Taken from DosBox Wish List Thread....the Wish List is for Wishes/Requests NOT length discussion!

[Ben] DosBox addict […]
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[Ben]
DosBox addict

Joined: 2005-02-20
Posts: 16
Since TFT market is growing and CRT's tend to disappear ...
I Think we have to reconsider the FullScreen mode ...
The main part of Dos Games are in 320x240 or 320x200, so fullscreen in 1280x1024 or 1024x768 is nonsense and makes pixels odd and blurred (Hard-blurred by TFT, Well-known problem with recent games played from 1024x768 on a 17" 1280x1024 screen !) ...

My opinion is that we have to strictly respect the size of pixels ... and not "fullscreening" everything without thinking about. We have to do special modes for this.

normal2x, with fullfixed in fullscreen is what I want to get, but with Higher multiplicator.

normal2x, 3x and 4x will cover the whole thing : (640x480, 960x720 (for 1024x768 screens with black borders in fullscreen), and 1280x960 (for 1280x1024 screens with black lines at the top and the bottom of the screen)

I saw that hq2x, 3x and 4x are in "developpment-state", so I will not ask it (advinterp2x in 0.63 version is quite amazing, despite of I can't get it in Fullscreen (the way I mean )

Please note that I tried openglnb with Hwscale=3.00 and fullfixed=true and it's exactly what I want BUT it seems that sound stutters (1Go Ram and Amd 3500+ ...) ... so it's not a good option !

Guest

Something for resizing odd screenmodes to a 4:3 ratio would be good. I've come across a few programs that use some odd ratios, including one demo that looks like it has its graphics in 2.35:1 ratio, which is then stretched vetically for display, when run under native DOS.

I propose a feature that would resise all graphics and text modes so that they fill the full vertical height of the screen, no matter what the resolution (at least in fullscreen modes; windowed modes would stretch things so the window is a 4:3 ratio). Stretching would occur in the dimension which is smallest (usually the y dimension). We need some method of counteracting the fact that a number of old screenmodes don't use square pixels, while our modern GUI desktops do.

`Moe` Barkeeper […]
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`Moe`
Barkeeper

[Ben] wrote: Since TFT market is growing and CRT's tend to disappear ... I Think we have to reconsider the FullScreen mode ... […]
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[Ben] wrote:
Since TFT market is growing and CRT's tend to disappear ...
I Think we have to reconsider the FullScreen mode ...
The main part of Dos Games are in 320x240 or 320x200, so fullscreen in 1280x1024 or 1024x768 is nonsense and makes pixels odd and blurred (Hard-blurred by TFT, Well-known problem with recent games played from 1024x768 on a 17" 1280x1024 screen !) ...

OpenGL-HQ. Not yet in CVS but the code is there (see sourceforge patches section) and works. It's exactly the situation you describe that made me do it: 1280x800 TFT.

Of course, if even openglnb makes your box sweat, you'll have problems scaling anything up that much. 2x scaling is bearable for most computers (my old 300MHz box handled Hq2x quite usable), but if you go 4x, it's 4 times the work of a 2x scaler, or 16x the work of not scaling. Having your display do the scaling might be the only option then.

Re: DosBox Wish List #2 :: 2005-5-19 @ 07:35 am Guest […]
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Re: DosBox Wish List #2 :: 2005-5-19 @ 07:35 am
Guest

The "aspect=true" only seems to work for the standard video modes, and has little effect on the more exotic modes, like the 2.35:1-like mode that the earlier poster mentioned. I've also noticed that it does not stretch the textmode displays to the full vertical height of the screen, either.

I propose a modification to the "aspect=true" function to compare the screen dimensions of the requested video mode to either the fullscreen mode, or the desktop mode, depending on whether DOSBox is running fullscreen or windowed.

If running in fullscreen mode on a 4:3 display, frames are simply resized to the fullscreen resolution. If running on a 16:9 display, resize the frame to a 4:3 ratio, where the y dimension is the same as that of the display resolution, and centre the resulting image horizontally with black bars on the left and right of the image. Optionally, allow for stretching to the full 16:9 resolution, resulting in a horizontally distorted image, if the user desires it.

In the case of windowed modes, check which dimension of the requested mode is smallest, and stretch the image so the resulting frame is in a 4:3 ratio, also taking the desktop resolution into account, as some resolutions that are displayed on 4:3 monitors are not actually 4:3 resolutions themselves (1280*1024 is the example which comes to mind, here). I imagine this also applies to some of the widescreen video modes, too.

This feature would require a "monitor_ratio" and "widescreen_stretch" value in the config file. By default it would be set to "monitor_ratio=4:3", as most users have 4:3 displays at present. The "widescreen_stretch" value would be set to "widescreen_stretch=false" by default, as I imagine that most users wouldn't want the image distorted, and would prefer the black bars.

Great Hierophant Member […]
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Great Hierophant
Member

Joined: 2003-04-27
Posts: 110
Most Dos games are based on the 320x200 resolution, one way or the other, but consider the challenges of each resolution:

160x200
Used by CGA composite 16-color mode and Tandy 16-color mode

320x200
Used by CGA 4-color, EGA and Tandy 16-color and VGA 256-color.
Used by CGA 40-column text mode

640x200
Used by CGA monochrome and EGA 16-color modes
Used by CGA 80-column text mode

720x348
Used by Hercules monchrome graphics mode

320x350
Used by EGA 40-column text mode

640x350
Used by EGA monochrome and 16-color modes
Used by EGA 80-column text mode

720x350
Used by MDA and Hercules 80-column text modes

320x400
Used by MCGA 40-column text mode

360x400
Used by VGA 40-column text mode

640x400
Used by MCGA 80-column text mode

720x400
Used by VGA 80-column text mode

640x480
Used by MCGA monochrome and VGA 16-color modes

Now, most LCDs in the 15" to 20" come in three resolutions, 1024x768, 1280x1024 and 1600x1200. Now, if you appreciate integral scaling factors like I do, which would you choose?

I would choose 1600x1200. Consider that 320 x 5=1600 and 200 x 6 = 1200. No interpolation needed. For a 640x480 resolution, a 1280 x 960 resolution is the best you will get, so you will be stuck with thick borders on all four sides of the screen if you want a true aspect ratio. However, on a 1280x1024 screen, you would only have to put up with insignificant letterboxing to get a native image.

But consider a widescreen monitor with a resolution of 1920x1200. Expensive, but eminently suitable for HD TV broadcasts. In the most common 320x200 resolution, this would have an integral scaling ratio of 6:6. Yes, the pixels would be huge and the mouse movement would be jerky, but the pixels would be perfectly square. The next most common resolution is 640x480. You would need a 1920x1440 panel to get a fullscreen image in an integral scaling ratio of 3:3 (and I don't believe they make LCDs in that resolution.