schadenfreude wrote:
Dochartaigh wrote:
But for a lot of us we're playing these on a 15khz TV or PVM, so I'm assuming GroovyMame changes that khz to match the monitor?
I'm not sure what you mean here.
You initially posted about "R-Type with its 384x256 resolution at ~55Hz". 15khz sets are 60hz, right? (NTSC at least...this kind of stuff I'm nowhere near 100% on admittedly), so that game isn't going to run at exactly 55Hz through a Raspberry Pi to my knowledge – and I don't know if GroovyMame will do that either, or if you have the GroovyMame drivers setup so it knows the monitor is a 15khz/60hz and it'll only stick to resolutions/timings/etc. which it
knows that monitor can display (which I know PVM's can do NTSC 60 and PAL 50, but don't know if it'll do 55hz for example).
schadenfreude wrote:
Dochartaigh wrote:
Here's some more info I posted about the pixel clock and how much work it is to setup something like the Pi2SCART or RetroTink (I HIGHLY suggest the RetroTink because of Mike's excellent customer support).
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=58994
I read through that thread before making my post, and it only made me more concerned about the feasibility of using an RPi.

For example, you said:
Dochartaigh wrote:
I used
this article as my base (I like the pixel perfect setting - especially for arcade) and I can switch back and forth from my consoles to the Pi 3, on the same game on the same level, and it's like ~90% identical
...but when I checked that article, I saw that the "pixel perfect" setting outputs the video without forcing it into a 4:3 ratio, meaning games with, say, a 256x224 resolution will be pillarboxed. That's not what I want.
That was actually a bad post to link to - that was before I got the wonderful 1600px tweak fully working (which I'm extremely happy with now).
For pillarboxing, I can't think of a single game (talking about MAME here - that's all I really play on my Pi anymore) which is pillarboxed on the left and right. The only problem I currently have with my RetroPie setup is the image getting cut off by approximately 8 pixels on the top and 8 pixels on the bottom (which I believe is only because of how my monitor's are adjusted) - I'll get more into this below.
schadenfreude wrote:
That sounds like a lot of work to get an underwhelming result. What's it like setting up all the different resolutions and refresh rates before booting up an arcade title?
There is no setting up all the different resolutions before booting up an individual game. The Pi's resolution is in the /boot/config.txt file, and that is set in stone. Only way to change it is to manually edit that boot file, then reboot the entire system. This is the BIGGEST drawback of the Pi in my opinion - it can't adjust that on the fly whereas I'm pretty positive GroovyMame (with the graphic card being able to adjust the pixel clock and all these settings/timings/etc on the fly) CAN adjust that for every single game. That's why they say GroovyMame adjusts each and every game to the correct (pixel perfect?) resolution for every game.
Basically, what I’m doing on my Pi is setting it to 320x240, using those pixel perfect settings so there’s little to zero artifacts and such. When that’s done I basically have two vertical resolutions to deal with: 224 and 240 (scaling horizontally seems to be fine without introducing artifacts so that's nothing to worry about in my experience). Since I can’t adjust the Pi’s settings on the fly (without rebooting before playing every single game) I choose to have 224 fill the screen, and 240 cut off the top 8 pixels on the top and bottom. No other way to do it (besides go the opposite and have 240 fill the screen top-to-bottom, then have 224 have black bars on the top and bottom which isn’t acceptable to me). The latter also isn’t acceptable to me since my monitor’s H/V Size/Centering/Phase (through the service menu) is setup for the video game consoles I most commonly play which is NES and SNES, so I didn’t want to have to go into those service menu settings every time I switch from my consoles to the Pi, so that was the best course of action to me.
Right now I can switch from any one of my 6 consoles (NES, SNES, Genesis, PS1, PS2, Xbox) where the image on my monitors is decently centered with just a little bit of overscan on most/all of the systems (well, the best it can be with all those varied resolutions), and immediately switch to the Raspberry Pi 3 running RetroPie. 224 is pretty perfect. 240 is cut off a little bit, with the option to shift the image up or down quickly (to not cut off a life meter or whatnot) - and you only tweak that once and save the setting and it'll be like that the next time you play it. (hope the above makes sense...this hurts my head and I literally tried it SO many different ways that once I finally got it running, I left it like that months ago and haven't touched it - and hope I've explained it how I actually have my system setup like now).