Is there anyway to “upscale” old 640-480 games?
Right now you either get a tiny box you can’t see or a pixelated mess.
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You could reset your monitor to 640x480 while you play the game
It’d probably depend on the game, but see if there’s any source ports for the games in question. DSDA Doom, for example, adds modern wide-screen support to classic Doom and has heaps of fantastic options for different compatibility levels for different custom map sets. GZDoom is also an option if you want gameplay mods (shame it’s so inefficient lol).
You can also see if there’s any wide-screen patches for your games on the PC gaming wiki.
I had never heard of this! Thank you
Any time, SharkFucker420!
I remember back in the day linking 3 computers together, each running a copy of Doom, to get a pseudo VR type setup where the two computers on the sides showed a left and right view of your perspective.
Was a bitch to setup back in the CRT days, and we only did it once, but it was pretty cool. I’m sure a modern computer could handle that on its own now, but I have no idea how you’d set that up software wise.
I have used this app when using emulators and it seems to work well https://store.steampowered.com/app/993090/Lossless_Scaling/
Those older games look better on OLED or CRT screens if you have any.
you’ll need to research the various games to see if someone made a HD mod pack for them.
Check that when the game is in fullscreen it sets the monitor resolution correctly. Sometimes it’ll stretch the game in software and look goofy.
If you are on Linux you can use gamescope. It has FSR 1 built-in.
Personally I would take the pixelated mess over any upscaling any day. It’a either blurry or just plain wrong.
Gonna need more information here
Are you playing PC native games? Run them through dosbox to get access to its scaler and settings (you can run windows 95 in dosbox if needed)
Are you running emulated games? Jump into the video settings and adjust the scaling configuration
Are you running console games? Gonna want to get an OSSC or retrotink
Edit: just seen the post title says PC, dosbox is your solution then
If you’re using Windows, DXWnd has some options for improving the graphics in games. It may not work for every game but it’s probably worth checking out.
It’s a matter of time before we can use real-time AI upscalers. Nvidia (et al) have been working on this quite a bit.
In the mean time, the two options you mentioned are it.
I thought their 40 series already did?
I don’t just mean DLSS or frame generation as it exists today… I mean completely re-interpreting what is rendered before it’s displayed with complete temporal and deterministic consistency. Given that we’ve seen some demos of the concept in action, and that was over a year ago, I really don’t think it’s far off, either.
Imagine booting up classic Monkey Island, and Nvidia’s AI reinterpreted makes it look like a high-end modern animated TV show. That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about.
BorderlessGaming lets you force a window to scale to a specified size.
Alpha Centauri from Fireaxis games has some downloads available to make it run on a 4k setup.
You can always just turn your screen resolution down.
