- Techno Greek
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- Noble Member
Posted by: Tupolev
Yeah, the HUD, and, in fact, everything except the in-game rendering gets stretched.
Composite cable standard is to output 4:3 video. oXbox's typically use composite cable. To get the widescreen effect, oXbox games just render using a wider horizontal field of view in the 4:3 image, and then send a "squished" (well, "anamorphic") 4:3 image that becomes natural widescreen when the TV stretches the image across a 16:9 area.
The thing is, when they made Halo 2's widescreen capabilities, Bungie only accounted for the 16:9 in the form of in-game object rendering. Even while rendering such a "squished" 4:3 image, the game just slaps the regular 4:3 HUD on top. As for the menu interfaces, they were never made for 16:9 in any respect, and so you just wind up with stretched 4:3.
Seriously, go to your TV options while viewing the stretched 16:9 image in-game, and set the TV to display 4:3. THAT is effectively what the oXbox naturally renders. You'll find that the HUD is its natural, unstretched, fullscreen self when you do that, even though the image behind it is mushed.
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As a result, setting your xbox to a lower resolution wouldn't help; it's an issue with how the game decides to render in widescreen, not a resolution problem. To fix stretching problems, you'd have to tell the xbox to render in 4:3 instead of widescreen, since then the HUD would render to the same assumed ratio as the in-game modelling stuff.I'll try it. It's a shame the problem exists; the game looks so gorgeous on the flat panel. The opening cutscene was unbelievable; I prefer the way it looks to Halo 3 and Reach, even without the HD resolution. It just seems to be a more artful looking game.