It's very straightforward, just type "smooth <filename>", that's it. If you don't have a text file at hand, try "smooth c:\command.com" 😉

While working on capturing footage for my Splinter Cell YouTube video (uploading now), I saw that the Nvidia driver (at least for Geforce 4 and FX cards) has display scaling and custom resolution settings.

Used this to play Splinter Cell at perfect 4:3 ratio at a resolution of 1440 x 1080!

That GPU scaling option saves 5:4 monitors. At least on XP and newer. 😀

Not sure why, but I have two AOC 24" LED monitors at home and could never get 4:3 working. I left it at that.

Now on the Pentium 4 I found that Philips 18" too small so I tried the AOC again. Booted it up and immediately saw that it was 4:3. It does this for VGA and DVI for all the main 4:3 resolutions such as 640 x 480, 800 x 600, 1024 x 768 and 1280 x 960 😀

Quite happy so far. Starting with the FX Series you can also add custom resolutions and many games can be modified to display 1440 x 1080.

Just need to find an LCD that does 320x200 @ 4:3 for DOOM (and some of the other iD shooters).

Artex wrote:

Just need to find an LCD that does 320x200 @ 4:3 for DOOM (and some of the other iD shooters).

🤣 I haven't even tried DOS yet 😊

Make sure you get a monitor with a native vertical resolution that's an exact multiple of 200. Majority of dos games use a vertical resolution of 200. It should also have an option to preserve aspect ratio. If you get a 1280x1024, 1680x1050 or 1920x1080 monitor, you're going to have uneven pixels and have to resort to really ugly-blurry interpolation! Stick to something like 1600x1200, 1920x1200, 1280x800, 1600x900, etc.

The problem with scaling now days, which amazingly hasn't been addressed despite all these years of fixed resolution displays (not even in software), is the lack of supersampling-oversampling for good quality scaling (downscaling in the last step) with uneven resolutions. In other words, the image has to be internally upscaled by an exact multiple using nearest neighbor until it's past the native resolution. At that point it should be downscaled using a good filter to the native resolution. The result? Much better image quality that can look as sharp as nearest neighbor without distortion (as opposed to straight upscaling; which is stupid with uneven pixels). Antialiasing in 3D games, actually works similarly to remove aliasing-jagged edges. Ironically they both achieve opposite results.

1920 x 1200 are nice but cost 3-4 times as much as 1080p screens 😵

I find the scaling of that AOC at 1024 x 768 very good. In the end it's a compromise and cost is a huge factor for many.

There's so many LCD's around and then you have an AOC. Seriously, I've never even heard of an AOC! Post some YouTube videos so we can see it! AOC, that sounds kind of cool.

If a monitor can make non-native resolutions look like nearest neighbor without distortion (in other words, non-native look native), then that's what you want. Even if it's not an exact multiple of the target resolution.

I do recall having a 2004 Hitachi 1280x1024 8ms LCD that seemed like that. Beat Doom3 @ 1024x768 with a7n8x-deluxe mobo, Barton 3200xp, 1gb dual channel ddr400, audigy2, and Radeon 9700pro in 2004 on that thing; it ran faster in WinME than XP, albeit with longer loading times (used hex editor or something to bypass windows check). I've never seen a digital panel look sharp like that again (@ non native resolutions). Guess that's one of the reasons I'm paranoid about perfect scaling.

🤣 AOC is very much a budget brand over here, but quite happy with it. They are quite popular in the Asia Pacific area: http://www.aocmonitorap.com/root/anz/

I do have a Samsung 27" in my home office and that has all sorts of options in the menu. Even settings for HDMI overscan / underscan.

The AOC auto detects 4:3 resolutions and automatically enables letterboxing.

While not quite on the topic, I found something interesting in an old Orion 15" LCD. It has a DOS mode that switches resolution to 640x400 and thus removes the vertical lines that are present in 720x400. It also tries to smooth the edges, but in DOS the font just goes all funky. Any other LCD's out there that have similar features?

Setup

740x400

640x400

CRT

You can see how off the colors are with the LCD.

with lcd monitors plus scaler and scanline generator you can get some nice effects:

Iiyama Prolite b1906s - 19", 1280x1024, Led Backlit 5ms TN panel - looks great even at 320x240. Colors are beautiful, pixels blend in superbly at low resolution w/o any blurring or excessive sharpness, fully height adjustable stand with pivot and rotation - it's by far the nicest LCD panel for old games in my collection. In my opinion, it looks better than mos CRTs. Also, it's auto-adjust function works superbly so it corrects most flickering and weird lines that appear on other LCD displays.

Eizo also makes some really good 4:3 LCD monitors witch you can get new - TN or IPS, led backlit, up to 21" 4:3 and 1600x1200. The 21" IPS version is a bit pricey.

anthony wrote:

with lcd monitors plus scaler and scanline generator you can get some nice effects:

this looks really good. Could you please elaborate and tell us more about your setup? Is it hooked to a TV or a computer monitor? Which resolution? Which scaler and scanline generator do you use?

Hardware used for screen above is xrgb-3 upscaler and diy scanline generator (something like this: http://assemblergames.com/l/threads/scanline- … pictures.45527/)

No matter what viewing device is used, tv or LCD monitor

Main idea is: scale 320x200 image to (1024x768 or something else) and then apply scanlines to hires mode. If you will apply scanlines to lowres mode, then dark lines will be too fat. You can see how is fat lines looks here: http://www.modlabs.net/forum/topic/16083/

retro games 100 wrote:

Naibas, I really hope some people share their experiences about this topic. I keep meaning to upgrade my LCD. I did some research a while ago, and these two models seem good: Dell Ultrasharp U2410, and HP LP2475w. They are both widescreen, but apparently have good hardware scaling.

Both manuals are available online to download from Dell and HP, and in the appendix section, they state what resolutions are guaranteed to work with hardware scaling. I did copy and paste the relevant pages to a post of mine here about a year ago, but I can't locate this post at the moment...

As a longtime LP2475w owner, I will dispute that it has a "good" hardware scaler built in. Most SVGA modes will work well as long as you have refresh set to 60 or 75Hz depending on resolution (Optimal refresh settings will cause the monitor to go black with an "Input Signal Out of Range" message). But older VGA modes like 320x200, 320x240, or any of the ModeX resolutions will either be stretched to full 16:10 or an even more squashed and letterboxed 16:9.

If you can find a 20.1" or even a 21.3" 1600x1200 LCD those would be your best bet. Dell made a few models (2001FP, 2005FP, 2007FP, 2008FP) as well as NEC (mostly 21.3" models, although a couple 20.1" are out there - and are much more expensive than the Dells) I would NOT recommend the LP2475w for anything that doesn't natively use DVI.

anthony wrote:

with lcd monitors plus scaler and scanline generator you can get some nice effects:

Could you use the SLG by itself without the Scaler? If it's vga I don't see why not.

Using the Scaler and SLG how is the lag compare to a CRT?

Hi, i ordered this display because of the 15khz amiga support (not tried yet), but the dos vga 13h 70hz also looks native - the scrolls are smooth. It was just 110 eur from the amazon on prime days. The mode switching is also fast.

arncht wrote on 2023-10-18, 18:49:

Hi, i ordered this display because of the 15khz amiga support (not tried yet), but the dos vga 13h 70hz also looks native - the scrolls are smooth. It was just 110 eur from the amazon on prime days. The mode switching is also fast.

It officially support 75Hz, so of course 13h 70Hz won't be a problem. The main issue is 1080p though, which is not optimal for for scaling 200(240)p/480p content.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2023-10-18, 19:16:

arncht wrote on 2023-10-18, 18:49:

Hi, i ordered this display because of the 15khz amiga support (not tried yet), but the dos vga 13h 70hz also looks native - the scrolls are smooth. It was just 110 eur from the amazon on prime days. The mode switching is also fast.

It officially support 75Hz, so of course 13h 70Hz won't be a problem. The main issue is 1080p though, which is not optimal for for scaling 200(240)p/480p content.

Which modern display resolution is suitable for 200/240?