0.81.0-RC - DOSBox Staging

DOSBox is a free and open-source, high-level 286 and 386 emulator written in C++.

Hey DOS enthusiasts! We are proud to present DOSBox Staging 0.81.0 to you, a rather substantial release containing a large number of exciting new features and improvements!

For the first time in history, DOSBox comes with built-in authentic CRT monitor emulation that just works out-of-the-box without any manual configuration required. The VGA code has been overhauled, shortcuts and simplifications have been removed, and now we’re defaulting to accurate per-scanline emulation and double scanning in all VGA, SVGA, and VESA modes. Integer scaling options have been added, it’s now possible to stretch the image to fullscreen, force any arbitrary aspect ratio, or even emulate the horizontal and vertical stretch controls of CRT monitors in real-time. Screenshots have been made aspect ratio correct by default, and image capturing has become multi-threaded, so it no longer causes audio hiccups and micro-pauses. Video capturing has been made about three times more performant. Oh, almost forgot: we’ve also added 3dfx Voodoo 1 support for the fans of those late 90s 3D DOS games! 😎 🤘

Well, that’s just the video side of things. We’ve added support for the ultra-rare IBM Music Feature Card, dealing with Roland MT-32 ROMs has become much easier, plus we’ve made numerous MIDI-related improvements as well. Not to mention all the mouse and joystick enhancements and fixes, the addition of a few missing DOS commands, improved filesystem integration, fixing some long-standing annoying shortcomings of the FPU emulation in non-x86 builds, taking localisation support to the next level, and the list just goes on and on