Flycast - Widescreen Hacks vs. Cheats?

I was hoping I’d find this in the documentation, but it didn’t seem to have much information on the subject.

Essentially, I’m just trying to understand what is going on, and the difference, with turning on either Widescreen hacks and Widescreen cheats in the core options menu. Are they something I could/should just leave both on? Are there maybe certain games that I shouldn’t apply them with?

Basically stretch the images in 2D, I do not know if it will serve for something else.

As far as I can tell, the emulator widescreen hacks are hit and miss, while specific widescreen cheats were tested for a specific game, giving you better results overall, for instance, Gran Turismo 2 will display garbage in the left and right sides using the emulator hack. Using specific cheats you can not only make it look OK, but also run it in 60FPS, change the meter to KM/h, etc.

Note the HUD is streched here, but usually, even HUD elements are kept in their original aspect ratio if the cheat accounts for that. Personally, I’d rather use a cheat like this, with increased internal resolution, 60 FPS, L2 and R2 analog throttling/breaking.

So, basically, stick to specific cheats rather than relying on the emulator hacks. Unless the emulator devs actually adds these cheats to the emu core itself or provide those game specific cheats, like PCSX2 does.

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It’s about Flycast, Dreamcast. Without the trick, the 2D elements are not stretched and it works perfectly well.

I appreciate the full-bodied response, but I was referring specifically to the Core Options for Flycast, rather than the cheat menu on something like PCSX2.

Unless the core options is just doing this on it’s own in the backend or something? That’s what I mean. I don’t understand what flipping “Widescreen Cheats” to “on” is when compared to flipping “Widescreen Hacks” to “On” when they are right next to each other in Flycast’s options.

Got it, I’m shooting in the dark here, but maybe the “hack” option means it brute forces “squishing” the polygons, while maybe the cheat option integrates those specific game cheats I talked about in my previous post. But, really, only the devs can answer this specifically.

What I told you… Hack makes it change 4: 3 to widescreen.

Cheats. The Stretch the 2D elements to cover the entire screen.

And in some games modify the aspect ratio so that they look perfect.

Being more specific, the hack changes the radius aspect of the polygons of 4: 3 to wide screen. The Cheat modifies the game with a patch so that the elements look on wide screen.

Always active both. The hack alone does not show the 2D elements well. The cheat alone, I’ve never tried it.