MAME - Do you stretch your screen? for fullscreen?

[shateredsoul]

do you guys have your mame at fullscreen? or do you choose to keep it at the original ratio?

[DCsegaDH]

I stretch the screen, I have a 32" widescreen so I would look weird if I made it original size because It would have bars on the sides.

[javeryh]

I use a 4:3 monitor for everything... well, almost everything - I have a 5:4 which is almost the same.  I would never ever use a widescreen monitor for MAME.

[versapak]

I stretch the screen, I have a 32" widescreen so I would look weird if I made it original size because It would have bars on the sides.

Yuk.


It would look weird with bars on the side, but not being all squished and fat?


Some people have a really odd sense of weird.

[DJ_Izumi]

I'd prefer pillar boxes myself.  You get used to it when every wide screen supporting retro compilation for modern consoles does that now.

[ahofle]

do you guys have your mame at fullscreen? or do you choose to keep it at the original ratio?

Both 

[DCsegaDH]

It actually depends on the game, I use the original size for shmups and vertical games, I stretch the screen for beat-em ups and fighters mostly.

[Gorotsuki]

Stretch.
It doesn't really change the game for me.
Had to play on 19" TV for years.
I really like playing games on a 50"
monitor now.

[shateredsoul]

yeah, the bars on the side are bugging me... i think I'm going to stretch to.

to do that I just change fullscreen to 1 in the ini right?

[ivwshane]

I hate stretched images no matter what (even for regular tv). When objects that are supposed to be round but are oval instead, it really bugs the hell out of me.

[shateredsoul]

Oh,  yeah.. I just tried it by going into mameui64 and unchecking "enforce aspect ratio" parts of the images are cut off =/ (so for xmen vs street fighter the characters icons near the lifebars are choped off).

blah

[riley454]

NO STRETCH!

I prefer games to look the way they were designed. Side bars are soon ignored once you get into the game.

Imagine playing Donkey Kong stretched to fill a widescreen! Shouldn't the oval barrels bounce instead of rolling like the original round barrels? Pacman just won't look the same with an oval head(or is that his body?).

Keeping the aspect as close to original is best for me

[UberCade]

I'm a purist, so I run everything at its original resolution and aspect ratio. Also this is why I bought an arcade monitor for my cabinet. The only thing that won't be as originally intended is vertical games running vertically on a horizontally mounted 4:3 monitor, but I can deal with crop bars on the sides to keep the original aspect ratio, and I'm going to build another cabinet with a vertically mounted monitor next. Who wants to play Donkey Kong all stretched out like that anyway? I know Mario is fat, but good grief.

[Jack Burton]

I never ever stretch my games.  If at all possible I play on hardware that can display a game in its native resolution and aspect ratio. 

The same goes for any kind of filtering effect. 

If I had to play on a widescreen monitor I would go for pillarboxing every time.

[kop]

I'm definitely in favour of keeping the original aspect ratio at the expense of black bars on the side of my screen.  It just doesn't look right otherwise.

Even when watching normal TV, when the picture is stretched people look like they've got fat heads.  It just doesn't look right.  MAME is no different.

[Blanka]

No stretch. Only N64 emulation I use stretched sometimes, as the renderer is 3D and supports higher resolutions native.

[Ginsu Victim]

OAR with cropped bezels if available.

[Dizzle]

It actually depends on the game, I use the original size for shmups and vertical games, I stretch the screen for beat-em ups and fighters mostly.

Same here.  The streching doesn't bother me at all for fighters and beat-em ups.  For other games, I'll go with the original aspect ratio (or play them on my other cabs).

I really need to learn how to make my own bezels for cropped games though.  Anyone have any advice?

[Necro]

This actual brings up something I was going to ask.

What is stretched in the MAME video settings? 

The reason I ask is I have a 4:3 monitor (1600x1200).  I can set some games at 4:3 or 5:4 or pixel ratio.  Now, just at face value the pixel ratio looks 'right' but...I'm not sure which is 'true to the arcade game'.   Could anyone enlighten me?

[pinballwizard79]

No stretch dude

[Jack Burton]

About pixel ratio:

A game has an aspect ratio and a pixel ratio.  The aspect ratio refers to the ratio of the display the game is intended to be played on.

For almost all arcade games that ratio is 4:3.

However, not all games use a resolution that has a ratio of 4:3. 

For example, the CPS1 and CPS2 use a resolution of 384x224.  This is a ratio that is slightly wider than a 4:3 ratio. 

On a real game pcb when the game is connected to a 4:3 monitor the monitor will automatically squish the image back into the 4:3 ratio.  Sometimes this required a little adjustment of the monitors horizontal and vertical size though.

In MAME when you select the pixel aspect ratio it will make it so that all the pixels of the game will be exactly the same size and shape.  They will not be squished or stretched in any way.  But when you do this the image will automatically be set to the ratio of the resolution.

So here you will have three choices. 

1. You can live with bordering.  I wouldn't do this since the pixel aspect ratio is not really the way the game was meant to be seen. 

2. You can use your monitors controls to manually stretch the image to fit the screen.  This is what I do, and is the most accurate way to play the game.  Especially if you're using the native resolution already.

3.  Select 4:3 and let MAME do the stretching.  This will introduce scaling artifacts and other undesirables sometimes, but is the easiest solution.  On a widescreen HDTVyou can choose a high resolution and it will help out a lot with the artifacts. 

You should never use the 5:4 ratio.  That ratio is the ratio of many early LCD pc monitors and there are no arcade games that use it.  If it is selectable then I am betting you have one.  You can use 4:3 and have a little letterboxing. 

[ark_ader]

I use a plastic magnifier lens.

[DJ_Izumi]

I have a question.

All PC monitors and new HDTVs have a Pixel Aspect Ratio of 1:1, as in the pixels are SQUARE.  All NTSC Televisions had a PAR of about 12:11, slightly rectangular.  This is why DVD and television signals are 'square' at 720x480 an not 640x480.  What was the common PAR on arcade monitors?  Did they share PAR with PCs or with TVs?

[Jack Burton]

Well I think CRT's themselves don't have a set pixel aspect ratio.  They just automagically try to squish whatever you send them into full screen.  

If you send random resolutions to a Studio monitor over RGB it will try to fit them into the screen.  I bet an arcade monitor would do exactly the same thing.

Now, I think they do have some manner of default settings to the timings they accept.  So if you send a raw SNES signal to a pc monitor that accepts CGA but has been set up for VGA video then the SNES video will appear squashed vertically.  Or at least that's what happened to mine.