23 ms·

I'm pretty sure those are similar, but different, images. Having grown up with CRTs, very few games look "better" on them; mostly games that used interlacing t

I'm pretty sure those are similar, but different, images. Having grown up with CRTs, very few games look "better" on them; mostly games that used interlacing to create flashing effects. (Edit: Forgot that light guns need CRTs due to timing.) Otherwise, CRTs are like vinyl: Some people will invent all kinds of reasons why they are better, but in practice, they aren't.

pdpi 2y ago
The argument isn’t “CRTs are better”. You’re right — they’re not. The argument is that pixel art from that era was designed around the specific limitations of CRTs, and takes advantage of the specific way that CRTs would mess with the pixels. This is similar to what happened with electric guitars — you can make cheap amps with barely any distortion these days, but that sucks horribly for playing music composed around the presence of distortion. E.g. amp distortion tends to add a bunch of harmonic content that makes major/minor triads sound pretty bad, which is why power chords are popular. On the other hand, power chords sound pretty terrible without distortion, because they need that extra harmonic content to sound good!
- sim7c00 2y ago
  nice points. the parallel with guitar really made it click for me thx =) makes total sense!
mrandish 2y ago
I agree with you about vinyl but I think you're misunderstanding my point about CRTs. I'm not claiming CRTs are inherently "better" either technically or aesthetically. In general, they're not. I'm not like some audiophiles who argue vinyl, tube amplification and "magic copper" cables are better - denying both signal theory (Nyquist et al) and objective data (double blind A/B/X tests). Modern digital formats and devices are almost always better overall. The cases where they aren't are rare, very specific and, even then, 'better-ness' is only in certain ways and not others. My background is in video engineering and the point I'm making here is very specific. It only applies to hand-crafted retro game pixel art created in the CRT era. And my point isn't even about CRTs! It's about how the RS-170A composite video standard that CRTs used encodes color. The "A" in RS-170A added color to the existing black and white television standard while remaining compatible with old B&W TVs. It was sort of a clever analog-era compression hack. I'll skip the technical details and history here (but both are fascinating) and simplify the takeaway. Broadly speaking, in digital representations of composite video color encoding, the correct color of a pixel can only be known relative to the current phase of the pixel clock and the pixels adjacent to it. Sometimes it's a fairly subtle difference but other times it can change a pixel from blue to red. To be clear, this wasn't "better" in any way (other than allowing optional color). The "hack" of encoding chroma information at half the frequency of luma and only in relation to a sub-carrier frequency came with trade-offs like chroma fringing on high frequency edges, ringing and other spurious artifacts. However, it was the only video we had and video game creators of the 80s & 90s used the tech they had to create the best images they could. For example, we would put a pixel of a certain color next to a pixel of another color to intentionally change the color of the second pixel (and NOT just due to blurring the two together, it literally decoded to a different third color). I did this myself in the 1980s, intentionally positioning a white pixel next to a black pixel on an even numbered column so they would show as a single red pixel on the screen. Using this encoding technique, I could display 9 different colors from a computer that only had two bits per pixel. That's why just displaying a naive RGB output of the game isn't properly decoding a signal that was hand-encoded to have more and different data than what's in the naive RGB. So I recommend using a CRT shader not because it emulates a glass tube with phosphors but because it includes the decoding logic to correctly display the original encoded content. Personally, I never use the shaders that add noise, blurring, cross-talk or other degradation. That would be as dumb as adding the pops and click of a dirty vinyl LP to a pristine signal. That would make it less accurate. My goal as an engineer is to be more accurate. It's fine if adding spurious crap tickles somebody's nostalgia bone from when they were a kid - but I'd never do that. I want to to see the original pixels and colors the artists saw and intended their audiences to see. That requires properly decoding the signal. And the example I posted demonstrates just how different an image can appear when properly decoded.
- dylan604 2y ago
  >It was sort of a clever analog-era compression hack. Also known as technical debt around these parts. The repercussions of that clever hack are still being dealt with to this day. I've spent a good deal of my career specializing in proper handling of video sources that are painful to deal with all because of this clever hack. color burst, front porch, 1.001, ugh!!!!
  - mrandish 2y ago
    I feel your pain. :-) I've gone back and read through some of the committee reports when they were deliberating about this and... all I can say is, the more I understand about how composite color video really works - the more amazed I am that it works at all. And to be fair. It's not like they didn't know there were better ways. There were lots of proposals to do YUV, RGB and other kinds of encoding but backward compatibility with B&W TVs and staying within a 6 Mhz channel were political mandates from on high.
    - dylan604 2y ago
      Yeah, it's one of those very clever things that fit the bill for exactly what they needed right then and there. How could they have ever expected HD, 4K, progressive, internet streaming, or any of the things that their very clever hack would wreck future havoc on forevermore?
sim7c00 2y ago
the vinyl comparison doesn't hold because music isn't composed on vinyl. saying vinyl is better is like saying jpeg images are better than png or something.. its the storage format/medium. it does impact the sound, but not the way people composed afaik. the crts were used as the medium to compose the thing on for these artists. they saw their art come to life on them and found ways to optimise for that.
- stavros 2y ago
  There was a post on here a few weeks ago that claimed that this isn't true, and that artists created the images on much better displays, that didn't have the limitations that the average CRT of the time had. Unfortunately, I can't find the post.
cubefox 2y ago
CRTs are definitely much better than OLED or LCD in one major aspect: Motion clarity. OLED and LCD are sample-and-hold screens, meaning they will display a frame for the entirety of a frame time, like 1/60th of a second at 60 FPS. A CRT displays frames just for a fraction of the frame time (the rest of the time they are dark), which prevents perceptible blur when our eyes track moving objects, which they do all the time in order to prevent blur. More details here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42604613 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42604613
- paulbgd 2y ago
  As a user of a crt pc monitor and a 240hz oled, the motion clarity of the oled is pretty darn close now. I’d bet 480hz is the point where the smoothness of modern panels finally catches up to the crts.
  - cubefox 2y ago
    Of course the question is how to leverage those monitors. Either games have to render 480 frames per second (which is impossible on average hardware in most cases other than Subpixel Snake), or the monitor just displays 7 black frames after every rendered frame, which would cut down the games to 60 (rendered) frames per second. But the latter would of course greatly reduce the maximum screen brightness to 1/8, possibly below CRT level, because OLEDs aren't very bright in the first place.

pdpi 2y ago

The argument isn’t “CRTs are better”. You’re right — they’re not. The argument is that pixel art from that era was designed around the specific limitations of CRTs, and takes advantage of the specific way that CRTs would mess with the pixels. This is similar to what happened with electric guitars — you can make cheap amps with barely any distortion these days, but that sucks horribly for playing music composed around the presence of distortion. E.g. amp distortion tends to add a bunch of harmonic content that makes major/minor triads sound pretty bad, which is why power chords are popular. On the other hand, power chords sound pretty terrible without distortion, because they need that extra harmonic content to sound good!

sim7c00 2y ago
nice points. the parallel with guitar really made it click for me thx =) makes total sense!

mrandish 2y ago

I agree with you about vinyl but I think you're misunderstanding my point about CRTs. I'm not claiming CRTs are inherently "better" either technically or aesthetically. In general, they're not. I'm not like some audiophiles who argue vinyl, tube amplification and "magic copper" cables are better - denying both signal theory (Nyquist et al) and objective data (double blind A/B/X tests). Modern digital formats and devices are almost always better overall. The cases where they aren't are rare, very specific and, even then, 'better-ness' is only in certain ways and not others. My background is in video engineering and the point I'm making here is very specific. It only applies to hand-crafted retro game pixel art created in the CRT era. And my point isn't even about CRTs! It's about how the RS-170A composite video standard that CRTs used encodes color. The "A" in RS-170A added color to the existing black and white television standard while remaining compatible with old B&W TVs. It was sort of a clever analog-era compression hack. I'll skip the technical details and history here (but both are fascinating) and simplify the takeaway. Broadly speaking, in digital representations of composite video color encoding, the correct color of a pixel can only be known relative to the current phase of the pixel clock and the pixels adjacent to it. Sometimes it's a fairly subtle difference but other times it can change a pixel from blue to red. To be clear, this wasn't "better" in any way (other than allowing optional color). The "hack" of encoding chroma information at half the frequency of luma and only in relation to a sub-carrier frequency came with trade-offs like chroma fringing on high frequency edges, ringing and other spurious artifacts. However, it was the only video we had and video game creators of the 80s & 90s used the tech they had to create the best images they could. For example, we would put a pixel of a certain color next to a pixel of another color to intentionally change the color of the second pixel (and NOT just due to blurring the two together, it literally decoded to a different third color). I did this myself in the 1980s, intentionally positioning a white pixel next to a black pixel on an even numbered column so they would show as a single red pixel on the screen. Using this encoding technique, I could display 9 different colors from a computer that only had two bits per pixel. That's why just displaying a naive RGB output of the game isn't properly decoding a signal that was hand-encoded to have more and different data than what's in the naive RGB. So I recommend using a CRT shader not because it emulates a glass tube with phosphors but because it includes the decoding logic to correctly display the original encoded content. Personally, I never use the shaders that add noise, blurring, cross-talk or other degradation. That would be as dumb as adding the pops and click of a dirty vinyl LP to a pristine signal. That would make it less accurate. My goal as an engineer is to be more accurate. It's fine if adding spurious crap tickles somebody's nostalgia bone from when they were a kid - but I'd never do that. I want to to see the original pixels and colors the artists saw and intended their audiences to see. That requires properly decoding the signal. And the example I posted demonstrates just how different an image can appear when properly decoded.

dylan604 2y ago
>It was sort of a clever analog-era compression hack. Also known as technical debt around these parts. The repercussions of that clever hack are still being dealt with to this day. I've spent a good deal of my career specializing in proper handling of video sources that are painful to deal with all because of this clever hack. color burst, front porch, 1.001, ugh!!!!
- mrandish 2y ago
  I feel your pain. :-) I've gone back and read through some of the committee reports when they were deliberating about this and... all I can say is, the more I understand about how composite color video really works - the more amazed I am that it works at all. And to be fair. It's not like they didn't know there were better ways. There were lots of proposals to do YUV, RGB and other kinds of encoding but backward compatibility with B&W TVs and staying within a 6 Mhz channel were political mandates from on high.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    Yeah, it's one of those very clever things that fit the bill for exactly what they needed right then and there. How could they have ever expected HD, 4K, progressive, internet streaming, or any of the things that their very clever hack would wreck future havoc on forevermore?

sim7c00 2y ago

the vinyl comparison doesn't hold because music isn't composed on vinyl. saying vinyl is better is like saying jpeg images are better than png or something.. its the storage format/medium. it does impact the sound, but not the way people composed afaik. the crts were used as the medium to compose the thing on for these artists. they saw their art come to life on them and found ways to optimise for that.

stavros 2y ago
There was a post on here a few weeks ago that claimed that this isn't true, and that artists created the images on much better displays, that didn't have the limitations that the average CRT of the time had. Unfortunately, I can't find the post.

cubefox 2y ago

CRTs are definitely much better than OLED or LCD in one major aspect: Motion clarity. OLED and LCD are sample-and-hold screens, meaning they will display a frame for the entirety of a frame time, like 1/60th of a second at 60 FPS. A CRT displays frames just for a fraction of the frame time (the rest of the time they are dark), which prevents perceptible blur when our eyes track moving objects, which they do all the time in order to prevent blur. More details here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42604613 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42604613

paulbgd 2y ago
As a user of a crt pc monitor and a 240hz oled, the motion clarity of the oled is pretty darn close now. I’d bet 480hz is the point where the smoothness of modern panels finally catches up to the crts.
- cubefox 2y ago
  Of course the question is how to leverage those monitors. Either games have to render 480 frames per second (which is impossible on average hardware in most cases other than Subpixel Snake), or the monitor just displays 7 black frames after every rendered frame, which would cut down the games to 60 (rendered) frames per second. But the latter would of course greatly reduce the maximum screen brightness to 1/8, possibly below CRT level, because OLEDs aren't very bright in the first place.