Horizontal 15hz monitor with vertical games?

[Lilwolf]

Anyone get any good results running vertical games in any 15hz or 25hz resolutions on a horizontal crt?  I have a multisync, so I can just force them to stretch to 31hz 640x480... but am interested to see if I'm missing a resolution that will work.

Thanks!

[2600]

Whatever the AVGA does looks good to me.  I don't recall the resolutions off the top of my head, but here's the link.

http://ultimarc.com/avgainst.html

[ahofle]

Yes they look way better at 15khz than stretched to VGA.  Just look at the game's resolution and pick a MAME resolution with the exact (or slightly more) number of horizontal lines.  For example, Pacman = 224x288, so use AVGA's 352x288 resolution.

[Minwah]

Yes they look way better at 15khz than stretched to VGA.  Just look at the game's resolution and pick a MAME resolution with the exact (or slightly more) number of horizontal lines.  For example, Pacman = 224x288, so use AVGA's 352x288 resolution.

I basically agree, but for me there are 2 serious issues with this:

1) if your monitor is adjusted for horizontal games (& doesn't have a memory for size/positions at different modes) then some of the 288 lines will be cut off (these lines often tend to be crucial for gameplay).  Of course you can shrink your size down, but then horizontal games look squashed.  Maybe this isn't an issue with a multisync, but for most fixed 15khz screens it probably is.

2) Some of the 288 line modes have odd refresh rates.  eg 352x288 @ 51Hz.  This can play havoc unless the game uses the same framerate (dropped frames, sound glitches etc).

For me these two reasons are enough to make me use 640x480 interlaced for most of these vertical games.

[Lilwolf]

I'm trying to remove all interlaced modes right now.  I think they look really really bad.  I'm getting a decent and obvious flicker on the colors thats annoying.

I'll have to play with each resolution I don't like and cut them off soft15k and see if mame will then automatically use better settings.

[Minwah]

I'm getting a decent and obvious flicker on the colors thats annoying.

Not as annoying as skipped frames ;-)  I haven't played around with recent MAME versions tho, maybe there are some new ways around the problems I've encountered.

[ahofle]

Maybe this isn't an issue with a multisync, but for most fixed 15khz screens it probably is.

Yeah it an issue if you don't have a digital multi-sync that remembers resolution settings.  I haven't noticed the glitching sound that you mentioned though (except on games that my PC can't keep up with).  Screen tearing is another matter though...

[Minwah]

Yeah it an issue if you don't have a digital multi-sync that remembers resolution settings.  I haven't noticed the glitching sound that you mentioned though (except on games that my PC can't keep up with).  Screen tearing is another matter though...

Yes I think I messed around with some settings to remove the tearing, but then had sound issues.

I just remembered it is not so much of a problem if the refresh rate of the video mode is higher than the framerate of the game, but in many (most) of cases the refresh rate is <60Hz and the game framerate is 60fps.