Jane's Fighters Anthology: Going wide in Windows

Jane's Fighters Anthology (JFA) has received a couple of new widescreen patches recently. These patches allow the cockpit to be shown in a widescreen resolution. These are file replacement patches replacing the original fa.exe file.

There are three patches:

• FA_Widescreen_zip: Created by ohyeah2389.

• FA_Widescreen_1920x1080.zip: Created by ohyeah2389.

• FA_Widescren_nocd.zip: The widescreen patch modified by kuoyichen (hawke) so the CD is no longer needed, this does not support 1920x1080.

• FA_1920x1080_nocd.zip: The 1920x1080 widescreen patch modified by kuoyichen  (hawke) so the CD is no longer needed.

• FAex.zip: A general purpose resolution and HUD patch by kuoyichen (hawke). The resolution can be specified in a config file.

Patch release notes

The widescreen patch has been created by ohyeah2389 and was released on the 24 June 2026.

The following notes have been edited from those provided by ohyeah2389.

So here's FA.EXE with the following changes:

• 16bit scanline counter

• 800x600 now runs at 1024x600 (with HUD support)

• 1024x768 now runs at 1280x768 (without HUD support)

• 640x480 was not changed to a widescreen variant as it's the mode the menus use, and it would corrupt their drawing.

This WILL NOT WORK if your display driver does not support 1024x600/1280x768, which my system does not.

You can work around this by using a DDraw wrapper that supplies this display mode, such as cnc-ddraw. Otherwise, FA will try to set the video mode a few times, and then fail with an error "Could not set video mode X".

Note: The 1920x1080 resolution should be supported by a majority of display drivers, it replaces the original 1024x768 (without HUD support).

Further notes

Issues remain when trying to access the Jane's reference material in-game, this has been a long-standing issue with JFA. A previous article provided a workaround by using an alternative wrapper (not compatible with this patch).

A suggestion is to take a copy of an existing JFA installation folder and apply the patch and cnc-ddraw wrapper to this new installation and use it for running missions. The existing JFA installation can be used to access the reference material.

Obtaining

Both patches can be obtained from the Internet Archive at the Jane's Fighters Anthology widescreen patch archive. They are also available at the Combat Flight Sim Tavern, janes-fa channel.

Installation

Installation is simple, the steps are as follows:

• Extract one of zip archives to the JFA installation folder.

• Optional: backup the existing fa.exe file.

• Rename the patch executable to fa.exe.

cnc-ddraw

As discussed in the release notes the patch requires a display driver support 1024x600/1280x768. The DirectX wrapper cnc-ddraw can provide this support if needed.

cnc-ddraw can be obtained from the cnc-ddraw GitHub repository Releases.

The cnc-draw zip archive should be extracted into the JFA installation folder.

Screenshots

There is no example video as recording with cnc-ddraw active, resulted in a video recorded in the original 4:3 aspect ratio. However, the following screenshots should provide examples of the patch.

ONnthe tarmac

And in the air

External view in widescreen

1920x1080 cockpit

1920x1080 external view

General purpose resolution & HUD patch

This is a general purpose resolution patch (FAex.zip) created by hawke. From some (edited) notes supplied by hawke:

We only have two resolutions supported (1920x1080, 1280x1024), maybe a startup program with config file will be a good solution. So here is the FAex. Here is 3 files you will need, FAex is written with python (include source), there is also a standalone version (FAex.exe), so you don't need install python env, the FA.exe just use 1.02F NOCD version. change the resolution in FAex_Config.txt file, then you can enjoy all different resolution. By the way, I also put the hudpatch in, if you set hudPatch = true in FAex_Config.tx, then you will have Hud in any resolution (still a little problem, the little round still in the middle of screen).

Obtaining

This can be obtained from the Internet Archive at the Jane's Fighters Anthology widescreen patch archive. They are also available at the Combat Flight Sim Tavern, janes-fa channel.

Installation, configuration & running

The patch allows the configuring a resolution supported by display drivers. As a valid display driver should be used it can be used without cnc-ddraw which means it is compatible with DxWrapper as used in the previous article, Bringing it all together with Jane's Fighters - Anthology.

The steps are:

• Download and extract FAex.zip to the JFA installation folder.

• Open FAex_Config.txt and set the resolution and HUD settings. An example is shown below:

# Thank ohyeah2389 in Discord
# By kuoyichen (hawke), https://sites.google.com/site/fashape/home
# Show HUD graphic regardless of resolution
hudPatch = true
bgPolyFix = false
# Force specific resolution
# Note that in sim options you must select 1024x768 to use thisforceResolution = true
resolutionWidth = 1280
resolutionHeight = 720

• Run the game with FAex.exe.

Playnite config

When using the Playnite game library manager, the scripts should be configured as follows:

Playnite scripts

• The FAex.exe process ends after starting JFA. This causes Playnite to think the game has been quit, causing Playnite to become the active window.

• After the game starts a 20 second delay gives the game time to start the intro video, this will be interrupted by Playnite, but you can switch back to the game. Without this delay, the game hangs at the first splash dialog.

• Scripts to close any joystick/HOTAS profiling apps should not be used. These apps should be closed manually.

Example video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qf3quL304hs

Playing in 1280x720 resolution with a HUD

Finally...

Huge credit and thanks for all the hard work, goes to:

• ohyeah2389, for creating the widescreen patch.

• kuoyichen (hawke), for creating the no CD version of the patch and the general purpose resolution patch.

• FunkyFr3sh, for cnc-ddraw.

Good hunting!