[Ben] wrote:

So to summarize : I want my games in "normal3x" mode (does not exist) or in "nearest neighbour 3x" ...
And for my future or richer 17" or 19" TFT owners ( 🤣 ), hq2x, hq3x and hq4x would solve ALL the problems that we got with bad D3D foggy effect on pixels

And I want a yellow Ferrari - and next year I want a Porsche.

But I am afraid that the answer to both of us are: Not going to happen anytime soon.

😁

I found a solution but it's not complete at this time :

1output = openglnb (no blur ! :D)
2Hwscale = 3.00

But it does not work in fullscreen (I mean, it goes fullscreen, but it blurred everything on my TFT (it's a known TFT problem !!!), even when I allow fullfixed 😒 ...

It's EXACTLY what I wanted but how to put black border arround the window (like i showed in the second screen)

Please, I tell you that my english was not as good as I wanted, so when I say "I want" please read between the lines : "Please, I Want" ...

Anyway, I think it's a MAJOR issue to solve this problem ... playing dos Games in a 1/4 window on a 1280x1024 will be a PAIN ! (and there will be some graphical problem too since 320x200 or 320x240 are not multiple of 1280x1024 ... so fullscreen on TFT (I think CRT are going to desappear ..) will be a huge problem with DosBox if it's not solved...)

Anyway (bis), I think the solution is to set a fullfixed screen and a "black" wallpaper with the original aspect ratio (320x200 in Lands of Lore = 960x600 or 1280x800 ...) ...

So, if you have a solution for me, please tell me 😏

Edit :

I think (Ok, You're probably wondering HOW I can think so much a day 😁) that to keep CORRECT pixel ratio and no blur, these modes are needed :

• normal3x (for 1024x768 screen)
  normal4x (for 1280x1024 screen) for the "old rendering way" fans 😏
  advinterp3x
  advinterp4x for the trully impressive way these scallers improve image quality !!!

I mean, these modes will be used as well on TFT as on Laptop screens ... add blur is, to me, a mistake with old games ... and work good only for CRT ...

Yeah...LCDs are a bit tricky when it comes to resolutions. That's why I still keep my CRT 😁
In any case. Normal2x works differently in surface or opengl (and overlay, ddraw...). You must remember that in surface mode there is no hardware stretching so that extra pixels have to be computed by the main cpu (that's why x3 and x4 might not be such a good idea). The other accelerated modes do bilinear by default (uck, I agree) except openglnb. Also, hwscale parameter is not used in fullscreen modes.
I think this shouldn't be too difficult to code at least in accelerated modes (that is openglnb, others are bilinear anyway) it's just the matter of setting the correct parameters for the display mode. [Ben]...you can also try my Direct3D version (click on the web icon to get to my page). It is also set to do nearest neighbourhood stretching by default and I'll see if I can add some sort of stretching that would work for you 😎

😳 COOOOOOOOOOOOOL

Where can I get your version ?

I find the "advinterp2x" quite good ... and I found a hq2x version who's quite good too 😁 !

Actually, i would like a "neighbour pixel" 3x or 4x (hardware with Direct3d with no blur will be perfect) AND a hq2x or hq3x or hq4x ... But "fullscreen" (with black border around -> not hard-blurred by TFT)

I am gonna sleep now 😀 !
I wonder if I will not learn by myself programming in C and break into DosBox code 😏 ... I have so many thing to do 🤣

Actually, I tried ScummVM and "wow" it's nearly what I expected from DosBox ... So if i could have all the graphic modes from ScummVM in DosBox, it will be perfect ! (think about a "4x" mode for 1280x1024 TFT owner 😀 !)

😊

CRT's are going to be with us for quite awhile yet. At least until the problems of LCD are fixed. Actually it probably won't be LCD that does it, probably something like OLED or something. Heck, Thin CRT's are just starting to break out. Don't know how far they'd progress or even if they'll hit the monitor market but CRT technology is still being developed.

1280x1024 is NOT 4x 320x240. 1280x1024 is NOT a 4:3 aspect ratio resolution.

That's why I said "what the f**k?" when I heard that they have 1280x1024 LCD screens. Why the hell would anyone want an LCD that doesn't have a 4:3 aspect ratio for its native resolution?

Well, 'cause that's how they're made and supplied... you can't have what they don't sell and pretty much all 17-19" TFTs have tnis as a native resolution. You can always use the graphics card driver to set a fixed aspect ratio mode!

Snover wrote:

1280x1024 is NOT 4x 320x240. 1280x1024 is NOT a 4:3 aspect ratio resolution.

[320x240] x 4 = 1280x960 ... So that's the max "realisitic" size with no blur that a TFT monitor can achieve !!! For Fullscreen, I would have checked "fullfixed" and then DosBox would have added black borders on top and bottom of the screen !

I really don't understand your reacts ... we don't discuss about what kind of technology will won the battle or not. Nowadays, TFT and/or OLED are the future of displays, I don't know what else to say 😒 ...

So to avoid hard-blurring on TFT's, the only (and easiest, that's the point ...) way is to keep a a not-decimal multiplier of the basic resolution (320x240, 320x200) and to add black lines around the well-maximized image 😊 !

Have you ever tried ScummVM ? That's exactly what has to be done with DosBox ! Even with "keep aspect ratio" there is no hard-blurring, because the resolution never changes : 1024x768 on my little TFT 😮. And the "Fullscreen" Mode is available, as well as if you hit on ALT+ENTER it goes with black borders around (no real fullscreen, it just adds black borders around the window), and if you check the fullscreen-box in the option menu, when ALT+ENTER is pressed, you get REAL fullscreen (no fullfixed) ...

I Think DosBox could be much easier than now if it had a toolbar or an option menu that fully fill the dosbox.conf for us ... and of course a good way to manage fullscreen with TFT 😁 😁 😁 (that's the point guys, nothing else !)

Well...I coded something like this in my Direct3D mode. It took 5 lines of code to do it 😁
D3D already had a somewhat different algorithm for choosing the resolution I'll try to explain it and if somebody finds a flaw in my logic... 😉
In window mode it's simple - the resolution is game resolution times aspect ratio and hw scale options. Because many dos games use 320x200 (not 4:3!), DOSBox aspect ratio option will pass parameters to resize this to something like 320x233 (why not x240?). This will (almost) be 4:3 on desktop resolutions. Fullscreen mode can either be fullfixed or not. 'Normal' fullscreen will just switch to native res (or times 2 when scaling is enabled). Fullfixed is the problematic one. Opengl and other DOSBox modes compute the aspect ratio of the display mode and use this when scaling to fullscreen. For instance with fullfixed=1024x768 and the dos resolution 640x400 this will be scaled to 1024x640 with black borders on top and bottom. This is somewhat questionable since fullfixed=false will give 4:3 image and this is somewhat stretched. D3D used to scale everything to full resolution. That would give correct aspect ratio in all fullscreen modes (since in dos, everything was exactly the size of the monitor -> 4:3) but ofcourse introduces scaling artefacts. Now I limited the scaling to integral numbers. 320x200 will be scaled to 960x600 (this is ofcourse when using fullfixed=1024x768). Note that the aspect ratio is off by 20% (1.6:1 - when it should be 1.33:1)! However, 1280x1024 is much nicer (surprisingly...). We can scale 320x200 image x4 in x direction and x5 in y direction. This will give 1280x1000 image, which in fullscreen at 1280x1024 the aspect ratio is only 2% off!
I will have a compiled version with these changes on my page probably sometime today. The new 'LCD mode' fullscreen will be used by default, I guess all CRT users use native resolution anyway and LCD users would prefer this new mode. As usual, feedback appreciated 😁

You're already my DosBox-God 😁 !!!
Question, anyway : do you have 1024x768 d3d mode ??? 😁
960x600 or 960x720 with "good aspect ratio" can be acceptable too 😉 ! (and then add black border in "fullfixed")

I will be surely the FIRST to give feedback to you 😏 !

(Did you try ScummVM to see what I mean about scallers ?)

With all this trouble, why did you get an LCD? 😖 Anyone who actively plays old-resolution games should think twice about one. I mean, you just paid more for less! With my 'ol $50 (CAD) CRT I play everything from old to newest (doom3,hl2) with no fuzzy displays.

I agree that while LCD/TFT might be the future....one can argue that in the future one will not be playing dos games (which we all know to be bs 😁 ) No one but us oldies fans care about backwards compatibility. If there were others, XP would have a [X] EMULATE DOSMODE button on shortcuts wouldn't it?

Why do I buy a TFT ?

FOR MY EYES !!! 😠 (and my electricity bill, and the space on my desk too 😏)

CRT started to make me completely sick ! I spend more than 10 hours a day in front of my screen, so I got headaches, stomach aches just staying in front of my AOC 17" (1024x768 85hz ... so it's not bad at all) ...

Now I can spend the whole day sitting in front of my eizo (second hand 200€ 15" professional TFT) without any pain !

AnyWay, It is not difficult AT ALL to do a "normal3x" or "normal4x" mode since "normal2x" is available in DosBox ... they just have to put in for future releases and TFT owner will enjoy old good dos games with no hard-blur in (almost 😁 ) fullscreen ! (and it was said earlier : 1280x960 is a 2% loss compared to 1280x1024 !!!)

But as I say : THAT'S NOT THE POINT, GUYS ! 😒 DosBox is a tool that allow to play old games without constraints on NEW and MODERN computer ... including the screen (and joystick, and sound card, and graphical card, and so on !!!)

DosBox is not only for x86 based processors ... it's designed for mac, linux, ...
Do you think that mac users still have their apple II ?
No, I think the main part of mac users run on Os X or 9 and with G3, G4 or G5 and Apple hasn't released a CRT-based mac since a while !!! Why to keep old methods when a few work can be done and can solve this problem without playing on a 150w 14" 60hz CRT ...

[Ben] wrote:

Question, anyway : do you have 1024x768 d3d mode ??? 😁
960x600 or 960x720 with "good aspect ratio" can be acceptable too 😉 ! (and then add black border in "fullfixed")

There's 2 resolutions here I'm talking about. One is screen resolution (the one LCD is set to...this is the resolution you configure with fullresolution=), the other is the resolution of the game window (obviously filled with black bars up to fullresolution). Yes, in current configuration D3D with fullresolution=1024x768 will show a 320x200 game as 960x600 with black bars around (x3 scaling). And even I get confused some times 😁. I'd like to point out that you can't have it both ways - either you stretch on pixel borders and get wrong aspect ratio (like in this case where 960x600 is 1.6:1) or you enlarge to correct size (and AR) but get blurred pixels...
Oh yeah, the build is now up on my page 😉. There are some problems with games like Psycho Pinball that set weird resolutions like 320x367. I have NO idea how to solve that 😕

gulikoza wrote:

DOSBox aspect ratio option will pass parameters to resize this to something like 320x233 (why not x240?).

I suppose this is for people who cannot play in fullscreen so the good option to play for them is to set your windows desktop to the resolution of the game and run dosbox in a window. This 233 resolution is for window's blue bar. If it would be 240 the top part of game's screen would be covered by blue bar. I magine you play a game with a menu on the top - you can go there with your mouse, but you don't see what you are doing.

The greater the scaler, the slower the game shall run (although I do scale some games like jazz jackrabbit...the small windowed like resolution it uses is annoying)

I don't understand why they can't just use better technology (besides cost) I mean, if they expect everyone to go to LCD screens then they had better work without the blur on low resolutions.

Example: I'm currently reinsalling XP on a laptop...its not fullscreen and the pixels are smooshed and ugly...

Since TFT are not "ray-based" (they use transistors, not tubes like TV), a pixel IS a pixel ... I mean, when a TFT is set at a 1024x768 résolution, each pixel has a size of 0.27 (+/-) and will not vary at all ! So when you want to decrease your resolution, if it is not exactely half or double (or every integral number), you will get trouble and blur on screen because of emulation from TFT and "smoothing" of pixels ...

When you take some distance from the screen, you won't notice anything ! But since it's a computer screen, you have to be right in front of it and be disgusted by the weird resolution anyway 😵 !

For my D3D god : YEAH YOU ROCK 😁

For DosBox scaller : A scaller 3x or 4x will not affect dosbox speed if it's managed by graphic card 😀 !

gulikoza wrote:

Oh yeah, the build is now up on my page 😉

WHERE ? 😕 I Can't find it 😒