Black bar across bottom of screen

[grandmaaaaa!]

Does anyone know if work is being done on a patch for removing the black bar on the bottom of the screen?
God damn I hate that thing.

I have hunted through the forums but was unable to find an answer.

[Covarr]

Does anyone know if work is being done on a patch for removing the black bar on the bottom of the screen?
God damn I hate that thing.

I have hunted through the forums but was unable to find an answer.

I think Aali's driver can remove it during battles, but that's about it. Someone might do something about it someday, but so far no such thing has happened.

[Kudistos Megistos]

I too would like to see the end of it.

Frankly, it would be much better to get rid of it in the field screen than to get rid of it in battle. Removing the black border entirely during battle leaves the menu boxes floating in midair, which looks weird (we'd be better of moving the boxes lower down and having a very small black bar).

There's no reason for the black bars in the field: they just waste screen estate.

On a widescreen monitor (pretty much the only kind you can buy nowadays, for some reason) the game is almost windowboxed.

EDIT:

Also, what are you doing here, grandma? I thought you were dead?

[Aali]

Removing that black bar is very easy, the problem is that there's not always something behind it. In many field screens the scene simply ends halfway down that black bar. In some scenes you are still able to walk in this area and even worse, in some scenes where you are supposed to be hidden at the bottom of the screen you can pop up "under" the scene by walking down in the black bar area.

[Covarr]

Is it possible to crop and zoom in? For people with widescreen monitors in particular, that would be a good solution. Although, I suppose it might have negative effects on the menu, since they threw that "Quit" option at the bottom.

[Aali]

Possible but the result would not be great. You would have to pretty much change the resolution for the whole game to match. This in turn would also lead to multiples of 640x480 no longer being the optimal resolution. Instead you would have something that doesn't fit any common native resolution.

[Timber]

Possible but the result would not be great. You would have to pretty much change the resolution for the whole game to match. This in turn would also lead to multiples of 640x480 no longer being the optimal resolution. Instead you would have something that doesn't fit any common native resolution.

I don't really see why that is so bad? Or am I missing something?

Yeah it would be a strange resolution, but who cares?
I would much rather the game use more of my widescreen.

[Covarr]

Well, not optimal, but for example, I already use 1680x1050. FF7 is rendering at the nearest "good" multiple, and then scaling to fit, correct? When it's doing that anyway, wouldn't this be no different?

I can understand not doing this as the default, for obvious reasons, but it'd make a kickass option.

[Aali]

Exactly, its not good enough of a solution to become the default setting and its a HUGE amount of work.

[DLPB_]

and the gains are not exactly breathtaking.  I can do without it 

[Timber]

Hmm I still don't really understand what's so bad about this solution (other than it being a lot of work to implement correctly).
Is there a better solution?
And wouldn't the only reason to not make it the default option is for people not using a widescreen monitor/resolution?

[Beavii]

There is a 'kind of' quick fix for this

If you open the config file for Ali's driver, set the resolution to the maximum for your screen, but add on 6% to your height. This will remove the black bar on the field and battle, (leaves a few black pixels for the battle menu's) but cuts off part of the menu and victory screens

If any one then wanted to remap the menu  and victory screen to allow for this then the problem would be gone for good. Only a suggestion. perhaps i could experiment

I have never done this trick on 4:3 so you may have to experiment a little. Also, i done this on full screen.

[DLPB_]

If you start adding parts to the height you are ruining the resolution and Aspect Ratio.

[Beavii]

If you start adding parts to the height you are ruining the resolution and Aspect Ratio.

Technically all widescreen formats do, basically all this does is tell the driver to draw most of the black bar off screen, i believe Ali's driver rescales everything else,
I've had mine set up this way for quite some time and never experienced any problems, like i said. it's only a quick fix. Everyone has different setting's and mods
it's only a suggestion.

Beside adding height to a 16:9 format brings it closer to the aspect ratio that the game was originaly designed in. Sorry this sounds like a moan
i respect your comment just thought i'd explain my idea a bit more as i never declared that this was in widescreen, Thanks for the feedback

Also an unexpected side of this that i would like someone else to test, when i done this it removed the lag from the custom FMVs i have installed.