On 6/7/2015 7:46 PM, Eric Auer wrote: > Hi John, > >> Though I cited Edit, and the mode suggestion might improve that, I >> imagine that the improvement would be lost if I started a game or >> anything else that runs in a graphical mode. > As long as the game lets you make a CHOICE between several resolutions, > you will again have the possibility to select ANY resolution that does > look nice when zoomed to the native resolution of your LCD screen :-) > >> In the meantime, I found this very dense thread on vogons.org: >> http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=18933 > Well that is mostly about REFRESH rates - which makes a difference in > CRT screens because of the flicker. But for LCD, you do not have that > issue anyway. On LCD, faster refresh rate only means faster reaction > times, which is sometimes nice for fast games. Also, when watching a > video, it is good if the refresh rate is a multiple of the frame rate > of the video (e.g. 25 frames per second video & 50, 75, 100 Hz screen > refresh rate instead of 60, while 30 fps video looks better on 60 Hz). > > Again, regarding the zoom issue, LCD screens differ in the quality in > which they manage to make odd RESOLUTIONS look smooth. Assuming that > your screen has 1920x1080 native resolution, which is common today, > 640 width should zoom fine. On 1920x1200 screens, 640x400 should look > quite nice. As there are no popular 640x360 DOS text resolutions, you > could use 640x350 on your 1920x1080 screen as long as you can select > aspect ration preserving zoom. In other words, you should simply let > the screen put black bars on top and bottom and let it zoom 640x350 > to 1920x1050. Each DOS pixel will then be 3x3 screen pixels, which is > an integer size, thereby avoiding zoom artifacts. > > You could also try to reach 1280x1024 if you can tell your screen to > NOT do any zooming: This will have small black bars on top and bottom > but unfortunately the bars on the left and right will be quite large. > Using that with a text font is probably 160x64 chars at 8x16 font... > > For 1920x1200 screens, an obvious choice could be 1600x1200. Outside > of text modes (which look okay in wide screen) most DOS games will be > limited to 4:3 aspect ratio graphics resolutions, so you might often > have to live with wide empty bars on the left and right. But that is > still better than distorting everything if you would select stretch- > to-fill-whole-screen for such modes. Note that 320x200 might actually > look good when stretched to 16:9 AND it is again zoom friendly using > 4x4 screen pixels for each DOS game pixel on 1920x1200 screens :-) > > As you see, 16:10 screens (1920x1200) are simply cooler than 16:9 ones > (1920x1080) even though the latter are better for watching videos ;-) > > Long story short, try 640x400, 640x350, 320x200, 1280x1024, 1600x1200, > depending on which screen you have and what your games and editors do > support. It sometimes takes some playing with the possibilities to get > a nice resolution. Do not forget to also use the buttons on your LCD > screen itself, it often lets you select one of several zoom settings. > > Cheers, Eric > > PS: DOS will often use the DEFAULT BIOS text mode of 720x400, but as > 720 is a weird fraction of 1920, this might look less smooth... There > even are funky mode setting tools for DOS, too, so in theory, a text > mode of 106x67 characters, 9x16 font, padded to 1920x1080 may be fun? > Or alternatively 120x67 characters with 8x16 font, tastes differ :-) > QUESTION: Can anybody recommend such a tool? Does the mode look good?
Thanks, Eric, for jump-starting my thinking. Some related old DOS knowledge slowly bubbled to the surface ... I noticed the problem in text mode on an older LCD screen with classic 4:3 aspect ratio. As you noted in your first reply, an 80x25 text mode with 9x16 fonts would require a 720x400 pixel array, which the LCD monitor displays poorly. (But I see now that I should retract the proposition that an old game will likely look bad on that, since 320x240 or even a 320x200 resolution should zoom nicely enough under that ratio.) It seems that "mode con lines=34" should display text mode nicely on the 4:3 LCD. And reading up on MODE, I saw that 34 lines requires VESA support. This vintage setup has a circa 1991 16-bit ISA video card, manufacturer unknown, but based on an Oak OTI-087 chipset. It has a jumper to select VESA support, but support must be faulty or incomplete, since "mode con lines=34" returns "No VESA ..." To fix that I suppose I would need to come up with a Vesa driver for the card, and would welcome any suggestions. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
