GLOSSARY

Depending on how of if your monitor is capable to interpolate, the appropriate interpolation can be selected within the driver menu of the graphics card or the OSD menu of the monitor. There are the following different methods


The pictures have been created on a NEC 19880SX. This monitor has a native resolution of 1.280 x 1.024. In order to visually exemplify the interpolation behavior, we ran the monitor at 800 x 600 pixels.

Displayed 1:1


The monitor is showing exactly 800 x 600 at 1:1.

Full screen


In full screen mode, the picture is always stretched to the full size of the screen area. If the resolution is incongruent with the monitor's aspect ratio, the displayed content might appear distorted. A circle, for example, would appear oval.

Fixed aspect ratio


In case the monitor's aspect ratio doesn't match with the resolution in use, one can use a fixed aspect ratio in order to prevent the displayed content from appearing distorted. The example above demonstrates that there will be black bars at the top and at the bottom of the picture, then.

User



Some monitors even offer the user to set up one's own interpolation methods. The NEC 1980SX allows the user to set up two arbitrary settings. The example was deliberately chosen to be that extreme in order to make clear that it’s a different display mode. But since everything will look too stretched or respectively too squeezed, such a display mode is very unlikely to be used in practice.

You can find more information particularly about how fonts look like when they are interpolated over here.