For the first computing devices a screen was built to operate in only portrait or landscape mode, and changing between orientations was not possible. Typically a custom video controller board was needed to support the unusual screen orientation, and software often needed to be custom-written in order to support the tall, narrow screen layout.
As video display technology advanced, eventually the video display board was able to accommodate rotation of the display and a variety of differing resolutions and scan rates. After several years of producing the first Macintosh portrait display, Radius introduced the Radius Pivot CRT monitor, that could be freely rotated between landscape and portrait with automatic orientation changes done by the video controller.
Rotation is now a common feature of modern video cards, and is still sometimes used in tablet PCs, and by writers, layout artists, etc. Operating systems and drivers do not always support it; for example, Windows XP Service Pack 3 conflicts with monitor rotation on many graphics cards using ATI's Catalyst control software, Nvidia's proprietary drivers for Linux do not support screen rotation unless manual changes are made to its configuration.
Orientation of Video Game Displays
Portrait mode is popular with arcade games that involve a vertically oriented playing area, such as Pac Man and Donkey Kong. The vertical orientation allows greater detail along the vertical axis while conserving detail on the sides.
The conversion of early popular arcade games to home consoles was difficult not only because the home computing capability was lower, but also the screen orientation was wrong and the home user could not be expected to set their television on its side to show the game correctly. This is why most early home versions of arcade games have a wide, squashed appearance compared to the full-quality arcade versions.
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