BCMM Widescreen Support

Bridge Commander has seen many widescreen attempts over the years, but most of them ultimately amounted to superficial patches.
With BCMM, we decided to address the problem properly and without compromises.

What Has Been Done

Aspect Ratio (AR) Fixes

First, credit where it is due.
AlphaYellow's widescreen fixes served as an important reference point and helped initiate more in-depth widescreen work in BCMM.

https://github.com/alphayellow1/AlphaYellowWidescreenFixes

BCMM applies the core subset of these fixes and extends them further to correctly support exterior ship views and eliminate reticle drift. While the original patch targets 16 memory locations, BCMM integrates the essential fixes and builds upon them where additional corrections are required.

The end result is a correct 16:9 projection both on the bridge and in external ship views.

Actual 16:9 Support

Previous widescreen solutions -- including the most advanced implementations found in KM -- were always tied to a fixed output resolution. Any attempt to use higher resolutions such as 2K or 4K would either not be supported at all or would result in excessively small and unreadable UI elements.

BCMM takes a fundamentally different approach.

There is no windowed mode and no manual editing of options.cfg. These aspects are handled internally. The game runs in true fullscreen mode while BCMM transparently scales the output to match the native desktop resolution.

Conceptually, this approach is similar to modern spatial upscaling techniques: the game renders at a chosen base resolution, which is then cleanly scaled to the display resolution.

Resolution as Layout Profiles

BCMM treats resolutions as UI layout profiles, not literal render resolutions. The selected resolution defines the UI proportions, font sizes, and layout logic that will be used as the basis for upscaling.

In addition to the original inbuilt 4:3 layouts, BCMM introduces two additional widescreen layouts:

Full HD (1920x1080)
2K / QHD (2560x1440)

For users with modern displays, these layouts provide optimal readability and UI consistency.
The recommended default layout is Full HD (1920x1080), as it offers the best balance between clarity, performance, and visual consistency.

Lower-resolution layouts remain available for laptop users and systems with older hardware.