https://dosbox-x.com
Fantastic first impression. GUI, bazillion options, quicksaves, extended deadzone settings for controllers, Glide emulation... Basically what Daum had and more (deadzone). But there's one "little" problem - scaling in fullscreen...
Windowed:
Fullscreen:
This screenshot may look good, but it's actually just an unscaled window sitting in the middle of the screen. So it's not "full screen", it looks like this:
I've tried different output methods and different scalers, and couldn't force the emu to switch into full screen. The harsh truth is brutal - DosBox-X cannot into "fullresolution"="original". IMO this emu was made with advanced DOS / Windows programs in mind, and
not games.
It's clearly stated on the webpage:
Started as a fork of the DOSBox project, it retains compatibility with the wide base of DOS games and DOS gaming DOSBox was designed for. But it is also a platform for running DOS applications, including emulating the environments to run Windows 3.x, 9x and ME and software written for those versions of Windows.
Sadly, you can call me a graphicswhore, but I can't enjoy my DOS games when they look like shit (wrong aspect ratio, pixelation, shitty filters). And unfortunately that's exactly how DosBox-X operates.
It's clear that the "recommended" setting for fullscreen is "desktop". It's not only a default in .conf file, but also the only one for which scaling actually works. At least on "hardware" outputs, since scalers don't work with "output"="surface" (.conf warns you about this). And they don't work indeed:
Code:
fullresolution = desktop
output = surface
So, let's try other output methods...
Code:
fullresolution = desktop
output = default (it uses direct3d)
Code:
fullresolution = desktop
output = openglpp
Slight incline, but pixelated AF.
I've enabled log and noticed, that no matter which option for "fullresolution" you choose (original, manually selected value, desktop), emulator always uses your desktop resolution for rendering:
And it's not my individual problem, since
other people were complaining about this exact thing happening on Linux.
As you can see, the best DBX can do is OpenGL perfect, which still looks inferior (sharper & pixelated) to previous emus (which can use scaled "fullresolution" = "original").
It has proper aspect ratio in 2D, but resizes the 3D to "smaller" window than previous emus (notice black bars up & down):
So we end up with inferior 2D (pixelated) and 3D (smaller window). Still, it's the ONLY decent output method for this fork, since using anything else than "OpenGL perfect" gave me AIDS:
Code:
fullresolution = desktop
output = default
aspect = false
Wrong AR in 2D (320x200 is 16:10, Dosbox squishes it vertically to 16:9)
Wrong AR in 3D (640x480 is 4:3, Dosbox stretches it horizontally to 16:9)
Code:
fullresolution = desktop
output = default
aspect = true
Wrong AR in 2D (320x200 is 16:10, Dosbox squishes it horizontally to 4:3)
This is the correct output.
Proper AR in 3D (640x480 displayed in 4:3).
Tested some other outputs, added scalers, but nothing looks better than "OpenGL perfect". And that's still inferior to how other builds work / look.