NFS: Most Wanted (2005): enabling 1920×1080 and wider without a stretched HUD

NFS: Most Wanted

Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2005) was made for 4:3 monitors, and back in its release year nobody minded. Today, on any 16:9 screen, things are different: the image is either stretched horizontally, or black bars appear on the sides, and the interface loses its proportions. Below is how to bring back a proper widescreen look: from manually installing the fix to a "one-click" solution.

Why the original doesn't get along with widescreen

The EAGL engine was designed for a 4:3 frame — both the camera's field of view and the interface elements were tuned for it. At a resolution like 1920×1080, the game either stretches the 4:3 image across the full width or shows it with a border. Hence the "squashed" car, the stretched speedometer, and the suspiciously narrow field of view.

What ThirteenAG's Widescreen Fix offers

WidescreenFixesPack is a set of plugins for older games: they enable support for widescreen resolutions, fix related bugs, and add useful features along the way. The dedicated plugin for MW (2005) supports Full HD (1920×1080), QHD and 4K, and by default it adapts to your desktop resolution — most often the image fills the whole screen right after installation. Here's exactly what it fixes:
* HUD — brings the interface proportions in order so the speedometer, map and menus don't "drift".
* FOV — corrects the field of view for a wide frame instead of just cropping the image.
* UI and cutscenes — interface element scaling, video behavior and automatic fitting to screen width.
* As a bonus — other improvements and fixes the author bundled into a single plugin.

Manual installation: quick and without an installer

Download the fix from our downloads section or from GitHub (author — ThirteenAG).
Find the game's root folder — the one containing its executable file (.exe). It's not the saves folder and not a directory in "My Documents".
Extract the contents of the archive right there. There's no installer: the files simply end up next to the game, and the nested scripts folder takes its place.
Nothing else needs to be installed — the package already includes Ultimate ASI Loader, the loader that picks up .asi plugins.
Launch the game and check the resolution.

> Important: just in case, back up a copy of the game folder before installing. The fix is not designed for Windows XP, and it's just as easy to remove — simply delete the same copied files, with no registry edits.

Fine-tuning: the .ini file

All parameters are collected in the text file scripts/NFSMostWanted.WidescreenFix.ini. Open it with "Notepad": the lines here look like parameter = value, and after the ; character the author left explanations. What to look at first:
* FixHUD — a value of 1 fixes the HUD aspect ratio. If the interface is stretched, it's best not to disable it.
* HudAspectRatioConstraint — constrains the HUD to a given frame: Auto, 16:9, 21:9 or a custom ratio. For a non-standard monitor it's convenient to set it manually.
* FixFOV and Scaling — field of view. The first parameter enables the correction, the second chooses its variant: 0 — original, 1 — as in the Xbox 360 version, 2 — mathematically correct.
* FEScale — the size of interface elements. Default is 1.00; if you want it more compact, like on consoles, aim for 0.92.
* FMVWidescreenMode — video behavior: 1 crops them to 16:9, 2 stretches them. The first option usually looks neater.
* AutoFitFE and AutoFitFMV — automatic fitting of the interface and videos to screen width. Useful on 16:10 and other non-standard ratios, but on formats already at 16:9 black bars may appear.

Changes take effect after restarting the game. If you don't like the result — restore the previous values or replace the file with the original from the archive.

The "one-click" option: NFSPatcher

If you don't want to bother with the archive and .ini, there's NFSPatcher — a small utility by KilLo445 (GitHub). It downloads the official patches itself (the ones EA once released) and applies widescreen fixes from the same WidescreenFixesPack.

Steps:
1. Install .NET Framework 4.8 if it's not already on your system.
2. Extract the program into a separate folder and run NFSPatcher.exe.
3. Select NFS: Most Wanted (2005) from the list — the utility supports the classic entries in the series.
4. Click Go! and wait for it to finish: patches are downloaded from the internet, so a connection is required.
5. Launch the game and check the result.

Common problems and how to solve them

Stretched HUD — make sure FixHUD = 1 is set, and set HudAspectRatioConstraint if needed.
Black bars on the edges — check the in-game resolution against your desktop resolution; on non-standard ratios AutoFitFE helps.
Interface too large or too small — adjust via FEScale and AutoFitFE.
Narrow field of view, "flattened" image — enable FixFOV and pick a Scaling value.
Game won't launch or crashes — restore the .ini settings to their defaults, and if that doesn't help, delete the fix files. You can describe the error in the Issues of the project.