Is it possible to force BigBox in a certain aspect ratio?

[Landcross]

To quickly get to the point: I have an ultrawide monitor. 21:9 aspect ratio, 3440x1440 resolution. It's a great monitor, I love it. But, it's not a very common aspect ratio (certainly not in the emulator world) and thus things get a bit annoying.

Launchbox, bigbox, emulators etc. etc. all work fine on this screen (or at the very least a lot better than Hyperspin), that's not the problem. The thing is, pretty much all media files are in a 16:9 format. I see a cool video-collection in the downloads section; arg, 16:9. I see a cool set of backgrounds; arg 16:9. I don't have the skill nor the time to start creating piles upon piles of my own 21:9 media, so I'm wondering if it's possible to force BigBox in a 16:9 aspect ratio (thus with black bars on the sides in my case). I'm not 100% sure if it would look better at 16:9 or not (in my personal opinion of course), but that's what I would like to find out.

Forcing bigbox to 16:9 on my 21:9 screen instead of creating 21:9 media would have the added benefit though that if I were to take my launchbox installation (which is on an external hdd) to another pc which has a normal 16:9 monitor it would still look fine instead of having stretched out media.

So... Any thoughts on this? Any idea how (or if) I can force bigbox in 16:9? Thanks!

 

Edited August 18, 2017 by Landcross

[Lordmonkus]

There is no way to do this within BigBox on its own but I took a few minutes to see if I could find something. I think I found something that will do what you are looking for. I tested it out on my 16:9 2560x1440 monitor and I created a custom shortcut to start up BigBox @ 1920x1440 and it worked, it loaded up BigBox in that 4:3 aspect ratio with black bars on the sides.

Here is a link to the program called Reso http://www.bcheck.net/apps/reso.htm simply run it and point it at your BigBox.exe, input the resolution you want it to run at which would be 2560x1440 for 16:9. Then click the create shortcut button and tell it where to create that shortcut, the just load up BigBox using that shortcut file and you should be good to go.

I hope this does what you are wanting it to do.

[Landcross]

15 minutes ago, lordmonkus said:

There is no way to do this within BigBox on its own but I took a few minutes to see if I could find something. I think I found something that will do what you are looking for. I tested it out on my 16:9 2560x1440 monitor and I created a custom shortcut to start up BigBox @ 1920x1440 and it worked, it loaded up BigBox in that 4:3 aspect ratio with black bars on the sides.

Here is a link to the program called Reso http://www.bcheck.net/apps/reso.htm simply run it and point it at your BigBox.exe, input the resolution you want it to run at which would be 2560x1440 for 16:9. Then click the create shortcut button and tell it where to create that shortcut, the just load up BigBox using that shortcut file and you should be good to go.

I hope this does what you are wanting it to do.

I've been searching for an external application too, but did not come across that one. It's far from ideal though. It looks like it's forcing the whole screen resolution (or video output) to 16:9 and not just the selected application. In other words, the whole OS gets cropped which messes up my desktop and other windows (you know, just like when you fire up an old PC game which starts at something like 600x800 ). And besides, it did not list my desired resolution of 2560x1440. I chose 1920x1080 but because that's not an exact multiple of a 1440 screen it looked horrible.

I think the solution really has to come from Bigbox itself.  I'm not an expert on this, but I suppose Bigbox should just render at the native aspect ratio and just add black bars to the sides on its own instead of relying on gpu/monitor scaling like most emulators do.

But thanks, I appreciate the help! 

[Lordmonkus]

Feel free to submit a bitbucket ticket using the "Help & Support" menu at the top of this page and clicking on "Request a Feature"

That is weird there is no 2560x1440 resolution option there since there was a pretty big list for me including the 4:3 aspect ratio of 1920x1440 which for made my BigBox stuff still look good and clean but with black borders on the sides.

[Landcross]

22 minutes ago, lordmonkus said:

Feel free to submit a bitbucket ticket using the "Help & Support" menu at the top of this page and clicking on "Request a Feature"

Yeah, I guess I have to do that. I already submitted 1 feature request and 1 bug a few days ago. It seems like the issues list is huge already so I wanted to make sure there's not already a setting I overlooked (or if it was already being worked on). 

Well then, I suppose I have to wait. I'm pretty sure my feature request isn't a high priority at all, pretty niche I think 

Edited August 18, 2017 by Landcross

[lumni]

Any update on this ? I want it too

[Saraph]

Same, would love the ability to alter aspect ratios in full screen. It just looks weird and off running on my ultrawide.

[Landcross]

On 9/8/2018 at 3:08 AM, lumni said:

Any update on this ? I want it too

 

46 minutes ago, Saraph said:

Same, would love the ability to alter aspect ratios in full screen. It just looks weird and off running on my ultrawide.

It is kinda possible now (for a while now actually). I didn't knew it either until someone notified me on my feature request on BitBucket.

In the ThemeSettings.xml you can add (or set to True if the setting is already there) the following line:

<Force16X9AspectRatio>true</Force16X9AspectRatio>

 

Edited September 23, 2018 by Landcross

[Saraph]

9 hours ago, Landcross said:

 

It is kinda possible now (for a while now actually). I didn't knew it either until someone notified me on my feature request on BitBucket.

In the ThemeSettings.xml you can add (or set to True if the setting is already there) the following line:

<Force16X9AspectRatio>true</Force16X9AspectRatio>

 

Holy @#$* that worked! Thank you so much! Why isn't this a setting in the graphical interface?

[lumni]

great! it works, thank you!