4:3 in DosBox on Raspberry Pi

[Clint Hobson]

I'm using Recalbox now, looks like the settings format is identical to Batocera and it was easy to find my way around - and I still can't get dosbox to obey any aspect ratio settings, not in the UI, and not in either of the two config files - dosbox.conf or dosbox-SVN.conf

[voljega]

@clint-hobson you shouldn't modify those file but create a dosbox.cfg in your game directory, see there : https://github.com/recalbox/recalbox-os/wiki/How-to-use-DOSBox-to-emulate-DOS-games

still it's strange that it isn't working, works fine for me (but I'm on 16/9 screen)

you can try maybe with the custom dosbox.cfg linked in the wiki page

[Clint Hobson]

@voljega But do you have black bars on the side of your screen so that the game is 4:3, or is it stretched to fill the full width of your screen?

This is what I'm seeing

This is what I want to see

[voljega]

@clint-hobson yes I have the second one in real 4/3

[Clint Hobson]

@voljega Ah ok, are you using a computer monitor, or TV, or one of those small HDMI displays for the Raspberry Pi (like mine? Mine's a 5" 800x480)

Can I see your dosbox.conf?

[voljega]

@clint-hobson computer screen.

as I said you can see the dosbox.cfg from the wiki page I linked there's a pastebin link

[Clint Hobson]

@voljega And just to double check - are you running this on a Raspberry Pi? (or your desktop PC?)

[voljega]

@clint-hobson pi3

[Clint Hobson]

@voljega Wow ok. I just tried it the way you have it - connecting my Pi3 to my 16:10 computer monitor via HDMI, and simply changing "aspect=true" from the default conf above, does indeed work. It just doesn't work on my little 5" LCD... so weird...

[Dragu]

@Clint-Hobson
If the Hdmi goes over a TFP401 board to the screen, the TFP401 driver does not have a video scaler. Just as info.

[Clint Hobson]

@dragu What's confusing me is - I thought the aspect correction was done by Dosbox - it draws an image to the display that is the full resolution of the display, and the image consists of the game content with black bars on either side - all drawn by Dosbox.

So it boggles my mind that the black bars disappear when I simply switch from my widescreen monitor to my 5" widescreen display. What is going on here?

[ian57]

@Clint-Hobson everything is here for the configuration of you screen https://github.com/recalbox/recalbox-os/wiki/TFT5-Screen-HDMI-(EN)
"Remember, the TFP401 driver does not have a video scaler! If you don't feed it exactly 800×480 pixels the image will not stretch/shrink to fit! So we need to configure the resolution in the config.txt"

[Clint Hobson]

@ian57 Wow - that was the problem after all this. Thank you

In my defence, it didn't appear that I needed these settings as the Recalbox front end looks perfectly fine - pixel perfect, no glitchy pixels due to wrong resolution, the full screen is used - and indeed, the other emulators have their own black bars on the side and are already aspect correct. It was only Dosbox with the problem. In fact I only went and applied these settings just to say I had, I didn't expect it to make a difference...

[ian57]

@clint-hobson As always... RTFM

[Clint Hobson]

@ian57 True... but my understanding (from the "manual") was that these settings were for if your display isn't recognised or displaying incorrectly... so as it was displaying correctly for everything - the Recalbox interface, every emulator - except for one emulator, and only one aspect of that emulator, it seemed like the problem with the one emulator was what needed fixing.

It was an insidious problem... and I'm glad to have had the help from you guys to fix it.