Diablo 4 Black Bars on 4:3 Displays

Technical Support
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Realy Blizzard??

With ultra wide screens at 32:9 resolutions (5120x1440) I can perhaps still understand with a lot of will that there are black bars on the left and right, but with such small screens in 4:3 format this is just ridiculous!!

I have an old screen here with a resolution of 1600x1200 and I have 2 cm cut away from the visible image at the top and bottom. So 4 cm picture is simply missing and since in the past the screens didn’t really show 100% black, I now have fat dark brown stripes at the top and bottom and what for??

What’s the reason for such crap? You can see less to the right and left due to 4:3 resolution and now they are also censoring up and down?

Sorry Blizzard, but I’m starting to feel screwed.

When you will fixed this stupid Bug??

and doesn’t tell me anything about “fairness in PVP”!
In case you haven’t noticed yet, almost no one is playing your “stupid” PVP!

You can often run around for hours and not see a single player in PVP - but not bad for me, because I’m a solo player anyway and don’t want to play with anyone, so that doesn’t bother me…

but those stupid censor bars there - they really get on my nerves

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Hey there,

Diablo IV does not support 4:3 aspect ratio and I don’t know of any plans for the game to support those resolutions. 4:3 aspect ratio monitors are not as common now as they were years ago.

If you stretch the screen to remove the bars on the top/bottom then you would lose out on what’s happening on the sides of the screen. You may be better off replacing the display with a monitor that supports widescreen resolutions.

Of course if you would like to provide a constructive suggestion for why 4:3 aspect ratio should be supported, you should do that over on the PC General Discussion forums where the community can discuss it.

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Heyho jambrix,

thank you for your answer.

I would like to understand the reason why you can’t play Diablo 4 in the resolutions that the screen provides. It also works with Diablo 2 Ressurected and Diablo 3 or other games from Blizzard.

Why are there these problems with Diablo 4 of all things?

Whether or not 4:3 screens are no longer so popular in the current time shouldn’t make much difference.

I can take my video off work yes. It’s an Eizo Square… 1920 x 1920 so 1:1 resolution. What will I get then? 2x 420 pixel wide black bars at the top and bottom?
The screens I use here are professional devices for image editing and not “gaming” screens.

I would love to buy a 32:9 screen, but with the resolution 5120 x 1440 you cut black bars left and right instead of using the full available image.

32:9 is not okay, 4:3 is not supported, we don’t even want to talk about 1:1…
all the games I play manage to fill my screen in full screen, only Diablo 4 can’t do that. The only game that is out of line.

How do you imagine that?
Usually, you program the software according to the available hardware and not the other way around.

I’m aware that you or the team can’t change much here, but you have the opportunity to forward my report here to the appropriate places, so that you can also realize that it doesn’t work the way you mean it here.

Compared to the other games, Diablo 4 is a big step backwards with the supported resolutions. Such artificial limitations are really bad and in my opinion should not exist.

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Diablo IV is one of the first of Blizzard’s titles to fully embrace DX12.

This has many caveats. For starters, you no longer have the option of an exclusive full screen mode. Its either windowed full screen or windowed only now.

This also limits the game to rendering within certain screen parameters. 4:3 is no longer considered a normal or typical screen resolution for it to directly support, hence the bars when using full screen windowed mode. Same goes with the 32:9 setups. Will this be fixed later on in the life of the game? Who’s to say.

Now I don’t have a 4:3 aspect screen to test this with, but you could attempt to run the game in windowed mode and maximize the window. However it would still have a window frame border around it. But I don’t know if the game will adapt to fit the full window in this choice or not on a 4:3 monitor, unlike how it is with full screen windowed mode.

You could of course opt to pick up a standard 16:9 HD or better display, there are a lot of options under $100 on both Amazon and Newegg right now. I just bought two 24" HD displays for $77 each for a security camera install I’m doing in a couple weeks. I think their refresh is 120hz, which isn’t horribad either and come with both DVI/VGA and HDMI inputs. No speakers though.

There are options. You can complain that the direction the engine has gone is put you in an unhappy spot and be mad about it, or you could catch up the tech to match what’s normally available.

Choice is yours.

Game on.

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You know, I like to use hardware until it breaks, and I don’t see why you should throw away perfect hardware if it’s fine and just because you think you have to force something on the customer.
If I’m angry, I’d say that Blizzard has learned from Microsoft very quickly. There, with Windows 11, it has become a tradition to make technically flawless and fast hardware obsolete. Here’s the same thing. If you want to have full screen - without black bars, then please buy new monitors BUT NOT TOO BIG because that will also be rewarded with black bars.
Very positive and exemplary in this day and age with all the climate change etc. ← that was meant sarcastically

I have some 4:3 screens here that ran in multi screen for a long time (3x 1600x1200 = 4800x1200) It was perfect under Diablo 3, but for Diablo 4 the hardware is not strong enough anymore. With a screen, however, it went well enough. Except for the beep black bars.
At work, I have 1:1 screens. Super screens!! It’s certainly a good place to play. You can theoretically see up and down as far as you can to the right and left - as it should be. In practice, I don’t think it will work, as Blizzard certainly “censors” anything outside of widescreen. <— it’s nothing other than a kind of censorship. Of course, you can also call it something else (because of supposed PVP or other fictitious reasons)

Newegg does not deliver to Good old Germany. At least not that I know of. But no matter. I wouldn’t buy screens for the game if I still have working screens here.

But I know what you mean. I still had a 16:10 screen in the basement. 1366 x 768 … lousy resolution, much too small the display but at least without those stupid black bars. All the same.

Btw. FHD also only has 1080 pixels in height. However, the software I have to use requires 1200 pixels. That’s why it’s 1600:1200 and not 1920:1080, even though the number of pixels is almost identical. FHD has a few more (153600 pixels). It doesn’t make much difference to the hardware load.
But for the company’s internal software, it makes a big difference and that’s why anything below the 1200 pixels in height is not usable.

120 Hz sounds great, but 60 Hz is enough for me. I don’t need an FPS flood. It’s enough for me if it’s “jerk-free”.
I have made my experience known here and thus made my displeasure known. what Blizzard makes of it now is in their hands, but I’m afraid nothing will change anyway. Neither at 4:3 resolutions nor at the 32:9 resolutions and everything else that is on the market that is not widescreen.

Oh and indeed Diablo 4 is the only game I have gotten my hands on or on the screen that forces me to have a certain resolution and is not playable in full screen.

Even in windowed mode, the black bars are maintained unless you want to see the desktop in the background. Then you can get rid of the bars and instead of 2 black bars at the top and bottom, you see a huge colorful one at the top or bottom.
Diablo 4 isn’t a bad game. I don’t want to say that, but it has had the most negative aspects I’ve noticed in a new game so far. A lot of little things, but these black bars were the absolute crowning glory.

I’m going to accept that for now.
I have no other option than to bring more screens into the house.

Thank you very much for your reply and your good tip with Newegg/Amazon.

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I think one of the primary driving forces behind what dictates a screen’s size is media designed to run on it. Primarily streaming and even HD video playback.

Most of them were built to support natively 1920x1080p resolutions. As this being the medium best size fit all ratio for screens in the past decade and a half.

I have a slew of 4:3 monitors in storage. Sure they work fine! But no one wants them.

I ran on 60hz monitors for years, even with some of my earlier HD screen pics. But the advantages and crispness of having a higher refresh rate capable monitor just can’t be beat for the visual improvement.

And that doesn’t even begin to touch features like curved screens, LED panels, OLED panels, and the like.

I actually upgraded this year to a 1440p 32" curved monitor with a 165hz refresh rate.

There is no way I’m going back to lower sizes or lower refresh rates after that. And they have monitors capable of a lot more refresh speeds.

My previous monitor which became my second monitor, is an HD 1080p 24" screen with 144 refresh, and I thought that was great. But this new one being curved and larger, just works SO much better. But funny enough, I run the older monitor in portrait mode to give me a “long” screen, perfect for reading PDFs and website pages.

Going back to a 4:3 monitor now is laughable. Whether they work still or not.

Upgrade if you can.

Your eyes will thank you.

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so u are still using a nokia phone since they are unbreakable ?
ur expectations are unreasonable
at some point hardware is just outdated and continouss support slows down useful development

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hey, how do you know?
The phones were huge in the beginning, then they got smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller. Very nice phone was the Nokia 8850.

Then came the smartphones and the things got bigger and bigger and bigger.

But what do I want with it if I just want to make a phone call or write a message? All the rest I can do from home or work.

And yes, I’m still using my Nokia 8850. I’d rather lug around a 91-gram phone than a fat block with a huge display

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logic
like those phones are unbreakable so if u ever had one and u are consistent with ur own logic than it was likly that u still use one

recently had to get a new one its terrible
my old one i could easily use with one hand
but its impossible to do with my new one its way to big

well i think its respectable ur consistent
i think its a good thing to use stuff aslong as it works but specily when we are talking about electronic devices at some point are just dated and can no longer keep up with the new ones and continous support would slow down development of features which could be good for everyone

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