Most normal text modes are forced to 1:1 aspect ratio. I think that was done because the blending of pixel rows that occurs with aspect correction can look rather ugly in windowed mode unless you're scaling up (e.g. "scaler=normal2x forced"), although in fullscreen you typically would be scaling up. At any rate, it's easy to remove the 1:1 aspect override for text modes in the source, if you're up to making your own build.

ripsaw8080 wrote:

Most normal text modes are forced to 1:1 aspect ratio. I think that was done because the blending of pixel rows that occurs with aspect correction can look rather ugly in windowed mode unless you're scaling up (e.g. "scaler=normal2x forced")

"aspect" option should work for text modes, not only for graphics, - current situation is an issue. If "scaler=normal2x" (what is set by default) makes this option usefull, so it's an issue on practice too.

it's easy to remove the 1:1 aspect override for text modes in the source, if you're up to making your own build.

It's an issue, but not a special feature, and hence have to be resolved in official release.

and hence have to be resolved in official release.

Says who?

I wouldn't call something done intentionally an "issue"; more a matter of personal taste.

Just to help visualize why text is forced to 1:1 aspect, a couple of screen shots with 4:3 aspect that show the distortion and blurring that can occur:

The above effects happens in games too.
So even if we hide aspect=true in the text mode it will still look ugly in gfx mode.
But nobody forces anyone to using aspect=true (it is not even default)
With higher resolutions aspect=true effect is not ugly.
I think unhiding aspect=true for text mode would make people understand the effect better, as dosbox's welcome text is very good for figuring out how it works.
I think it will also help understanding scalers/output/resolution settings better too.

As a result if you want to play gfx in a small window (or low resolution) you will be able to understand what is causing the ugly look easier, and you will be able to either upscale to higher resolution or turn off aspect correction (or use some other methods for correcting aspect (card drivers/monitor settings).
And I think making people play gfx mode games in a low resolution with aspect=true is the worst method of all mentioned above.

Normal VGA text mode is equivalent to 640x400 pixels, so if you compare that to a game using 640x400 graphics, yes, the effect is about the same. But a 320x200 graphics game with a normal2x scaler has doubled pixels, and I think the aspect correction looks just fine on that, even in a window.

Not all text modes have a 1.2 pixel aspect ratio; e.g. machine=vgaonly has VGA text of 720x400, which would need a pixel aspect ratio of 1.35 to create 4:3 aspect (720x540). So there are some considerations in calculating the correct aspect for text.

Something like "aspect=true forced" could be used to disable the 1:1 aspect override on text, but not sure if the devs could be sold on the idea.

MB5 has it

A modification that might work is leaving as is when the render framebuffer is less < 4x the area (or < 2x in each dimension) of the original, but otherwise making aspect true.

It looks fine once you've got enough surface area for filtering to kick in, but it definitely looks ugly when you have no extra area and your native aspect is different from the original DOS display.

Dunno though that might just confuse people more. I'm sure most people never notice the current behavior.

-Frob