4 ms·

The 1980s with its CGA, EGA and early VGA displays must be from before your time then? I definitely played games looking like that. I prefer not to use such fil

by shdon 8y ago

The 1980s with its CGA, EGA and early VGA displays must be from before your time then? I definitely played games looking like that. I prefer not to use such filters, but some people might be nostalgic for it. One interesting application might also be for games that make use of the overscan border, which is not normally visible in DOSBox (and people have been trying to work around this), causing problems in games that need it such as Crystal Caves.

tsm 8y ago
I played Crystal Caves when I was (very) young and wasn't actively aware of the overscan border being relevant—what was it used for?
- acheron 8y ago
  Overscan border was set to red in each level, and would switch to green when you collected all the crystals.
kbenson 8y ago
I'm referring less to the curve, and more to the scanlines[3]. The bleed in CRTs means that's not what it actually looked like when displayed on era accurate hardware, so it's always confused me why people would opt for a filter that claims to be "authentic" that does this, especially when emulating the visual experience enough to show screen rounding. For example, here's a picture of an actual DOS ANSI output, from a CRT monitor[1], and here's the equivalent display from this filter[2]. In what way is emulating the scanlines making this more authentic? Edit: clarified a bit 1: https://steemit-production-imageproxy-thumbnail.s3.amazonaws.com/U5dtcYTKdwcTiwv2tRKds1SGGK2Fxcm_1680x8400 https://steemit-production-imageproxy-thumbnail.s3.amazonaws... 2: https://img.itch.zone/aW1hZ2UvMjU1NzcwLzEyMjU1NTQucG5n/original/yx1c62.png https://img.itch.zone/aW1hZ2UvMjU1NzcwLzEyMjU1NTQucG5n/origi... 3: The correct terminology is escaping me. The interlacing? Whatever is responsible for the skipping of lines in the output.
- pvg 8y ago
  It's tricky to make a comparison of 'authenticity': for one thing, some displays had more visible scanlines and for another, it's the sort of detail that's easily lost in photos because you're taking a picture of a small, very-high contrast area and the artifacts often bleed together.
  - kbenson 8y ago
    Well, it can be tricky once you start getting accurate, but I'm not sure any display ever looked like these screenshots, or even very close to it. There was always some visual bleed to eyes as well, not just pictures. I'm pretty sure even LCD panels just repeated lines and didn't leave them blank, so some portion of people actually used an LCD to play these originally might have close to perfect accuracy if they repeated lines. The only times I can particularly remember scanlines being really bad and noticeable were on the old CGA displays in the 80's. And those didn't look like this representation by a long shot, there was a lot of bleed in those as well, the lines were just big enough the bleed didn't obfustate it quite as much. I can't comment on EGA/VGA, we went straight from a CGA monitor to a SVGA one in the late 80's or early 90's, I don't recall exactly when. It's possible there was a display type in there that I didn't use much which actually makes this representation more accurate.
    - pvg 8y ago
      I think the effect tends to be exaggerated in most of these implementations my points are just 1. visible scanlines were totally a thing. 2. it's really hard to take a representative photo of a CRT.
      - WorldMaker 8y ago
        Also, human memory is a funny thing, and these sorts of things are easy to forget from your remembered experience, too. So to some it is exaggerated because they only remember it at its best and others it is spot-on because they only remember it at its worst. Because we notice problems more than things working, there may be more people in that second camp than in the first.
reaperducer 8y ago
It would be great to get a filter that replicated the days when I'd play Sim City on the IBM PC Convertible's 640x200 monochrome un-lit LCD screen. Oh, wait. No it wouldn't. That was terrible! Yet, somehow I'm nostalgic for it.

by shdon 8y ago

tsm 8y ago

I played Crystal Caves when I was (very) young and wasn't actively aware of the overscan border being relevant—what was it used for?

acheron 8y ago
Overscan border was set to red in each level, and would switch to green when you collected all the crystals.

kbenson 8y ago

I'm referring less to the curve, and more to the scanlines[3]. The bleed in CRTs means that's not what it actually looked like when displayed on era accurate hardware, so it's always confused me why people would opt for a filter that claims to be "authentic" that does this, especially when emulating the visual experience enough to show screen rounding. For example, here's a picture of an actual DOS ANSI output, from a CRT monitor[1], and here's the equivalent display from this filter[2]. In what way is emulating the scanlines making this more authentic? Edit: clarified a bit 1: https://steemit-production-imageproxy-thumbnail.s3.amazonaws.com/U5dtcYTKdwcTiwv2tRKds1SGGK2Fxcm_1680x8400 https://steemit-production-imageproxy-thumbnail.s3.amazonaws... 2: https://img.itch.zone/aW1hZ2UvMjU1NzcwLzEyMjU1NTQucG5n/original/yx1c62.png https://img.itch.zone/aW1hZ2UvMjU1NzcwLzEyMjU1NTQucG5n/origi... 3: The correct terminology is escaping me. The interlacing? Whatever is responsible for the skipping of lines in the output.

pvg 8y ago
It's tricky to make a comparison of 'authenticity': for one thing, some displays had more visible scanlines and for another, it's the sort of detail that's easily lost in photos because you're taking a picture of a small, very-high contrast area and the artifacts often bleed together.
- kbenson 8y ago
  Well, it can be tricky once you start getting accurate, but I'm not sure any display ever looked like these screenshots, or even very close to it. There was always some visual bleed to eyes as well, not just pictures. I'm pretty sure even LCD panels just repeated lines and didn't leave them blank, so some portion of people actually used an LCD to play these originally might have close to perfect accuracy if they repeated lines. The only times I can particularly remember scanlines being really bad and noticeable were on the old CGA displays in the 80's. And those didn't look like this representation by a long shot, there was a lot of bleed in those as well, the lines were just big enough the bleed didn't obfustate it quite as much. I can't comment on EGA/VGA, we went straight from a CGA monitor to a SVGA one in the late 80's or early 90's, I don't recall exactly when. It's possible there was a display type in there that I didn't use much which actually makes this representation more accurate.
  - pvg 8y ago
    I think the effect tends to be exaggerated in most of these implementations my points are just 1. visible scanlines were totally a thing. 2. it's really hard to take a representative photo of a CRT.
    - WorldMaker 8y ago
      Also, human memory is a funny thing, and these sorts of things are easy to forget from your remembered experience, too. So to some it is exaggerated because they only remember it at its best and others it is spot-on because they only remember it at its worst. Because we notice problems more than things working, there may be more people in that second camp than in the first.

reaperducer 8y ago

It would be great to get a filter that replicated the days when I'd play Sim City on the IBM PC Convertible's 640x200 monochrome un-lit LCD screen. Oh, wait. No it wouldn't. That was terrible! Yet, somehow I'm nostalgic for it.