720p

[Thiago Christovao]

Hello,

Ever since I started using the GameCube on a 16:9 TV, I've always had to get used to the vertical black bars. From a Swiss version, the 720p option was implemented and it solved my problems with the games.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to enable this function in homebrew.

I recently discovered that there is such an option in the GameCube version of RetroArch.

It may be possible to implement this option in GensPlus GX. Thanks.

[Eke ekeeke]

I think you are confusing 720p with widescreen support as vertical black bars (on left and right sides) are not related to vertical resolution (which 480p or 720p refer to) but horizontal resolution.

Genesis Plus GX horizontal resolution when emulating games is related to original games resolution and tries to preserve original aspect ratio so you will always have black bars on left and right sides with a 16:9 TV screen since the original display aspect ratio was closer to 4:3.

Anyway, there is no 720p option in Retroarch, it is just that someone made a modified libretro core of Genesis Plus GX for Retroarch (called Genesis Plus GX Wide) that hacks the original emulation core to display the hidden parts of the VDP internally rendered screen, which results in a wider image that can fill 16:9 TV (up to 720 pixels wide on Gamecube/Wii since it’s the physical limit of the console video encoder). But this is still a hack that only works with a limited set of games (generally those that use horizontal scrolling) and, for most of these games, works very poorly in motion because those hidden parts were not supposed to be displayed in the first place so you often see garbage or graphical glitches in there. The way it is implemented is also not very well integrated with the original code. For these reasons, I am not interested to add this kind of hack in the standalone emulator at this point and feel having black bars with accurate aspect ratio is less distracting and more enjoyable.

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[Thiago Christovao]

I thought it would make no difference to call it 720p or 720i (correct term?). I think there was some confusion...

Just to be sure, the option in Retroarch is "Set VI Screen Width: 720" and it works for all cores. At least, the three I use.

I thought it could be implemented.

Anyway, thank you.

[Eke ekeeke]

720p (or 720i) refers to vertical height of the screen i.e it means the active screen is made of 720 lines, while what you are refering to is the horizontal width.

The Gamecube (or Wii) can go up to 480i or 480p max (there seems to be some unofficial way to configure video encoder to output more lines, as done in Swiss, but it is not used in any homebrew emulators and does not seem really reliable as I think there are drawbacks to it like reduced framerate or reduced width).

The VI screen width option in Retroarch is about the horizontal width. It is 720 pixels max on Wii/Gamecube, with 720x480 representing max resolution and giving 16:9 aspect ratio on a TV screen. That option however does not really increment the width rendered by emulators, it just stretches the rendered image (which is limited to 640x480 in Retroarch and most - if not all - other gamecube/wii homebrew) up to the max width so it fills your 16:9 TV screen. So unless the emulator is hacked to extend the rendered width (like in Genesis Plus GX Wide core), it will simply result in original aspect ratio (4:3 approximately) being heavily distorted to give fake 16:9 aspect ratio. I never really understood why people would prefer games looking weird and inaccurate rather than having tiny black bars on both side but anyway, if you want to do that in Genesis Plus GX, you can already do it: just set the aspect ratio setting in video options to “manual” then increment the “screen scaling” value to the right to increment the width.

[Thiago Christovao]

I fully understand your problem with distortion. This is probably what I feel for a wasted screen area.

Getting back to my problem:

You can be sure it was the first thing I tried when I first used the GensPlus GX and the versions that came after. Sadly, that never worked.

If I stretch the screen, after going beyond the black bars limit, the image is consumed. It's always been that way with this emulator, Snes9X GX and FCEU GX. Maybe it doesn't make sense to you.

These bars are just not displayed when I play a PAL/60 game, using the Swiss function 720x and now with this RetroArch option. I was surprised and wondered if it could be solved with something as simple as this option.

[Eke ekeeke]

I think I understand: you have to also increment the VI width for the menu rendering if you want to preview the effect of in-game screen upscaling in video options menu. There is an option for that in options->menu called “screen width” where you can adjust it for your TV screen (up to 720 pixels wide). The default value was chosen to give me full screen menu on my old CRT TV back then but modern TVs are surely able to show more pixels (on my HDTV it indeed shows tiny black bars on left/right sides but they are so barely noticeable that I never cared about changing that value)

Anyway, this only has effect in user interface: setting the xscale offset value to a large enough value in the video option menu should give you a full screen image in-game (even if it did not look full screen in the menu preview). This really does exactly the same as what this Retroarch option is doing, it increases the VI width up to 720 pixels, which results in rendered image being upscaled to max width by the video hardware.

[Thiago Christovao]

I can't believe the answer was so close to me during those years... I've always ignored the menu because it's just the menu. Thank you.

I will check if there is an option with the same effect in other emulators.