MiSTer FPGA Forum

Screen rotation could be a lot more user-friendly. With so many games on MiSTer that can be displayed vertically, I've been thinking a lot about better ways that cores/OSD can handle rotating the user's display. Currently, game rotation is handled purely by the core. The user can set the OSD to be displayed normally, or rotated 90 degrees either direction (no 180° flip), and I'm not aware of any cores which can be rotated automatically based on that setting. I suppose my main question is this: Are cores capable of accessing this .ini setting or something like it? If so, ALTs could be used for rotation and cores could be built to be loaded according this setting, right?

Let's say a game has an Orientation (Vert, Horz) and a Flip Screen setting (Off, On). Could a future update to that core theoretically convert those core settings into one setting with choices (0°, 90°, 180°, -90°, and Match OSD Rotation) with the 5th option to allow users to load into a game with the screen already oriented in the correct direction? Or instead of a .ini setting, could 4-way OSD rotation be tied to a menu option that can by cycled through with L and R, and also be passed on for game rotation to be handled by the core thereafter?

Forgive me if something like this is already possible somehow. I would be delighted to find that out. I just want vertical games to know whether my screen is already rotated or not so that I don't have to change or check those settings with each new core I launch.

Sounds like a good idea (Match OSD), but I am thinking that each core would have to implement that option within the core. Another thing is, the OSD should match the core, not the other way around. That way when you rotate your physical screen or rotate it in the core menu, the OSD is always in the same orientation as the core.

Yeah I think having the OSD understand the game settings would be nice, too. Ideally, it would be both the game rotation and OSD rotation controlled by the same setting but I'm thinking it would probably be easier for the developers for cores to read OSD rotation. If OSD rotation could be read by the core, and then the core developers could work that feature into their cores in a way that makes sense for something a bit more specific. I think OSD rotation would fit nicely into the Misc. Options menu (with the Alts and such) where it could be rotated by the user from within the core. Hopefully, it could be something that wouldn't require a reboot.