ahofle,
Are you reading? Do you even understand a damn thing as to how the card works??? Einstein, I repeat, MULTIPLE PIXELS are used to generate the resolution.
Windows display properties reports the resolution as 401 x 256 at 60Hz.
When I hit F11 on MAME it reports the refresh at 53 fps. This leads me to believe that the computer is being "fooled". Software can work wonders, and I am not about to try to figure out how it came to that conclusion, all I know that this is proof that it DID!
Unless of course my computer is now "lying".
The screen shot is the exact resolution that is being sent to the card, and the fact that it plays is what is EXACTLY running. What more can I tell you.
As for needing a picture, I can take pictures all day, and it wouldn't change the fact that the Ultimarc website has the best one. It illustrates the point exactly, and me not being an expert in photography have added nothing to the mix. I have taken multiple pictures and it just isn't lit well. I am not hiding anything though, like so many accuse me of. You want proof, go look at the link, because that is exactly what I am seeing. I have a 7.2 megapixel camera and it still pisses me off that I can't get a non-blurry image. I cannot reproduce what I see. But I match colors for a living and my job is being able to see differences up to 3 decimal places, a crap resolution is not going to be my downfall.
Now seriously, get your head out of the clouds. IF I take a snapshot, and even if my LCD doesn't report it correctly, does it change the authenticity of the snap? I am illustrating the difference of direct draw and direct 3D, so at this point, it really doesn't even have anything to do with a monitor does it??
Not that what I said is wrong, but I can't even get some people to see one plus one. That is how I debate. I start from the ground up.
Key Whiz,
Your LCD doesn't go below that either. "Faked" is "Faked". But don't take my word for it. Hit the menu button on your LCD while a game is running and tell me the resolution and the frequency that is being reported on the input. And if you'd like, do some math and report to us how those numbers interact with the points you have been trying to make.
Fake is not Fake, as I have tried to illustrate. There are degrees of being faked. As I said to ahofle, the widows display properties show 401x256 at 60. That is what is being reported. PERIOD.
Now how it got there, I don't pretend to know, but there are a million ways of doubling/tripling pixels that could produce acceptable means. Perhaps the black lines on the side are how it is done. You do realize that 401 lines aren't easily noticeable. Could it really be that hard to leave off most of one line, and yet get a proportional enlargement that would be much more satisfactory as opposed to using direct 3D which upscales windows defaults of 640 x 480 as best?
You keep going over that native resolution doesn't change for LCD, YET I have told you time and time again that I FREAKIN' KNOW THIS. Listen broken record, I got it, and it takes nothing away from my point. MULTIPLE PIXELS MULTIPLE PIXELS MULTIPLE PIXELS. Am I getting through here??
Does it really matter if multiple blacks are used on the the borders of Pacman if the rest of the resolution is upscaled accordingly to present a bigger pictures while still mainting the aspect ratio(or very close to it)? Actually when I look at the picture in startup mode, the white border of the agreement guide is cut off(before the game loads), but when Pacman starts, you only get a cut black border at most. I have compared, and it looks like behavior like this has happened. NO LOSS in my book.
You seem to be dancing all around the point, yet never seem to get your feet wet in it. A complete system cannot exist without all the parts that comprise it. Maybe color monitors of much higher resolution did exist at the time, but they cost 10x what an entire game sold for. Memory was also very very expensive, so there were a multitude of reasons why the programmers couldn't make the graphics smoother. But the neat thing about artistic types is that you can hand them a stick, a bic lighter and a sheet of paper and you get a result that is much greater than the sum of the physical components. To say that an artist does not take advantage of the traits inherent to his medium only tells me that you aren't one.
I have never disputed that what you say COULD be true. But at the same time, why would an artist CHOOSE his pellet to be that shape over a perfectly round one?? Don't you think it is more to do with the limits of the chipset over the supposed cost of a monitor(I am still reeling over this....gee I am sure that tall narrow monitor was cheaper to make then a standard model
)?? Or do you really believe there was tons of chips laying around, and tons of ram and they just wanted to use that screen so bad, but they would rather be "arty" about it.
I got one even better...just maybe monitors were actually so cheap compared to the chip set, that one could do a read made of just about any resolution they wanted, so the lazy asses programmed as they saw fit rather then matching a standard. I am not saying this was a bad thing, but if you take a look at the 101 resolutions, I highly doubt the monitor was a real problem.
What I do know, and I will say it again. Getting the original vision right FIRST is a must. It may be one's and zero's, but it is still repeatable. Do you understand? It doesn't matter how it is displayed afterwards, it matters how it is sent to the screen. If you have an incorrect aspect ratio like 640x480, then "simply turning off direct 3D" is not going to cut it. Direct 3D does not work with lower resolutions because most video cards do not have that to start with, and as you said LCD screens can't go below it anyway. So can you not fathom the idea that Direct 3D would actually do more harm then good in this case. Well I can tell you that it does. When I put on Direct 3D while it is in a lower then say 800x600 then actually whole rows are cut out from the "rounding". If you have a high display like LCD, then you obviously have to write software that will correct this by using MULTIPLE PIXELS to represent one. OR you have Direct Draw and you don't utilize the screen. How else can I explain this? I can say it over and over, and you just won't get it.
The artist part comes AFTER you get the resolution correct. Not BEFORE. You can put any effect on a correct estimation, but as they say, if you start with 640x480, you can't polish a turd. You may get it really shiny, but a turd is a turd.
Lets face it, do we really disagree that much? I know exactly what you mean, and I see merit in a programmer most definetly knew his hardware, but still you cannot ignore the fact that the limitations of the software were the bottle neck. Do you really dispute this?
I don't think an LCD player is a crappy display, and in alot of cases if done correctly it can give you closer results with clever software(or hard encoded/rigged hardware). You don't believe so. Cool. Everyone has opinions. Perhaps you may be closer to knowing what the original programmer thought. But it doesn't matter because the documentation is there and yes....that one was a one, and that zero was a zero, and no after the fact monitor is going to change this.
Oh incidently I feel that I am an artist as well as a scientist. Not only do I excel at abstract thinking, but the talent runs through my family, with the closest as my dad being a painter. Still, you can learn through observance. I don't have to be hit by a car to know what it does to you.
I hate idiotic rationale like your background lends some kind of weight to having more knowledge. History will show you that people with absolutely no connection to x technology can know more then someone that has spent a lifetime in the field. The greatest inventions of the world were materialized through that one guy that could make the connection.