Scale "up" low resolution programs to fit screen?

penyuan · Post by **penyuan** » Tue Aug 09, 2011 3:09 pm

Some old apps and games are of pretty low resolution by today's standards, i.e. 640x480.

If I run such a program the text and interface are often very very small because of it.

Therefore, is there a way to have Wine scale up, for example, a 640x480 virtual desktop to fit my high resolution display?

In other words, the program will fill the screen, albeit looking more pixellated.

doh123 · Post by **doh123** » Tue Aug 09, 2011 3:54 pm

penyuan wrote:Some old apps and games are of pretty low resolution by today's standards, i.e. 640x480.

If I run such a program the text and interface are often very very small because of it.

Therefore, is there a way to have Wine scale up, for example, a 640x480 virtual desktop to fit my high resolution display?

In other words, the program will fill the screen, albeit looking more pixellated.

Wine will not scale it. You need to configure your X server to run fullscreen at that resolution, so that it will still run 640x480 (or whatever) in fullscreen mode.

jjmckenzie · Post by **jjmckenzie** » Tue Aug 09, 2011 4:35 pm

On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 1:54 PM, doh123 <[email protected]> wrote:

penyuan wrote:
Some old apps and games are of pretty low resolution by today's standards, i.e. 640x480.

If I run such a program the text and interface are often very very small because of it.

Therefore, is there a way to have Wine scale up, for example, a 640x480 virtual desktop to fit my high resolution display?

In other words, the program will fill the screen, albeit looking more pixellated.
Wine will not scale it. You need to configure your X server to run fullscreen at that resolution, so that it will still run 640x480
(or whatever) in fullscreen mode.

Also, you have to make sure that your video system will handle such
scaling. Some systems will not scale 4x3 images onto a 16x9 screen
very well, if at all.

This is a discussion to hold with the distributor of your Linux
product. I will state that the Mac video system through XQuartz ran
QuakeII at 640x480 very well on my MacBook Pro (2011 edition).

James McKenzie

penyuan · Post by **penyuan** » Tue Aug 09, 2011 5:05 pm

[quote="jjmckenzie"]
...
This is a discussion to hold with the distributor of your Linux
product. I will state that the Mac video system through XQuartz ran
QuakeII at 640x480 very well on my MacBook Pro (2011 edition).
[/quote]
Do you mean you changed your resolution in System Preferences->Display to 640x480, start X11, then start QuakeII?

doh123 · Post by **doh123** » Tue Aug 09, 2011 10:08 pm

penyuan wrote:
jjmckenzie wrote: ...
This is a discussion to hold with the distributor of your Linux
product. I will state that the Mac video system through XQuartz ran
QuakeII at 640x480 very well on my MacBook Pro (2011 edition).
Do you mean you changed your resolution in System Preferences->Display to 640x480, start X11, then start QuakeII?

you do not need to do this if you install the latest version of XQuartz and make sure Wine is using that. It will change automatically for you when the game calls the resolution. Apple's X11 on Lion supposedly will do this as well, but XQuartz is still all around better. Apple's X11 on Snow Leopard and older cannot. You really just want to run XQuartz if you are using Wine this way.

perryh · Post by **perryh** » Wed Aug 10, 2011 3:22 am

James McKenzie <[email protected]> wrote:

On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 1:54 PM, doh123 <[email protected]>
wrote:
... is there a way to have Wine scale up, for example, a
640x480 virtual desktop to fit my high resolution display?

In other words, the program will fill the screen, albeit
looking more pixellated.
Wine will not scale it. ?You need to configure your X server
to run fullscreen at that resolution, so that it will still
run 640x480 (or whatever) in fullscreen mode.
Also, you have to make sure that your video system will handle
such scaling. Some systems will not scale 4x3 images onto a
16x9 screen very well, if at all.

If the scaling does not work well, one possible fix would be to set
X to, say, 1600x900 and continue to use a 640x480 virtual desktop.
This should produce a correct aspect ratio, and a larger image than
if X were running at the display's native resolution.

penyuan · Post by **penyuan** » Wed Aug 10, 2011 10:38 am

[quote="doh123"][quote="penyuan"][quote="jjmckenzie"]
...
This is a discussion to hold with the distributor of your Linux
product. I will state that the Mac video system through XQuartz ran
QuakeII at 640x480 very well on my MacBook Pro (2011 edition).
[/quote]
Do you mean you changed your resolution in System Preferences->Display to 640x480, start X11, then start QuakeII?[/quote]
you do not need to do this [u]if you install the latest version of XQuartz[/u] and make sure Wine is using that. It will change automatically for you when the game calls the resolution. Apple's X11 on Lion supposedly will do this as well, but XQuartz is still all around better. Apple's X11 on Snow Leopard and older cannot. You really just want to run XQuartz if you are using Wine this way.[/quote]
Please excuse my ignorance, but how do I tell Wine to use Xquartz, and should I install Xquartz via something like Macports?
If so, how should I "invoke" Xquartz after I install it?
Thanks for your patience.

jjmckenzie · Post by **jjmckenzie** » Wed Aug 10, 2011 11:29 pm

On 8/10/11 8:38 AM, penyuan wrote:

doh123 wrote:
penyuan wrote: Do you mean you changed your resolution in System Preferences->Display to 640x480, start X11, then start QuakeII?
you do not need to do this if you install the latest version of XQuartz and make sure Wine is using that. It will change automatically for you when the game calls the resolution. Apple's X11 on Lion supposedly will do this as well, but XQuartz is still all around better. Apple's X11 on Snow Leopard and older cannot. You really just want to run XQuartz if you are using Wine this way.
Please excuse my ignorance, but how do I tell Wine to use Xquartz, and should I install Xquartz via something like Macports?

You can do it that way or you can download a disk image file and install
it on Snow Leopord beside Apple's X11 or instead of on Leopard.

http://xquartz.macosforge.org

If so, how should I "invoke" Xquartz after I install it?

It will be the default X11 unless you override on Snow Leopard or
re-install X11 on Leopard.

James

penyuan · Post by **penyuan** » Thu Aug 11, 2011 12:21 pm

I have successfully installed xquartz. Thanks!

If I am on a Linux system, will the system's xorg work like this, too?

doh123 · Post by **doh123** » Thu Aug 11, 2011 12:45 pm

penyuan wrote:I have successfully installed xquartz. Thanks!

If I am on a Linux system, will the system's xorg work like this, too?

you'll have to config it to work right with what resolutions you want...

X11 on Mac OS X is different because the main windowing system is not X11, so X11 is a separate program having to run on top of the normal one. On Linux, X11 will be your normal windowing system thats running all the time. As long as its configured right for the right fullscreen resolutions, then it should work easily when the game tries to change it.

jorl17 · Post by **jorl17** » Thu Aug 11, 2011 12:50 pm

Also, if it doesn't "stretch" by default, you can always readn the manual on xrandr. I, for instance, have to run

Code: Select all

xrandr --output LVDS1 --set "scaling mode" "Full"

to get my screen to be filled up by applications.

Cheers,

Jorl17