Emulator

https://github.com/dolphin-emu/dolphin/pull/2791

I'm not entirely sure what you want to have done here. If you are experiencing black bars, it is because the render window is not the same aspect ratio as the game output. Cropping is the best solution in most games to get a 4:3 or 16:9 ratio without messing up geometry. It is possible to design AR hacks for true 16:9 support, but dolphin isn't going to be designed around those hacks. I initially left the old settings in, but it was decided that it doesn't make sense, because they were basically just wrong in every way. There is an ongoing discussion about putting them back in, and we are evaluating the merits and disadvantages of including them.

It's just that I find too weird to have "small" black bars in games, but I also don't like cropping. To be able to slightly stretch the game to what it was before, filling the screen, but at the same time have the images that are impossible to "fix" in widescreen, become their original aspect, like menus and such, I don't care about black bars in those, since they can't fit 16:9 without stretching. That's like in 4.0-7133.

To put it simply, I preffer to stretch those few pixels in 3d worlds, rather than conceal portions of the top and bottom of the image. Unless someone made it possible to change the FOV in games, cropping would be a good option to hide black bars then. We could simply zoom out the rendered world, and have the intended view space, correct aspect ratio and no black bars.

I think you're being a bit unreasonable here. The stuff on the absolute top/bottom that is being cropped (in most situations) is something you wouldn't see on a regular T.V. anyway, so, it's not like you're going to lose anything of value.

Slightly stretching the game is far more of a hack than cropping it.

Is there still black bars showing up in widescreen with cropping for some reason or something I'm missing?

In order to get a 16:9 or 4:3 image, you either need to mess up the aspect ratio or crop some of the image off. Otherwise there will be black borders. If you don't want to do either of those things, then you have to have black borders on the image. Those are the choices. I think what you are asking for is that dolphin be able to intelligently choose between those options during gameplay based on some user preferences. I don't know if/when that can be implemented, but am I at least understanding correctly what it is you want?

I decided to investigate personally, and I tried Wind Waker with the Action Replay code for widescreen with crop. I really don't understand the complaint, I had no black bars at all, everything looked fine, nothing was clipped off the screen or anything like that.

My problem isn't the cropping, but the "zoomed in" effect that comes with cropping. In Wind Waker, besides the UI being stretched because of widescreen hack, it'll also look bigger. It's only my opinion it seems, but it's better for me to have the game a little stretched, something that we had in previous revisions without even perceiving (my case), rather than have black bars (widescreen hack, no crop), or "zoom in" effect (widescreen hack, crop). That's my perspective because I already completed Wind Waker on older revisions with the widescreen hack. I disliked the stretched menus in there, and in 4.0-7133 that was "fixed", then 4.0-7138 fixed it "more", but with those "setbacks" (cropping or black bars). Again, just my opinion, not trying to rage war in like "closest to original x emulator enhances image/shows more" or something. Guess it's better to wait for revision #2791 and see how it will look, rather than discussing this. Sorry if I sounded unreasonable, english isn't my native language, and my choice of words might not have been the best to express this issue.

No no, you don't sound rude or anything, I just don't understand where you're coming from. Cropping (or a similar) is something that'd happen on a real T.V. due to stuff like overscan and such.

I just don't understand why we would add an option for a mistake. If you hate the stretched UI, isn't a solution making a better widescreen hack that doesn't stretch the UI?

You can test out #2791 now and see if it fixes things:

https://dl.dolphin-emu.org/prs/pr-2791-dolphin-latest-x64.7z

I took the screenshots with the title bar, because using Dolphin's screenshot hotkey didn't show the black bars in them, and also for ease of Alt-Tabbing into MS Paint (could've used borderless fullscreen, forgot, my bad). And the hack I'm using for widescreen is the AR code, and it is with the AR code (no crop) that I get the black bars, and in fullscreen (something like 15:9, not 16:9). If a AR code was made to fix the aspect ratio of the "3d rendered world" (noblack bars here, no crop), but also having the menus in the original 4:3 (black bars fine) then I would be "happy". I'll test pr#2791 later, and then see if it's fixed.

I know the FOV thing could be too much as of right now, it was just wishful thinking of my part.

Yes, pr #2791 does fix my problem, no black bars and no need to crop, with menus "unstretching" when entered. All I would need is to enable Force square pixels in the INIs of the games I want to, right? Now... should I add something like this to the INI:

[Video_Hacks]
ForceSquarePixels = True

or maybe under [Core], since that's where progressive scan gets enabled by INI (it seems), and force square pixels was put in the same tab as the latter. I'm not enabling it for all games, because like I said in the issue post, in 2d games, I actually preffer the original intended aspect, since in those is impossible to force a widescreen hack with no artifacts.

Also, thanks all for replying. Now that I've reread my comments, I see that they're actually confusing XD!

Is it possible to have widescreen hack dynamically change? Let's say there is a game that's 1:1. It sounds like we can detect that, can the widescreen hack detect that and adjust? We would also add a 4:3 code if that is possible.

I guess that's what 4.0-7133 introduced already. Look at my screenshots, the widescreen hack (in this case AR code) is enabled, the black bars are because of the aspect ratio/VI scaling fix. But the overworld is wider than the native aspect ratio of the game. If Aspect Ratio is set to Auto in Dolphin's options, when I enter the items or charts screen, which are 4:3 textures, Dolphin detects them and adjusts the image to 4:3, so they aren't stretched, like they are in my Aspect Ratio Stretch to window screenshots. When I exit those menus, the game automatically returns to the widescreen aspect ratio. This works in most games, even better in 4.0-7141, since the heuristic was made smarter.

This should do everything you want: https://github.com/dolphin-emu/dolphin/pull/2796

Thanks for your report and concerns.