4:3 resolution without stretching for old games

[HadesLV]

Alot of older games do not have any kind of support for widescreens, and while alot of them do have widescreen mods/fixes, not all do, and those which do are not always complete. In particular I am trying to play a childhood favourite of mine Dungeon Siege 2, and even on steam where you would think they would have thought to implement a fix right into the game, since you're paying for it, they didn't(my fault really, should have read up on it previously, but it was cheap so whatever). I found some fixes online, but they were far from perfect. I know one solution is to force the game into windowed mode and then use a 4:3 resolution, but on my 1440p screen, 1280x1024 windowed looks so tiny that its unplayable.

So I am wondering if there is some way that I can 'simulate' a 4:3 resolution on my screen. What I am imagining is just having two big black bars on the sides of my screen, like you have with videos that are of a different aspect ratio. So that way, the game thinks I have a 4:3 resolution and I can 'fullscreen' it across the visible part of the screen and play like that. Is this something that is possible to do, or do I have to look for an old screen to play comfortably?

 

Thank you for any responses!

[bellabichon]

The only working way that I know, would be to manually change your display resolution in the Windows settings. It's inconvenient, I know, but I think it's the only way. Anyone else should feel free to correct me if i'm wrong. 

[HadesLV]

1 minute ago, bellabichon said:

The only working way that I know, would be to manually change your display resolution in the Windows settings. It's inconvenient, I know, but I think it's the only way. Anyone else should feel free to correct me if i'm wrong. 

Oh sweet, I didn't realize that it worked that way. I tried changing my resolution through Nvidia, and it just stretched the screen. Thanks, this is what I was looking for!

[bellabichon]

Just now, HadesLV said:

Oh sweet, I didn't realize that it worked that way. I tried changing my resolution through Nvidia, and it just stretched the screen. Thanks, this is what I was looking for!

You're welcome! I've done it before to get emulators working right, so it should work for you.