Aspect Ratio with DOSBox through VGA Monitor \ VOGONS

Aspect Ratio with DOSBox through VGA Monitor

Topic actions

First post, by Sharkspine

Posted on 2025-01-06, 12:43

Sharkspine Offline

Rank Newbie

Rank: Newbie
Posts: 1
Joined: 2025-01-06, 12:23

Hello

I have a Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 920 Monitor connected to my Windows 10 PC. I have started using DOSBox to play retro titles. The lowest resolution my Nvidia card can 'see' is 800x600.

I have used CRU to set up two custom resolutions following the timings specified from the'TinyVGA' website. My monitor has no issue displaying these. They are:

- 640 x 400 at 70hz (for Quake and Descent) with DOSBox settings to scale= normal2x / Aspect=False
- 640 x 480 at 60hz (for HOMM 1) with DOSBox settings Scale = none/Aspect=false

However I assumed when using these settings the display would be full screen i.e the whole game screen would fit 'corner to corner' however there are black borders around both resolutions at the listed refresh rate.

I am able to manually use the monitors in built controls to adjust the display to fit the screen and these settings are saved by my monitor whenever I want to switch with no issue

Are the black borders just how the display is supposed to look? And by utilising the monitors in built controls to make the game image fit is it still preserving the aspect ratio?

Thank you so much for your time and take care.

Reply 1 of 1, by clb

Posted on 2025-01-06, 15:45

clb Offline

Rank Oldbie

Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 554
Joined: 2021-07-14, 11:45

In analog VGA there did not exist a mechanism to precisely synchronize where the edges of the image are. So each display would then have to either allow user the manual control of cropping borders, or incorporate some kind of a fancy video border detection heuristic. The idea was that the user would then use the display's centering and size knobs to maximize/fit the video image to cover the whole display.

That is, in the end, it is/was up to the user to decide if they want to leave borders in some direction, or whether to maximally fit the screen to cover the available display surface area.

Go to top of page Go to top of page

Back to Video