4 ms·

There is a great twitter account that compares raw "sharp pixel" renders of classic games side-by-side with how they actually looked running on CRT displays of

by knubie 5y ago

There is a great twitter account that compares raw "sharp pixel" renders of classic games side-by-side with how they actually looked running on CRT displays of the era. https://twitter.com/CRTpixels https://twitter.com/CRTpixels You start to realize that these artists not only crafted sprites specifically for the resolution and color constraints of console, but also for the unique display characteristics of the CRTs that were used at the time. Here are a couple of my favorites: https://twitter.com/CRTpixels/status/1468423054145425410 https://twitter.com/CRTpixels/status/1468423054145425410 https://twitter.com/CRTpixels/status/1443969255809200133 https://twitter.com/CRTpixels/status/1443969255809200133

Luc 5y ago
A couple more good ones: https://twitter.com/CRTpixels/status/1461432490636234756 https://twitter.com/CRTpixels/status/1461432490636234756 https://twitter.com/CRTpixels/status/1484553881329745925 https://twitter.com/CRTpixels/status/1484553881329745925 Sharp pixels are fine for modern pixel art, but some of the old stuff looks much better using a CRT or CRT-shader (and sometimes even NTSC color effects matter).
- mrandish 5y ago
  > some of the old stuff looks much better using a CRT or CRT-shader (and sometimes even NTSC color effects matter). Yes, I built a custom MAME cabinet around a 27-inch Wells-Gardner multi-scanning arcade CRT with authentic arcade buttons, sticks, trackball and spinner for this reason. Although some advanced shader emulators are recently getting closer in some games, there's still usually a visible difference with a real CRT. Whether that difference matters to you in the games you play is up to you. If you get a CRT for emulation of classic arcade machines, look into GroovyMAME, which is a dedicated, synced fork of MAME with changes under the hood specifically to support accurate CRT display. Arcade machines often had different, non-standard resolutions, frame rates and scanning frequencies which makes visually accurate emulation even more challenging than emulating home game consoles like Nintendo. For accurate appearance, some arcade games require tweaking the config file to ensure the correct resolution and scanning frequency are sent to the CRT but once you've set these, with a multi-scanning CRT it's possible to achieve essentially perfect emulation of a wide variety of raster CRT originals. I certainly don't tweak the config file for each of the thousands of games emulated by MAME. For most, I just go with the defaults which are usually close enough. However, for a few dozen games that I played the most back in the day (and a couple of which I actually owned a cabinet), it makes a noticeable difference to me. There are dedicated scan converters to adapt HDMI to composite, S-Video or analog component but they come with various quality or accuracy trade-offs. The best way to output analog to a CRT is to instead use an older graphics card with native analog VGA output (usually on a 15 pin connector). The last widely distributed PC graphics cards with native analog out were circa roughly 2014, so many HN readers probably have a few kicking around in a parts bin. Emulation is a great way to put these older cards back into useful service as their 3D capabilities and memory sizes are inadequate for modern gaming but still exceed the requirements for emulating most 90s and earlier arcade machines and 16-bit era home game consoles. I'm currently using a Radeon 3850 in my dedicated cabinet. With a fast enough CPU (circa 2016-17) and recent emulator improvements, now home consoles such as most PS1 and even many PS2 and Gamecube titles can be fully emulated. All out of parts bin and thrift store grade components. People who see my MAME cab are often impressed by how great the games look when properly emulated and displayed through a quality analog signal chain. The best part is that now new generations of players who've never seen these games are discovering just how fantastic they are. While modern AAA games certainly have spectacular visuals and scope, the harsh constraints imposed by 8 and 16-bit era hardware forced the best games to really nail the game play and feel in ways modern games rarely do.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
bennysomething 5y ago
I really like the hylation shaders as they seem to emulate the CRT effect pretty well, sorta makes whites glow. I'm constantly switching back and forth between real hardware and consoles with an ossc (upscaler device). No doubt CRTs look better for these games. However if you are stuck with LCD, N64 and playstation games look better on an emulator rather than through a hardware upscaler.
- SirRockALot 5y ago
  Many of the things emulators do are also available to original hardware, though. There are patches that disable dithering on PS1 games. You can get rid of the infamous N64 blur through a combination of hardware mods and software patches. The N64 will of course always be low-res, low-FPS and have its low-quality bilinear filtering, but I'm not sure changing all of these really makes things better. For instance, I think content is also often authored with a target resolution in mind and the typical 240p game does not really look good at 4k with perfect texture filtering. Also, the scanline settings on the OSSC never really looked good / interesting to me, but the CRT settings on the RetroTink5x seems quite awesome. They got actual shadow mask / aperture grill emulation and different settings for high-TVL PVMs vs consumer tubes etc.
  - bennysomething 5y ago
    Ha! Coincidence I'm fiddling with RGB mod deblur right now, I think I'm blind as I can't see difference. A lot of this is personal preference. I tried playing Goldeneye in my ossc, honestly to me it's a better game on an emulator, it runs at 60fps, can appreciate the draw distance they achieved as I can make out the baddies instead of a jumble of pics. Same with wipeout 2097 on PS1 emulator. However Ive noticed played 1080 snowboarding on real hardware is way way more responsive. So it's a tough call. Also emulators have bugs, like Mario's triple jump not working etc. It's all trade offs really.
    - SirRockALot 5y ago
      Through an OSSC you should see a difference! :-) There's no fundamental reason emulators need to have lots of lag. Often the culprit is a controller or controller converter that has a inherent input lag. Also your video / audio output configuration (triple buffering etc.) can introduce lag. And of course your choice of display. There are also emulation features like run-ahead, frame delay etc. unique to software emulation that can even reduce the latency below original hardware or FPGA recreations in some circumstances. Many systems have basically perfect emulators. For some we even have emulators where there should be no known deviations whatsoever (pretty sure bsnes/higan are at that stage). I think N64/PS1 are not quite there yet, but certainly nothing game breaking like a triple jump not working. I think it's fun to just keep trying different setups. Playing retro games on a giant 2020 TV can be just as fun as using an ancient CRT. Emulation can allow for fun things like higher resolution, endless controller options and rewind/save-state, but original hardware also has its charms.
SirRockALot 5y ago
CRTs are very different, absolutely. I also observe this sort of thing on the original Game Boy. Spaceship shooters frequently used white space with black stars since the obvious opposite would be an indecipherable mess on the DMG's display. They also use flickering content to add more shades due the low-pass nature of the slow display response. Game developers and artists have always been great at getting the most out of the hardware and I strongly believe that part of preservation has to be preserving the input & output devices.
- trzy 5y ago
  Are any emulators set up to properly simulate these persistence effects? Seems to me that it would properly involve passing in the last N frames to a shader to allow for time integration. I don’t think that’s how RetroArch works but I could be wrong.
  - SirRockALot 5y ago
    I'm not sure if you have access to previous frames in RA shaders, you get a frame index at least, maybe there's some option / way to feed old framebuffers, the docs are a bit lacking. But yes, RetroArch emulation cores, the Analogue FPGA systems and IIRC even replacement IPS screens for GameBoys address this particular issue. I can't really tell you how good of a job they do, I mostly play GB(C) on my unmodded GBC. But I also run GB games on my CRT emulation setup through RA and I definitively played some of the problematic games that use the slow display response for additional shades or fake transparency and I can't say I noticed anything wrong. There are options to control frameblending etc. in the emulator specific options, but I haven't spend any time tweaking them.
  - andai 5y ago
    I've gotten really cool results in my graphics experiments by not-quite clearing the screen on each frame, ie. very slightly lowering the opacity of the rectangle with which the screen is cleared. It does however leave a subtle "stain" in places where the color doesn't fade all the way out, perhaps it would work better in combination with subtracting 1 from all RGB values.

by knubie 5y ago

Luc 5y ago

A couple more good ones: https://twitter.com/CRTpixels/status/1461432490636234756 https://twitter.com/CRTpixels/status/1461432490636234756 https://twitter.com/CRTpixels/status/1484553881329745925 https://twitter.com/CRTpixels/status/1484553881329745925 Sharp pixels are fine for modern pixel art, but some of the old stuff looks much better using a CRT or CRT-shader (and sometimes even NTSC color effects matter).

mrandish 5y ago
> some of the old stuff looks much better using a CRT or CRT-shader (and sometimes even NTSC color effects matter). Yes, I built a custom MAME cabinet around a 27-inch Wells-Gardner multi-scanning arcade CRT with authentic arcade buttons, sticks, trackball and spinner for this reason. Although some advanced shader emulators are recently getting closer in some games, there's still usually a visible difference with a real CRT. Whether that difference matters to you in the games you play is up to you. If you get a CRT for emulation of classic arcade machines, look into GroovyMAME, which is a dedicated, synced fork of MAME with changes under the hood specifically to support accurate CRT display. Arcade machines often had different, non-standard resolutions, frame rates and scanning frequencies which makes visually accurate emulation even more challenging than emulating home game consoles like Nintendo. For accurate appearance, some arcade games require tweaking the config file to ensure the correct resolution and scanning frequency are sent to the CRT but once you've set these, with a multi-scanning CRT it's possible to achieve essentially perfect emulation of a wide variety of raster CRT originals. I certainly don't tweak the config file for each of the thousands of games emulated by MAME. For most, I just go with the defaults which are usually close enough. However, for a few dozen games that I played the most back in the day (and a couple of which I actually owned a cabinet), it makes a noticeable difference to me. There are dedicated scan converters to adapt HDMI to composite, S-Video or analog component but they come with various quality or accuracy trade-offs. The best way to output analog to a CRT is to instead use an older graphics card with native analog VGA output (usually on a 15 pin connector). The last widely distributed PC graphics cards with native analog out were circa roughly 2014, so many HN readers probably have a few kicking around in a parts bin. Emulation is a great way to put these older cards back into useful service as their 3D capabilities and memory sizes are inadequate for modern gaming but still exceed the requirements for emulating most 90s and earlier arcade machines and 16-bit era home game consoles. I'm currently using a Radeon 3850 in my dedicated cabinet. With a fast enough CPU (circa 2016-17) and recent emulator improvements, now home consoles such as most PS1 and even many PS2 and Gamecube titles can be fully emulated. All out of parts bin and thrift store grade components. People who see my MAME cab are often impressed by how great the games look when properly emulated and displayed through a quality analog signal chain. The best part is that now new generations of players who've never seen these games are discovering just how fantastic they are. While modern AAA games certainly have spectacular visuals and scope, the harsh constraints imposed by 8 and 16-bit era hardware forced the best games to really nail the game play and feel in ways modern games rarely do.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

bennysomething 5y ago

I really like the hylation shaders as they seem to emulate the CRT effect pretty well, sorta makes whites glow. I'm constantly switching back and forth between real hardware and consoles with an ossc (upscaler device). No doubt CRTs look better for these games. However if you are stuck with LCD, N64 and playstation games look better on an emulator rather than through a hardware upscaler.

SirRockALot 5y ago
Many of the things emulators do are also available to original hardware, though. There are patches that disable dithering on PS1 games. You can get rid of the infamous N64 blur through a combination of hardware mods and software patches. The N64 will of course always be low-res, low-FPS and have its low-quality bilinear filtering, but I'm not sure changing all of these really makes things better. For instance, I think content is also often authored with a target resolution in mind and the typical 240p game does not really look good at 4k with perfect texture filtering. Also, the scanline settings on the OSSC never really looked good / interesting to me, but the CRT settings on the RetroTink5x seems quite awesome. They got actual shadow mask / aperture grill emulation and different settings for high-TVL PVMs vs consumer tubes etc.
- bennysomething 5y ago
  Ha! Coincidence I'm fiddling with RGB mod deblur right now, I think I'm blind as I can't see difference. A lot of this is personal preference. I tried playing Goldeneye in my ossc, honestly to me it's a better game on an emulator, it runs at 60fps, can appreciate the draw distance they achieved as I can make out the baddies instead of a jumble of pics. Same with wipeout 2097 on PS1 emulator. However Ive noticed played 1080 snowboarding on real hardware is way way more responsive. So it's a tough call. Also emulators have bugs, like Mario's triple jump not working etc. It's all trade offs really.
  - SirRockALot 5y ago
    Through an OSSC you should see a difference! :-) There's no fundamental reason emulators need to have lots of lag. Often the culprit is a controller or controller converter that has a inherent input lag. Also your video / audio output configuration (triple buffering etc.) can introduce lag. And of course your choice of display. There are also emulation features like run-ahead, frame delay etc. unique to software emulation that can even reduce the latency below original hardware or FPGA recreations in some circumstances. Many systems have basically perfect emulators. For some we even have emulators where there should be no known deviations whatsoever (pretty sure bsnes/higan are at that stage). I think N64/PS1 are not quite there yet, but certainly nothing game breaking like a triple jump not working. I think it's fun to just keep trying different setups. Playing retro games on a giant 2020 TV can be just as fun as using an ancient CRT. Emulation can allow for fun things like higher resolution, endless controller options and rewind/save-state, but original hardware also has its charms.

SirRockALot 5y ago

CRTs are very different, absolutely. I also observe this sort of thing on the original Game Boy. Spaceship shooters frequently used white space with black stars since the obvious opposite would be an indecipherable mess on the DMG's display. They also use flickering content to add more shades due the low-pass nature of the slow display response. Game developers and artists have always been great at getting the most out of the hardware and I strongly believe that part of preservation has to be preserving the input & output devices.

trzy 5y ago
Are any emulators set up to properly simulate these persistence effects? Seems to me that it would properly involve passing in the last N frames to a shader to allow for time integration. I don’t think that’s how RetroArch works but I could be wrong.
- SirRockALot 5y ago
  I'm not sure if you have access to previous frames in RA shaders, you get a frame index at least, maybe there's some option / way to feed old framebuffers, the docs are a bit lacking. But yes, RetroArch emulation cores, the Analogue FPGA systems and IIRC even replacement IPS screens for GameBoys address this particular issue. I can't really tell you how good of a job they do, I mostly play GB(C) on my unmodded GBC. But I also run GB games on my CRT emulation setup through RA and I definitively played some of the problematic games that use the slow display response for additional shades or fake transparency and I can't say I noticed anything wrong. There are options to control frameblending etc. in the emulator specific options, but I haven't spend any time tweaking them.
- andai 5y ago
  I've gotten really cool results in my graphics experiments by not-quite clearing the screen on each frame, ie. very slightly lowering the opacity of the rectangle with which the screen is cleared. It does however leave a subtle "stain" in places where the color doesn't fade all the way out, perhaps it would work better in combination with subtracting 1 from all RGB values.