I don't have a real life reference point for CRTs, so for me just going from these flat images to something that suddenly looked like there was more detail sold me on it. Prior to that my assumption had been old games on modern displays must be better until comparisons made me see how there was actually more attempts to be more than mspaint type pixel presentation back in the day.

So these raw pixels look even less realistic to how the final product actually ended up coming out back on old devices to me. So between the two unrealistic options I prefer Crt filters now, and I in the past hadn't liked them either thinking all people had wanted was scanlines.