Widescreen gaming: Which games benefit and which don't

Widescreen Gaming: Introduction
The trend away from the 5:4 monitor to the 16:10 widescreen TFT is continuous. The widescreen resolutions become popular among gamers and the sales figures reveal that the "old formats” will lose their market share. But why are such displays so popular? The answer is easy: The horizontal field of vision of an adult is 170 degrees, the vertical 110 degrees - so the human is more or less "widescreen optimized”.

Widescreen Gaming: Benefit
A 16:10 display with the common 22 inch resolution of 1,680 x 1,050 doesn't offer a much bigger vertical field of vision, but on the left and right side there is about 15 percent additional surface. Current games often benefit from this: The expanded virtual field of vision makes it possible for the gamer to see friends and foes or turns of the road. The gaming experience becomes more real and in multiplayer games you have a advantage compared to players who use a 5:4 or 4:3 resolution.

Widescreen Gaming: Games survey
One of the first places to go to in matters of widescreen gaming is the similarly named website widescreengamingforum.com. There you won't just find comparative screenshots, but also tips and tricks how you can get a game widescreen ready since if it doesn't support this feature naturally.

Widescreen Gaming: Conclusion
On the following pages we compared ten current games. The result: Widescreen gamers see more of have a better - not squeezed or cut - visualization. In Far Cry 2, Need for Speed: Undercover and Fallout 3 you can work around the squeezing with a hack.