The aspect ratio of the game itself seems to be correct. Those are just heavily cropped images.

Thank you for this post. I tested these settings with a few games and they all work great (Daggerfall still has choppy cutscences but that was the case w/ the other output settings as well).

I would argue that there is no correct behaviour, just individual preferences. Which is fine.

There is correct as in "intended by game designer". The artwork was designed for 4:3 CRT screens, not for a simulation of a low-resolution (phone) LCD with big visible square pixels. This is also the reason why SD video is upscaled the same way (because it was made for exactly the same output device).

This.

I had the same problem -- it's easily fixed by simply changing the CPU cycles setting (Ctrl + F11 / Ctrl + F12) during the title cutscene (just before the main menu comes up), adjusting up or down as necessary until the sound & video are no longer choppy (I had to reduce the number by a few presses of Ctrl + F11; don't remember what the actual cycles value was). Then you can change the config file later to whatever value worked for you., so as not to have to manually adjust the cycles every time. : )

I just asked a question there. Unfortunately they weren't very helpful.

Heh, told you.

I have LCD monitor but also a Samsung SyncMaster CRT monitor. Should i change any setting you suggested?

Great topic, and I agree that the settings should be changed, although I disagree with the solution :)

Some might know my GOG DOSBox tweak guides and the settings I recommend are:

[sdl]
fullresolution=0x0 (but I usually just enter the native resolution of my monitor which is 1920x1080)
output=opengl

[render]
aspect=true
scaler=normal3x

I have tested these with Nvidia, AMD and Intel graphics and my viewers haven't had any issues with them.

The opengl render gives you a slightly softer look, which masks the different sizes of pixels a little bit. If you want sharp pixels try openglnb which disabled bilinear filtering.

Jtsn, your settings don't work for me. Just like SCPM, the image looks like an old Nintendo connected through composite.

I've attached two external HDMI captures to show what it looks like on the screen.

http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=46102&p=465543#p465543

Define helpful

There is no such thing as an "ultimate" Dosbox config. Trying to do so is a pointless exercise. You can set things up to suit your preferences and what you think is "ultimate" but by no means is it necessarily so.

As far as help on vogons: GIGO.

But I don't think that bilinear filtering makes it any more "as intended by game designer" than without, just blurry. I like crisp pixels myself, but if you want it to look more like a CRT, may I suggest scaler=tv2x? It's pretty close, just needs any other scaling to play nice with it so that the scanlines remain uniformly spaced.

If I raise the cpu cycles to make the cut-scene play properly won't that mean I'll have to lower it when it's over or else the game will play faster than intended?

I'm sorry but that's bullshit. This is from the DOSBox Wiki:

"aspect = true | false
Do aspect correction. It only affects non-square pixel modes like VGA Mode 13h, which has a resolution of 320x200 pixels and is used by many DOS games (DOOM, etc). Recommended as such games were designed for 4:3 displays, and without aspect correction will look distorted and not as the developer intended.
Default is false."

As Strijkbout was trying to tell you: many DOS games run in 320x200 resolution (which is NOT 4:3) but were designed for 4:3 monitors. The horizontal density of the pixels on screen was higher than the vertical one and the developers took that into account when making the graphics and/or defining the speeds in gameplay. And that's the only thing that aspect=true is about. You can read some more about it here.

Anyway, whether the original aspect ratio is maintained depends on the renderer you choose. I preferably use opengl (actually openglnb, because I hate the default opengl filtering) which actually scales the image up as far as possible while maintaining the aspect ratio.You are correct that those games were designed for CRTs and the image looks very different on CRTs than it does on LCDs, however, no simple filter gets even close to how the games were "intended to look". Not to mention that CRTs also heavily differed among each other. Here you have two photos taken directly from two different CRTs: woop. Round pixels my ass. If you want to get even remotely close to how the games were intended to look you will need to use a shader, the filtering that the hardware applies to the output texture is eye cancerous shit and results in an infinitely blurrier image than what good CRTs looked like.

1.) If your DOSBox preset for Daggerfall is anything like mine (I'm using the Wiwiland version), the problem is that the number of cycles is too high, and you'll have to lower it (though, again, this might vary depending on your computer, I suppose);
2.) Tweaking this setting shouldn't really affect gameplay; it should just ease the choppiness during the FMV cutscenes (which is mostly only noticeable in the audio, at least for me). So, no, you won't have to change the setting whenever a video starts to play, then change it back afterwards -- just set it once at the beginning of the game ([EDIT:] obviously it doesn't HAVE TO be at the beginning, but it's preferable to having to scramble to do it when a cutscene that might actually be important starts to play), every time you start it up (or edit the config file once, and forget about it ;) ). Or don't -- it's not as though there are tons of cutscenes in that game anyway.