VOGONS


First post, by red_avatar

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LCD monitors are becoming increasingly popular among gamers, which is also our target audience. I switched to a 22" LCD screen today, which has a resolution of 1680x1050. I sadly discovered that there's no possibility to use full screen with Dosbox without the image being terribly stretched. Using different output doesn't do much. Surface refuses to be scaled so on full screen, it's actually at resolution 640x400 or so.

What would be great, is if Dosbox could scale the image - 320x200 would be scaled by 5 to 1600x100 which fits in the 1680x1050 resolution.

Reply 1 of 14, by Kippesoep

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It does do that quite wonderfully. I have two of those screens sitting side by side. When aspect ratio correction is disabled, I get full-screen 320x200 (both it and 1680x1050 are 8:5 [or 16:10 if you prefer]). It does depend on the output mode, though. I prefer to use DirectDraw.

My site: Ramblings on mostly tech stuff.

Reply 2 of 14, by red_avatar

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Hmm directdraw I didn't use because it softens the edges last time I used it which negates the benefits of having nice integer values for the multiplication - then the end result is not much different if you had just used full screen.

I'm trying to avoid using a full screen resolution that differs from 1680x1050 because then the game pixels won't be evenly matched to the screen pixels and there will be softened edges and suchlike.

So what I want is a way for Dosbox to scale the screen in full-screen, without stretching (so keeping aspect mode) with an output that does NOT alter the pixels - opengl does it too and I had to use openglnb to avoid the softening but directdraw has no such thing and last time it used it, it softened the edges too.

Reply 3 of 14, by Kippesoep

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Since the scale factor is so high (5.25:1), I find it doesn't blur so much. Similar to the level of blurring on an actual CRT IMHO.

My site: Ramblings on mostly tech stuff.

Reply 4 of 14, by gulikoza

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Direct3D does that 😀
With aspect=false, you will (should?) get 1600x1000. With aspect=true, you will get a 4:3 image.

http://www.si-gamer.net/gulikoza

Reply 5 of 14, by red_avatar

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That means I have to use custom builds though - and for testing games I have to stick to the 0.70 version 🙁 I guess there will be no way out if I want a clear unaltered image.

And kippesoep, one problem with the softening is that it alters screenshots and also it's not fun when I use art programs in Dosbox. I like messing around with neopaint and suchlike and the softening is a bother there.

Reply 6 of 14, by red_avatar

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Okay, direct3D refuses to go full-screen in Vista. It just crashes. So far the only solution ...

Reply 7 of 14, by Qbix

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ctrl-f5 and resize yourself ?

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How to ask questions the smart way!

Reply 8 of 14, by Kippesoep

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Screenshots don't get changed if you simply press Ctrl-F5 to capture. These are taken directly from DOSBox' video memory and are always in the original resolution.

My site: Ramblings on mostly tech stuff.

Reply 9 of 14, by red_avatar

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That's only inside Dosbox - not if you use printscreen which I often do for other means. And the softening in games & Windows 3.1 is *very* noticeable with ddraw.

Hmm I wonder why it refuses to go fullscreen.

Reply 11 of 14, by red_avatar

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And how do I do that ? 😜 is that in the code ? Because there's no way I'll be able to compile it - haven't had a look at coding in 6 years.

Reply 12 of 14, by gulikoza

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That's an environment variable. Either open a cmd prompt, type set SDL_VIDEODRIVER=windib and start dosbox from there, or configure the variable from System properties (at least that's where it is in XP...)

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Reply 13 of 14, by red_avatar

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Okay that kinda worked - it no longer crashes but it's not very easy. Would it be possible to add that option to Dosbox itself since a lot of people are starting to use Vista? It won't work with frontends otherwise either.