Steam – How to Fix Broken Aspect Ratio for In-Home Streaming of The World Next Door?

iosnvidia-gamestreamsteam-in-home-streamingsteam-linkthe-world-next-door

I am trying to play the game, The World Next Door on my iPad using the Steam Link app and Moonlight (inofficial NVidia GameStream client).

When I start the game, the PC switches to a 4:3 aspect ratio – but the game has visual-novel style cut scenes which are formatted for a fixed 16:9 aspect ratio; The image gets cut off at the sides.

Ironically, the image displayed on the iPad is still 16:9, having black borders both on the top and on the sides unless I zoom in.

Expected Appearance
+-----------------------------+
|  __                     __  |
| /  \  Hello       Bye  /  \ |
| \__/ ''             '' \__/ |
| =||=                   =||= |
|  ||                     ||  |
| /  \                   /  \ |
+-----------------------------+
                                    What it looks like on the iPad
What it looks like on the iPad.     after pinch-zoom.
+-----------------------------+     +-----------------------------+
|#############################|     |                             |
|###+---------------------+###|     |\                           /|
|###|                     |###|     | \  Hello            Bye   / |
|###|\  Hello       Bye  /|###|     | / ||                   || \ |
|###|/ ''             '' \|###|     |/                           \|
|###|=                   =|###|     |__                         __|
|###|                     |###|     |__                         __|
|###|\                   /|###|     |                             |
|###+---------------------+###|     |                             |
|#############################|     |\                           /|
+-----------------------------+     +-----------------------------+

I am seeing the same effect if I use Nvidia GameStream with the Moonlight App, except that it doesn't support pinch-zoom.

Did anyone see a similar effect, or knows how to fix it?

Best Answer

It turns out, that the cause was using the Moonlight app, which was configured to adjust game settings – after all, for Streaming to an iPad, it is obviously best to render the game in 4:3 when it allows it.

Apparently, the engine (Unity) allows for the resolution to be changed, but the game isn't designed to actually support it. Correspondingliy, no options are offered in the GUI.

The botched engine settings are stored in the registry. To fix:

  1. Open regedit.exe
  2. Navigate to Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Rose City Games\TheWorldNextDoor. Recent versions of Windows 10 allow copy-pasting this path to the "Address bar" of regedit.`
  3. You will see two keys Screenmanager Resolution Height_h2627697771 and Screenmanager Resolution Width_h182942802 (I suppose the numbers may deviate). They need to be set to 16:9 values, such as 1920 and 1080. Beware: By default to input mask expects hexadecimal values, so you need to check the decimal radio button.

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