How to fix blurry pixel edges in a 640x400 game?

[speak]

I am trying to test my 640x400 game and the edges of the pixels look blurred at full screen rather than being crisp and clear.  I've had this problem before at 320x200, I assume because, as I have read in some other topics, some graphics cards don't support that resolution so well anymore, and have solved the problem with the 2x nearest neighbor filter.  If boosting the resolution of a 320x200 game to 640x400 fixed the issue, I don't know why a naturally 640x400 resolution doesn't work.  Putting 2x nearest neighbor on with this game produces an error that says that graphics mode is not supported.  What am I screwing up here, and how do I fix it so my art looks clear in fullscreen?

[Gilbert]

Does this happen in fullscreen or windowed?

What kind of monitor are you using? LCD panel or CRT?

Also, what's the resolution of your desktop? (For LCD panel users, this is usually the native resolution of the panel.)


If it's in fullscreen and you are using a LCD panel then this kind of blurriness is mostly unavoidable, unless (if possible with your driver/card/monitor settings) you're not stretching the image to whatever maximum resolution the panel supports, but to some exact multiples of the x and y dimensions of the original image, with black borders around the image. (For those ignorant people who insist on saying LCDs are better than CRTs in every aspect, well, this is largely incorrect.)

Also, to use the 2x filter for a 640 x 400 game means that the monitor has to be able to display at least at a resolution of 1280 x 800. If the monitor/driver doesn't support it you cannot use this filter.

[Khris]

Wait, you ran a 320x200 with the x2 filter and it looked fine, but running a 640x400 game without a filter looks all blurred?
Then there has to be some difference in the configuration. Did you try letterbox mode? This will stretch the aspect ratio to 4:3 (the displayed resolution in winsetup should change to 640x480).

(Also, I hope you didn't switch to 640 but are still using graphics intended for 320?)

[speak]

It's an LCD, the native resoltion is 1680x1050.  I'm running windows xp with Boot Camp off of a 2008 iMac.  So I guess with an emulator some wonky-ness is somewhat expected...

I ran that 320x200 game again to compare the bluriness, and after looking at it again I think they are actually equally fuzzy looking... It just looked sharper because the pixels were so much bigger (oops).  Both the 320x200 and the 640x400 display just fine in a window, but the pixels are pretty unreadible in fullscreen.  And yeah, the graphics for 320x200 are drawn in 320x200, the 640x400 are drawn in 640x400.

It's sounding like this might just be an issue with how my LCD displays things.  I have played with the letterboxing a little to no effect so far... any suggestions of configurations to try or ideas of how to get this to work, or do you think it's an unavoidable side effect of the hardware I've got?

[Khris]

You could run a 320 game using the x4 filter and a 640 game using the x2 filter. Windowed, of course, which will display both of them at 1280x800. That should read fine on your resolution.

At least until the engine allows fancy things like centering the screen with black borders, something that might actually be in the works already behind the scenes.