I do think it's better. Even though the absolute quality may suck when directly compared to the crispy pixels of an unfiltered image, the games were designed to go through that "modulated signal which mixes everything together into a mush" and take advantage of the characteristics of that signal. Effects like transparency, dithering and other kinds of color mixing only work because of the way the pixels are encoded for NTSC, and look silly when displayed otherwise. I only play using NTSC filters when they are available.
Many Mega Drive games are actually designed with that in mind. Did you think those vertical color lines in the Final Zone pistons are supposed to be visible? They make great gradients with the NTSC filter.
This. For the exact same reason, you can also render at 1280x960 or 1600x1200 - there's no reason to use such a low resolution as 320x240 for fullscreen, especially with the amount of difficulty required to do that resolution on a modern graphics card.
Sometimes, there's NOTHING to be done about overheating. It's just a problem due to bad design. Remember the Prescott-based laptops? Remember how they made lap-shields because people were BURNING THEIR LAPS because of such ridiculous designs? :D
I've had a few problems with CPU maxing and shutdown, but it's because I'm a jackass that runs it full screen on my HDTV. :v: Keep it well-ventilated and it shouldn't be an issue.
I like to use HQ4X or whatever its called due to the sexy pixel smoothing going on. I do have all of the other filters including NTSC though so I can change to another one if I get bored with HQ4X. I don't reccomend using it if you have CPU issues though as the game might slow down, especially if you are trying to record an AVI with Fusion's codec. Its best to turn it off for that.
Actually, video recording is handled in such a way that slowdowns don't occur. See audio dumping in most emus, same concept.
Well it doesn't effect the final video at all. It plays at normal speed. I'm just saying that with HQ4X on lower CPU computers, the emulator slows down while recording the AVIs. Trust me, it happened on my old Windows XP and I tested it to make sure that was the problem and it was.
Ah, I see what you mean. Only problems I've had with recording is that cracks and pops from PCM (DAC and Mega CD) and CD-DA can occur.
Actually, I just found out a (possible) solution recently. It might not work for you, but it did for me: In your graphics card/display properties, look for an option that determines how fullscreen is shown. Set it so that it stretches what's shown in fullscreen. Things might be stretched, but at least you won't have the black bars anymore. EDIT: My old laptop DID overheat while playing Fusion, but then again, it overheated if I even looked at it funny. I'd always scream in frustration when my laptop overheated for the billionth time that day.
That's... not a bug, that's how it should behave :\ If a game was designed with a 4:3 resolution in mind (e.g. 320x240 or *sigh* 640x480), it is supposed to have black bars at the sides in order to look correct on a 16:9 screen... But yes, as Chris said, most video card drivers unfortunately give you the option to change this behaviour and set it to stretch in all the horrible ways you want. For example, my laptop has an nVidia video card, and this setting is in the nVidia control panel. And of course I set it to have black bars when in 4:3 mode
Disable vsync and enable "Sleep While Waiting" (if using Fusion) or "Power Saving Mode" (if using Regen).
Most of the issues involving overheating-related powerdowns involve poor ventilation when running any CPU-intensive application (I have this problem on occasion when playing Team Fortess 2 for long periods. First thing to do is to wait a few minutes to let it cool. Second, get four rubber feet (1/2 in.³ should be more than sufficient) and stick to the bottom of the offending notebook (use an adhesive that is easy to clean up and can withstand temperatures in excess of 170°F (about 76.67°C). Be sure to keep clear of any vents and such.
