HunterZ,

No, I don't have doublescan enabled. I've read that it supposedly renders 320x200 games at 640x400, but in my monitor it just gives an out-of-sync signal and it goes completely blank.

If doublescan really worked (and believe me, I've tried everything I know to make it work) it would be great for me, but unfortunately it doesn't.

So, I guess that if I want higher refresh rates I will have to toe the line and enable scaling after all <sigh> It seems that my holy grail is unattainable...

How does normal2x impact the performance? Do you know by how much?

Kind regards.

Leolo wrote:

I don't want that. I prefer to see the image that the game designers intended.

What I want is to DISABLE the scalers. I want my monitor to display the original resolution of the game.

Read the part about "fullfixed". That _is_ the solution to your problem. Configured correctly, it is able to change the output resolution so your video card can use hogh refresh rates, while the appearance is left unmodified.

`Moe`,

Ah! Sorry, now I see. I had no idea it was possible to do that!

So, if you set "output=" to something else instead of "surface", then you can use "fullfixed=true" and "fullresolution=640x400" to get the refresh rate you want?

And you can still maintain "scaler=none"! This DOSBox program never ceases to amaze me!

The only problem is that "output=overlay" is very blurry. I'll have to test them all to find one that is sharp.

Many thanks for your help. And sorry for my ineptitude.

Try ddraw or openglnb.

Hi again,

I've tried overlay, opengl, openglnb and ddraw, but they are all very very blurry.

Thankfully, direct3d is razor sharp!

Do you know why is direct3d the only one that gives a sharp picture?

I'm using Gulikoza's latest binary with these settings:

fullscreen=false
fulldouble=false
fullfixed=true
fullresolution=640x400
output=direct3d
hwscale=1.00
pixelshader=none

frameskip=0
aspect=false
scaler=none

Thanks again for all your help. I'm really happy now!

PS: Oh, I forgot to mention: I've been able to set the refresh rate at 150 Hz! Yaaaay!

No, I don't know. It doesn't make any sense, as openglnb is supposed to stretch without filtering (nb means no bilinear filtering I think). Do you have some kind of forced texture filtering enabled for OpenGL in your video driver options?

HunterZ,

I haven't touched anything in NVIDIA's drivers. They have the default settings.

Mmm, could it be something strange in Gulikoza's build?

I have tried with the official 0.63 release, and output=openglnb is perfectly sharp (overlay and ddraw are still blurry, by the way)

CORRECTION: Actually, openglnb mode is not blurry in Gulikoza's build. It's just black as charcoal. The entire screen is sharp, but black 🙁

Cheers.

😕 How can you tell if it's sharp if you can't see anything?

Maybe openglnb doesn't work with fullfixed=true for some reason? I wouldn't know since I never use it (OpenGL modes in DOSBox seem to be slower on ATI, at least in Windows)

To "fix" overlay/ddraw's blurriness (only happens if you use normal2x) you have to disable DirectDraw acceleration in DXDIAG. So either disable DirectDraw acceleration or just don't use normal2x if you use ddraw/overlay.

There's a patch for this in the "ddraw filtering" thread...but you can only use it if you compile it into dosbox yourself.

If your using gulikoza's latest build then all output modes should be about the same speed....at least they are for me on my ATI X800.

Where in DosBox is the screen "black" in opengl? All output modes display fine over here. Are you running a specific game or something? Also try fullresolution=-0x0

If I use the DosBox default of fullresolution=1024x768 with opengl then whenever I have DosBox go fullscreen @ the CLI then the bottom/top of the screen will show the desktop.....so the DosBox window is probably rendering at 1024x768 on my 1280x1024 desktop...at least that's what it looks like.

Sorry, I didn't express myself correctly.

What I meant is that the screen is completely filled with black. There are no different shades of gray, just a vivid and intense black. There are no signs of blurriness anywhere.

Although I'm not really sure if it's proper to talk about blurriness and sharpness when the only color you see on the screen is black 😕

Cheers.

DosFreak,

I'm using fullresolution=640x400

The problem happens with latest Gulikoza build with both opengl and openglnb outputs. After launching DOSBox, the main screen is black, I cannot even see the welcome message that says "HAVE FUN!"

Should I report this to Gulikoza as a bug?

Regards.

Hmm, see if you can recreate this behavior on DosBox 0.63 and then using the AEP CVS build. These are just straight CVS builds so if it works there then it could be Kurnov's rendering patch or some other unofficial patches in gulikoza's builds that is causing your problem.

All output modes are working fine using gulikoza's build.....

Does this "black screen" happen in a dosbox window or in full-screen? I guess you could try sticking an earlier Nvidia OGL ICD in the dosbox directory if it's an OGL driver problem.....

Btw DosFreak, it's Kronuz that made the scaler patch 😀 You always refer to him as Kurnov 😜

I always make sure that only the chages I know of make my newer builds. I compare my previous builds with current build to make sure no unknown modifications enter the code. I find it hard to believe that opengl would behave differently with the current build since only Kronuz's patch was added (along with the cvs changes that haven't changed opengl output). But of course, if something escaped me, please post your config file, if I can reproduce the problem I'll try to fix it.

Weird, WTF did I get Kurnov? heh. Well, your all free to mangle my name if you wish!

SodFreak, DasFreok, FosDreak, or any variation you can think of!

I haven't had any OGL issues over here and we really haven't heard of any on the site (except the ATI slowness), hopefully it's a system problem.

OK, I have made a few more tests.

First I've tested this build:
http://cvscompile.aep-emu.de/dosbox.htm

And I've had no problems at all. Both opengl and openglnb work (this last one is very sharp, I like it) I've also tested the official 0.63 build and found no problems either.

But then I tested this build:
http://ykhwong.x-y.net/cvs/20051208.zip

And unfortunately it has exactly the same problem as Gulikoza's build. Using opengl and openglnb outputs the main screen goes completely black and you can't see anything.

I can reproduce this behaviour (perhaps a bug?) 100% of the time.

These are the relevant system specs:
Windows Server Standard 2003 SP1
Microsoft DirectX 9c drivers (October 2005 redistributable)
NVIDIA ForceWare drivers v81.95

Athlon XP 2500+ Barton (FSB overclocked to 200 MHz)
512 MiB of DDR-SDRAM (PC3200)
ASUS A7N8X-X mainboard (nforce2 chipset)
GeForce 6600 GT AGP graphics card

Cheers.

This is just an idea...it could be related to Kronuz's patch, opengl and partial texture updates on a nvidia card (because of the GL_NV_pixel_data_range extension). Dunno how to test it though, I don't have nvidia hardware...

Sorry if i write something stupid, didn't read the whole topic...
Your problem is, that that the refresh rate is too low. right?
I know the answer, but it only works for one operating system.
Windows. you are probably out of luck, but if you ARE a windows user, then try to lock the refresh rate.

usualy the driver program enables this, but it's too complicated for me.
I use a program called Refreshlock. Works only on NT-like systems(for example winXP), no win98.
Automaticaly detects all the rafresh rates for all resolutions.
Don1t forget to "enable" it!
RefreshLock download page

There might be other programs like this for Linux(X.Org), or other systems.
It solved all my refresh problems, not just Dosbox, but all the other game stuff too.

WARNING! DO NOT USE IT together with another locker, like the one in the driver. anything can happen!!!! 😈 [/url]

Well, just FYI, on linux you don't need a separate program. The refresh rate is set in the X server configuration file.

Leolo: if you want to use doublescanning you have to use scaler=normal2x
cauze doublescanning option doesn't work with very small resolutions (320x200, 320x240, 300x400). Those resolutoins are already doublescanned, and would require quadscanning.

By the way - I supposed nVidia limited refresh rate of their drivers cause they introduced doublescanning which requires lower refreshrates and they didn't want to have problems with it (althouth there are still problems with a bit higher resolutions - 640x480 and 800x600)

I thought of the doublescan issue too (see the top of page 2), but Leolo says it isn't enabled.