NES resolution suggestions?

tim_841

This is probably a bug/feature in RetroArch, but I was wondering if anyone has suggestions. Under the NES emulators, we have the video options under the core settings and in the video settings with the core options as a setting. My problem is that the 8:7 core provided does not match the 8:7 video setting. This is probably to-do with the overscans being calculated in, but does anybody know how to change this in core settings without cropping?

This is more of an aesthetic complaint, square things aren't square enough. I don't want to start an argument about any "true ratio". This is in all the emulators for NES/FDS, but SNES doesn't have this problem.

mitu

@tim_841 said in NES resolution suggestions?:

My problem is that the 8:7 core provided does not match the 8:7 video setting. This is probably to-do with the overscans being calculated in, but does anybody know how to change this in core settings without cropping?

What exactly is cropped ? If you use the 'core provided' aspect ratio (the default), RetroArch will try to fit the image to your screen size.

tim_841

Not so much of the problem seems to be cropping, as it seems to be stretching. The proper 8:7 seems to lock the screen size to a fixed resolution (toggling crop in the core options causes the image to stretch to fit the defined window). The core provided 8:7 will readjust the screen size (toggling "crop vertical overscan" will cause the screen to go wider as the image is enlarged to fill the screen).

I think more of my confusion surrounds what defines that 8:7/4:3 and why is it so different between video modes. It does not seem to just be a passed variable but a separate calculation in the NES cores (it's not just the one core that is doing this).

This is somewhat easy to reproduce, take some masking tape and mark the edges of the images, and switch back and forth between "core provided" and the respective 8:7/4:3 under the main menu>setting>video>scaling (both do it). SNES aligns perfectly while NES/FDS does not. This has been on every version of RetroPie I've used so far and I haven't found a reasonable explanation to why except for arguments about the internal resolution of the games.

Edit: the "uncorrected" aspect ratio in the SNES core aligns perfectly to the 8:7 video scaling.

tim_841

Update: I've been poking at the source code of lr-fceumm and found part of my hiccup:

#define NES_WIDTH   256
#define NES_HEIGHT  240
#define NES_8_7_PAR  ((width * (8.0 / 7.0)) / height)
#define NES_4_3      ((width / (height * (256.0 / 240.0))) * 4.0 / 3.0)

so the core options for 8:7 PAR is calculating from a hard coded 16:15 ratio and going from there, the settings under video settings are calculating differently (the 1:1 PAR was coming back as 8:7 DAR when selected).

tim_841

Playing with the sourcecode, I usurped the 8:7 PAR to be just 8:7 like 4:3. The switch that controls this is a boolean and I haven't the time to change it right now (and then I would need to make a github account to request a pull for the changes).