Remove FF7 black bar with Reshade!

[Axel Firestorm]

I was thinking about the old black bar issue in FF7 recently and had an idea for a different approach to the problem. Instead of trying to mod FF7 itself to get rid of the bar, couldn't one use Reshade to do it using a magnify filter? I've done it myself for FF8 Remastered so I know it works. It's just that for FF7, the bar is only in certain places, so a static magnify would cut off parts of the screen where the bar isn't present. However, is there a way to tell Reshade to only use the magnify filter on the field and fmv screens? There's a way to set a hotkey to manually activate/deactivate reshade so it seems like one could set that up, at least, and just hit the key whenever the screen type changes. But it would be nice if Reshade could do it automatically somehow. Is that possible?

 

[Axel Firestorm]

I did get the toggle-based Reshade fix working, as shown in these screenshots:

4:3

16:9

The method was originally developed by a guy named Zelkar on Steam for FFVIII Remastered, I just adapted it for FFVII. The values in BasicFX.cfg are set for 1920x1080 resolution but you can adjust them if yours is different. It's not very hard to get this fix working, either. Just follow a few steps:

1. Install ReShade to your ff7.exe using the OpenGL option - you only need to install one filter, don't worry about more than that, it'll just cause ReShade to load more slowly
2. Download and unpack this file - https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Nz5nfODesXwzZVQZrUNb_ETyRNrnWAmu
3. Copy the "reshade-shaders" folder to your FFVII directory (same place as ff7.exe)
4. Run FFVII, and in the settings for ReShade (hit Home by default to bring up the overlay), set your toggle key (I used spacebar, but you can use whatever you want).
5. Enjoy! Hit your toggle key to turn the black bar on and off anytime!

Incidentally, if you use something like Joy2Key or PGP, you can set up a profile for FFVII that has a certain button or buttons on your controller (I use the triggers since FFVII itself doesn't use them for anything) activate your ReShade toggle key so you don't even have to use the keyboard to turn the black bar on and off. Just hit your assigned button(s) and off you go!

 

[Axel Firestorm]

That's why this fixes uses ReShade's toggle key - you can turn the bar off or on at will, so if the screen doesn't look right, simply hit the toggle key to turn the magnify filter off and restore the screen to normal. Magnify doesn't actually do anything aside from adjusting what part of the screen you're seeing, so if you're not seeing enough, just turn the filter off. And I've noticed no difference in picture quality with the fix on or off, it's exactly the same.

 

[Axel Firestorm]

No, you set the exact values you want the magnify to go to and start from, so it's more like's stretching the image down from the top by the amount that you specify - in this case, just enough to push the black bar off the bottom of the screen. There's no change horizontally (unless you were to specify one, but for this fix it's unnecessary). You wouldn't have to toggle the bar every time you go from one field to another, just when you go to the menu or a battle. And if you use something like Joy2Key, you can set it up so that one of your controller buttons (such as one of the triggers) activates the toggle key so you don't have to use the keyboard to do it. Switching is much faster that way. I don't know what you mean by modules, though.

 

[Loki_]

Thanks for this! One question, to adjust screen to my resolution (2560x1440) which values I have to change into BasicFX.cfg? thanks

 

[orichalcon]

the screenshots in the second post actually do indeed clip a bit of picture off the bottom

i can tell without even zooming in on the picture, can see it naked


oh, you thought i meant with the naked eye? nah, i meant with no clothes on... helps me see better