Remove Black Bar with ReShade!

Tired of having to look at that big black bar across the bottom of the screen? Now there's finally a way to remove it! Using ReShade and its Magnify filter, you can toggle the black bar off and on whenever you want. No more running through fields or watching FMV's with a useless strip of black along the bottom of the screen. Play FFVII in true fullscreen at last!

Introduction

I was thinking about the old black bar issue in the PC version of FFVII and decided to take a different approach with it. Instead of trying to mod FFVII itself, I used Reshade's magnify filter to remove the bar, though it's not really automatic. What you do is, you set up a shortcut key in Reshade to toggle the filter on and off, which lets you hide or show the black bar anytime.

Since the bar isn't present on every screen, a static magnify would cut off parts of the screen where the bar normally doesn't show up, such as in the menus and in battle. This why the shortcut key is needed. When you're in the field or about to watch an FMV, hit the key and the bar will vanish. When you go into the menus or battles, for instance, hit the key again and the screen will return to normal so nothing is cut off. It's unfortunately not able to be fully automatic as far as I know, but I think it's the closest we'll ever get to truly removing the black bar.

Screenshots

Here are some comparison screenshots to show the game with and without the ReShade fix activated:

4:3

16:9

Instructions

The method was originally developed by a guy named Zelkar here 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 - FFVII Black Bar Fix.7z[drive.google.com]
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!

[starmind]

Just in case for me it was a plugin in reshard list called "borders", so disabling the "border" feature fixed it.

[Jaiko 🐉]

I have a 3440 x 1440 resolution, so this solution won't work for me I'm afraid. After installing the reshade tool over my ff7.exe, going in, and setting my toggle button, during battle, pressing space just cuts off the entire battle menu for me, rather than eliminating the black bar issue.

[Axel Firestorm]

CV01: Yeah, everything else is as it should be, just change the width and height to what you need.

[freaks]

When changing the resolution do i only need to change the magnifyEndPixelWidth and height?

[Dr. Swoltie Tesst-Eccles]

Took me awhile to figure this out but this could be a possible solution for you.

YOU MUST adjust the "#define magnifyEndPixelWidth" in the basicfx.cfg (located in the shaders folder) to match the width resolution in the game itself.

For Example: I dislike stretching so I set the game's resolution using 7th heaven to be 1440x1080. I had to change "#define magnifyEndPixelWidth" from 1920 to 1440. Afterwards it was fixed.

[Ziron]

getting a weird problem where it just fixes the bottom black part but the top and sides do not change

[Ziron]

uniform int2 iUIOffset <
ui_category = "Advanced settings";
ui_type = "drag";
ui_label = "Offset (Preview)";
ui_tooltip = "Best use 'Present type'->'Depth map' and enable 'Offset' in the options below to set the offset in pixels.\n"
"Use these values for:\nRESHADE_DEPTH_INPUT_X_PIXEL_OFFSET=<left value>\nRESHADE_DEPTH_INPUT_Y_PIXEL_OFFSET=<right value>";
ui_step = 1;
> = int2(RESHADE_DEPTH_INPUT_X_PIXEL_OFFSET, RESHADE_DEPTH_INPUT_Y_PIXEL_OFFSET);

[Ziron]

https://imgur.com/a/GsdKFLu

[Axel Firestorm]

You'll need to download Reshade first from here: https://reshade.me/ Sorry I forgot to mention that. It's an .exe file, so run it and point it to your ff7 directory, then follow the rest of the steps above and it should work.

[Jaiko 🐉]

Step 1 doesn't make any sense. How do I install ReShade to my ff7.exe using the OpenGL option? There aren't any .exe files in the file you provided. Just merely placing the folder in my FFVII directory isn't enough and pressing the Home key with the game running doesn't do jack.