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"The question is whether old games were intended to be seen on CRTs, or intended to be seen on LCD screens created years later." I think the counter-argument i

"The question is whether old games were intended to be seen on CRTs, or intended to be seen on LCD screens created years later." I think the counter-argument is that they were intended to be seen on CRTs but the differences between CRTs were bigger than the difference between CRT and LCD. I don't know if this holds water but I think this is the point some try to make.

crazygringo 2y ago
Right, it's about the differences between CRT's. > The pixels were placed by artists who looked at how they rendered on a CRT, and they'd change pixels here and there, do hand dithering, and play with the colour palette until they got what they wanted on the CRT. The issue is, sure they could do that for their CRT. But plug in a different one and the colors are different, the hand-dithering effect looks totally different, etc. This stuff was drawn using zoom levels where the pixels really were squares. Obviously the artists looked at the preview to get a rough idea of how it would look blurry, but they also couldn't optimize too much for their particular display. It was more important for the design to be robust across a wide variety of displays, some of which would just look like crap no matter what. So I'm saying, if you just apply some blur it's fine. Nobody needs to be emulating the exact characteristics of a CRT to chase down some "artistic intent" that only vintage CRT's provide. Just blurring out the jaggies is really the only thing that was ever consistent across displays, and even that varied greatly.
- mrandish 2y ago
  > Nobody needs to be emulating the exact characteristics of a CRT to chase down some "artistic intent" that only vintage CRT's provide. While it's true that blurring is one aspect of CRTs, there are multiple different things we're talking about here. Let's get specific. This is an image of an Apple II's composite video output as seen on a naive RGB LCD. https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM70Qt9m1uvw6oZOqpZxNy0x_Os12blzs5lDdVzm_-3KfU1moKlZs500zz6Ljxa-hPbKkgY6V1L_0yEJpsHnTCTZwegwjV8StJ_oVKBUaqOjCghaupDVJGlDUSVxnjjVBAZnbx5LANSGs/s560/Apple+DOS+3.3+August+1980+B%2526W.png https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj... This is the exact same video output displayed on a CRT (or via a CRT shader properly decoding it). https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUPl2xUM0UyrJxP8c2sUYOvcW-xhHXVN4corGHk9en6Ob3GzxWs37nln__IhOHT0owxlnhUQ6Z3owEBTDJwupPOZWW-2_Vzl7Kj5Jpdyh4M9n9Lv2xEF5NrB_Lwa-_zErg29dGRcbq5Ss/s560/Apple+DOS+3.3+August+1980+Color.png https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh... This is not just blurring. The colors aren't even there on the naive RGB image. This is because modern displays don't properly decode the pixel pattern data as specified in the RS-170A analog video standard. A CRT shader can do many things including add blur, cross-talk, noise, scanlines, etc. But it ALSO does something else - properly decode the bit patterns in the first image to add the colors in the second image. The bit pattern was put there on purpose by the original artist/dev. Not decoding it properly means the colors are wrong or missing. Admittedly, this is an extreme example. Most games shown undecoded in naive RGB still have roughly the right number of pixels, in about the right colors, and in about the right places. So people accept it. But without composite decoding, some colors will be incorrect and some shades will be missing. It's as objectively wrong as decoding surround sound improperly. I don't care if you use a shader to "Make it look more like a fuzzy-ass old screen." In fact, I'd prefer you didn't. Adding excess blurring or noise just degrades pixels I worked hard on. But please, when you play games I wrote almost 40 years ago, I ask that you properly decode the color data I painstakingly encoded by hand and tested on a variety of different displays from Amdek monitors to cheap ass old TVs. If you don't, you're not playing the games I wrote. You don't have to buy a CRT. Shaders are free - and just a few clicks away. Use a high-quality one that just properly decodes composite and doesn't add any degradation bullshit. Note: those images are borrowed from this blog, which is a good discussion of composite video color encoding on the Apple II but the same principles apply to all analog composite video sources and displays. http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2021/10/apple-ii-composite-artifact-color-ntsc.html http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2021/10/apple-ii-composi...

crazygringo 2y ago

Right, it's about the differences between CRT's. > The pixels were placed by artists who looked at how they rendered on a CRT, and they'd change pixels here and there, do hand dithering, and play with the colour palette until they got what they wanted on the CRT. The issue is, sure they could do that for their CRT. But plug in a different one and the colors are different, the hand-dithering effect looks totally different, etc. This stuff was drawn using zoom levels where the pixels really were squares. Obviously the artists looked at the preview to get a rough idea of how it would look blurry, but they also couldn't optimize too much for their particular display. It was more important for the design to be robust across a wide variety of displays, some of which would just look like crap no matter what. So I'm saying, if you just apply some blur it's fine. Nobody needs to be emulating the exact characteristics of a CRT to chase down some "artistic intent" that only vintage CRT's provide. Just blurring out the jaggies is really the only thing that was ever consistent across displays, and even that varied greatly.

mrandish 2y ago
> Nobody needs to be emulating the exact characteristics of a CRT to chase down some "artistic intent" that only vintage CRT's provide. While it's true that blurring is one aspect of CRTs, there are multiple different things we're talking about here. Let's get specific. This is an image of an Apple II's composite video output as seen on a naive RGB LCD. https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM70Qt9m1uvw6oZOqpZxNy0x_Os12blzs5lDdVzm_-3KfU1moKlZs500zz6Ljxa-hPbKkgY6V1L_0yEJpsHnTCTZwegwjV8StJ_oVKBUaqOjCghaupDVJGlDUSVxnjjVBAZnbx5LANSGs/s560/Apple+DOS+3.3+August+1980+B%2526W.png https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj... This is the exact same video output displayed on a CRT (or via a CRT shader properly decoding it). https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUPl2xUM0UyrJxP8c2sUYOvcW-xhHXVN4corGHk9en6Ob3GzxWs37nln__IhOHT0owxlnhUQ6Z3owEBTDJwupPOZWW-2_Vzl7Kj5Jpdyh4M9n9Lv2xEF5NrB_Lwa-_zErg29dGRcbq5Ss/s560/Apple+DOS+3.3+August+1980+Color.png https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh... This is not just blurring. The colors aren't even there on the naive RGB image. This is because modern displays don't properly decode the pixel pattern data as specified in the RS-170A analog video standard. A CRT shader can do many things including add blur, cross-talk, noise, scanlines, etc. But it ALSO does something else - properly decode the bit patterns in the first image to add the colors in the second image. The bit pattern was put there on purpose by the original artist/dev. Not decoding it properly means the colors are wrong or missing. Admittedly, this is an extreme example. Most games shown undecoded in naive RGB still have roughly the right number of pixels, in about the right colors, and in about the right places. So people accept it. But without composite decoding, some colors will be incorrect and some shades will be missing. It's as objectively wrong as decoding surround sound improperly. I don't care if you use a shader to "Make it look more like a fuzzy-ass old screen." In fact, I'd prefer you didn't. Adding excess blurring or noise just degrades pixels I worked hard on. But please, when you play games I wrote almost 40 years ago, I ask that you properly decode the color data I painstakingly encoded by hand and tested on a variety of different displays from Amdek monitors to cheap ass old TVs. If you don't, you're not playing the games I wrote. You don't have to buy a CRT. Shaders are free - and just a few clicks away. Use a high-quality one that just properly decodes composite and doesn't add any degradation bullshit. Note: those images are borrowed from this blog, which is a good discussion of composite video color encoding on the Apple II but the same principles apply to all analog composite video sources and displays. http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2021/10/apple-ii-composite-artifact-color-ntsc.html http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2021/10/apple-ii-composi...