You know what happens if you watch a widescreen movie on a normal television? One of three things: Either you cut away the sides of the picture to make it fit. Or you leave black bars at the top and bottom to make it fit. OR you squeeze the too-wide picture into the frame anyway, in which case the dimensions of the picture become all distorted.
Now widescreen has 16:9 dimensions, while a normal television or computer screen has 4:3 dimensions. 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x960 and 1600x1200 are all resolutions that follow the 4:3 ratio. 1280x1024, however, has a 5:4 ratio. What does this mean? It doesn't fit your screen. The picture is too high for your screen, and has to be squished.
Try this: Go into MS Paint, in a resolution of 1280x960. Paint a perfect circle (hold down the shift key while using the circle tool to get a perfect circle). As large as possible. Now get a ruler (or measuring tape) and measure that circle, first from top to bottom, then from left to right. Notice how the two measurements are almost exactly the same? Well they should be. The small variations are because it's hard to measure on a screen, and because your display is probably not 100% perfectly aligned. Try to align it as good as possible, measure again if necessary. Note, again, how the two measurements, both top to bottom and left to right, are almost exactly the same. Now, switch to 1280x1024. After aligning your screen as good as possible, make the same measurements again. Notice how the circle is suddenly a lot wider than it is tall? Yep, it's no longer a circle, just an oval. If you look carefully, you can see the difference as you switch back and forth between the resolutions.
Now you know why you don't want 1280x1024. Go with 1280x960 instead.
For even more glaring examples, try setting your monitor to 1280x720 or 1600x900 if you can. That's widescreen, 16:9. You should easily spot the difference.
Oh, I used to play NS in 1280x960 I think. I play most non-HL games in 1024x768, except for Halo, which gets 800x600. At 800x600, I can turn on ALL the candy and still cruise along without any stuttering. And specular looks real sweet.
And isn't this thread blatant spam?
