What does the AR option in the Configuration window actually affect?

[karasuhebi]

Under Dolphin Configuration, in the Wii tab, there's an option for setting your Aspect Ratio. What does this actually do? Does it force all games to run at that AR? Or is it equivalent to setting your Wii to a certain AR? Because as of right now my games are all running at 4:3 because that's what I set it to but MKWii in particular is looking pretty squished. Should I switch it over to 16:9 seeing as how my monitors are 16:9?

[pauldacheez]

It's equivalent to setting your Wii to run at a certain AR, thus games that have 16:9 support run at 16:9 while 4:3-only Wii games (e.g. all Virtual Console games, Trauma Center: Second Opinion, I dunno what else) will just be stretched (unless Dolphin actually somehow has code that avoids this, which is unlikely since it's entirely up to the game to decide how to obey the 16:9 flag). GameCube games will still run at 4:3 if you have the Aspect Ratio in Graphics > General set to Auto. If you have any GameCube games that support 16:9 or any Wii games that don't, toss a flag into the game's .ini: https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-unofficial-howto-using-gameini-settings-per-game

[karasuhebi]

Thank you very much for the reply, very informative! I'm assuming most Wii games support 16:9?

[pauldacheez]

Most of them do, yeah – I could think of only one exception + VC games off the top of my head, and I have dozens of games. Some recent ones (e.g. Zelda: Skyward Sword) actually only support 16:9 and add black bars to the top and bottom of the screen on 4:3.

[karasuhebi]

What about the Aspect Ratio option under the Graphics Configuration window that you mentioned? What does that do? Should I leave it set to 'auto'?

[pauldacheez]

That one affects all games, and, yeah, leave it on Auto unless you feel like using the widescreen hack (which is kinda awful, but feel free to experiment). I dunno what else there is to say about it, it's pretty straightforward.