Would welcome Vogons' comments on the dosbox setup I've gotten so far to run Dune I (1992, CD version 😀
It seems to be running smoothly & happily, but I wonder if I can get it graphically any better?

Running Dune under Dosbox (vanilla build) 0.74 under LaunchBox version 3.8 (my favorite front end of the 3-4 FE's I have tried). Thanks to the people that worked on these! The machine is windows 7 prof, 64-bit, this is for my friend's dell I5-3537 which is an i3-4010 with integrated HD-4400 graphics, and 1366x768 screen.

So for Dune, I would have liked to see all the jaggies and blotchies go away but without losing any visual details; but I do understand one is walking a line with old game graphics and dos emulation on modern systems and screens. That's why I want to check with you-all.

Examining text and outdoor scenes (building exterior, dune edges, dune sand wrinkles, shaded dune slopes, and ornithopter's thin struts). The dune edges were all jagged zigzaggy while walking on foot; Jessica's face is a blotched shape in the distance (she's great up close). The castle exterior you start the game in is soft and blotchy outside. Everything else looks very good with the settings I have at this point. Maybe the jaggies and blotchies are as good as they are going to get?? Will be playing it fullscreen, not a small window (oldfart eyes). Dune's mouse control is very smooth and natural. Sounds and visual movement running smooth. (I haven't played beyond the beginning.) The game's reviews are great, I really like its visual art (I didn't used to appreciate the art in old games, but now I do - color, composition, style, etc), and its soundtrack is excellent, too.

I also don't want to mess with adding sound or graphical programs that could mess up the loaded laptop's registry, hidden devices, other games, etc. This machine has a combination of old, less old and kinda recent games on it. Plus other customizations. My friend can only use a pc with 2 fingers on one hand, so a lot of research went into which games are both excellent and mouse driven... I'm an old gamer myself, so after lots of research I ended up with a really long & varied list that he could play, and many cool games installed. Plus shortcuts and documents for games help, wiki's, etc.

Thanks very much for this wonderful volunteer website workj/discussion/info sharing, which has helped me with tweaking many other older games.

Here's the dosbox.conf settings that have worked best for me so far, after lots of googling and trial & error (I'm not expert at this!); am not listing here the default settings I kept, just what I changed.

Set autolock=false is because I personally don't like the mouse cursor sticking inside window when I shift out to windowed mode.
Used fullresolution=0x0 - means the actual screensize (whatever it is for your machine).
Set windowresolution=800x600 instead of screensize, only because that's what fixed the game's windowed mode on this machine; any other setting made the bottom edge of the window either get trapped to the bottom of the desktop and/or the window's bottom edge was under the desktop edge which cut off the game's movement arrows & bottommost area. Normally with DosBox games, you can set windowresolution anything including up to your actual screensize.
With vanilla dosbox, direct3d is not a valid parameter, but ddraw works better than the other output variables with this game.
Best graphical combination to keep visual details (not oversmooth) while minimizing pixelation and jaggies, was this combination: output=ddraw with scaler=advinterp2x - also aspect=true to maintain 4:3 ratio. Didn't need frameskip.
Sound is sb16, opl3 & compat. Not using any external pc speakers with this laptop.
Set Tandy, Disney, GUS and joystick off because they are not needed or present, so save the resources.
Game seemed a little slow on default cpu cycles, so I tried fixed 10000 and this seemed to run nice and smooth.

[sd1]

fullscreen=true
fulldouble=false
fullresolution=0x0
windowresolution=800x600
output=ddraw
autolock=false

[render]

frameskip=0
aspect=true
scaler=advinterp2x

[cpu]

cycles=fixed 10000

[sblaster]

sbtype=sb16
sbmixer=true
oplmode=opl3
oplemu=compat
oplrate=44100

[gus]

gus=false

[speaker]

pcspeaker=true
tandy=off
disney=false

[joystick]

joystick=none

My Dune 1 bat file is basically:
@echo off
D:
DNCDPRG AMR ADP220 SBP2227 EMS 386 SAF WRIC:\DUNECD\

Dunno if that bat is right but it's working.

Thanks for your help & this site.
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EDIT:
Dune 1, tweaked again,
Googled around some more because the music in map sounded distorted and the map was very blobby

Used http://www.grandgent.com/tom/dune/dunemp3s.htm mp3's page for sound comparison - he cleaned up the game recording with other tools afterwards, but his mp3's showed me what the musical peices should sound like, to aim towards.

Changed fullresolution=1024x768 to reduce blobbiness of map.
Increased cycles appears to have helped everything a bit (picture blobbiness decreased, animation better, improved sound clarity)
Chose dualopl2 instead of opl3 because it sounded better - I read that the CD version of Dune used that, whereas floppy used opl3 (Idea for Adlib Gold emulation?)
Set sampling rates for opl and mixer at 49716 becuz it appears to sound better than 44100, which some say is the physical max for sblaster so I dunno.

Sound is now VERY much improved and game animations run better.
Finally gone is an awful flat-twangy metallic distortion in "Water of Life" and the other map music.
Changes from above settings are:

[cpu]

cycles=fixed 18000

[mixer]

rate=49716
blocksize=4096
prebuffer=30

[sdblaster]

sbtype=sb16
oplmode=dualopl2
oplemu=compat
oplrate=49716

[speaker]
pcrate=49716

Thanks for your helpful discussions & this site.