I just noticed that GOG now seems to force DOS games to fit the screen by default instead of keeping aspect ratio (or letting the users decide according to their driver or monitor setting, if that's possible). So I wondered, is that how a majority prefers to play their old school games?

What is the lesser evil to you? Black borders on the side or a horizontally stretched / compressed image?

Correct aspect ratio all the way. But yeah, I really don't like the black borders. Which is why I saved an old 4:3 19'' lcd monitor to one day use exclusively for retro gaming.

I take black borders on the side anytime before having a shitty distorted image but not before i have tried everything including scaling options to my monitor or modding in resolution support which works 95% of the time.

Keep the aspect ratio, always. I'm not a philistine!

Black borders for sure. Stretched image looks awful. It's not that bad if only the UI is stretched, but in DOS games everything is stretched. So keep the 4:3 aspect ratio please!

For 4:3 games, I always scale it up to screen height but maintain the correct aspect ratio (or "Aspect Ratio Scaling" as its often called in GPU drivers). If GOG have started messing around with DOSBox scaling settings to force stretching then this sounds like another reason why I'm happy to create my own .conf and zip files instead of GOG's "proper" installers.

It's easily rectified by the way, you just have to open the .conf file, search for [render], and replace aspect=false with aspect=true, but I don't know why they would put that line in by default.

I prefer to keep the aspect ratio.

"Keep aspect ratio" every time. Anyone who prefers the stretchy stuff deserves to be tarred and feathered. Black borders have never bothered me on widescreen displays.

I don't understand people who think keeping proper aspect ratio is bad. They'll say "Those black bars really annoy me!!!" and I have to say, is it really more annoying than everything looking gross and stretched out? I love proper aspect ratio.... Better still if they can massage the game to support wide screen.

Keep aspect ratio

Only exception is when there is a good widescreen patch or source port, that just increases the view area while keeping everything else correcty centered and proportional.

I already knew we didn't see eye to eye though. I don't understand it an I probably never will, but thanks for replying to me. :-)

I want to see the games as they were intended, ie. correct aspect ratio.

I wonder why GOG is doing this? Have they received complaints from some ignorant users saying there is something wrong with the graphics because they don't fit the whole screen? Maybe GOG feels it is easier to change the default to the "wrong one" instead of trying to educate all the new users that it is how the game is supposed to look on 16:9 (and wider) displays.

Has GOG changed this also to games that used to be with correct aspect ratio before? Oh well, as long as I can change it back myself, I guess...

I presume in many cases some users think there is something wrong with the graphics if there are the "black bars", ie. they don't understand the "aspect ratio dilemma".

After all, it might be that by this day and age, some people have never even seen a 4:3 monitor or TV in their life. They are unaware such displays existed in the past.

The way to go is aspect ratio corrected. When I see someone running a DOS Game with fit to screen I'd like to show him How that game would look in a the monitor wider than 16:9 and the game scaled to fit. The absurdness of the result image would speak for itself.

All that said there are examples of old games that a different choosing is more convenient due to the inconsistecy some developers had with the tweaked graphics for a 4:3 monitor. Some old Flight simulators or for example, UFO defense can look better with a non corrected image, showing perfect circles with the former and/or horrible melon planet in UFO defense in 4:3 for example.

Greetings