1) Which scaler is the best to use with DosBox?

One that just duplicates pixels, if at all (like normal2x) as that's SOOOO oldschool.

2) Do scalers work in both full screen and windowed mode?

They work the same in fullscreen as in a window, IF they work. You might
need the "forced" parameter for some game resolutions (or some text
interpolation).

check this for some examples http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/Scaler

1) It depends on personal preference. Personally, I very much prefer normal2x/normal3x because it does indeed give the most authentic-looking result. I like my pixels big and blocky.

3) The visible effect of the scalers depends on the source material. Check out the comparison in the DOSBoxWiki article on scalers.

Hello again and thanks for your answers!

I actually checked the DOSBoxWiki article before posting here (as mentioned, I tried to document myself first) and that's exactly why I was wondering if the scalars I chose worked at all, since there was no visible result and the pixelation was to my eyes identical (that is, very strong) no matter my choice for scaler.

And yes, for my personal taste I'd like to reduce pixelation as much as possible so what I look for is a scaler that does that.

Could it be possible that the lack of any result depends on the specific game I am playing?

Thanks again for your kindness!

If you use the rgb2x or tv2x (or 3x) scalers, the result should be very visible even if they are not to your liking. Quick experimenting shows that the scalers operate mostly on high-contrast areas where a staircase pattern would be visible in lines. They don't do much for gradients or for dithering and indeed for near-photographic material. As such, you're much likely to see the effects on in-game text and for older, 16-colour games.

Could it be possible that the lack of any result depends on the specific game I am playing?

Post a screenshot of how it looks like, and be sure to try the "forced" option.

Hello!

Here I have taken 3 screenshots using 3 different scalers.

While I was playing I could see a difference only when using the rgb3x (and similar like tv3x because they'd display the black lines/dots so I know they were active and working but in the rgb3x screenshot saved not even that shows!).

I tried also to force the scaler and what happened was that it would not even work in full screen. I set the fullscreen option to false and tried again: with hq3x would start in an enormous window which could not fit my screen, with hq2x the window is still very big but I can almost see what I am typing and when I run the game, the game window goes back to normal size (320x240, I guess?)

I guess noone there could try this game locally and see if all this can be reproduced?

Thanks again!

I set it to false and tried again

Please check how that option is used exactly, there's no "false forced" option.

Sorry, I meant to say that I set to false the fullscreen option, not the scaler (former post corrected for clarity).

with hq3x would start in an enormous window which could not fit my screen, with hq2x the window is still very big but I can almost see what I am typing and when I run the game, the game window goes back to normal size (320x240, I guess?)

Means the scalers are in effect (640x400 textmode gets you a 1280x800
resolution for the x2 scalers obviously, which you call "very big").

Well, yes... I have a rather old LCD monitor and I run at 1024 x 768 so I guess all is relative.

I see the effect of the scaler when the DosBox window appears but, even with the forced option, no visible differences can be noted (as my screenshots show).

However I can confirm that when I now used the tv3x scaler, I could at least see in the window game the orizontal black lines which are not there in the screenshot I take (I tried blowing the image up to see closely) so I wonder if the screenshots even keep the use of scalers in account?

(as my screenshots show)

The screenshots seem to be created by dosbox, where the raw image data
is saved (thus unprocessed by the scalers).

Well, yes... I thought I could use DosBox's own functionality to take screenshots (else why would there be such an option available at all? 😮 ).

However here I am attaching screenshots taken directly via print key and pasted on Paint (at least the black lines of the tv3x scaler here are visible).

look at the arrows below the compass. and the lady
those are different,but the wall stuff doesn't however that isn't that much of a surprise though. It looks a bit random red stuff and random stays random.

Qbix, you're right!

Well spotted! I must say I did expect an all kind of impact on the pixelation by using a scaler like hq3x, mostly after looking at the Dosbox Wiki page.

Thank you very much for your help and support in all this!

Keep it up!

else why would there be such an option available at all?

Not to debug scaler issues but render the actual screen content into a file.

wd wrote:

else why would there be such an option available at all?

Not to debug scaler issues but render the actual screen content into a file.

Got it!

Thanks! 😀

use supereagle. Best scaler ever. too bad there is
no supereagle3x or something.

Feel free to add that "best" scaler ever.