16x9 games on 4x3 monitor

[killbill]

Hi Guys,

I am building a Hyperspin bar top machine that will be running MAME and several other emulators, including MUGEN and some PC Games. The monitor I wish to use is a HP LP2065 4x3 LCD monitor.

My question is, is there a way to automatically have the monitor display the widescreen games as letterbox and then return to the previous resolution when exited back to Hyperspin? A program or script or something? Scaling? Not too savvy on this. Any help is truly appreciated.

Thanks,
J

[vwalbridge]

The monitor I wish to use is a HP LP2065 5x4 LCD monitor.

That's a 4:3 aspect ratio monitor:

http://www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/getpdf.aspx/c04142050.pdf?ver=15

[vwalbridge]

is there a way to automatically have the monitor display the widescreen games as letterbox

Hyperspin shouldn't care what resolution your games run at. It really only needs to care what resolution it runs itself at. It's just a front end. The screen ratio you run your games at is defined in each of the respective emulators themselves.

and then return to the native resolution on menu out to Hyperspin?

Not completely sure on your wording here. Why would you be exiting Hyperspin? Normally, the only time you "exit" Hyperspin is to shut down the computer.

[killbill]

@vwalbridge. Thanks. I mistyped the aspect ratio for the monitor. My question is: If I run a pc game that is 1280x768 let's say, how can I get it to automatically show up letterboxed on the 4x3 monitor and not vertically stretched and horizontally crushed? Then when I exit out of the game back to the Hyperspin frontend, have the frontend itself display full screen again on the 4x3 monitor, not sure if this would mean a resolution change back when exiting the game?

[vwalbridge]

Sorry, now that I understand what you are trying to do, I'm going to have to bow out and let someone more experienced that me step in.

I could help you if it were an emulator-only machine but I don't use PC games on my arcades so I can't be of any help.

I tried to think of all the ways I could suggest you get around this issue but I keep hitting dead ends. Hopefully someone here can help you one way or another.

It's definitely a tug of war between your monitors resolution, windows resolution, and the PC game's resolution.

[killbill]

Thanks for your time vwalbridge. I appreciate it.

[Malenko]

PC games usually "fit to resolution"

[killbill]

Hi Malenko, thanks for the reply. In my limited experience the widescreen PC games that I have played on a 4x3 lcd computer monitor have all displayed fullscreen meaning that they are crushed horizontally and stretched vertically. I want them to display letterbox with bars on top and bottom preserving the widescreen aspect ratio on a 4x3 monitor. Is there a way to do this? This also extends to MUGEN games, if anyone has any experience with these.

Any help is truly appreciated.

[yotsuya]

Hi Malenko, thanks for the reply. In my limited experience the widescreen PC games that I have played on a 4x3 lcd monitor have all displayed fullscreen meaning that they are crushed horizontally and stretched vertically. I want them to display letterbox with bars on top and bottom preserving the widescreen aspect ratio on a 4x3 monitor. Is there a way to do this? This also extends to MUGEN games, if anyone has any experience with these.

Any help is truly appreciated.

Check the game settings to see if you can preserve the aspect ratio.

I dunno, I don't play widescreen games on my arcade cab, so I can't help you with experience. I would just check the game settings to see, but I'm sure newer games aren't designed with 4:3 in mind.

[killbill]

Hey yotsuya, Yeah, I'll check. i'll have to keep experimenting. In the quest to play tons of varied games, I'm trying to make new games run on older monitors. MAME is my #1 priority, so a 4x3 monitor is my only choice. Something tells me I'm just going to have to live with the limitations. Thanks for your time.