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CYPHER looks horrible stretched on my screen!

Wrong Aspect Ratio, horizontal stretched image and Black Bars! How to scale my screen?

Worry not! this happens very often with some monitors and configurations. In fact it happened to us with Resident Evil 5 and other games so it has nothing to do with the game or your video card but with how the monitor handles the aspect ratio. Believe or not, one of the most common problems with aspect ratio its because you are using a DVI connection (but don't worry it has a simple solution).

TRY THIS BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE Some monitors have a small "stretch to fit screen" button on the base, look for that one before diving into your video card settings.
Images and text copyright of WideScreenGamer.com

This is where I should tell you that each video card manufacturer handles these differently. ATI gives you basic controls, and while NVIDIA adds one feature, it is somewhat redundant.

ATI allows you to center the image on the monitor, or stretch it to fill the screen. There is no selection for fixed aspect-ratio stretching.

NVIDIA has a few more options - you can display the small resolution image in the center of your screen, or have it stretched to fill the screen, just like ATI. NVIDIA also has an option that will stretch the image to fit the maximum height of the display, but in a fixed aspect ratio. You can also select "Monitor Scaling" which will let the monitor do the work. This is exactly the same as selecting "Centered Output" in either driver.

Monitors may scale an image differently, so it's up to you to decide whether you want the monitor to handle scaling, or the drivers. On my Dell 2005FPW, the monitor's scaling looks exactly the same as both ATI and NVIDIA's scaling. At least, to my eyes.

This is what Dell's monitor control menu looks like:

As you can see, the monitor supports 1:1 (centered display), Fill (stretched to fit entire screen) and Aspect (fixed aspect ratio, stretched to fit full height of monitor). How monitors handle this will differ, however. If you don't have the same selections, you can just use the drivers to handle the output.

FIXING THE PROBLEM

ATI SOLUTION

  1. If you have correctly installed your AMD Catalyst™ driver you have to open from your taskbar the AMD VISION ENGINE CONTROL CENTER. (if you don't find the "AMD Vision Engine Control Center" panel on your taskbar try right click on your desktop and select it from your right-click context menu).
  2. Once you are inside the AMD VISION ENGINE Control Center:
    Go to >MY DIGITAL FLAT-PANELS and click on >PROPERTIES (Digital Flat-Panel)
  3. Click and select the SCALE IMAGE TO FULL PANEL SIZE option and press APPLY.

NVIDIA SOLUTION

Important notice: In the next steps you need to create a custom resolution setting to correctly scale the image, we tested this on several computers but every computer is a different world, follow this steps at your own risk.
  1. If you have correctly installed your NVIDIA Driver you have to open from your taskbar the NVIDIA CONTROL PANEL. (if you don't find the "NVIDIA Control Panel" on your taskbar try right click on your desktop and select it from your right-click context menu).
  2. Once you are inside the AMD VISION ENGINE Control Center: Go to >DISPLAY / CHANGE RESOLUTION and follow the next step.
  3. Click on CUSTOMIZE... a pop-up will appear now.
  4. Click on CREATE CUSTOM RESOLUTION a last pop-up will appear now.
  5. Change the DISPLAY MODE and fill the fields with this settings:

    -HORIZONTAL PIXELS: 1280
    -VERTICAL LINES: 800
    -REFRESH RATE (Hz): 60

    And let all the other settings on default.
  6. Click on TIMING a drop menu will appear.
  7. From the drop menu change from the STANDARD drop menu AUTOMATIC to CVT and let all the other settings on default. Click on test and apply.
  8. Now you are ready to play at fullscreen resolution with a correct aspect ratio, if the image on STEP 6 looks wrong when you click on test try another option from the TIMING / STANDARD drop menu.

Download your video cards drivers

You should google your video card site and download the latest driver and tools if you don't find the options in your system. Here are links for the most common graphic cards companies.

Important: You must uninstall the old drivers before installing updated drivers to avoid driver conflicts. CabreraBrothers assumes no responsibility for the effects that changing the driver for your video or sound card may have on your system - it is your responsibility to follow the instructions provided by the video card manufacturer to ensure the proper removal of old drivers and installation of updated drivers.

Mac users:

Apple handles all system and driver updates for your system. To check if any updates are available please do the following: Click on the Apple in the upper left corner of the screen Select "Software Update..." Any updates available will be listed and able to be downloaded or you will be told your software is up to date

Part of my screen is missing, what is happening?

HDMI Overscan Problem with TV-LCD monitors

A common issue with TV-LCD monitors is to have part of the game screen displayed outside your screen. This is called overscan problem and it has more to do with your monitor than with your videocard. Good news is, all you have to do is adjust the size of your overscan options in your videocard tool to make the game fit your screen. Sounds easy? well, sometimes it is not. Keep reading.

TRY THIS BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE play with your monitor settings before installing drivers. Some monitors have overscan controls in their settings menus. A good idea would be to also write these values down before changing anything.

FIXING THE OVERSCAN PROBLEM

What I am looking here? You need to find anything that says OVERSCAN or SCALING OPTIONS or OVERSCAN COMPENSATION in your videocard tool's settings.

ATI CATALYST SOLUTION

The option is well hidden like everything these idiots do. And yes, that was an insult. You need to find the option by right-clicking the little monitor at the bottom and choosing configure in some cases.


Find the Configure option in your monitor.

Now you have to play with the overscan values until the problem gets solved and you can enjoy CYPHER (and possibly other games in full screen)

It also comes in VISIO CONTROL CENTER as you can see. It works exactly the same.

NVIDIA SOLUTION

The overscan option is also present in the NVIDIA driver tool. Depending on which version you have, you can find it in different places. Here is an example of a recent NVIDIA driver tool with the overscan option.

Download your video cards drivers and tools

You should google your video card site and download the latest driver and tools if you don't find the options in your system already. Be sure to download your videocard tools too, like Catalyst for ATI AMD since the solution for your problem is in these tools.

Here are links for the most common graphic cards companies.

Important: You must uninstall the old drivers before installing updated drivers to avoid driver conflicts. CabreraBrothers assumes no responsibility for the effects that changing the driver for your video or sound card may have on your system - it is your responsibility to follow the instructions provided by the video card manufacturer to ensure the proper removal of old drivers and installation of updated drivers.

My MacBook Pro is doing some weird things with the colors!

MacBook Switching video cards

Some of the Apple products (like the MacBooks Pro) come integrated with two videocards. Sometimes, they don't switch properly and you have to do it manually.

TRY THIS BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE set the resolution of your desktop to 1280x800. If that doesn't fix the issue, then follow the next steps.

FIXING THE WEIRD COLORS PROBLEM

Important: CabreraBrothers assumes no responsibility for the use of third party tools with your operating system.

To fix the issue, a user at the forum gave us the following tip: there is a free and open source tool that fixes the problem. http://codykrieger.com/gfxCardStatus. You will need to switch between your two GPU and see which one is the one to play CYPHER with. Easy!