Resolution in windowed mode

[Maxumus32]

First of all, I love how the emulator works! No clumsy plugins and stuff. Keep up the good work!

I have one suggestion though:

When in windowed mode I like the window to have the exact size of the content, and not the content to have the size of window. This way every pixel of the psx is a pixel on screen and the contents will look perfect (no blurring, squashing or other size effects).

This could probably be achieved in two ways:

• Automatically resize the window when the resolution of the psx changes. Like vmware.
  
• Or an option to set the resolution at runtime to 1x psx resolution, 2x psx resolution, etc... Like windows media player.
  

The second option would probably be the better one, since it prevents the window from resizing when the user just created his ideal window size.
When manually resizing though a distorted aspect ratio is not desirable and it should always keep a fixed aspect ratio (whether that is 'true' / 4:3 / 16:9 / other). Again, like the content of windows media player.

Let me know what you think!

[patrickp]

AFAIK the video output of pSX is normally in the correct pixel ratio, maxumus32plus, but Playstation games often have varying size images - in other ratios than exactly 4:3. Therefore, pSX, like the Playstation, outputs them enclosed in black borders to fit the image to what would usually be, with a Playstation, a 4:3 TV screen. So the complete image is not just the game image; it includes those borders if present, and the actual final output should stay the same size. So your window size shouldn't vary, either.

However, you can set different window sizes, such as 1x, 2x etc with Ultima's pSX Frontend, although only in the Windows version. Give it a try - it's an extremely useful accessory for pSX.

[Sune]

Also, people often assume that pixels are supposed to be square.

I'd venture a guess that the Playstation didn't always use square pixels, but rather relied on the final video output stage (or whatever, insert appropriate technobabble here ;-) to present the image in a 4:3 ratio that fits a standard Television.

Like capcom CPS-2 arcade hardware for example.

[Maxumus32]

I've tried ultima's frontend on your advise patrickp. . It sets a fixed resolution: 1x == 640x480. This is true for the maximum resolution of the psx.
The psx supports more native resolutions like 320x240 (used a lot) and other non 4:3 resolutions (where pixels are not square, Sune).
The tool is of use to me though, if I know the resolution used, I can use the frontend to set it to that resolution.

[patrickp]

As I explained, maxumus32plus, although a game may be displayed at a non-standard resolution, a Playstation needs to output a display at a fixed resolution, otherwise the picture will not fit a TV screen.

Psx is _not_ an enhancing emulator. Its aim is to emulate the Playstation as accurately as possible; therefore there's no reason to include outputs that change resolution according to what the game produces. That's not how a Playstation works.

If you want an enhancing emulator, there are several good ones around - ePSXe, for instance. However, if you compare ePSXe to pSX you'll soon find that pSX emulates the game images more accurately that ePSXe does, generally, and this is because the various enhancement processes distort the image to a greater or lesser extent.