Feature request: 4x graphics mode

[Koyder]

Hello,
Since most people today have nice big displays with millions of pixels, it would be great if ScummVM added a 4x graphics mode to make better use of the available screen estate.

Now, when I run ScummVM fullscreen on my 1680x1050 display, it reduces the screen resolution to 1024x640 and displays a 320x200 game at 3x. The problem is that lowering the screen resolution results in blurry image. It'd be great if instead of that ScummVM displayed the games at 4x at full screen resolution, showing huge, crisp pixels.

Pretty please!

[garrythefish]

I remember, and it was mentioned couple years back, that the team didn't want to add these filters because compiling this, took like forever or too long, and conforming the whole code would be very painful (certainly true for HQ4x, if I remember correctly).

Edit: A "few" examples (out of many over the years):

http://forums.scummvm.org/viewtopic.php?t=8340
http://forums.scummvm.org/viewtopic.php?t=1911
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.ph ... tid=418823
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.ph ... tid=418822
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.ph ... tid=418823
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.ph ... tid=418823
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.ph ... tid=418823
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.ph ... tid=418823
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.ph ... tid=418823

As you can see, it was discussed in the forum itself probably several times, a few feature requests and even patches on this, all of these are filed.

Don't know if the argument still stands, but this filter scaler factor is certainly a must today, as HD resolution monitors are becoming a standard and its a popular request, I guess.

The official scaler policy must the changed to suit the needs of the user of today.

Just an opinion, hope the team will take some consideration into this a bit.

Cheers

P.S. The HQnX site doesn't exist anymore.

[epmode]

Man, this is an old thread. But this is definitely becoming more of a problem as time goes by.

I would love a way to have ScummVM scale a game to my native 2560x1600 resolution. My goal is to have a game filling my screen at the original aspect ratio (black bars on the sides, but not on the top and bottom) with razor sharp pixels. I realize that I can let my videocard or monitor scale ScummVM to fill my screen but everything gets ugly and blurry.

Since ScummVM does not automatically resize the games to my native resolution, I have to play around with different scaling settings (3x works for some, 2x for others). Even then, the result is not ideal since the Aspect Ratio Correction option results in minor (but noticeable) screen distortion to compensate for the ratio change. If ScummVM rendered the games natively at much higher resolutions, the scaling artifacts would be minimized.

[MusicallyInspired]

I think I read somewhere that somebody is working on exact/specific resolutions for ScummVM but that it would take a while?

[Raziel]

There was a scaler plugin part of last years GSoC...not sure what came out of it and how it will change scaler policies

[Lostech]

Wouldn´t it be a quick&dirty solution just to apply the scale2x filter two times?

Original size -> 1st scale2x run -> 2nd scale2x run
for e.g.
320x200 -> scale2x to 640x400 -> scale2x to 1280x800

[Charles]

I don't know the current state of resolution/scaler discussions overly well, but it seems to me the current state of affairs is very game-centric, instead of platform-centric.

What I mean is, it depends entirely on what the original game's resolution is. If you set ScummVM to a default of a 2x scaler (or a 3x scaler, or even a 4x scaler if we continue this way) it will have very different results if you're playing Quest for Glory 1 (320x200 native pixel resolution) than if you're playing Leisure Suit Larry 7 (640x480 pixel resolution). (In fact, I believe any SVGA games such as LSL7 will simply ignore the scalers, because it doesn't produce the expected result.)

In my humble opinion, (and this is a very brief overview, because I'm ignoring things like aspect ratio correction and the like) I think it makes more sense to select a size based on my system (or handheld, or whatever device I'm using) using this (or any arbitrary) resolution, and then use a selected scaler (pixel scale, HQXx, AdvMame, SuperEagle, SuperSAI, etc.) to fit as appropriate. If the filter can scale evenly to the desired resolution, then perfect, no worries; if it can't, then for best picture quality, it should filter scale slightly higher than the desired resolution, then do a simple opengl linear/bicubic scale down to the desired resolution.

That would be my ideal solution.

[eriktorbjorn]

(In fact, I believe any SVGA games such as LSL7 will simply ignore the scalers, because it doesn't produce the expected result.)

It will probably ignore the default scaler, but you can still specify a scaler for that particular game, and it should honor that setting.

(I don't remember off-hand what happens with games that use more than one resolution.)

[Charles]

Yeah, I see, you're absolutely correct. At any rate, I think my point still stands: (Generally speaking,) it shouldn't be up to the game to decide what resolution it's run at, it should be up to the system to pick the resolution and up to the user to decide how to get it there (i.e. which scalers).