Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

It seems that games in the Virtual Console lack some sort of proper overscan. It changes mostly per game. I was checking if Dolphin had any option to set a custom overscan, which could match individual Virtual Console games. Some games appear correctly on the Virtual Console like Majora's Mask, through others like Ocarina of Time lack proper values.

As a result you end up with black bars. And no, the Crop option in the Advanced Tab for Graphics doesn't work (or won't properly recognize to adjust it). The game below has a Widescreen Gecko Code enable so it results in a 16:9 display, yet still with black bars.

Something like GlideN64 would be practical I suppose, which could be adjusted on a per game basis.

Would an set custom value overscan option for Dolphin be practical? Or does it already exist and I just failed to notice it?

Should I post a Feature Request of it on the bugtracker?

I've always wanted a "zoom" function. For VC, but also for games like Beyond Good and Evil, it would allow us to get rid of *any* black bars, no matter how big. It would need to be GameINI only, as it is very niche and I don't think we should expose that to users in the UI, but it would be a nice option. Especially for Beyond Good and Evil.

I am perfectly fine having it INI only.

I suppose some Overscan INI options for specific games could by automatically be provided for Dolphin. It's mostly for the VC yeah.

The overscan is really reaaaallly lacking for Beyond Good & Evil. That would literally be a world difference. Personally, I find Dolphin the superior emulator than let's say Project64. So running your N64 games on Dolphin (through the VC obviously) tends to result within a better emulation than Project64 might result in to. And that's taken in account Nintendo's own sloppy VC emulator and therefore increased system requirements (since ya know, emulation within emulation, emulation-ception). A few things still prevent Dolphin's own VC to completely destroy any N64 emulator out there:

- Custom Overscan (as discussed here)
- AR / Gecko Codes sorting, expandable lists and modifiers (aka, change one code between a few preset values)
- Fixing texture dumping and custom texture loading for VC games (mostly N64 VC and even the N64 GC disc games such as Ocarina of Time, Super Smash Bros., Majora's Mask, Mario Kart 64, etc).

I suppose we gotta love with it that Nintendo's own VC emulator is way too sloppy. Sadly a lot of games won't work. Even through custom injections.

Having overscan support is just the first step towards superior N64 emulation on Dolphin .

I don't know how hard it is to code a overscan option for it, but it wouldn't be that hard right? It's basically providing a zoom-in option for all four sides individually.

It would be best not to provide it for each individual side, since that will mess with the aspect ratio. That's another matter. IMO, just letting users zoom in until the black bars are gone on the top and bottom is ideal, so only one zoom value is really needed.

If users then want to stretch the image to widescreen, they can do that with force 16:9 or stretch to window size.