> ....I thought this 'fishbowl' effect was to simulate a curved tube. I don't recall > seeing any games with bizarre pincushion. All the games I saw, that were functioning > half-way decent anyway, had the images filling the screen.
Yes.. to simulate a curved screen. On a curved screen, you can adjust things so that the image is corrected to appear perfectly squared on a round tube using pincushion.
However, most arcade monitors in the arcades were never adjusted like this. They factory shipped them without pincushion adjusted... so the image lit up the entire tube.
As such, when looking at a fully lit rounded tube, it appears to bow outwards on the edges.
The fishbowl effect may not be completely accurate in how this is simulated, but its at least a start, and makes me feel more like Im looking at a much more rounded monitor. The thing I least like about it is the hard aliased edge that it creates on the border.