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Retro games really did look better on a CRT
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2023
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A lot of games depend on a CRT for color blending / smoothing / transparency effects. I actually don’t really like how nearly all 8 / 16bit games look on modern displays, filters generally don’t do a good enough job emulating the look.
It's called dithering, and it's super nice imo. Still, I kinda like the super pixely look if I'm being honest.
Some games did transparency by alternating frames which on interlaced sets would draw every other line per frame or something along those lines.
Those effects do not appear in screenshots or generally on any progressive scan modern display without specific emulation
Some examples : https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y6NLXga1i0M the first two look horrible but the third shows the blending more like how it would have originally appeared.
That's so cool. I never considered the sort of analog nature of the frame being redrawn being used to create unique effects. If I understand the intent was that on older sets the previous frame would "fade" instead of turning instantly on or off it produced a transparency effect?
Interlaced vs. Progressive Scan
How a TV Works in Slow Motion
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Yeah, you’re pretty much right. Interlacing complicates it a bit more because not only would the previous frame “fade” but half of the frame was drawn, every other line, and then the next half. So it didn’t look like a flicker because it was basically 60fps for half of the total screen, but an alternating 30 frames for each half of the image. This is why on early and terrible transcodes, you can get a “comb” effect, it’s not properly combining the image per frame and showing you half of the last frame and half of the next frame and the motion in the image shows in combs.
It’s really interesting stuff, imo.
There's something very satisfying about it being actually pixel-perfect.
However, there's also something to be said for a/b comparing for each sperate game and deciding what you think looks best for it. Having options is always best.