True Fullscreen

[nathaniel]

Hey all, just a quick question. NESEMU has a true full screen function, but LJP's full screen doesnt size correctly. It either just hides the battery bar or is WAY too large.

Is this just with the 650?

[Tinnus]

Huh? It works right for 320x320 devices. Do you mean Treo 650 or 600?

Can you send me a pic of the problem?

[jutendouji]

I don't know if my comment on this issue will help, Tinnus, but I "think" I have a similar problem on my Treo 600 (GSM).

If I try to play a SNES game (Like Final Fantasy III, for instance), the Ratio on the screen looks VERY messed up, like streteched to FIT from the sides? So it's not 4:3 ratio at all, and it's really un-readable for a text-heavy game like an RPG.
I tried tapping the screen with my Stylus, and I can see this message that comes up that says "Changing Screen Size" or something and my Treo 600 resets. This also happens on GBC games (like Pokemon Crystal, for example).

Another thing is that MANY MANY MANY things on the Launcher just DON'T appear on my Treo 600. For instance, on the Config pane of the SNES Emulator, I see the option for Display and Smoothing, but there's NOTHING to select there! Is this an issue with Treos, is it a known issue or were us Treo users never supposed to be able to use it?

Another thing, since I'm at it, if I disable the Beltbar, then I see, on my GBC games, 2 black bars on top and bottom of the screen which suggest that IF FLIPPED, the screen would actually make playing SNES games (or NES games for that matter, that don't use a SQUARE screen, but rather a 4:3 screen) a LOT LOT LOT better. Is this feature supposed to be IN RC2? (I'm using RC2 right now, yes). If so, how can I activate it on my Treo 600?

Sorry for all the questions, Tinnus. Thanks a lot for your help and thanks for this great emulator!

[Tinnus]

The problem with the Treo 600 is that the screen is downscaled, so yes, one way or the other it will be hard to read text, no way around it, sorry.

Also... the NES and SNES were not really 4:3, so the aspect ratio is not wrong (I think).

Also (again)... you're really not supposed to change the "display" and "smoothing" options since you don't have an option for the Treo 600. There's no way to change the screen size since it's already being dsownscaled 100% of the time.

I will remove the "change screen mode" feature for low-res though to avoid crashes.

jutendouji said:

Another thing, since I'm at it, if I disable the Beltbar, then I see, on my GBC games, 2 black bars on top and bottom of the screen which suggest that IF FLIPPED, the screen would actually make playing SNES games (or NES games for that matter, that don't use a SQUARE screen, but rather a 4:3 screen) a LOT LOT LOT better. Is this feature supposed to be IN RC2? (I'm using RC2 right now, yes). If so, how can I activate it on my Treo 600?

What do you mean by FLIPPED? GBC shows black bars above and below because the screen is 160x144 so there are 16 spare pixels. I can't really understand what you mean by "flipping the SNES and NES screens"

[jutendouji]

First of all, thanks for replying. Second, what I mean by "flipping" is rotating the display 90º to the right or left when playing SNES, SMS, GEN, NES, ATARI and all the other systems that don't use a PERFECTLY SQUARE (or almost perfectly square) screen ratio.

You said it yourself, there 16 pixels that are NOT used when the beltbar is HIDDEN when playing a GBC game, right? Well, if you rotated the display, you'd be able to USE those 16 pixels to get a wider image when playing SNES or NES, for example, since right now, wether you play SNES or GBC, the output image is exactly the same in both (only that in the case of the SNES, because of the original display it was intended to, it comes out stretched, whereas the GBC does not because it was originally planned for a square-ish screen).

And yes, you are mistaken Tinnus, every system that had a TV for output was 4:3, that's the aspect ratio of TVs, and hence their native aspect ratio.

[Tinnus]

No, I am NOT mistaken. The native NES and SNES displays (inside the system) are not 4:3, the TV output is. The native display is 256x240 IIRC (I've looked at the code).

Anyway, rotating the display won't make any difference since the Treo screen is square...

[jutendouji]

Just so you know, in the media industry, 256x240 IS considered a 4:3 aspect ratio for it not being EXCESSIVELY wide, but still not square. Just so you know, that's what 4:30 is called in the media even if it is not accurately a 4:3 aspect ration in actual pixels.

Anyways, I was just asking because the GBC emulation with no beltbar has pixels unused and I thought that was squared, so I thougt that maybe it'd have adapted better with SNES games had they been displayed horizontally. Thanks anyways.

By the way, is there a reason for the Display Zooming and filters not being available to us Treo users?

[Tinnus]

Of course, you have no option. Since the display is already bigger than your screen, the only option is downscaling to fit the screen. I don't think you'd want to have an even smaller game screen

[_Em]

There's actually another option too... with real TV screens, the edges are actually hidden behind a screen mask (because at the edges, there's blurring/blending/artifacts/etc.). If LJP could have a video mode where X pixels are chopped off the edges (like they would be on a TV), this would be a good video mode for consoles that originally were shown on a TV. Of course, with Treo users, they'd still need downscaling, but it probably wouldn't be quite as much as they'd otherwise need.

[Tinnus]

Nah, I always thought one of the good things about emus is that you get to see the entire screen instead of chopping the edges like TVs do ;D

And also it would make a very small difference, since I'd remov something like 2-3 pixels at the borders.

[jutendouji]

Yes, it'd make a little different to you, but not having the CHARACTERS and FONTS and all that stuff all SQUISHED together and loosing 3 pixels to the side would be a VERY VERY good deal. At least I'd be able to READ the text.

[Tinnus]

Let's take a look. The first pic is normal, the second I removed 5 pixels at each border (ie: it's 10x10 pixels smaller)




Does it really make a difference?

[_Em]

Actually, I'm surprised, but on my screen it does... I was expecting it not to.

[Tinnus]

Ok, I'll add a "Cut" mode to low-res devices.

[angel]

Out of topic but i'm searching since long why SNES was better looking on my pocket pc asus a620 than on my T5 (considering the T5 screen is rather better quality than my old asus...)

Now i know.

Pocket pc screen is low res (240x320), so you can code a fullscreen native display without resizing (and without adding glitchs or uggly smoothing) with a cropping 240x240 video.

Palm screen is high res (320x480), the only way to have the orginal graphics is the x1 and gives you only 3/4 of the screen width, so the game look small with huge black border... Ok i can resize to 1x25 but it create some effect

The screen is higher, the emu is quicker the resolution is better, but the snes native mode makes it less nice

[Tinnus]

You could try smoothing modes 2 or 3, which are fine but unfortunately VERY slow.

[Tinnus]

Update...

I'm trying to implement this as a testing drive for NES in RC3... but strangely enough the cut screen looks worse to me (text is more unreadable). Either I'm doing something wrong, or Scale2xSaI is.

I think I'll try SNES next...