Widescreen gaming and Wing Commander

[Edfilho]

Hello all;
I just got me a pretty 19" LCD widescreen monitor, and I'm reconfiguring all my games to work with it. Recent games usually support 1440x900 out of the box, or can be coaxed into doing it with a few tricks. There is a great site just about that, and it's ridiculously good.

The thing is, Wing Commander games are so old that they're not included. So I'm starting a thread in which we can debate a list solutions related to WC and widescreen.

I managed to set my nVidia card to stop scaling up the older games, and that avoids horizontal stretching. The problem is that A) that doesn't fix DOSBox and B) games ran outside it will be too small in the center of my screen.

What we need is some solution that scales up the image (in order to fill the monitor vertically) without changing the 4:3 aspect ratio. We also need the optimum DOSBox config to support that.

Anyone has a solution for those issues?

 

[AD]

THere's a switch in the dosbox.conf file that forces it to keep the ratio while scaling. If you dictate the dosbox's screen resolution along with the scaler that should do the trick.

 

[Edfilho]

THere's a switch in the dosbox.conf file that forces it to keep the ratio while scaling. If you dictate the dosbox's screen resolution along with the scaler that should do the trick.

I tried that...
Here's a snip of my dosbox config:

[sdl]
fullscreen=true
fulldouble=false
fullresolution=1152x864
windowresolution=1152x864
output=ddraw
autolock=true
sensitivity=100
waitonerror=true
priority=higher,normal
mapperfile=mapper.txt
usescancodes=true

[dosbox]
language=
machine=vga
captures=capture
memsize=16

[render]
# frameskip -- How many frames dosbox skips before drawing one.
# aspect -- Do aspect correction, if your output method doesn't support scaling this can slow things down!.
# scaler -- Scaler used to enlarge/enhance low resolution modes.
#           Supported are none,normal2x,normal3x,advmame2x,advmame3x,hq2x,hq3x,
#                         2xsai,super2xsai,supereagle,advinterp2x,advinterp3x,
#                         tv2x,tv3x,rgb2x,rgb3x,scan2x,scan3x.

frameskip=0
aspect=true
scaler=normal3x

[cpu]
core=auto
cycles=auto
cycleup=500
cycledown=20

[dos]
# xms -- Enable XMS support.
# ems -- Enable EMS support.
# umb -- Enable UMB support.
# keyboardlayout -- Language code of the keyboard layout (or none).

xms=true
ems=true
umb=true
keyboardlayout=none

I removed the sound and network stuff.

What should I change?

 

[AD]

Scaler options HQ2x and HQ3x are both 16:9 aspect ratios that are essentially 720p and 1080p respectively while in windowed mode. They're both decent scalers, but in fullscreen mode almost all the scalers will use the resolution that you set in fullresolution=. If set to original, understandably a 2x option will make WC2 have a resolution of 640x400. If full resolution is set to 1600x1200 then that will be the resolution of the game. But without scalers the pixels will be exagerated along with the image size. HQ will smooth some but will also force the same resolution to be displayed in a 16:9 ratio s If you add "forced" after the scaler option (scaler=hq3x forced) then it will stretch the image to suit whether you like what happens or not. This may not work in 0.65 Something like Normal3x should work ok though. Does it look any different when you switch aspect to equal false? You should try it with fullresolution=original though. Something like advmame will try to smooth out lines and jaggies as well. here's a few reference shots. the first two use fullresolution=original with 2x scaler options. The last two both are set at 1600x1200 but one is set to normal2x and the last is set to hq3x.

Also, what happens when you run the game windowed?

 

[Edfilho]

Scaler options HQ2x and HQ3x are both 16:9 aspect ratios that are essentially 720p and 1080p respectively while in windowed mode. They're both decent scalers, but in fullscreen mode almost all the scalers will use the resolution that you set in fullresolution=. If set to original, understandably a 2x option will make WC2 have a resolution of 640x400. If full resolution is set to 1600x1200 then that will be the resolution of the game. But without scalers the pixels will be exagerated along with the image size. HQ will smooth some but will also force the same resolution to be displayed in a 16:9 ratio s If you add "forced" after the scaler option (scaler=hq3x forced) then it will stretch the image to suit whether you like what happens or not. This may not work in 0.65 Something like Normal3x should work ok though. Does it look any different when you switch aspect to equal false? You should try it with fullresolution=original though. Something like advmame will try to smooth out lines and jaggies as well. here's a few reference shots. the first two use fullresolution=original with 2x scaler options. The last two both are set at 1600x1200 but one is set to normal2x and the last is set to hq3x.

Also, what happens when you run the game windowed?

Ok, I'm gonna test those options.
Windowed gets me the game with the right scaling.

Edit: No big luck. Only windowed set to a fixed resolution gives me good results. those scalers on fullscreen present a little stretching.

 

[ChrisReid]

I just run windowed, sometimes scaled up to the larger screen, but still windowed.

 

[Edfilho]

Hey, Chris, what about WCSO and Prophecy?

 

[ChrisReid]

I think HCl's patch fixes this issue. You specify a resolution in the Enhancement Pack installer, and it can be widescreen, and everything should be fine.

 

[Edfilho]

I think HCl's patch fixes this issue. You specify a resolution in the Enhancement Pack installer, and it can be widescreen, and everything should be fine.

I actually found a great solution in the OpenGL patch made by the UE/Standoff people. It just adds black bars on the sides and scales the center to the right res. It's gorgeous. and also adds prettier starfields.

HCl's patches didn't help, because 1) in prophecy, the glide mode won't allow 16:10 resolutions and D3D sucks and 2) in SO it only offers 3 4:3 options.