MSTS Screen Size

[CSX FAN]

To whom can help,

I recently had to take my computer to a computer doctor to serviced. Before I took it, MSTS was played at full screen on my 21" monitor. Now it only plays in about the same size as the AE screen. Is there a way that I can change that screen in which it is played? I have searched the threads and can't seem to locate what I'm looking for. Would appreciate any help out there.

Thanks
CSX FAN

[EricF]

There are a couple of things to check. Your video driver's settings are the first place to look. Here, you may find settings for scaling and aspect ratio adjustments. The default values may not be playing nice with MSTS. If you have a laptop, then there might be a setting in the BIOS that can affect this. Look for "H/V Expansion" (It means Horizontal/Vertical expansion) and turn it on. Laptop screens often lack the sophisticated scaling circuitry found in desktop monitors, and they often default to displaying everything at the monitor's native resolution instead of scaling it up. Your video driver settings can do the best job with this adjustment, so look there first, though.

If you can give some basic info about this particular computer and its specs, more of us will be able to chime in with even more on-target suggestions.

[dedwa15237]

Or try to do an Mprofile from MSTS, as that will check around screen settings..

[dbourke]

I don't have a screen size problem when running Train Simulator but do when running TS Ediitor & Tools. Workscreen and related dropdowns only occupy about 1/2 the available screen area. Need to use "Magnifier" especially to aligne Dynamic Track sections or Track Objects. Is this normal or is there a fix that won't adversly effect running Train Sim itself later.
Cheers,
"Old Weak Eyes" Steamer

[CSX FAN]

This is the size of my MSTS screen on my computer. This size is what my RE and AE comes up in as well as my MSTS when I go to play the sim.

CSX FAN

[baldwin]

Looks like your screen is a 19:6 ratio that MSTS was not designed to run on. The screen you show is the standard MSTS start screen which has an Options choice at the bottom. In there you can set the window size that MSTS will use when setting up and running an activity, but it will never be full screen on a widescreen monitor.

[CSX FAN]

This is the same monitor that I have used for 3 years and MSTS always showed up full screen on this monitor. This just happened after I had to get my OS reinstall a week ago.

[EricF]

You said your OS was re-installed? That would tend to confirm your video driver may be different than before. If so, I'll second that running mprofile.exe (Which is in the MSTS main directory) would be good. The tool will probe your computer's current video environment and update the appropriate MSTS registry entries. Double-check the video options in MSTS afterward.

I see in your screenshot that MSTS is running in a window. Normally, you need to add "-vm:w" at the end of the shortcut's command line to make it do that. If it launched in windowed mode without the command, then Windows 7 didn't handle MSTS' color depth and resolution switch into fullscreen mode correctly. That's not uncommon, especially with the Route Editor, but the main MSTS application can have similar problems. You can try setting the color depth manually to 16-bit color before you launch MSTS and see if it improves.

Was MSTS reinstalled after the OS was reinstalled? I know Windows 7 is supposed to offer more seamless repair ability without needing to reinstall all your applications, but there's a chance that the MSTS entries in the Registry were disturbed by the OS reinstall. If you have a backup of the MSTS Registry, now might be a good time to compare the backup and the current setup, and restore the Registry backup if they're different then run mprofile.exe again. If you don't have a Registry backup for MSTS and nothing else is fixing the problem, you may need to back up the MSTS directory (your whole installation), reinstall identically to make the Registry keys, then restore your "real" installation by copying back all your MSTS files and overwriting to bring it all back but under the fresh Registry keys. Be sure to "Unstore Everything" in Train Store before undertaking any major backup/restore operation! I'm not a fan of total reinstalls unless there's no other way to fix messed-up MSTS Registry settings.

On the other hand, if this is a fresh install of MSTS on top of a fresh OS install, it's just a matter of finding the combination of settings that will make Windows 7 and MSTS happy with each other. Run mprofile.exe and then try different video resolution options in MSTS and find what gives you the best results. The solution lies somewhere in your video driver settings and how MSTS responds to them.

[derekmorton]

This is the same monitor that I have used for 3 years and MSTS always showed up full screen on this monitor.

Then the resolution of MSTS would have been wrong the whole time.
The picture of MSTS on your screen is the correct way that MSTS should be displayed.
MSTS cannot display correctly on a wide screen monitor, it is over 10 years old.

[CSX FAN]

Then the resolution of MSTS would have been wrong the whole time.
The picture of MSTS on your screen is the correct way that MSTS should be displayed.
MSTS cannot display correctly on a wide screen monitor, it is over 10 years old.

When I played the game it was in full screen on my monitor with no problems. It filled the entire screen and was not distorted in any form or fashion. I have been working trying to get it back to the resolution that it was at and I'm almost there. So the picture on my screen that I attached is wrong, it should fill the whole screen.

[baldwin]

If I do not use the vm:w switch on the command line I do get a full screen image, but because I am using a widescreen monitor, MSTS is distorted, round is oval, trains are low and wide.

[OTTODAD]

The MSTS editors should be run in a Desktop resolution of 1024x768x16 bit colors, the latter being 32 bit colors crashing the editors on some computers when moving it's views as do some of the MSTS outside cameras.

O t t o

[CSX FAN]

Thanks for all the advice on my mentioned problem. I was able to get everything back to normal. What I had to do was uninstall my video driver to get back to square 1. After I did that, I reinstalled MSTS and looked at it in game to see if things were like they were supposed to be in which they were. MSTS showed up in the full screen format with nothing being done and my desktop resolution not even bothered with. Thank goodness for backups when times like this happen. Now in the process of moving approximately 35GB of MSTS to a new folder. Again thanks for the help offered on my problem.

CSX FAN

[baldwin]

Still would like to see an ingame screen shot when you are finished.

[CSX FAN]

Still would like to see an ingame screen shot when you are finished.

Here is what my screen should look like when I start up MSTS in the attachment. This has been my screen for at least 4 years now on a flat screen monitor. I also removed the "-vm:w" from the launch settings in Train Store. Once I did that, everything is back to normal.

CSX FAN