lr-mame2003 aspect ratio

dankcushions

@Riverstorm I'm really struggling to work out your question but as with most of these things you have all the hardware available to you to find out the answers yourself ;)

caver01

@Riverstorm I think I see where you are coming from. Consider a game like Street Fighter II (384x224 I think). This game does not have a 4:3 pixel dimension (it's 12:7) so to fill an old arcade CRT, it was expected that you would adjust the timing on the display to STRETCH the pixels taller. To scale on a modern 4:3 screen, the vertical multiplier would have to be different than the horizontal. In this case, it would seem like 4:3 and Integer_Scaling are incompatible.

The way around this is to consider the pixels to be NON SQUARE, so that you CAN use an integer in both dimensions--just that the pixels are elongated to begin with. Pixel Aspect Ratio is not 1:1 in this case.

To @dankcushions point, it would be an interesting thing to test in practice. I use FBA for street fighter, but I am curious what would happen if I set it up in MAME with integer scaling and 4:3 aspect ratio.

Riverstorm

@caver01 said in lr-mame2003 aspect ratio:

@Riverstorm I think I see where you are coming from. Consider a game like Street Fighter II (384x224 I think). This game does not have a 4:3 pixel dimension (it's 12:7) so to fill an old arcade CRT, it was expected that you would adjust the timing on the display to STRETCH the pixels taller. To scale on a modern 4:3 screen, the vertical multiplier would have to be different than the horizontal. In this case, it would seem like 4:3 and Integer_Scaling are incompatible.

The way around this is to consider the pixels to be NON SQUARE, so that you CAN use an integer in both dimensions--just that the pixels are elongated to begin with. Pixel Aspect Ratio is not 1:1 in this case.

To @dankcushions point, it would be an interesting thing to test in practice. I use FBA for street fighter, but I am curious what would happen if I set it up in MAME with integer scaling and 4:3 aspect ratio.

Thanks Caver, I think you understand it but I might have to digress. I read it several times to try and put the pieces together but it's clear there are several aspects I don't fully understand. I think another layer of math is thrown in there to calculate non 1:1 aspect ratios but it seems you would almost need to have the pixel height or width to calculate the other "axis" correctly to compensate a non-square pixel. There's way more complexity that I would have originally thought.

I was shooting for a "blanket" setting to start and be more granular from there but it's like each game has it's own caveats.

Is there a website that has the information of pixel dimensions or aspect ratios of Arcade/MAME games by chance? I think that would be helpful when trying to adjust settings for a game that might look a bit off.

dankcushions

@Riverstorm said in lr-mame2003 aspect ratio:

I was shooting for a "blanket" setting to start and be more granular from there but it's like each game has it's own caveats.

the blanket setting is to not mess with the aspect ratio and let the core do its job :) CPS2 games on mame2003 are only an issue because of a very specific bug on that core. usually, you shouldn't touch the aspect ratio.

Riverstorm

@dankcushions said in lr-mame2003 aspect ratio:

@Riverstorm said in lr-mame2003 aspect ratio:

I was shooting for a "blanket" setting to start and be more granular from there but it's like each game has it's own caveats.

the blanket setting is to not mess with the aspect ratio and let the core do its job :) CPS2 games on mame2003 are only an issue because of a very specific bug on that core. usually, you shouldn't touch the aspect ratio.

I hear ya Dank! :) The issue I am seeing is when I run lr-imame4all it's cutting off the top and bottom of Donkey Kong if I turn off video_scale_integer, the sides are good. Also ES is cutting things off too. So I thought I would use the overscan options in the /boot/config.txt to adjust everything as a whole. What happens is the RetroPie logo screen at boot is adjusting but it doesn't seems to adjust ES at all.

I did a setting of 100 (for testing) and of course the RetroPie logo gained black borders nicely but ES still had "Start" pushed off to the left bottom corner of the screen.

I was thinking I could use the overscan settings to adjust the view as a whole but I am still missing some setting or something in lr-imame4all as in my example Donkey Cuts part of the score off the top and the credits on the bottom.

dankcushions

@Riverstorm hmm, you must have something wrong with your overscan config as that exact case is what it's for. if ES has sections cut off then your overscan is wrong and will certainly be the cause of your DK issue. off topic, though...

mediamogul

@Riverstorm said in lr-mame2003 aspect ratio:

So I thought I would use the overscan options in the /boot/config.txt to adjust everything as a whole. What happens is the RetroPie logo screen at boot is adjusting but it doesn't seems to adjust ES at all.

I ran into this same problem and found that you have to add the following line to "/boot/config.txt" before Emulation Station will fall in line....

overscan_scale=1

Also, I don't know if you have tried it yet, but I also had to uncomment the individual directional overscan settings in there as well to fully conform to my television.

Riverstorm

@mediamogul said in lr-mame2003 aspect ratio:

@Riverstorm said in lr-mame2003 aspect ratio:

So I thought I would use the overscan options in the /boot/config.txt to adjust everything as a whole. What happens is the RetroPie logo screen at boot is adjusting but it doesn't seems to adjust ES at all.

I ran into this same problem and found that you have to add the following line to "/boot/config.txt" before Emulation Station will fall in line....
overscan_scale=1
Also, I don't know if you have tried it yet, but I also had to uncomment the individual directional overscan settings in there as well to fully conform to my television.

Thanks Media, I will give this a try. I did uncomment each overscan setting but looking at config.txt I don't see overscan_scale=1. If that option is needed to enable the overscan_left, right, etc. Hopefully they add that in with a little comment for the future. It sure would make it a bit more handy! :)

Riverstorm

@dankcushions said in lr-mame2003 aspect ratio:

@Riverstorm hmm, you must have something wrong with your overscan config as that exact case is what it's for. if ES has sections cut off then your overscan is wrong and will certainly be the cause of your DK issue. off topic, though...

Thanks Dank and sorry for being off-topic...back on-topic! ;)

mediamogul

@Riverstorm said in lr-mame2003 aspect ratio:

Hopefully they add that in with a little comment for the future. It sure would make it a bit more handy! :)

Yeah, there are enough pages out there that recommend this for Emulation Station that it should probably be considered for inclusion here. I feel like I'm going to forget about it at some point, whereas if it were uncommented, it would always act as a reminder.

Riverstorm

@mediamogul

Ok, just a quick update. I did try overscan_scale=1and it seems to work nicely. It filled ES from the left edge all the way to the right. On the top and bottom it left about 1/2" (on a 720p TV). Games look great with no cropping or clipping but I do loose that same 1/2" or so on top and bottom.

I am not sure if overscan_left, right, etc. was doing anything. I tried 24 down to 1 but it didn't seem to make a difference. Maybe they are fine 1 pixel adjustments or something or overscan_scale=1 takes priority but either way it looks spectacular. I am able to leave scan lines in tact without using video_scale_integer = true and it still looks great but better utilizes the whole screen. I think Caver was saying with enough lines of resolution you can get by without video_scale_integer.

mediamogul

@Riverstorm

In my particular case, I still had to adjust the left & right overscan to 22 on either side for my television. You might have to fine-tune the top & botom by a certain amount to get it where you want.

Riverstorm

@mediamogul said in lr-mame2003 aspect ratio:

@Riverstorm

In my particular case, I still had to adjust the left & right overscan to 22 on either side for my television. You might have to fine-tune the top & botom by a certain amount to get it where you want.

I can't seem to find good information on overscan_scale=1. What is it doing? Also like overscan_left=22. Is that 22 pixels or some unit of measurement? If there's a link I can't seem to find it. Apparently TV's must have a few extra lines beyond say 720p (1280x720) or something that requires some fine tune adjustments which isn't really a surprise there if that's the case. I guess I started fine tune tweaking things thanks to @caver01! ;)

EDIT: found it on the http://elinux.org/RPiconfig even though I don't quite understand overscan_scale=1.

dankcushions

it's pixels. how else could it be measured? :P

http://elinux.org/R-Pi_Troubleshooting#Big_black_borders_around_small_image_on_HD_monitors

mediamogul

Yeah, sorry about that. I could have been more clear. I meant 22 pixels. Your settings will of course vary based on the intricacies of your own monitor should you choose to fine tune in this way.

Riverstorm

Oh, thanks guys! @dankcushions that link is a much better explanation!

mediamogul

@Riverstorm

If you're still interested in knowing more about the usage of "overscan_scale=1", get in line. It seems to be the go-to response in these situations, but no one ever mentions what it is doing. I take it that it is simply scaling everything to the known screen borders. This would still leave a few TVs with a bit obscured here and there based on how they happened to be manufactured. Below are a few samples of past recommendations in other locations. Perhaps they go into greater detail throughout one of the threads.

https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/issues/205
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=78&t=50100
https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/15311/how-do-i-shrink-the-screen-with-composite-out

dankcushions

@mediamogul check the link I posted to understand overscan_scale :)

mediamogul

@dankcushions

And to think, with two simple strokes of my scroll wheel, all would have become clear. Very useful indeed, thank you.

Riverstorm

@dankcushions said in lr-mame2003 aspect ratio:

it's pixels. how else could it be measured? :P

http://elinux.org/R-Pi_Troubleshooting#Big_black_borders_around_small_image_on_HD_monitors

Dank thanks again for this link. I was able to also resolve a long running issue with getting the Pi to run on a big ol' LG flat screen we have downstairs. It's really great playing on such a large screen.

Also overscan_scale=1 seemed to be the only option to "shrink" ES to fit on the screen. I tried enabling and disabling overscan_scale=1 in combination with disable_overscan=1 then adjusting different settings for overscan_left=150 and overscan_right=150. Nothing changed ES except overscan_scale=1. It was the same for both an LG TV and also a Best Buy house brand TV.

The thing that was changing when I was tweaking the options was the RetroPie logo screen (blue screen with cupcake controller) but ES was unaffected from overscan_left, right, top & bottom.

Anyway I am still quite happy with the end result and was also able to resolve the other issue of getting a Pi to work on a bigger TV which the wife can kick me down the stairs to use that TV now so thanks Dank! :)