Got a question for emulation pros and there's no relevant/general thread. I was messing around with Dolphin and PCSX2 in windowed mode and since I set it to be a specific size, 1980x960 which as per google is a 4:3 resolution, I saw that when letting the automatic/4:3 scaling do its business different games presented different black borders (which weren't part of the game rendering since I could resize the window to eliminate them rather than have the whole image scale again to include them). What gives? Should I change them to stretching to fill the window so that they maintain 4:3 even if the pixel ratio is then going to be anamorphic? Or should I let it do its thing and work off whatever the native resolution ratio is with black bars? I would assume since GC/PS2 (and largely Wii) were made with CRT SD/ED TVs in mind the games would expect to be stretched to fit a 4:3 display like this 1280x960 window, but maybe not? What's the correct display of the visuals? Examples of a GC and Wii game below showing they have different size borders at that. Native resolution, no enhancements, 1280x960 window, stretch to fit vs 4:3/auto (same result).
The matter is the same in fullscreen, I just never noticed since on a widescreen monitor there always are black bars (unless in 16/9 games/systems). It's actually similar for older systems now that I went back checking for this in RetroArch. Except Dreamcast which seems to render nicely at 4:3 in pretty much every game, gg SEGA. I understand resolution wasn't as important so anamorphic could be a non issue for developers back in the day, but surely they would all make sure the game rendered in the proper proportions in the average 4:3 TV, no? But then why would the emulators default to the wrong aspect ratio with the black bars even when set to force 4:3 as above? Surely it's not a mistake nobody caught all this time with the games being anamorphic but the emulator catching their rendering resolution and thinking that's the correct ratio? Anyway, hoping for a catch all solution or at least a setting that works for the vast majority of cases cos if I have to research and set this per game to account for different games going for real 4:3 and different games ignoring this and going for pixel perfect/integer scaling (meaning they displayed wrong on TVs back in the day) would suck.
As for the topic, I integer upscale from original native resolution for old systems, with CRT filters and such on top, for authenticity with slightly less crude pixels than just seeing them at 10x their original size on my monitor or playing in a tiny window. But for Dreamcast, PS2, GC & Wii it depends on my mood, I can go original resolution like this, with just a 2x upscale to make the window readable on my monitor, or I can upres to native, games look good either way at that point. Anything newer than those systems however, like PS3 or whatever, it's best to run at higher resolution if you can.