Is there such thing as a monitor "Sweat spot" ??

[JoeB]

No matter how hard I try, I can't find a vertical position/size that will look great on all games!  One position (e.g. for NBAJAM) fills the entire screen, while in other games (e.g. for Neo Geo games) there are big bars on top and bottom, while in vertical games, the top/buttom are slashed.

Is this a problem with the monitor, software, or just something you deal with?? The reason I ask this is because no matter what game I try on my 17" PC Monitor, it always fills perfectly.

[AlanS17]

Well different resolutions will (obviously) show differently on a monitor even though it tries to compensate. Some monitors compensate better than others.

What you need to do is find a resolution that works for your monitor and force every game to play at that resolution. You can do that by editting the mame.ini or with the following switch in MAME (for 640x480 for example):

-r 640x480

The same would hold for other resolutions, though. Of course, if you have a crappy video card it might choose a different resolution for you, anyways. In this case it will still screw up on-screen, but it's not your monitor's fault. Then you might need a better video card.

*Disclaimer* This is just the way I understand it.

Hope this helps!

[JoeB]

I do own an ArcadeVGA and am trying it on a real WG 25" Arcade Monitor..

I know that with this video card, one should not lock to a particular resolution.

[rampy]

did you read the avga instructions on the ultimarc site...?

http://www.ultimarc.com/avgainst.html

there's a section on neo geo games...  some games originally were squished a little (example sfII)

On your PC monitor you were probably invoking hardware stretch.

Well the vertical games are probably being played on a horizontal monitor so you may need to figure out which resez's display them best.  perhaps use gavin's or tom speirs utilities to select the best resolution for a give game.

*shrug*

Rampy

[Brax]

I had a monitor sweat spot once, but I've switched deodorants and now everything is fine!

[Minwah]

It seems to be difficult to get a good compromise.  I can get most horizontal games to show perfectly, but then I miss the top/bottom for many vertical games.

I use hwstretch 640x480 (atm) for the highish res vertical games (leaving a bit of a top/bottom border), but have sacrificed a little of the top/bottom for the lower res ones (Pacman etc).

Certainly don't set to one resolution with the ArcadeVGA - use one of the tools suggested by Rampy - and spend some time fiddling...