendered cutscnes, letter or pillar boxes in 3d scene or 2d UI or cutscenes, incorrectly applied buffer effects rendered with 16:10 ratio and missaligned as overlay that does not match 16:9 rendered 3d scene, or even crashes because game is poor japanesse port that expect current resolution whichis 1280x720 and the only game supports, to match NATIVE resolution and MAX resolution which is 1280x800 and not the one game recognizes and support.


Do you understand what kind of problems you will get with 16:10 display and why simply choosing 1280x720 would not work in many unproperly coded games?

[ReBoot]

How the game is stretched, it's the graphics driver's/monitor's decision. Not the game's.

So set your graphics driver to stretch sensibly (which I assume Valve will manage to pull off). Then set the game to run @ 720p. That will work just fine. If you don't, then the game may indeed autodetect 800p and piss itself whatever how. But that's where settings come in.

Either way, the Deck's specs are fixed, your screaming & pulling won't change that.

And that's disregarding the advantage of that extra height some of us like. Hell, I want a Surface with a 3:2 screen. Which can also run 16:9-games just fine (I tried myself, sadly not on my own Surface).

[Big Doniel]

Originally posted by v00d00m4n:

Originally posted by Big Doniel:

Damn, if only PC games came with the option of choosing from multiple resolutions. What a world that would be.

Originally posted by ReBoot:

Run the game(s) in 16:9 then. Problem solved.

Learn to read and understand what you just read before rushing to reply!

IT DOES NOT SOLVE THE PROBLEM, 90% OF GAMES ARE POORLY CODED AND HAS ALL SORTS OF STUPID

I explained that it does not work because many games USE MAXIMUM AVAILABLE RESOLUTION and NATIVE RESOLUTION to asume aspect ratio of display!

ill try to explain it simple:

Your NATIVE resolution of display is 1280x800 and aspect ratio is 16:10 or 1.6!
Your MAX resolution of display is 1280x800 and aspect ratio is 16:10 or 1.6!

You ran game in lower and non native resolution 1280x720p which is 16:9 or 1.777f !

Game asumes (YOU CANT IMAGINE HOW MANY GAMES DOES THIS STUPID THING!) that despite you have 16:9 resolution, your aspect ratio is 16:10 because max res is 1280x800 and native res is 1280x800!

Game renders everything or part of things in aspect ratio of 16:10 and than trying to fit it into 16:9 resolution which could cause all sorts of distortions - vertical or horizontal stretching or squishing of 3d scene, UI or prerendered cutscnes, letter or pillar boxes in 3d scene or 2d UI or cutscenes, incorrectly applied buffer effects rendered with 16:10 ratio and missaligned as overlay that does not match 16:9 rendered 3d scene, or even crashes because game is poor japanesse port that expect current resolution whichis 1280x720 and the only game supports, to match NATIVE resolution and MAX resolution which is 1280x800 and not the one game recognizes and support.


Do you understand what kind of problems you will get with 16:10 display and why simply choosing 1280x720 would not work in many unproperly coded games?

You're using a lot of words to show that you don't know what you're talking about. If you want a native image select the 1280x800 option in the game options menu, or one of the many other variations. Have you never played a PC game before?

[Sleazy]

Yawn

[IceHedge]

Dang and I thought 60+ FPS fans had a puzzling zealot-like passion for their frams.

Dude it's a resolution.

Did we forget to add "No one:" in the OP?

[marty8370]

16:10 is great for watching Movies on

[Aeris]

to the OP, sorry but i have no idea what you are doing on your computer.
In 30+ years of computer gaming not ONCE did i have a game refusing to start because the default resolution isn't what it expected.
If it starts in a 16:9 resolution it will display just fine and the ONLY thing you should have to do is perhaps change the resolution or if that is not possible (only 16:9 for example) then you can modify your graphics card setting to not stretch the image.

It is a PC, not a console, you will be able to modify all settings necessary.

I still have a 16:10 display connected and running together with a 16:9 as well and i never encountered any issues whatsoever with old or new games regarding the aspect ratio.
Just modify the settings if it doesn't display perfectly.