All of my games work great with my new monitor. I don't have that many games, they're mostly mods based on one of 2 engines, either the Source engine or the Unreal engine. Both of these support widescreen flawlessly. Call of Duty 2 demo also works with widescreen very well!

I was very pleased with the monitor until I booted up Battlefield 2. Oh my god, what a nightmare. How legacy does this program want to be? I mean, seriously... It took EA until Patch 1.2 to enable 1280x1024 as well as 1280x960 in the video options, and even now they only go up to 1600x1200. The only way you can change the resolution beyond that is to modify the shortcut (a sort of command-line mod, where additional arguments are provided)... So instead of booting up BF2.exe, I have to boot up [i]BF2.exe +widescreen 1 +szx 1920 +szy 1200[/i]. Even after this, the graphics look absolutely terrible in-game, the HUD is stretched, the crosshair is fuzzy and useless, and the field of view is err.. the same. This is such a shame! It's a shame because widescreen is most definitely the way forward, widescreen is the future! And EA have chosen to not be a part of it. Shame, that.

And apparently, from the news I hear about the Battlefield 2142 Beta, widescreen support [i]still[/i] isn't an option. I'm sorry, but this is 2006. Try buying a high-end PC and monitor and no doubt it will come as a widescreen. There are games released back in 2002 that supported widescreen and EA still can't manage it.

Oh there are so many things I could say about Battlefield 2. The server browser is clunky, unresponsive, lags and hangs occasionally... It took EA until patch 1.3 to get filters to work correctly, and they still can't get the favourites to work correctly. Server information is never picked up, even on local servers, everything seems to be 0... The port of the server is 0, friendly fire is 0, even if it is 1, ticket ratio is 0, somehow, and the IP address doesn't exist. Then, have you noticed how as soon as you enter the game, the hardware cursor turns in to a [i]really, really bad[/i] software cursor that runs about 50 times slower than the frame rate? What's up with that? And why does it take ages for the menu to load when you press Esc during a game?

And why are the fonts displayed as very low quality JPEG's? They look awful at 1600x1200, and even worse at 1920x1200. And what's up with the in-game fonts, like in the chat area? They're even worse! It's like grabbing a sample of Small Fonts at 6pt and expanding it 4x with 10% JPEG quality. Honestly it looks shit.

EA could do themselves a [b]huge[/b] favour by making Battlefield 2 a Steam application and making the front-end run through Steam - menu, server browser etc. A tried, tested, successful, easy to use, good looking system that's always responsive. Oh, how I dream.

So anyway, message from me to EA is: WAKE UP!!!

EA re morons, most their games are designed to be money grabbing rubbish. It's a shame they bought Dice.

I would like to see Battlefield on Steam, perhaps the best program ever (change of tone, I know, but that happens when you soend 2hours patching a program then another half houe setting up a meeting with a friend online, rather than just click on the server in a friend list to instantly load an auto-patched game straight into the server). Other than a few bugs here and there (such as the servery history being broken), Steam is amazing. VALVe are also making some excellent deals, namely the Egosoft (X2:The Threat and X3:Reunion) and Introversion (Uplink, Darwinia, Defcon) deals, giving little known companies with great games huge exposure. Plus, Steam has singlehandly stopped all forms of game piracy when it comes to their games AND elimited the need for CDs to play! Genius! Unfortunately only one company really has more power, and that is EA, the company that really needs some help with getting stuff right. Infact, I beleive EA have tried to copy Steam, but I can't imagine how badly that will go when they can't get the links on their own website right.

EA are morons. VALVe rule!

I want all my games to be on Steam, however that ain't gonna happen, EA has too much money. Shme they (EA) have got some of the best games aswell, like SPORE and Battlefield.

VALVe FTW!

In this situation, EA (with BF2) is the Microsoft and VALVe (with Steam) is the Linux. Microsoft is so supported, and unfortunately made in to a standard, but still generally a POS that will make your life a misery. Linux isn't so supported, but it's very up-and-coming, and hey it just works, and does what it says on the tin.

Yeah, nice analogy. Though I might say Mac instead of Linux. It also extends to website - M$s and EAs websites are impossible to navigate whereas VALVe's and Apple's are easy (never been to many Linux websites, but I assume they are similary easy).

I was thinking about this on the way home and came to the conclusion I should have used Apple instead of Linux. And err.. as for Linux websites, they're generally not very well thought out, mostly text based, with way too much text all over the place, a bit like my websites. Haha! The Fedora Project (www.fedoraproject.org) have a simple but effective website.

And hey, do you remember the time a few years back when there was this huge anti-Steam movement? Everybody hated VU/VALVe for doing the Steam thing. I never liked it that much before, but I was using a P4 1.6GHz with 256MB of RAM on an Nvidia Geforce MX440 64MB. Now I'm on this monster of a machine, Steam can only feel like that extra edge that many games lack so much.

Linux webbies are still better than M$s, though.

Yeah, I hated it when it started, mainly cos I was a Dial Up user, and it is really annoying on Dial Up because of the auto downloads and poor offline mode. Plus the backup system was rubbish. However, I really like VALVe for making the game run smoothly on my old Atlon XP 1.4GHz, 512MB RAM and GeForce 3 graphics card. anyway, didn't VALVe and VU have an arguement over Steam?

Argument back in 2004, text taken from good old Wikipedia:

[quote]
VU and Valve Software (makers of Half-Life) went head to head over the distribution of Half-Life 2 to cyber caf?s, they later came to an agreement stating:

* The authority of distributing cyber caf? licenses are to be handed over to Valve from VUG (and Sierra), and licenses granted by VUG and Sierra to cyber caf?s prior to the agreement are revoked.
* VUG would cease distributing all retail packaged versions of Valve games by August 31, 2005.
[/quote]

That's quite good, it meant all VALVe games are handled soley by VALVe, which is good for their business. Hmm, they evn seem to be producing their own discs now.

For more of a rant, please visit [url=http://techious.u13.biz/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=27&p=13038]the topic about the Battlefield 1.4 Beta patch[/url].

You seem to have loads of interlinked "I hate..." threads.

Hey guess what!? This thread means nothing to me any more!! I just sold my 24 inch widescreen monitor today for ?400. Fantastic

Now I am left with a 15" Medion monitor... It has a 1024x768 resolution. I am hott.

OMG OMG! I have a better screen than you! LOLZ!

Ah yes, but I [i]was[/i] better, once.

Once! My collective betterness time is bigger! xP

1 day of 24 inch = 1 year of 20 inch
i pwn

LOL, not quite. 1 day of 24" = 1.2 days of 20"! xP

Well it's a good thing I got hold of another 20" monitor isn't it

LOL, yes, a good old Flat CRT.