robertmo: that's interesting, the hi-color thing could be the cause of the effects I'm seeing. IIRC one of the games that wouldn't scale even with "forced" is Extreme Assault which runs in hi-color. And yes, i was talking about GLIDE accelerated fat-bottomed Lara (; .

I wonder if the D3D output (+pixel shaders) of Gulikoza's build is different to vanilla DOSBox in respect to scaling/stretching. I didn't notice any "missing" scaling yet with D3D/pixel shaders.

Gulikoza: notebook here, so no LCD settings to change. The version of the ATI driver I'm forced to use doesn't have any settings for AR correction I'm afraid. Maybe it's possible to implement fixed AR via the GLIDE patch? Just wondering... Oh, and please make the mouse cursor go away if it's possible! (; After every resolution change/output change (=when DOSBox switches to GLIDE, and after every reload in TR for example) the mouse cursor appears in the middle of the screen which is quite annoying. Not making any demands here, I'm just reporting some quirks. I <3 the Gulikoza build because of the patches and because it always performed a bit more smoothly on my system(s) compared to vanilla DOSBox.

ADDiCT wrote:

notebook here, so no LCD settings to change. The version of the ATI driver I'm forced to use doesn't have any settings for AR correction I'm afraid.

for laptops, I remember discussing all this back here:
Distortion on 16:10 widescreen
see e.g. my posts dating from
2007-1-17 @ 01:48 pm and 2007-1-18 @ 06:13 pm

for some screenshots e.g. for Ati
http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/wiki/ima … _aspect_ati.jpg
and
http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/forum/vi … 8ce1f521a678c9c

for nVidia see for instance
http://www.tweakguides.com/NVFORCE_7.html
scroll to: Adjust Desktop Size and Position
■Use Nvidia Scaling with fixed-aspect Ratio

As i've said: I don't have any settings for AR control. The machine I'm using is a Lenovo Notebook with a Mobile Radeon 3650 and the Catalyst Control Panel is rather stripped-down compared to the standard version for desktop GPU's. I've tried installing ATT during the initial setup phase of this machine but it crashed Vista and 7 with BSOD's, so I'm stuck.

I'm doing lots of gaming (both retro and modern) and emulating on this machine and don't have AR troubles at all. Most emulators have these functions built-in, and I'm pretty sure there's a reason for that (; .

why cannot you install Catalyst Control Center?
its Release notes says it supports
ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 3400 Series
ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 3600 Series
etc.
http://www2.ati.com/relnotes/Catalyst_104_release_notes.pdf

It won't work. 3600 =! 3650, believe me. I've already tried lots of stuff, including the "Mobility Modder" app, to no avail. The notebook has a "switchable graphics" function which is pretty important to me (=increased battery life when working with the integrated Intel adapter).

The following notebooks are not supported in this release:
ƒ Any notebook launched after this driver release
ƒ Switchable Graphics enabled notebooks using Intel chipsets.

Anyway, as I wrote I didn't have any troubles with AR so far, neither in games nor in emulators. Lara's fat ass is the only abomination i had to suffer so far (; . Mind you, meaty backsides can be sexy. Don't get me started on Lara's triangular breasts however, though I guess there's nothing Gulikoza can do about those.

ADDiCT wrote:

I wonder if the D3D output (+pixel shaders) of Gulikoza's build is different to vanilla DOSBox in respect to scaling/stretching. I didn't notice any "missing" scaling yet with D3D/pixel shaders.

D3D should work with anything...at least I know of no problems 😀

ADDiCT wrote:

Gulikoza: notebook here, so no LCD settings to change. The version of the ATI driver I'm forced to use doesn't have any settings for AR correction I'm afraid. Maybe it's possible to implement fixed AR via the GLIDE patch? Just wondering... Oh, and please make the mouse cursor go away if it's possible! (; After every resolution change/output change (=when DOSBox switches to GLIDE, and after every reload in TR for example) the mouse cursor appears in the middle of the screen which is quite annoying.

Mouse...great idea, I can do that. Not sure about the AR. As I've said, the wrapper is directly rendering the 3D surface, there is no easy way to change that (unlike dosbox, where the output is rendered into an emulated framebuffer and then stretched, scaled, whatever, before being drawn). But I can check the Lenovo issues (I love Lenovo, nothing like a T500 with dual graphics 😉)...

gfx card's companies and laptop vendors are doing the strangest things to
those "mobile" graphics cards for whatever reason.

ut I can check the Lenovo issues (I love Lenovo, nothing like a T500 with dual graphics Wink)...

🤣 that was unexpected, I was thinking i might get a "buy a better notebook, I won't support your shit!" comment. Yeah the machine is kinda nice, though I'm disappointed by the Windows 7 driver situation (ancient graphics driver) and the battery life (which seems to be a driver issue as well). But other than that the machine is great, though it's certainly not what you'd call a "gamer notebook" (; .

gfx card's companies and laptop vendors are doing the strangest things to those "mobile" graphics cards for whatever reason.

Yeah, it's a pity. I mean, there's always the possibility that certain hw implementations, like "Switchable Graphics" in this case, are so good they'll become a de-facto standardand and are supported for a long time. But if that fails you're basically stuck with whatever drivers are provided by the OEM. I'm not happy about this, but it's what i have to work with. The driver situation in this particular case is not made easier by the fact that an Intel and an ATI adapter have to work "together" to some degree. I doubt either company will put much work into implementing support for the other company's product.

Anyway, still better IMO than those gamer notebooks where the graphics adapter breaks down after two months from overheating, and which run 15 minutes on batteries (; .

ADDiCT wrote:

Lara's fat ass is the only abomination i had to suffer so far

or you could run the wrapper windowed and take it to adjust to highest res at 4:3 ratio vs. widescreen native

You might want to try this. I "recently" discovered it in trying to get full-screen scaling to... well scale correctly.

Go into your registry:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers\Configuration\*************\00\00]

"Scaling"=dword:00000004

Change Scaling from 3 to 4, and your system should use the correct aspect ratio scaling.

This works on my ATI card which is on a desktop, you might have luck on a laptop as well, as this is apparently a "controlled by windows" setting.

It does not appear to work with non-square pixel resolutions correctly since the aspect ratio of 320x200/640x400 is 4:3 but the system will letterbox it at 16:10 and then apply pillarboxes around it.

Life can be so easy sometimes... Guess what, it works! (; Thanks a lot. No more fat-assed and large thigh Lara on _this_ 16:10 display! The pillarboxes are exactly what i was looking for.

The setting can be changed without booting, which is very cool because it'll allow me to go back to the default quickly and easily (and via scripting) if necessary.

Oh... And i feel a bit stupid now. Turns out the setting is there in the Control Center after all, I just didn't see it. There's a screen where the display is shown in a large image with a small black arrow. You have to click on the arrow in order to configure the display. What i didn't notice is another small arrow which allows configuring another set of options including scaling. Here's a screenshot.

Kisai wrote:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers\Configuration\*************\00\00]
"Scaling"=dword:00000004

nice find
I guess that has to be an ati-dependent setting (?) though as I have a nvidia card and I miss that key

Kisai wrote:

the aspect ratio of 320x200/640x400 is 4:3

but 320x200/640x400 are not 4:3

gidierre wrote:

nice find I guess that has to be an ati-dependent setting (?) though as I have a nvidia card and I miss that key […]
Show full quote

Kisai wrote:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers\Configuration\*************\00\00]
"Scaling"=dword:00000004

nice find
I guess that has to be an ati-dependent setting (?) though as I have a nvidia card and I miss that key

Kisai wrote:

the aspect ratio of 320x200/640x400 is 4:3

but 320x200/640x400 are not 4:3

CRT screens of the day were all 4:3 aspect ratios not 16:10, unless you prefer the non-corrected aspect ratio, in which leaving the display adapter's scaling set to '3' should in theory use the full screen dimensions of a 16:10 monitor.

I play everything windowed since I use a 24" monitor, and there are still games out there that insist on 800x600 or 1024x768

Mainly a problem of terminology imo, 320x200 is of course not 4:3 but targets
at a non-square pixel output of a 4:3 monitor. Somebody may be come up with nice
description of all that and enlarge the wiki 😀

Some more GLIDE patch/Tomb Raider feedback (please tell me if you don't want to hear it or if this is the wrong forum):

I'm currently playing with fixed cycles. It seems that when the cycles count is too high (and when cycles=max) the game won't start properly. What happens is that when you choose an item from the "spinning ring" main menu that brings you to a GLIDE screen (starting a game, etc.) the ring will contract and the game will hang at that point. Strangely enough this happens only in fullscreen mode, not when DOSBox is running in a window before choosing the menu item. The max "safe" cycles i've found is 92500 (could be a bit higher, tired of tweaking).

Now that my AR problem is fixed the only display problem (besides rendering errors, I presume those are related to OpenGLIDE) is tearing. TR runs at 30 FPS (F1 or F2 in the game shows the FPS), so i guess with double buffering it should be possible to have smooth screen updates. Gulikoza?! (;

Btw, I'm having a blast playing this game in GLIDE mode. I remember playing TR when it came out and not being able to see stuff because of all the pixels. My machine at that time was too slow to run the game in SVGA mode, too. Are you guys aware of the TR sound patch? It's basically a hacked GLIDE executable which has various options to configure how and when the game plays music tracks. You have to create custom TR CD with tracks from the PC and PSX versions for it to work properly, but boy is it worth it (; .

The hanging menu is a known issue. It is somehow related to my last build (I don't remember it happening with previous builds). I have it on my todo list to test it...75000 cycles seems like a safe bet and enough for TR.
Doublebuffering is activated in the openglide, but you might want to force opengl vsync in the graphics card control panel 😉
Some of the rendering errors are related to the engine itself, IIRC. Not enough precision or so...glidos has some special tweaks to bring the polygons together...Voodoo did not have an onboard T&L, so all the transformations had to be done on the CPU. I assume rounding errors are quite common.

There are several more modifications to the original TR engine, including an updated texture pack. But the GLIDE patch does not support it 😀

ADDiCT wrote:

Are you guys aware of the TR sound patch?

you're joking, right? 😐

gulikoza wrote:

75000 cycles seems like a safe bet and enough for TR.

in the last version of my dosbox installer for TR1/UB (v0.73 w/glide patch)
I went with cycles=fixed 75000 for TR1
and =fixed 40000 for TRUB
that was the final arrangement after a series of adjustments in the 10,000 to 100,000 range based on feedback raisonné from many players on different machines spreading from XP to Win7 and x86 to x64 and different cpu specs.

Well i began playing with 75000 but there are some large areas where the game lags quite badly (for example "The Cistern" when the large room is filled with water). I'm currently using 90000 which seems to make the game run more fluidly. I'm really looking forward to see the performance on a 0.74 based Gulikoza build as some people reported performance increases for demanding games in 0.74. An interesting fact: the game performs very badly in SVGA (software) mode, even with cycles=max. Looks like my old PC wasn't too slow after all, but the game was simply too demanding (; .

Gulikoza, have you tested I76 in 9x in DOSBox yet? I belive it supports glide.

GOG is currently selling this but it has issues. Wondering how stable/glitchy it would be under DOSBox.

I made a build of 0.74 with the glide patch, and TR does receive a little bump in performance compared to 0.73, possibly due to the small improvements in the dynamic core and timing. Fixed cycles of 75K is not enough on my system as well, as it causes the FMVs to stutter and the game bogs down when T-Rex appears... although that could be considered a feature 😉

The audio patch for TR is nice, but one thing I wish it did was to shut off the ambient sound when Lara is underwater, and to loop the underwater sound that you only hear for about 3 seconds before it cuts off.