Incorrect 4:3 aspect ratio help:

Loggahead

I need some help on aspect ratios in retroarch. I am running a 1280x1024 lcd on my pi via an hdmi to vga converter. Everything works fine in emulation station and runs fullscreen. However, when I run a retroarch emulator , it's not running fullscreen. Instead, I have some very small black lines at the bottom and top of the screen.

As an example, lets use lr-mame2003 and lr-fba under the arcade folder. If I use Select + X to edit the retroarch.cfg to a custom resolution of 1280x1024, everything is fine as long as the game was a 4:3 game. However, when I run a game such as Pacman, it stretches it instead of maintaining it's aspect ratio. See the pics below. Setting the aspect ratio to either 4:3, config, or core provided all produce the small black lines. Custom at 1280x1024 like i mentioned above and 5:4 ratio does not.

Any ideas? I didn't change any settings, this was all happening on a clean install.

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ChuckyP

I can’t tell from the photo. But you may want to turn off “Integer Scaling”. It should be just under the options you have shown on the photo.

EDIT: Sorry. Looks like it is off.

Loggahead

Because it fills the whole screen when i select 5:4 ratio makes me feel like retroarch isn't properly recognizing my actual screen resolution. Should I try and manually set the resolution somewhere and where would I do that? I already tried the configuration editor and set the resolution for all libretro emulators but that didn't do anything.

dankcushions

@loggahead said in Incorrect 4:3 aspect ratio help::

1280x1024

this isn't a 4:3 aspect ratio. 4/3=1.333. 1280/1024=1.25.

it's slightly narrower, which is why you get borders at the top and bottom.

Loggahead

Ah!!! Dumb dora! I never really did the math, just always thought those PC resolutions were 4:3.

Hmmm... So the black bars top / bottom are the actual true aspect ratio of the game and if I force 1280x1024 I will be slightly stretching them vertically. That also means that if I am ok with that and force that resolution, there's no easy way for me to avoid stretching vertical (portrait) games like pacman?

dankcushions

@loggahead said in Incorrect 4:3 aspect ratio help::

Ah!!! Dumb dora! I never really did the math, just always thought those PC resolutions were 4:3.

Hmmm... So the black bars top / bottom are the actual true aspect ratio of the game and if I force 1280x1024 I will be slightly stretching them vertically. That also means that if I am ok with that and force that resolution, there's no easy way for me to avoid stretching vertical (portrait) games like pacman?

if you use 'core provided' aspect ratio (the default), pacman will not be stretched. by setting it to '4:3' you are telling all games to be 4:3 regardless of whether they are or not :) 'core provided' in lr-mame2003 will mean every game appears in their correct aspect ratio.

Loggahead

Makes sense and that's what I thought the answer would be. Thanks again.

nasp2000

Yap, when i use Retroarch, i always choose "core provided" and any screen or device the resolution of the game is always OK.