Implementing a 4x and 5x scaler

Roth · Post by **Roth** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 8:39 pm

Hi, before submitting a feature request to the team, I would like to know if anyone is interested in implementing a 4x and a 5x scalers (a clean one, no HQ/AdvMAME) and if it's a difficult task.
I have a 20 inc widescreen monitor (1680x1050), and if I toggle fullscreen on a 640x400 or 960x600 window I see it very blurry, if the source could be 1200x800 or 1600x1000 the image would be very neat (the fullscreen wouldn't even be necessary with such a big windows)...
I hope you understand my request (I'm not a native english speaker), thank you!

Post by **sev** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 9:27 pm

No, such requests were rejected many times in the past. There is just no huge advantage, percentage of users who would use it is really small, but code bloat is big.

Eugene

fingolfin · Post by **fingolfin** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 10:01 pm

Actually, for a simple 4x / 5x scale (no filtering done), this would be relatively simple to do, I guess. We *might* reconsider our stance on this particular kind of scaler at some point...

NLS · Post by **NLS** » Mon Dec 31, 2007 9:37 am

please do reconsider

20" monitors are cheap nowadays and everybody buying a new computer usually gets one of those

all games today support 1680x1050 (in contrast to last year games)

fingolfin · Post by **fingolfin** » Mon Dec 31, 2007 10:29 am

Yeah, but then usually the scaler doesn't help much with those screens: On my 24" LCD, 1920x1200, ScummVM runs just fine in full screen with no extra scaler... So...

Glorfindel · Post by **Glorfindel** » Mon Dec 31, 2007 1:03 pm

Hi, please see this wiki page, especially the image: if a lcd monitor don't use its native resolution the image is scaled and lost details/sharpness (some lcd panel is better than other, but a little blur is always present

); with a 4-5x scaler this problem would probably disappear, as the fullscreen 1:1 (black borders for smaller resolution, no blur) wouldn't have giants border.
I've made this image to compare the 1:1 fullscreen on a 20" wide monitor (1680x1050):

The 4x scaler should give the same result on a 1440x900 resolution.
(BTW, hope I am not the only person who doesn't want any blur on his favourite adventure games

)

Nagra · Post by **Nagra** » Mon Dec 31, 2007 5:25 pm

Glorfindel wrote: (BTW, hope I am not the only person who doesn't want any blur on his favourite adventure games )

No you are not. I just played Sam And Max on my 23" display with 16:10 aspect ratio

Freddo · Post by **Freddo** » Mon Dec 31, 2007 8:03 pm

fingolfin wrote:Yeah, but then usually the scaler doesn't help much with those screens: On my 24" LCD, 1920x1200, ScummVM runs just fine in full screen with no extra scaler... So...

True, but some people want to play the game in a window, yet let it use a large part of the screen.

Glorfindel · Post by **Glorfindel** » Thu Jan 03, 2008 8:58 pm

One more question: why 640x480 games (COMI, Broken Sword1&2, The Feeble Files...) don't support scaling? Are there some technical issues preventing scaling? (just curios

)

Edit: the README says:

Note #3: The FM-TOWNS version of Zak McKracken uses an original resolution of 320x240, hence for this game scalers will scale to 640x480 or 960x720.
Likewise, games that originally were using 640x480 (such as COMI or Broken Sword) will be scaled to 1280x960 and 1920x1440.

but I can't scale that games in my PC...

fingolfin · Post by **fingolfin** » Thu Jan 03, 2008 11:26 pm

Scaling works just fine for me in those games...

Glorfindel · Post by **Glorfindel** » Fri Jan 04, 2008 12:12 am

You're right

, but it works only when you select the graphic mode for the single game via the "Edit game" panel, if you select 2x as graphic mode in "Options" (for all the games) it won't work (I've tried with BS1&2 and Feeble Files, no "Override global graphics settings" option was selected before the test)... Could it be a bug?

Post by **eriktorbjorn** » Fri Jan 04, 2008 6:14 am

Glorfindel wrote:You're right , but it works only when you select the graphic mode for the single game via the "Edit game" panel, if you select 2x as graphic mode in "Options" (for all the games) it won't work (I've tried with BS1&2 and Feeble Files, no "Override global graphics settings" option was selected before the test)... Could it be a bug?

A feature, I believe. The assumption was probably that most games ran at 320x200 pixels originally, so if you use a 2x scaler by default you probably want to run all games at 640x400 or 640x480.

Another assumption could be that since the smoothing scalers generally don't do as good a job as with the 320x200 pixel games (the 640x480 graphics is usually pretty smooth to begin with), you would probably want the simplest 2x or 3x scalers, if you want them scaled at all.

But of course, like all "do what I mean" features, it doesn't always do what everyone means. Larger monitors and faster computers are more common now.

Glorfindel · Post by **Glorfindel** » Sat Jan 05, 2008 11:30 pm

Thanks for the explanations

!
(Returning to topic: I've submitted a FR for the implementation of the 4x-5x scalers)

MK666 · Post by **MK666** » Thu Feb 28, 2008 10:07 am

I would really appreciate if you would reconsider to implement the plain scaling with higher factors. The pixelated look of the old LA games is just beautiful, I don't want to spoil it by using some kind of filtering. Unfortunately, with the 3x scaler, just a small part of my screen is covered.

Maybe it's possible to implement a plain scaler with a variable scaling factor, so the problem won't reappear with the big screens of the year 3000...

tburke · Post by **tburke** » Thu Feb 28, 2008 4:24 pm

If you search for "4x" on the patch tracker, you'll find this has actually been implemented a couple of times, but never accepted. If you were really dead-set on doing it, I think you could just apply the patches, or failing that (and assuming you're feeling adventurous) look through the patch and see where the changes need to go in the current files, and recompile. Of course, I hardly expect most users would go to so much trouble.

Personally, I rather like the idea of an arbitrary scaler (which has also been done, though I haven't tried it), as it would also eliminate the argument of whether there were too many scalers already.