I'm not really following. What games have you tried? How are you passing through HW to a win98 VM? Why are you bothering with any of these things if you want 4K res gaming?

Auzner wrote:

I'm not really following. What games have you tried? How are you passing through HW to a win98 VM? Why are you bothering with any of these things if you want 4K res gaming?

I haven't tried games yet. I wanted to get it set up first, which for me includes the best resolution without being detrimental. I'm needing to use older versions of Windows (in this instance, 98) to run older games from my childhood.

Win98 era games were played on 4:3 CRTs at 640x480 and 800x600. A VM may not perform well enough for this. The Windows desktop resolution is not going to set the game to that or indicate that the game will scale appropriately. Black bars would be normal on the sides. Some games support modding or config tweaks for WS: http://www.wsgf.org/ But again, you're not going to get hardware graphics acceleration in a Win98 guest.

Auzner wrote:

Win98 era games were played on 4:3 CRTs at 640x480 and 800x600. A VM may not perform well enough for this. The Windows desktop resolution is not going to set the game to that or indicate that the game will scale appropriately. Black bars would be normal on the sides. Some games support modding or config tweaks for WS: http://www.wsgf.org/ But again, you're not going to get hardware graphics acceleration in a Win98 guest.

Yep. I'm able to get 1600x1200 resolution on desktop and see custom resolutions are able to be fixed via PowerStrip. So you mean even though the desktop resolution is higher it won't automatically try to scale the game up to that? It'll just still open in 640x480 or 800x600 depending on the game? As you've said it'll depend on each game if itll scale or not. Was just wondering if it was even possible for games without mods to surpass the standard 640x480 and 800x600 with PowerStrip or Digital Doctor?

Do you know why you want higher than 800x600? (If even that works for gaming in a VM) It's going to depend on each game, most of which from that time, the answer is no. You should know that resolution does not indicate surface size of the picture display (because you're talking about 4K with Win98). There are ways to scale up lower resolutions for your monitor, in the VM config, graphics driver config, or the monitor's control menu.

Some games did do 1600x1200 and beyond, but their UIs were mostly unusable or blocky. Off the top of my head I can think of Baldur's Gate 2 and Deus Ex--but those will run in XP and probably 7 anyhow.

Auzner wrote:

Do you know why you want higher than 800x600? (If even that works for gaming in a VM) It's going to depend on each game, most of which from that time, the answer is no. I'll tell you that resolution does not indicate a surface size of the picture display. There are ways to scale up lower resolutions for your monitor, in the VM config, graphics driver config, or the monitor's control menu.

Just to take the most advantage of my screen as I possibly can. Ah, so what resolution in VM with games on older systems has been seen..? I thought gaming in its native resolution would for sure be possible in VM. So if a game isnt going to scale will it just not open or result in an error of some kind? Yep, I've changed the resolution with digital doctor in the graphics driver config to be able to use 1600x1200 with PowerStrip allowing for even higher.

Looks like the plan is to just use digital doctor for higher resolution on a game by game basis with most listing somewhere their resolution requirement. One specifically says 640x480 or something I believe. So then I'll see if it'll upscale and if not scale it down to what it states. Was just wondering if through PowerStrip setting an even higher resolution if I would have to completely remove digital doctor first or if I could just set it back to default and try installing PowerStrip instead.

It sounds like I'm not helping you understand this. You'll have to see for yourself or see what others have to say.

The desktop resolution and the game resolution were two separate settings back then. All game from the era had either a fixed resolution or a menu to set it to your liking. As it has been stated, games back then were played on a CRT. CRT can display different resolutions fullscreen without any downsides, they have no native resolution per se. Games took advantage of that fact and allowed different resolutions to be set by the user, who would chose in function of their hardware.

In order to take advantage of your modern screen, and not play in a tiny window, you'll have to upscale the VM resolution to your native resolution. There are probably some settings to do that, I would say some bilinear filtering to scale anything to your display resolution, or maybe a set of 2x 3x 4x nearest-neighbour with a black frame to keep the pixels sharp and even.

Auzner wrote:

It sounds like I'm not helping you understand this. You'll have to see for yourself or see what others have to say.

Thank you very much for your responses.

jarreboum wrote:

The desktop resolution and the game resolution were two separate settings back then. All game from the era had either a fixed resolution or a menu to set it to your liking. As it has been stated, games back then were played on a CRT. CRT can display different resolutions fullscreen without any downsides, they have no native resolution per se. Games took advantage of that fact and allowed different resolutions to be set by the user, who would chose in function of their hardware.

In order to take advantage of your modern screen, and not play in a tiny window, you'll have to upscale the VM resolution to your native resolution. There are probably some settings to do that, I would say some bilinear filtering to scale anything to your display resolution, or maybe a set of 2x 3x 4x nearest-neighbour with a black frame to keep the pixels sharp and even.

Ah wow, did not know that. So basically no matter what I do to the resolution inside windows 98 via something like Display doctor the games are just going to pick up whatever resolution Virtual Box is running and not to upscale to the resolution set inside windows 98 through display doctor? I thought Virtual Box was already displaying my native resolution but I guess it's obviously not when starting up windows 98 in that tiny window. However, when I installed display doctor and then restated the VM the window wasn't tiny anymore and was in fact 1600x1200 instead. So are you sure the games wouldn't try to scale with that as well? Would you please be able to explain to me exactly how I would go about changing the bilinear or whatever else you're talking about? I so greatly appreciate your help.

Yes I am sure. There is no scaling within your virtualised environment. You need to scale the window of your virtualisation software itself if you want it bigger. I don't know your specific software, but you must have some video options somewhere.

According to the documentation, you need to enable "scale mode":

To enable scale mode, press the host key + C, or select "Scale mode" from the "Machine" menu in the VM window. To leave scale mode, press the host key + C again.

If you have "scale mode" enabled, then the virtual machine's screen will be scaled to the size of the window. This can be useful if you have many machines running and want to have a look at one of them while it is running in the background. Alternatively, it might be useful to enlarge a window if the VM's output screen is very small, for example because you are running an old operating system in it.

https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch01.html#i … o-resize-window

Virtual Box is not a gaming platform, so it isn't really designed for what you're trying to do.

Besides that, late Windows 9x-era games were played in 1024x768 (or so) at most, on a 4:3 screen. If the game supports higher resolutions and widescreen there is good chance it will work in XP or even higher.

jarreboum wrote:

Yes I am sure. There is no scaling within your virtualised environment. You need to scale the window of your virtualisation soft […]
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Yes I am sure. There is no scaling within your virtualised environment. You need to scale the window of your virtualisation software itself if you want it bigger. I don't know your specific software, but you must have some video options somewhere.

According to the documentation, you need to enable "scale mode":

To enable scale mode, press the host key + C, or select "Scale mode" from the "Machine" menu in the VM window. To leave scale mode, press the host key + C again.

If you have "scale mode" enabled, then the virtual machine's screen will be scaled to the size of the window. This can be useful if you have many machines running and want to have a look at one of them while it is running in the background. Alternatively, it might be useful to enlarge a window if the VM's output screen is very small, for example because you are running an old operating system in it.

https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch01.html#i … o-resize-window

OMG. Thank you SO much. I now have it full screen because of you! I was trying to make it extra difficult thinking I had to tweak it inside the VM of Windows 98 in order to scale it! You truly have made a huge impact on my enjoyment being able to play my childhood games full screen. I truly cannot thank you enough! Know that your post really made an impact! (:

Azarien wrote:

Virtual Box is not a gaming platform, so it isn't really designed for what you're trying to do.

Besides that, late Windows 9x-era games were played in 1024x768 (or so) at most, on a 4:3 screen. If the game supports higher resolutions and widescreen there is good chance it will work in XP or even higher.

Thanks for this response. I know it’s not perfect for it however I seem to be lucky enough that the first game I’m playing from 98 is working just fine! Ah, wow. I didn’t know games were starting to become HD that long ago! That’s good to know for the future.

Now you see for yourself that resolution does not indicate surface size of the picture display.

Resolution ≠ definition!

Auzner wrote:

Now you see for yourself that resolution does not indicate surface size of the picture display.

Yep! Just so weird for me to realize the game resolutions were set back then inside themselves irregardless of the resolution since for so long now games have been able to use different resolutions on an individuals preference. They’ve definitely come a very long way in every sense with PC gaming.

Actually, the fact that modern games use an internal resolution scaled to the desktop resolution is a workaround due to the limitations of modern displays. LCD screens can only display their native resolution, their pixels can only have one size: any other resolution will be either adjusted to that pixel size (lower resolutions will appear small in the center of the screen with a black border) or scaled by the screen itself with usually terrible results. Videogames had to work around that problem by using the set resolution of the OS, and scale their internal rendering resolution to it.

CRTs on the other hand don't need that scaling: they can display the rendering resolution directly, with no downside at all. LCDs were a step backwards in term of display adaptability.

jarreboum wrote:

Actually, the fact that modern games use an internal resolution scaled to the desktop resolution is a workaround due to the limitations of modern displays. LCD screens can only display their native resolution, their pixels can only have one size: any other resolution will be either adjusted to that pixel size (lower resolutions will appear small in the center of the screen with a black border) or scaled by the screen itself with usually terrible results. Videogames had to work around that problem by using the set resolution of the OS, and scale their internal rendering resolution to it.

CRTs on the other hand don't need that scaling: they can display the rendering resolution directly, with no downside at all. LCDs were a step backwards in term of display adaptability.

Ah, yep this makes complete sense. I remember it definitely being the screen holding a lot of the power and control back then versus the internal that is dealt with in LCD screens today. I learned something new, which I love learning stuff in the tech world so thank you. (: