different approach to resolution switching

[Rok Mandeljc]

I've been thinking recently about resolution changes in wine/X. As I
understand, this now works with UseXVidMode enabled, but I sometimes
find it ugly; I run X at 1280x1024 and when I run game in 640x480
(fullscreen), X switches resolution. But as mouse cursor can escape from
640x480 "box", I can see the rest of my desktop (enlarged). I believe
this is not how Win do it.

Even worse is when you run a game in desktop mode (let's say 1024x768)
and game uses different resolutions (e.g. game: 1024x768, intro & main
menu: 640x480).

So I've been wondering if you guys have already considered use of
scaler. It would probably (in my opinion) look much nicer than current
res switching and it would fill those black places in desktop mode.
-- 
Rok Mandeljc <rok.mandeljc(a)gimb.org>

"Hold your position! Leave doubt for the dying!"
-- Tahngarth of the Weatherlight

[Lionel Ulmer]

On Sat, Sep 06, 2003 at 08:46:43PM +0200, Rok Mandeljc wrote:
> I've been thinking recently about resolution changes in wine/X. As I
> understand, this now works with UseXVidMode enabled, but I sometimes
> find it ugly; I run X at 1280x1024 and when I run game in 640x480
> (fullscreen), X switches resolution. But as mouse cursor can escape from
> 640x480 "box", I can see the rest of my desktop (enlarged). I believe
> this is not how Win do it.

Well, if you are in a coding mood, read the specs for the RandR extension
and start coding in Wine. With some luck, you may even implement depth
switching :-)
> Even worse is when you run a game in desktop mode (let's say 1024x768)
> and game uses different resolutions (e.g. game: 1024x768, intro & main
> menu: 640x480).

'Desktop' mode switching is another story. For that, it's pure Wine coding,
no further use of X11 extensions are needed.
> So I've been wondering if you guys have already considered use of
> scaler. It would probably (in my opinion) look much nicer than current
> res switching and it would fill those black places in desktop mode.

A scaler ? That's another possibility. But either it's in hardware or you
will have a very slow Wine to play with (as the only stuff using resolution
switching are games and, well, you do not want to get Wine's performance
even slower that it currently is :-) ).

         Lionel

-- 
		 Lionel Ulmer - http://www.bbrox.org/

[Mike Hearn]

On Sun, 2003-09-07 at 13:32, Lionel Ulmer wrote:
> Well, if you are in a coding mood, read the specs for the RandR extension
> and start coding in Wine. With some luck, you may even implement depth
> switching :-)

Depth switching isn't implemented by XFree at present, so it's
resolution only. The other thing to bear in mind with R&R is that it
moves panels around and things, beyond that I know nothing about it. I
don't think integrating it would be too hard though.

[Dustin Navea]

--- Rok Mandeljc <rok.mandeljc(a)gimb.org> wrote:
> I've been thinking recently about resolution changes in wine/X. As I
> understand, this now works with UseXVidMode enabled, but I sometimes
> find it ugly; I run X at 1280x1024 and when I run game in 640x480
> (fullscreen), X switches resolution. But as mouse cursor can escape from
> 640x480 "box", I can see the rest of my desktop (enlarged). I believe
> this is not how Win do it.

Actually, you are right, in a sense.  That isnt how windows does it.  The
game developers are the ones that decide how they want the in-game resolution
to be done..  IOW: Yes windows handles the code to change resolution, but the
game chooses the method..

I know for a fact that in some games, they change the resolution of the
entire desktop (just alt-tab out of the game enough times and you will see
your desktop in 640x480 or 800x600), while in others they do something else
(my guess would be enlarging the game window)..

The reason you cant escape the game's window in Windows is 1 of 2 reasons (im
not sure which is the one actually used, or maybe both apply).

The first would be because DirectX grabs the mouse and locks it into the
dx-created window, although i think the 2nd one is the actual reason, this
could be it..

The 2nd would be the way windows handles resolutions..  In windows,
everything gets larger except for the desktop space..  Your icons and the
taskbar take up more room, but you cant scroll the desktop to see everything
(thats why if you are in 800x600 and have icons on the far right, when you go
to 640x480, you can't see them anymore)..  So no desktop scrolling in
windows.

In X, everything grows, the area of the desktop, as well as everything on it,
and you can scroll to see it all.  Since wine doesnt always grab the mouse
(and dxgrab doesnt always do what its supposed to), you are able to go
outside the game window and see your desktop in the game's resolution, which
isnt always what you want...  Hopefully DXGrab works for those games..
> Even worse is when you run a game in desktop mode (let's say 1024x768)
> and game uses different resolutions (e.g. game: 1024x768, intro & main
> menu: 640x480).
>
> So I've been wondering if you guys have already considered use of
> scaler. It would probably (in my opinion) look much nicer than current
> res switching and it would fill those black places in desktop mode.

I agree here, this would be a nice bug-ger (feature)... ;)  The problem would
be that at first it would probably end up using a lot of magic numbers, until
we figured out what went there and it probably wouldnt work for a lot of
games until we tweaked the code, but it would be better than nothing.. 
Another benefit would be for apps that for some reason dont take up all of
the desktop window even when maximized (i seem to remember there being a
couple, but it's been so long I dont remember which ones)


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