dreamcast VGA on LCD

[blackevilweredragon]

My father bought me a Dreamcast VGA box for me, and it should arrive soon..

I had this one question, will this work with a light gun if I get one?  I know it works on VGA CRT monitors, but what about LCDs?

[viletim!]

A light gun won't work on anything but a CRT.

[kendrick]

This is true in general, and for the Dreamcast specifically. There are a couple of third-party products that claim to supprt LCD displays, but these are compatible with Xbox and PS2 only as far as I can tell. E-real and Topgun are the two things you want to do a Google search for, but neither of them have a Dreamcast interface as far as I know. But Tim is right, for light gun games on the Dreamcast you'll definitely need to use a CRT.

-KKC, making mischief with laptop hard drives...

[blackevilweredragon]

ok, thanks...

how about this though, just thought of this..  where on the dreamcast, is the best spot for me to hit AUTO on my LCD?  I ask this because if I don't hit that button, the picture will be off centered, and will have pixels that are very blury..  but my LCD only really uses AUTO well if it has some kind of pattern or very VERY sharp pixels...  Anyone know of a spot on the dreamcast to do this?

[ido8bit]

The Dreamcast outputs 640x480 video.  On an LCD display anything that is not in the displays native resolution (and only old/small LCD displays are 640x480) has to be scaled up to be displayed at full screen.  The scaling is what makes the picture look blurry.  

Some LCDs handle scaling better than others.  Some LCDs have on option to turn off scaling.  This will give you a sharp image, but it will not be full screen.  

[blackevilweredragon]

The Dreamcast outputs 640x480 video.  On an LCD display anything that is not in the displays native resolution (and only old/small LCD displays are 640x480) has to be scaled up to be displayed at full screen.  The scaling is what makes the picture look blurry.  

Some LCDs handle scaling better than others.  Some LCDs have on option to turn off scaling.  This will give you a sharp image, but it will not be full screen.

I understand scaling, but any LCD with VGA needs to calibrate it's sync with the signal...

For example, if I do not hit auto, my laptop appears fuzzy, litterally (even with it's scaler shut off)...  A thin vertical line appears to fuzz between two pixels, as if the LCD can't determine it's ACTUAL spot..  Now if I hit AUTO with my laptop on a screen like Windows Explorer with a lot of sharp text, it will be able to map each pixel, and fix how it syncs to the signal, and every pixel is sharp as possible...

But on my dreamcast, which being a game console, it has a hard time doing this, and the only best way i found, was to boot up Linux, and start the X server, which has sharp lines, but that's time consuming...  (im in florida, and have so many power outages, my LCD can forget how to sync right)...

This is all based when my LCDs scaler is shut off...

[kendrick]

So you're asking what a good calibration point would be for a Dreamcast? That's a toughie, because the scaling algorithm generally has to take color into account, and the boot-up screen is black and white with the little bouncing red ball. The main menu before running a game has some blue and red in it, but the images are big and blocky.

The original Sonic Adventure made the best use of the VGA output, in my opinion. Lots of subtle textures and diagonal lines that were in sharp relief when viewed on a VGA screen, but stuff that didn't detract from gameplay if it was missed on a normal NTSC screen. But you'd have to boot the one game, calibrate the screen, and then insert the game you actually wanted to play. And that can't be any less time-consuming than the other method.

-KKC, who goes shopping for someone's birthday and always ends up spending ten times as much on stuff for himself.

[blackevilweredragon]

So you're asking what a good calibration point would be for a Dreamcast? That's a toughie, because the scaling algorithm generally has to take color into account, and the boot-up screen is black and white with the little bouncing red ball. The main menu before running a game has some blue and red in it, but the images are big and blocky.

The original Sonic Adventure made the best use of the VGA output, in my opinion. Lots of subtle textures and diagonal lines that were in sharp relief when viewed on a VGA screen, but stuff that didn't detract from gameplay if it was missed on a normal NTSC screen. But you'd have to boot the one game, calibrate the screen, and then insert the game you actually wanted to play. And that can't be any less time-consuming than the other method.

-KKC, who goes shopping for someone's birthday and always ends up spending ten times as much on stuff for himself.

That may work better than my Linux method..  My Linux method only has black, white, and teal colors...  And booting linux on my dreamcast, along with getting into X, is time consuming, because it takes like 5 minutes...