Dreamcast Toro & OSSC Aspect Ratio Question

[Steo]

Hi all. I tried my Dreamcast via OSSC when I first got it and to be honest it looked pretty bad using 576i/480i. I bought a Toro box then because someone recommended it to me and it looks so much better in 480p using it. I’m using SCART from the Toro to the OSSC, but there’s just one thing, what way do 16:9 games work?

I have Rayman 2 which is a 16:9 (anamorphic) game, however it has black borders on both sides of the screen. Even if I change it to VESA 640×480@60, it still has borders which are smaller but they’re still there. Is it normal to have those borders on Dreamcast games?

Also it looks clearer using DTV (720×480) but that might just be the sampling phase. I’m just wondering if it’s normal to have that aspect ratio with borders is all. This is what it looks like in 640×480

EDIT: I changed the image and exaggerated the brightness because the other one was too dark.

[nmalinoski]

I believe you just need to set the aspect setting on your TV to 16:9 for anamorphic widescreen. You absolutely need to have DTV 480p enabled (which is on by default for AV1), as the Dreamcast outputs 720×480 frames, not 640×480; without this setting, the aspect ratio will be incorrect. If you have DTV 480p enabled, and your display set to 16:9, and everything looks correct, I’d leave it be, even with the borders.

[Steo]

I agree with that as it does look much clearer on DTV. It’s worth noting that the boot screen has no borders though the game looks the same in 4:3 or 16:9 since it’s anamorphic. Maybe the game is actually 3:2 but CRT TVs would have scaled it differently.

[nmalinoski]

…the game looks the same in 4:3 or 16:9 since it’s anamorphic.

That’s not what anamorphic means; an anamorphic widescreen image is going to look horizontally squished at 4:3 and correct when stretched to 16:9 by a display or video processor. If you’re not seeing a difference, then your display isn’t correctly stretching the image.

[Harrumph]

Dreamcast uses DTV timings, but normally only outputs 640 horizontal active pixels afaik. However, from the look on your display it seems like Rayman2 might be an exception (if it truly has a widescreen mode). I’d try setting h.active to 704 and adjust h.backporch as needed.

[Steo]

Thanks I’ll try that out. Also I understand what anamorphic means and I meant that I know the borders won’t change whether I set it to either 4:3 or 16:9 in the games menu, just the size of everything horizontally within the active window changes with anamorphic.

Anyway yeah I’ll check that out and see if it makes any difference.

[Author]

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