VICE full-screen video problems in Windows

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ral-clan
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VICE full-screen video problems in Windows

Post by ral-clan »

Hi,

I've found that with the new WinVICE 2.2 on running under Windows XP, there is a small video problem with the full-screen mode. I have experienced this with both VIC-20 and C64 emulation.

What happens is that parts of the Windows taskbar at the bottom of the the screen flicker through or even stay at the bottom of the emulated Commodore machine screen.

This is usually the grey rectangle that says WINVICE, but the time at the lower right and some of the startup program icons show through too.

Again, this only ever happens when you are using full-screen mode (ALT-D) in WinVICE.

I have experienced this on two seperate computers - my laptop and my desktop.
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robinsonmason
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Post by robinsonmason »

I just tried 2.2 x64 and don't see this problem in Vista x64, but have you tried playing with the Settings, Video Settings in VICE, checking the optional boxes and changing resolution?

With 2.1 the default full VIC-20 screen for me was too large with video settings defaulting at 640x480, with Realms of Quest intro screen going off into the margins so as to be unreadable. Now 2.2 is fine and even has a sort of CRT fuzzy genuine look wherever that came from.
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ral-clan
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Post by ral-clan »

I agree that overall the quality of the video and corrected ratio makes v2.2 the clear choice.

I have tried playing with the video options without improvement.

I wonder if it has something to do with the graphics adaptor on my motherboard - some quirk - or perhaps a DirectX thing?

Well, a work-around would be to simply hide the windows taskbar before starting VICE.
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robinsonmason
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Post by robinsonmason »

ral-clan wrote: Well, a work-around would be to simply hide the windows taskbar before starting VICE.
True, or the auto-hide might be just as good and you wouldn't need to hide it each time you kick off VICE. Personally I like to run in Double Size mode - that way I can read the Realms of Quest manual or multitask in Windows, though I would probably do fullscreen if on a laptop.
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Pedro Lambrini
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Post by Pedro Lambrini »

I presume the problem to be a, as you said, a quirk but not necessarily with the graphics adapter on your mobo but more likely with Windoze itself. While I don't have this particular issue with Vice I do have the same thing happening when I use the VLC media player. The strange thing is it never used to happen. I also occasionally get it when I play Skulltag (Doom port) in fullscreen mode. I'm running XP. :)

What's the native resolution of your computer and what resolution do you run Vice in?
"...That of the Eastern tribe being like a multitude of colours as if a rainbow had settled upon its brow..." Daniels 1:3
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ral-clan
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Post by ral-clan »

Pedro Lambrini wrote:I presume the problem to be a, as you said, a quirk but not necessarily with the graphics adapter on your mobo but more likely with Windoze itself. While I don't have this particular issue with Vice I do have the same thing happening when I use the VLC media player. The strange thing is it never used to happen. I also occasionally get it when I play Skulltag (Doom port) in fullscreen mode. I'm running XP. :)

What's the native resolution of your computer and what resolution do you run Vice in?
I run my computer in 1024 x 780.

I think I'm running VICE in either 640 x 480 or 800 x 600. The reason for this is that I actually enjoy seeing the "scanlines". It makes the emulation more realistic because scanlines were always visible on the old Commodore monitors. Running the emulation at 1024 x 768 "smooths" things out too much. For some reason the "visible scanlines" feature no longer works in VICE 2.2 (unless you disable the auto-scaling/anti-aliasing in the VICE config file which then screws up the screen ration improvements in VICE 2.2).

I should try it in 1025x768 and see if that helps.

The reason I like fullscreen mode is that it really feels like a more accurate experience.
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