This isn't really a problem for people who still use CRTs, as they can use their adjustment dials to stretch virtually any picture to fill the screen. As most people use LCD monitors, I will limit my discussion to those.

For games that use a 640x480 resolution, its not so bad because the monitor can scale that. How well it can scale that depends on the monitor. For mine, which has a native resolution of 1280x1024, a 2x setting in the monitor will work fine (although it's still a bit fuzzier than doubling the pixels) with borders that are generally unnoticeable. Games that use a 320x200 resolution work even better using direct3d under ykhwong's build, which actually gives a proper scale.

But games that use a 640x350 or 640x400 mode can be more difficult to fill a screen. A 2x scale will still give you large borders and there is no way to obtain a correct aspect ratio while ensuring all the pixels remain the same size. Having the monitor expand to maximum will make the graphics very fuzzy. Of course, if you had a 1920x1200 resolution monitor, 640x400 isn't a problem anymore with a 3x scale, but it won't be in the correct aspect ratio.

The problem with using stretching scalers in high resolution is the performance hit the system will take by rendering the pixels multiple times. Many games that use a 640x480 resolution don't work fast regardless of the host system's speed. Using a scaler would reduce the game to a slideshow.

Someone said 640x400,640x480 are not high resolutions, so I simply added 'force-scaler'
If you really want to do it, try this. Don't expect that all the scalers support high resolutions.
http://ykhwong.x-y.net/dosbox.exe
Run it with a parameter "-forcescaler". It may be unstable.

Great Hierophant wrote:

For games that use a 640x480 resolution, its not so bad because the monitor can scale that. How well it can scale that depends on the monitor[...] Games that use a 320x200 resolution work even better [...] But games that use a 640x350 or 640x400 mode can be more difficult to fill a screen

You seem to have rather misunderstood my problem; I'm not talking about fullscreen mode, I'm talking windowed mode. So it doesn't have to fill the whole screen, just be big enough that I can see the game comfortably. I'm saying that for some resolutions the scalers just aren't doing anything.

ykhwong wrote:

If you really want to do it, try this. Don't expect that all the scalers support high resolutions.

Eh? Why not? Especially the ones that just do something very simple like x2 or x3. They should be able to support any resolution very easily.

You can change window size with...windowresolution parameter 😀

Yes, the parameters should be used with an output method that supports hardware scailing though. surface doesn't seem to work 😀

Great Hierophant wrote:

This isn't really a problem for people who still use CRTs, as they can use their adjustment dials to stretch virtually any pictu […]
Show full quote

This isn't really a problem for people who still use CRTs, as they can use their adjustment dials to stretch virtually any picture to fill the screen. As most people use LCD monitors, I will limit my discussion to those.

For games that use a 640x480 resolution, its not so bad because the monitor can scale that. How well it can scale that depends on the monitor. For mine, which has a native resolution of 1280x1024, a 2x setting in the monitor will work fine (although it's still a bit fuzzier than doubling the pixels) with borders that are generally unnoticeable. Games that use a 320x200 resolution work even better using direct3d under ykhwong's build, which actually gives a proper scale.

But games that use a 640x350 or 640x400 mode can be more difficult to fill a screen. A 2x scale will still give you large borders and there is no way to obtain a correct aspect ratio while ensuring all the pixels remain the same size. Having the monitor expand to maximum will make the graphics very fuzzy. Of course, if you had a 1920x1200 resolution monitor, 640x400 isn't a problem anymore with a 3x scale, but it won't be in the correct aspect ratio.

The problem with using stretching scalers in high resolution is the performance hit the system will take by rendering the pixels multiple times. Many games that use a 640x480 resolution don't work fast regardless of the host system's speed. Using a scaler would reduce the game to a slideshow.

Personally I never really care about aspect ratio. I just turn on normal2x and let the games stretch the full length of my 1280x1024 screen. Its hardly noticeable to me and the smoothing effect isn't as bad as people make it out to be.

Windowed or fullscreen? Do all games actually scale up in windowed mode?