FF7: resolution vs battle music vs battle swirl! ^^;

[justsomeguy]

Okay, I've pretty much solved my previous problem with the speed of the battle music. Unfortunately, it was not without tradeoffs in the graphics department. I'm using ePSXe 1.52 with PEOpS Soft Driver 1.16 and Eternal SPU 1.41. My computer's a P4-2GHz with 512MB Ram.
Right now, I have 3 usable configs, none satisfactory:

1) Everything absolutely perfect, except battle music slow!
This was my previous problem. I've solved it using one of the following two ways...

2) Everything absolutely perfect, except screen is tiny!
I simply have stretching set to 1:1, with frame skipping off. In battle, the music moves along at the correct speed. The problem is, now the view is so small that I have to squint to see what's going on! I'm reluctant to change my monitor resolution, so is there anyway to have the graphics fill up the entire window without leading back to situation 1, which arises when I use "Stretch to full window size" or "Scale to window size, keep aspect ratio?"
Plugin: P.E.Op.S. Soft Driver 1.1.16
Author: Pete Bernert and the P.E.Op.S. team
Resolution/Color:
- 800x600 Window mode
Stretch mode: 1
Dither mode: 0
Framerate:
- FPS limit: on
- Frame skipping: off
- FPS limit: Auto
Misc:
- Scanlines: disabled
- Game fixes: on [0000000d]


3) Everything absolutely perfect, except no battle swirl!
An alternative way to solve situation 1 is to have stretching set at either "Stretch to full window size" or "Scale to window size, keep aspect ratio," with "Use frame skipping" on. Now I don't have to put my face to the monitor to see what's happening. Problem is, now the battle swirl is gone, and there is a slight graphic glitch when selecting targets in battle.
Plugin: P.E.Op.S. Soft Driver 1.1.16
Author: Pete Bernert and the P.E.Op.S. team
Resolution/Color:
- 800x600 Window mode
Stretch mode: 0
Dither mode: 0
Framerate:
- FPS limit: on
- Frame skipping: on
- FPS limit: Auto
Misc:
- Scanlines: disabled
- Game fixes: on [0000000d]

So my question is, is it possible to use frame skipping without losing the battle swirl? Or alternatively, is there any way to use 1:1 stretching mode without having the graphics ridiculously small? I would like to stick with using the Soft GPU rather than the D3D or OGL ones.

[Neronix]

AFAIK, the battle swirl is a framebuffer effect. AFAIK, framebuffer effects are not supported under the soft plugin. Try using the D3D or OGL plugins.

[justsomeguy]

Actually, I do have the battle swirl, but only if I turn off frame skipping. And several months ago, I was able to have the battle swirl with the soft plugin. Unfortuanately, I lost those settings when I adjusted them to play some other games, and I'm unable to return to those.

[Shadow Lady]

why do u want to use the peops soft gpu?

I mean, Pete's D3D or Pete's OGL are better if u want speed also the peops soft gpu doesnt do any good while using the frame skip

anyway... u could activate "special game fixes" and select the "use old frame skipping" and see if the framebuffer goes well

[Kuronosu]

I recommend using Pete's OpenGL 1.75 with ePSXe version 1.6 and the same sound plugin you have there with that decent kind of machine. Since I don't know your video card specs, I am just assuming a decent one. You can give my settings a shot if you want and if you don't like the filtering, just take it off. One last thing, you may need to adjust the FPS limit so that when you access the menu, the sound doesn't slow down really fast.


ePSXe 1.6
800x600 resolution

Sound Plugin: Eternal SPU 1.41
DirectSound, Buffer size: 50
SPUasync, Async mode: Smooth
Update before accessing register is checked

Plugin: Pete's OpenGL Driver 1.1.75
Author: Pete Bernert
Card vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
GFX card: GeForce4 448 Go/AGP/SSE2

Resolution/Color:
- 800x600 Fullscreen - NO desktop changing [32 Bit]
- Keep psx aspect ratio: off

Textures:
- R4G4B4A4
- Filtering: 2
- Hi-Res textures: 0
- VRam size: 64 MBytes

Framerate:
- FPS limitation: on
- Frame skipping: off
- FPS limit: 65

Compatibility:
- Offscreen drawing: 3
- Framebuffer texture: 0
- Framebuffer access: 4
- Alpha multipass: on
- Mask bit: on
- Advanced blending: on

Misc:
- Scanlines: off
- Line mode: off
- Unfiltered FB: off
- 15 bit FB: off
- Dithering: off
- Screen smoothing: off
- Screen cushion: off
- Game fixes: on [00000001]