Native 640x480 resolution vertically shifted (no filters)

[andreas]

Hey there,

there is a simple reason I've never reported this before: I wasn't finding the time to play some text adventure again which shows ANY flaw in font display, other than a shmup, where scaling artifacts can only be seen by a very sharp eye.

OK, so what I tried was a configuration like I would do in ancient 0.8.x WinUAE versions:

- 640x480 full screen
- ABSOLUTELY NO filters, not even null filter
- vertical and horizontal centering ON

on a TFT 21'' display on Win 7.
Windows native resolution was 1024x768 (I usually use more, but well, currently I'm on 1024 and that's that.)

In short: it didn't work as I expected it to.
Tried various WinUAE versions from 1.33 (!) until current ones. Nada.

What happened was:
Workbench 1.3 top bar was WAY off-screen, probably 20 pixels or more, so that I could only see 3 pixels from the bottom edge or a tad more.
Turning vertical centering off DID bring the top bar back, however, it would not appear until 20-30 pixels from the top edge.

Is this a bug recently introduced?

The answer is: Nope!

Not at all. At first I tried to blame myself and my monitor settings, and fiddled together a test configuration with somewhat extreme vertical shrink values and even position way below sanity.
You guessed it: it *WAS* WinUAE. The top bar did *not* come back and, in the most amusing double sense, only showed me its bottom again

I went on digging for REALLY old versions, and to my surprise, WinUAE 0.8.23 (!) worked great with the same settings, despite full centering was applied. WB bar was perfectly in line with my screen edges. Don't ask me why. [edit]"Correct aspect" was not on, in case anyone asks.
I could not test either of 1.x versions because they would always crash under Win7. Well, if I could be arsed to set up an XP VM, well yes, then...

So is there still any way to get an unfiltered (!) properly centered screen in current WinUAE in 640 x 480 fullscreen on WB 1.3?
(this is low-end, NOT about 2.0 and higher)

[TCD]

You actually see 5 pixels The titlebar is 21 pixel high and since you miss 32 pixel vertically (480 not 512), the other 16 pixel of the titlebar are off screen. The old setting to 'fix' that was 'correct aspect ratio' and now you can use some kind of filter to achieve the same effect. Running in the next available resolution would be the better option though.

[andreas]

What if I tell you that I never had this "Correct aspect" thing on (since early 0.8.x versions) and it worked perfectly nonetheless?
CA actually enforces correctness (has always been doing that) on the expense of font rendering and all, so I avoid using it wherever I can.
Let alone that my WB 1.3 fonts have always looked totally garbled with CA enabled.

Plus, I don't feel well with the idea that I MUST use a filter now to get my display correct.

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

Running in the next available resolution would be the better option though.

For WB 1.3 text mode? Not at all. "Next available" here would be 800x600 and leave me heaps of free space on all four edges. When playing games with fancy graphics like Hybris or Banshee, yeah that might do well, but for "humble" text mode, I wish to keep to my 640x480.

[Toni Wilen]

tl;dr. Just a screenshot is enough (it is a MUST) + simple explanation.

Anyway, this is stupid special case that does not exist in real world. It is not "correct" display. You always have borders.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by andreas

What if I tell you that I never had this "Correct aspect" thing on (since early 0.8.x versions) and it worked perfectly nonetheless?

Oh, I forgot about the magic 'put 512 pixel in 480 without squeezing them' mode...
Maybe you should try to disable vertical centering though.

[andreas]

Tried that (of course), won't do the trick.
As I wrote far above, you end up with the WB bar estimated 30 (?) pixels from your screen's top edge.

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

Just a screenshot is enough (it is a MUST) + simple explanation.

You don't assume I forgot it deliberately I hope?
In fact, I assumed that "screenshot" would need to be taken by a camera off my monitor, since it might not have been WYSIWYG.

But ... I'll be damned, I tried and the screenshot does depict "reality"
Off-screen and all.

So here we go and sorry for not giving them at the beginning, but I really couldn't know...

Legend:
left screenshot: 640x480 fullscreen NO FILTERS, not even null filter.
center screenshot: 640x480 fullscreen AUTOSCALED, null filter (auto-enabled by autoscaling)
right screenshot: 640x480 fullscreen hor 1x ver 1x, null filter


It's interesting that left and right screenshot are practically the same.
Center screenshot visibly shows squashed 'R' letters (of 'Ransom').
'SavedGames' text seems to "dive" behind some invisible bottom line, too.

[andreas]

Here's an additional (fourth) one, as requested by TCD:
WinUAE 0.8.23 [1], 640x480x16 fullscreen unfiltered, h+v centered, correct aspect OFF:

[1]NB: I absolutely wanted to use a 0.9.xx version, but each of them "insta-crashed" on Win7.

[Toni Wilen]

It works exactly as designed, 512 pixels inside 480 window = 16 pixels missing in top and bottom.

It was top/left aligned long long time ago, not anymore.

[andreas]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

It was top/left aligned long long time ago, not anymore.

Exactly. Long time ago, but...well...simply perfect for my purposes

If you could consider putting this top/left align thing in again, I'd be the happiest person on earth
Since:

- even with the niftiest filter settings, you will never be able to get the WB standard font (topaz that is) as perfect as with the old versions in ancient WB1.3 configurations (though ancient, they are needed for old text adventures and the like).

- stock gfx cards support 640x480 and normally are followed by 800x600 which IMHO is a bit too much for WB 1.3.
So if I don't want my fonts "rendered to death" by that filter stuff AND have all pixels in vertical axis, I am doomed to use Powerstrip to create a 640x512 resolution.

Whatever, here's another interesting thing.
RECENT WinUAE.
I set hor to 1x and ver to 1/2x. Null filter.

It's not a very sensible setting, but I made it in order to see what is in the "invisible" area. I encountered heaps of empty space above the WB top menu bar.
I remember from A500 times there is some free space above the menu bar on the real thing running 1.3, though not that much.