How do I force the game to run at a given aspect ratio?

I mean, it's pretty obvious: if someone plays the game at some weird aspect ratio, things are going to appear wrong. Either they'll see things they shouldn't, or not see things they should.

So how do I have my build restrict the aspect ratio?

I found an option in the player settings for "supported aspect ratios" but even when I only have 16:9 selected when I play it on a 32:9 monitor I still have the game filling the whole screen. Either the setting is broken or it requires something else to be set at well.

 

I had a similar question, posted yesterday. There are so many posts, so fast, that it gets buried before anyone can see/respond to it.

If you find a solution, share the knowledge!

 

Hmm, I was looking through this documentation page and I notice that the "supported aspect ratios" actually applies to what appears in the resolution dialogue displayed at startup.
And since my game is set to "Default is native resolution" I never see that dialogue.

I'm starting to wonder if this just isn't' possible in Unity.
Well, at least without some kind of custom code that would draw black bars over part of the screen or something. But I can't find any native options within the engine.

 

If you want to have real control over rendering you should render into render texture and blit it on the screen in any aspect you want.

 

That seems like a pretty extreme solution, but I actually had considered it.

Well, I have found that if I disable "default is native resolution" and set a specific resolution in the option which then appears, the game will then run with blackbars to fit the monitor the way I want, so there's that.
The only problem is that it thus forces it to render at that resolution, which means it may not be getting a pixel-perfect rendering for the monitor. I guess I could write a script to find the monitor's resolution and try to find what that would be, but I was hoping for a more out-of-the-box solution to this.

 

Okay, I get that there are a lot of games out there where a wider view doesn't make a game-breaking change. A first person shooter, or anything with a freely-following camera in a 3D world, sure.
But let's bear in mind that ANYTHING with a fixed camera will cause problems if the aspect ratio is off; please don't treat this like a fringe issue.
For example: every 2D game, full stop. Let me repeat that: Every 2D game made with Unity will break if the aspect ratio goes too far.
No one wants to play a platformer where they can't see the bottom of the screen to know if it is safe to jump somewhere. Neither does someone want to play one where they can't see enemies shooting at them off screen. Puzzle games will look tacky when the default Unity-blue creeps in on the edges of the screen.

On top of that, there are still many 3D games with fixed camera angles that just don't play well with unexpected aspect ratios. A basic top-down view with the wrong aspect ratio can result in showing things the player isn't meant to see.

And it is not just an issue with ultra-wide monitors. Current Steam user statistics show that there are still users with non-wide monitors.

Please do not treat this issue as a rare thing that only a few users will have problems with; this impacts a significant percentage of Unity titles.

 

I've been running some experiments, and this is what I've found.
If I go to the project settings and set Fullscreen Mode to "Fullscreen Window" and deselect "Default is Native Resolution" then I can enter a resolution to use by default, and when the game runs it will actually run as fullscreen to whatever the resolution of the monitor is (probably is actually whatever is set in Windows) but the rendered image will be at whatever resolution I typed in as the default settings.
So effectively, the game will run in full screen but with black bars to lock the aspect ratio.

I also found that with this mode I can set the resolution in-game to any arbitrary value, not just a standard monitor resolution. As such, the resolution could be lower than the monitor and look fuzzy. When I increased the resolution beyond what the monitor was displaying, I could not discern any increase in quality. Either the engine is locking the render resolution to not exceed the display, or the increased resolution is indistinguishable from just running FSAA. (Personally I think it's the former, as my UI didn't change scale either.)

To get around this, I could have a script run at the game startup to change the screen resolution to match whatever the player's screen is, but trimmed to a value that maintains the desired aspect ratio. Thus, if the player has a 4K screen and I set that default value to 1080P, that script will start running the game at 4K instead of 1080P.

Furthermore, I can have a setting in the game's options to reduce the rendered resolution as a percentage of the display resolution, to improve performance. A simple slider that could take the resolution down to... 25% maybe?

Thus, I could lock the display to a given aspect ratio, still render to the highest resolution within that ratio, and allow the player to reduce the resolution to improve performance.
From what I've read, not running in exclusive fullscreen will actually cost a bit of performance, but it looks like that will only be notable for more high-end titles that need to squeeze more power out of the system.

I'd love to take a look at what I can do with that camera.rect option Tautvydas-Zilys recommended, but today is the last day I'm going to be borrowing my brother's ultra-wide monitor, so I'm not sure I can do any more definitive tests for a while.

 

We are building a game that will run at art exhibitions on a fixed 5:4 ratio arcade machine, and our client not having a 5:4 portrait screen to run test builds on is causing considerable confusion. Removing the functionality altogether and marking it as 'won't fix' is not suitable for our use case.

I understand our scenario is most likely an edge case and a niche requirement, but dismissing the need for the feature as 'How to get your game bombarded with negative reviews 101 ' is not a helpful official Unity response.

 

https://github.com/DenchiSoft/UnityAspectRatioController
I wish Unity actually cleanly supported windowed aspect ratios properly. This little tool attempts to do it, and does a fair job. Full screen aspect ratios is a different animal, but this might help some people.

 

To clarify, I want to enforce that aspect ratio regardless of screen resolution.

 

Unfortunately, I banged my head into this too, and the only thing that worked was doing a pillarboxing / letterboxing solution with black bars where you calc a new camera Rect.

 

What you're describing is in my opinion a sign of a bad/lazy developer. For the last major project I worked on one of my tasks was dealing with the possibility that some elements may very well go off screen in unusual cases, and the solution is trivially simple: you create the playfield with the expectation that most people won't see all of it.

Spoiler: Playfield example

There is a ton of information available on this subject with even the most basic of searches thanks to this problem having been a solved one for decades now. Letterboxing of course works but it's a solution that can annoy some of your audience even if kept to a minimum.

My group recently had a similar situation while trying to get a potential client interested. We were just about to mail them a device (an Oculus Quest 2) when they decided to just buy one themselves. A quick check of Amazon shows renewed 5:4 monitors available for around $110.

 

I agree, I had two use cases that required workarounds for this issue. One was a game that was created in the style of a GameBoy Advance emulator and since GBA has a 16:10 screen allowing any other resolution not only messed up the authenticity of the feel but also completely messed with the art for certain battle screens that needed to take up the entire screen on a fixed camera. My most recent use case has to do with certain boss fights with fixed camera arenas that are meant to take up the whole screen. Are there ways around this? Yes. But esspecially for small teams with low budgets there are a good number of situations where the functionality would be incredibly useful and the notion that it's guarenteed to get your game bombarded with said reviews is a tad ridiculous.

 

Very rude and uncalled for. Have you considered there are ultra-wide displays with extreme aspect ratios and games with cinematic styles that call for very specific framing to look right?

 

I made a YouTube video and a GitHub tutorial that solves this issue with a second Camera, a Render Texture and a RawImage.

Pretty much, by assigning a Render Texture to your camera, you are essentially able to force a given aspect ratio onto that camera.

Youtube

GitHub

 

Holy cow. I have been facing this issue with my game recently. It is a 2D game with strictly 16:9 pre-rendered art and uses parallax for depth. Short of pillar boxing, there simply aren't assets to display widescreen and it looks very bad when the window is stretched because you can see beyond the edge of assets. This thread shows this isn't an isolated problem. I also need to "enforce that aspect ratio regardless of screen resolution."
I figured I was doing something wrong but had no idea that Unity's official stance on this problem was basically "deal with it". I'm disappointed to say the least.

 

It is kind of laughable that in 2023 Unity can't do this natively. It's very surprising that such a basic function isn't available and they have no plans to implement it.

 

One very realistic use case for this is testing. We have a little game we are developing, and in the current prototype we're don't have the time to support every aspect ratio. However we do have certain aspect ratio dependent UI elements that we kinda wanna lock into place by enforcing one certain ratio. Kind of a shame that the engine won't easily support this.

 

We also really would appreciate a more developer friendly approach to aspect ratios and resolutions.
Because we're mostly producing interactive exhibits, we encounter all kinds of odd or even not so odd aspect ratios. It's a bit prohibitive to always have to use workarounds to publish reliable working solutions to our customers.
We're using the pro version.

 

Pretty ridiculous that that unity doesn't have a simple fix for this. A certain unity competitor is looking more and more attractive by the day.. :|

 

This might help

Code (CSharp):

1. using System.Collections;
2. using System.Collections.Generic;
3. using UnityEngine;
4.  
5. public class ScreenRatioSetUp: MonoBehaviour
6. {
7.     public bool fullScreen = true;  // Whether the game should be in fullscreen mode
8.  
9.     private void Start()
10.     {
11.         // Calculate the target height based on the screen width and 16:9 aspect ratio
12.         int targetHeight = Screen.width * 9 / 16;
13.  
14.         // Set the game's resolution to match the target width and height
15.         Screen.SetResolution(Screen.width, targetHeight, fullScreen);
16.     }
17. }
18.  

 

Yeah, def need a solution. I'm making a fixed camera horror game like old Resident Evil and the cameras are framed very intentionally and need to maintain 16:9 otherwise important stuff leaves the frame.

 

Can you put it back? It's really screwing my game.

 

No fix for the originally stated OP issue though? Been over a year. Still "won't fix" because it's not deemed necessary for anybody, despite more and more people coming into the same thread after obviously googling what they're trying to get done?

 

If you want Black Bars and just enfore your aspect ratio in your small Project:
leave every Build/Project Setting on your own and Follow this:
http://gamedesigntheory.blogspot.com/2010/09/controlling-aspect-ratio-in-unity.html

 

Been dealing with this issue for quite some time... Tried every settings still no perfect solution. Ran into this thread, seeing that Unity really has no official solution for this, we ended up modifying the camera rect, plus adding an extra layer of black UI as pillarbox to prevent touch events from outside camera rect. It's still disappointing to know that you have to implement your solution yourself for such a common thing.

 

Editing the camera rect seems to be the most reasonable solution, but it still bugs me because it doesn't natively check the display resolution. If the resolution changes at run-time, that rect needs to be updated as well. It "sounds" easy to just put that check with with your in-game settings menu, but its still just begging for some code to get accidentally bypassed.
It really should be built-in to the engine.

 

Unity People, I understand y'all. But this is a fundamental feature that everyone wants. Google this topic, there are tons of places where people ask for it. It couldn't hurt to add support for this in Player Settings.