Bugfix please!

Aha, a bug.

[moved]

Hmm, I posted this feedback to the development forum because of its description: "for discussion of bugs"

DOSBox General
- General information and assistance with DOSBox.

DOSBox Development
- Developer's Forum, for discussion of bugs, code, and other developmental aspects of DOSBox.

(Although I'm not a DOSBox developer, I need neither general information nor assistance with DOSBox)

Regarding DOSBox output, there is absolutely no difference between text mode and 640x400 graphics mode. None at all. That means your bug report is missing some important fact.

Moreover, your description of the "opengl" output indicates a video driver problem.

Regarding DOSBox output, there is absolutely no difference between text mode and 640x400 graphics mode.

Interesting. MCGA? IMHO VGA text mode was 720x400.

None at all. That means your bug report is missing some important fact.

Which one? 😕 Well, I admit I haven't tried all apps/modes yet, but I tried a picture viewer at 640x400:
No widescreen problem. It accessed that resolution through vesa though (imho).

Moreover, your description of the "opengl" output indicates a video driver problem.

I cannot exclude that. In fact I had trouble with newer drivers. So I still use "Catalyst 5.8" which is already much newer than my card. If I find time I could backup my system and give it a try with the latest drivers. However I don't believe and it's unlikely they would have a fix for that specific problem.

I tried some newer ATI-Drivers:

- It fixed the problem! No widescreen! 😊
- Very strange that only dosbox was affected...

New problems instead:
1. All 3D applications crash at startup if user has no administrator rights
- Workaround: Downgrade driver to version 7.4! (last one without that bug)
2. Screen corruption in Blender while moving mouse
- Workaround: Set Smoothvision 2.1 Anti-Aliasing Level down to 4x
3. By playing a .wmv file a small dxva_sig.txt file is created in the same folder
- Workaround: Get windowsmedia10-kb888656-x86-global-enu.exe from MS

For Sapphire Radeon 9600 Atlantis users I really suggest to make a system backup before experimenting!! 😉

Maybe send a mail to ATI 😉

...as usual with ati. 🙄

Now that I have got a newer graphics card (Ati Radeon X1550) the problem occurs again. In all Dosbox versions up to 0.73. It seems that Ati has not much interest in supporting older video modes with Dosbox. Now that the only software affected is Dosbox, couldn't the issue be fixed on Dosbox side?
(WinXP own DOS emulation works fine here, but is never as good as Dosbox)

I tried different settings:

output=surface, opengl etc.
Also fixed resolutions. 720x400 results in a smaller screen. 640x400 and 640x480 in widescreen. (I have got a 4:3 Monitor)
My main system resolution is 1400x1050 (4:3). Couldn't Dosbox just use that and upscale somehow?

Try playing around with scaler=, output = (any output but surface), and scaler=

Why are you using such a strange resolution?

Well, I use that "strange" resolution, because it's the native one of my Samsung 20" display. (20 inches enough if you have a 4:3 screen) 😎
But: The issue is _independent_ of that strange resolution. I had exactly the same issue on a completly different System with an old 17" (I used 1024x768) Monitor.

As I wrote before: Changing "output" doesn't help.
Changing scalers "works" but I don't know which setting to use.
How do I cleanly scale up to 1400x1050?

It seems Dosbox misdetects the aspect ratio "4:3" on my system, but only in text modes. Not a "major" bug, but slightly disturbing each time I start Dosbox!

i recall textmode doesn't allow aspect correct or so because else it looks too ugly according to harekiet. So textmodes are a bit special in dosbox.

did you try the vgaonly textmode ? (machine=vgaonly) that one has a different resolution

Ok, I tried vgaonly: Same widescreen effect. (Font looks different.)
If I remember correctly: Newer ATI drivers have *fixed* the issue (with another PC and an older graphics card)

So I *guess* that there could be some Dosbox vs. ATI incompatibilty with screen aspect ratio detection.