Aspect ratios.... again?!?!

[stryker]

(I've posted this on jamma+ but thought I'd try here too) My efforts and research to date have always centered around the effects such as using HLSL etc to get that CRT look, which I'm pleased with to date. However aspect ratios and tips n tricks to get it right is a little new to me.

I've made on observation since acquiring an MVS cab which makes me question my MAME setup.

My mame setup utilises a 4:3 LCD monitor and HLSL to provide general CRT emulation. Its looks nice and rather CRTish... so far so good.

However the other day I had puzzle bobble running on the MVS can and the MAME cab. They are next to each other and while looking at the screen I noticed the MAME cab image looked just a little "squished" on the horizontal.... looking more at the MVS cab I figure the CRT monitor on there is slightly wider than the 4:3 LCD monitor.

Question 1: I thought all arcade CRTs were 4:3????

Question 2: Considering MAME and the PCs desktop resolution etc... does anyone with more "experimenting" experience than me have any thoughts on how best to match the true arcade aspect/pixel ratios on the mame cab? perhaps using minor letter-boxing etc on the screen?

Thoughts?

Ta!

 

[minwah]

Question 1: I thought all arcade CRTs were 4:3????

I believe so. Maybe there is a slight difference between CRT & LCD '4:3'?

Question 2: Considering MAME and the PCs desktop resolution etc... does anyone with more "experimenting" experience than me have any thoughts on how best to match the true arcade aspect/pixel ratios on the mame cab? perhaps using minor letter-boxing etc on the screen?

I use a CRT on my Mame cabs so not had much experience with LCD's...

But are you sure the MVS just doesn't have the screen set a little wide? ie is it overscanning a bit horizontally?

 

[stryker]

Good thought on the over scanning... the mvs cab is my first native machine so I'm not sure whats correct. I can say none of the picture is cut off as it were.

This weekend I plan on putting the tape measure to the monitors and see for sure whats what.

 

[stryker]

BTW, you say you use a CRT, do you mean an arcade monitor or maybe an old PC CRT monitor? I have one of those and must admit it has crossed my mind on if its worth trying instead of the LCD so it at least looks a bit more authentic

 

[cools]

Neo Geo is an odd one, check inside the MAME video settings as I think you want to be using cropped resolution rather than full resolution.

It's also not 4:3 in its native resolution of 320x224 - but cropped to 304x224 it's near enough.

Lastly, not every game had square pixels. To get the aspect ratio right for these you need to be stretching to the full size of your LCD with no borders - but this will look awful.

 

[RygarR]

If your LCD screen is squarish, it could be that it's actually 5:4 - which is what most of them were before the change to widescreen. If the native resolution is 1280x1024, that's probably what's going on...