Okay, this is how I achieve correct aspect ratio in NTSC games (1:1.2 pixel aspect ratio) in WinUAE, plus some other random info that I think is useful (for
octavius or whoever else is interested). Note that enabling NTSC in the Chipset section will have
zero effect on the pixel ratio. WinUAE just writes regular "square pixels" into a framebuffer; it's up to the user to configure the desired vertical stretching via output filters, which we'll get to shortly.
Still, it's a good idea to enable the NTSC option for US made games (or games primarily intended for the US market). Without it, the music and possibly also the gameplay will be about 15% slower. (Be aware that enabling NTSC might cause problems with PAL cracktros of NTSC games, but those are not present in the WHDLoad versions, so unless you're playing cracked ADF floppy versions, this should not be a concern.)
So this is what the below configuration will give us (and the non-aspect ratio corrected version, for reference). Note how the aspect ratio corrected output is minimally blurry in the vertical direction, and 100% sharp horizontally (the achieved effect is similar to the "bilinear sharp" filter in some other emulators).
Note: the forum does stretch the original images, so just download and view them in a proper image viewer that doesn't do any scaling.
Eye of the Beholder II - with aspect ratio correction (NTSC pixel ratio)
Eye of the Beholder II - aspect ratio uncorrected (PAL square pixels)
First, you'll need this D3D shader:
Point-Prescale.fx
Just put it into
plugins\filtershaders\direct3d inside the WinUAE install directory (create the subdirectories manually if they're not present).
Then configure the display settings as follows (it's
very important to 100% match every single setting; they work together in non-obvious ways).
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You can set
Settings / Native / Windowed to
Full-Windowed instead if you want borderless windowed fullscreen.
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This is where the magic happens! I like to use
1.5x scaling for
Horiz/Vert size; that will give you basically 3x3 pixel rectangles for every "native" pixel, plus the 1:1.2 vertical stretching on top of that. The size of the resulting image on a 24" inch widescreen monitor closely matches the image size of a 14" 4/3 monitor from a normal viewing distance, which I prefer.
But if you want the image to fill the screen, you can use 2.0x scaling for 4x4 pixel rectangles, then adjust
Vert. position to center the screen again.
Note: fooling around in the Aspect Ratio Correction section is surely tempting, but ultimately all my attempts have been fruitless and these settings were the only ones that gave me the correct output.
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Make sure you use DirectX 9:
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Now, these settings are really optimised for low-res Amiga screenmodes for playing games. Workbench in hi-res mode looks a little bit funky, but I don't care because I only use it to launch the games (and using 2x scaling actually fixes the problem almost completely).
Finally, this is my whole config, some might find it helpful:
A1200.uae
(it's pretty much the perfect & most compatible A1200 WHDLoad gaming setup)
Have fun, and remember...
Only Amiga makes it possible!