Try these settings:

output=overlay
fullresolution=0x0
fullscreen=true

aspect=true

(maybe try it different output methods)

Works well with the Death Rally demo from
http://www.3drealms.com/rally/

This results in a tiny game surrounded by black. the the size of the game can be rescaled using the options, but all options are insufficient to reach anywhere near full screen.

Maybe play with the scaler setting, like "scaler=normal3x forced".

Scalers will not solve the problem. If the graphics stay in a tiny area when fullscreen=true it is the graphics card/driver (or SDL) that is the problem, and will not scale the video up to full-screen size.

Changing the output method might kick something into order with the driver/SDL.

Changing the graphics driver might help.

Changing a setting in the graphics driver, like lowering/raising hardware-acceleration might help too.

The following settings give me what you describe (I'm on Windows XP with an NVidia gfx card).

1fullscreen=true
2fullresolution=1680x1050 # this is important
3output=opengl # opengl,openglnb,ddraw all work, surface will give you a small image surrounded by black
4aspect=true # this is important for games that use 320x200, 320x400, etc non-square pixel resolutions
5scaler=none # you can use anything here, it works

edit: Don't be fooled by the text mode prompt - it will look incorrect, but graphics modes will work fine.

Scalers will not solve the problem. If the graphics stay in a tiny area when fullscreen=true it is the graphics card/driver (or SDL) that is the problem, and will not scale the video up to full-screen size.

I'm running an Geforce 8800gtx with the latest drivers.

Changing the output method might kick something into order with the driver/SDL.

Surface and Overlay have the same effect: They will both draw the screen fullscreen, assuming the other options are configured correctly.

ddraw will draw the game full horizontally, but not vertically. The games look like they are letterboxed.. and of course, distorted.

both opengl modes draw the screen very strangely. They leave one pillarbox on the right, but take up everything to the left of it.

Changing the graphics driver might help.

I'm not going to revert my graphics driver to correct the faults in one program.

Changing a setting in the graphics driver, like lowering/raising hardware-acceleration might help too

Just as an experiment, I tried this and there was no difference. Even if there was a difference, it wouldn't have been an acceptable solution for me.

The following settings give me what you describe (I'm on Windows XP with an NVidia gfx card).

Wow! This actually does work, but (for me at least) it only works with opengl. the other settings all stretch the screen out.

It shouldn't make a difference, buf this doesn't work when aspect=1 it only works with aspect=true. Go figure.

Thanks for all the assistance, folks!

• I'm not going to revert my graphics driver to correct the faults in one program.

Usually it's the deficiency in the graphics driver and not the fault of the program. Like in this case.

I'm not going to revert my graphics driver to correct the faults in one program.

when you look at the changelog of display drivers you often see that the driver needed fixing. Nothing wrong with the program but with how the driver works. You don't have to change but just be aware that this is more likely a driver issue than a program issue...

It shouldn't make a difference, buf this doesn't work when aspect=1 it only works with aspect=true. Go figure.

Well, Dosbox expects there to be either false or true not 0 or 1 so it makes sense that aspect=1 changes nothing.

Well, Dosbox expects there to be either false or true not 0 or 1 so it makes sense that aspect=1 changes nothing.

Most of the time, the two settings are interchangeable, at least on programs I've tweaked before. I'm glad to finally narrow down what was causing it.

when you look at the changelog of display drivers you often see that the driver needed fixing. Nothing wrong with the program but with how the driver works. You don't have to change but just be aware that this is more likely a driver issue than a program issue...

I hear this argument a lot from various game developers, that it's not their program, it's the drivers... but none of them can come up with a good answer to my argument.

If everyone elses game works, and yours doesn't, and they all use the same drivers, then what does that say about the way that your game is programmed?

This is like web developers making websites that look like crap and saying "my site is HTML compliant, it's not my fault that there are no truly HTML compliant browsers!"

In the real world we program things to fit the situation at hand. We don't make a program that doesn't work, and then hope that one day that someone else will fix it for us.

Anyway, no slight to the great DOSbox guys. Dosbox is an awesome hobby program!

It is a driver issue and not the fault of app developers if the drivers are hackish and in some way produce errors for some people. Especially if you are talking about an sdl app. You can't imagine how many times it turned out to be an old or beta driver that caused problems. But anyway if it makes you feel good blame all the developers and not the one thing they don't have any influence on

If everyone elses game works, and yours doesn't, and they all use the same drivers, then what does that say about the way that your game is programmed?

Nothing because different games/apps use different parts of the gfx card
and their drivers. Several driver issues have been debugged to the core,
for example a good while nvidia had broken opengl implementation which
manifested in a few apps and dosbox.

In the real world we program things to fit the situation at hand.

Feel free to "fix" "this error".

Klaitu wrote:

This is like web developers making websites that look like crap and saying "my site is HTML compliant, it's not my fault that there are no truly HTML compliant browsers!"

In the real world we program things to fit the situation at hand. We don't make a program that doesn't work, and then hope that one day that someone else will fix it for us.

This is getting off-topic, but I truly hope there is a difference between how commercial entities and free projects approach this problem.

Commercial entities has a great motivation to make their programs work for the biggest possible audience - even if it means breaking standards and doing ugly stuff that works really well - for 80% of their potential customers. Websites are a clear example of this, but I think it applies to a lot of other programs and services as well.

Free projects are free(!) to take a "holier" attitude of "this is how the standard says it should work" or "this might not look pretty today, but it will work on any present and hopefully future device". Sometimes this attitude works, sometimes other free projects chime in to support a certain solution, and suddenly it is the commercial entities that is forced to redesign their solutions because now the 80% drops down to 70%.

I have a DOS game that runs in 640x480 resolution and I was able to get it running "pillarboxed" on my widescreen laptop without much effort. I had to change the output and fullscreen settings, I forget what they were right now, but it was pretty simple.

This bothered me forever too. I finally stumbled on the solution I needed for my ATi X1900Xt the other day. I assume Nvidia drivers have a similar option. This picture explains it best:

The default option was "Scale Image to Full Panel Size". I changed it to maintain aspect ratio and now I can run non widescreen games at 1400x1050
or any resolution with proper pillarboxing. You can see that the little preview illustrates the pillarbox effect. It works for D3D games perfectly.

I hope this helped. If not, maybe I can take a look at one of my nvidia boxes to see if I can find a similar option.