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[-] JDPoZ@lemmy.world 90 points 1 year ago

To be fair, that probably is a REALLY nice broadcast-grade CRT like a SONY BVM-20F1U or something… which most people did NOT have access to back in the day.

Hell, my wealthy buddy’s family had a “flat screen” (meaning the CRT didn’t have a curved face) SONY WEGA CRT in the mid-90s and I know it had S-Video, but I’m pretty sure it didn’t even have a component connection, let alone the quality aperture grille/shadow masking, or the contrast ratio that the BVMs did (because those things were at local TV news stations running 24/7).

In reality, there’s a bunch of differences with connection types providing various levels of quality and CRT display technology , but the accessibility that new TVs give us all to astoundingly good picture quality at a pretty reasonable price means we are living in a golden era for retro gaming if you know what you’re doing.

I’ll take my gigantic 4K OLED hooked up to a MiSTer with some great shaders rendering the sub-pixel effects a real CRT has to emulate this visual effect with run-ahead to minimize the latency + input lag over anything except a BVM-20F1U in near mint condition almost any other day of the week.

TL;DR - you can emulate those sub-pixel CRT era display technology display artifacts with a decent shader on a good 4K OLED, and probably spend less than you’d need to get almost the exact same visual effect with pretty much none of the pitfalls you get with old CRTs like massive electricity use, having to carry a 150-250lb CRT, hope it has no burn-in, decent remaining bulb life, etc.

[-] Elektrotechnik@lemmy.world 36 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Nah, those phosphor strips of that screenshot on the left are plenty coarse to be achievable with a consumer grade CRT. Throw in the fact that European sets pretty much all had RGB and it's pretty realistic. Although most of us only heard about RGB cables with the advent of chipped PS1s and pirated NTSC discs (they oftentimes only displayed in black and white and RGB cables were the widely known fix for that).

EDIT oh by the way, the community CRTgaming also made it over here to Lemmy :-) I'll have to post some content there...

[-] thingsiplay@kbin.social 14 points 1 year ago

@Elektrotechnik Here in the EU/Germany we was used to SCART connection, even on the SNES (and upwards). MULTI-OUT/SCART supported composite, Svideo and RGB. The image I had was cleaner than what I emulate nowadays!

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[-] thingsiplay@kbin.social 18 points 1 year ago

@JDPoZ Most people not from that time think that CRT look is just bunch of clean black lines overlapping the image (keyword scanlines) without anything else to consider, and call it a day.

[-] JDPoZ@lemmy.world 27 points 1 year ago

Man I’m such an old fart I prefer my emulated games appear using different era CRT shaders to accurately reflect the sort of TV connection I had access to when playing. Like emulating shittier RF for older NES games, S-Video for SNES - N64, and then component for PS1 - PS2 era.

Like… I enjoy playing Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out using a shader that makes it look like a shitty RF connection with inaccurate desaturated colors bleeding, interlace jitter, etc. I’m actually kinda wistful when I can’t see the preview channel 3 TV guide blending through the crappy connection. I almost want to see if someone has made a shader that could render in a YouTube stream of retro late 80s to early 90s TV at like 5% opacity to get the same effect I saw as a kid sitting 2 ft away from my old 16” Magnavox.

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[-] onichama@feddit.de 88 points 1 year ago

Relevant example.

It just looks soooo much better.

[-] thingsiplay@kbin.social 29 points 1 year ago

@onichama Good game artists of that time period knew the limitation of their current technology and created the graphics with it in mind. In some games more apparent than on others. The linked image (often cited) is a good example of a game artist being aware.

[-] sundrei 21 points 1 year ago

It really is a stunning comparison. Designing art for CRTs was like painting with light.

"It was not by MY hand I was once again given pixels!"

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[-] shinnoodles@lemmy.world 72 points 1 year ago

Yeah, there's a crazy amount of tricks they employed to bring the sprites to life in a way that just isn't possible on modern displays. The sharp pixel look is actually an unfortunate byproduct of the transition to newer tech.

[-] RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

Abusing and exploiting slotmasks and such were what made games designed for CRTs look so much better on them. Unfortunately, it doesn't work backwards, because newer games designed for LCDs and LEDs don't look any better or worse on CRTs, outside of overscan and resolution issues.

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[-] endslavemorality@sh.itjust.works 52 points 1 year ago

Emulation made everyone forget that old school pixel art was made to blend in the really shitty consumer crts of the 90s using composit video. I don't like how crispy modern pixel art looks.

[-] A7thStone@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago

I hate a lot of modern pixel art games for that reason. Those old games weren't meant to have super defined pixels. The programmers knew they were going to get some blending due to the limitations of the technology at the time. If you're going for the old school aesthetic at least use a shader or two.

[-] CamelCityCalamity@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

I disagree completely. The pixel art Castlevania games on Nintendo DS look amazing! So many little details. It's fantastic.

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[-] Philolurker@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

If they're truly trying to be old school, I agree. Many such games actually come with adjustable filters to simulate that kind of distortion, and even arcade-like screen curvature (e.g., Hammerwatch).

That said, modern pixel art is evolving its own aesthetic that is valid and enjoyable in its own right. I don't think everyone making modern pixel art games is necessarily trying to be old school.

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[-] InFerNo@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 year ago

Composite lol, my Sega came with an RF connector with a switch. It was either TV signal or console.

[-] CamelCityCalamity@lemmy.world 49 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The raw pallette Nintendo video with NTSC filters looks amazing in RetroArch on a modern screen. It looks like how I remember. I'll see if I can find a screenshot of mine later.

Eh, I'll just show some from search results. Notice how the color bleeds between pixels, and edges have color artifacts.

Also, check out this amazing Game Boy filter!

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[-] ghariksforge@lemmy.world 44 points 1 year ago

In Linux you can try gamescope with fsr upscaling. It's a must-have for playing old games.

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[-] thingsiplay@kbin.social 29 points 1 year ago

@LastoftheDinosaurs There are filters for emulators called "Shaders" which can make games look close to a CRT look and feel. I use RetroArch to emulate games, which has first class support for such Shaders for use with any supported emulator core. If you want, have a look at what is possible with an article I wrote a while back, which has sliders to see a before and after effect: https://thingsiplay.game.blog/2022/03/08/crt-shader-showcase-for-retroarch/

Here a screenshot without and with my favorite Shader called "Royale" and a variant of the Shader that simulates even more characteristics, "Royale NTSC SVideo" :

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[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 29 points 1 year ago

This is reminiscent of watching TOS Star Trek restored for modern HD TVs. You can see all the make-up really clearly because they had to make everyone pop for old CRT screens. They look awful now.

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[-] Hazdaz@lemmy.world 26 points 1 year ago

I have mixed feelings about this. If you zoom in, it looks especially bad. If you are talking about consoles that had like 320x240 pixel resolutions, it is especially bad, but a high resolution LCD display can use filters/shaders (whatever you want to call them) to mitigate the blockiness to a large degree. Early LCDs were simply no match for a good CRT. I would argue with people all the time and they simply couldn't believe it and thought I was crazy. But now that we have LCDs with more than 4K resolution it is game over for CRTs and my back hurts just thinking about moving another 100 lb vacuum tube monitor.

[-] zombuey@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I disagree but only because I've seen it showed to me by my friends who are super into this. When games were made for TV and consoles especially in the late 80's and 90's they did things that took advantage of the analog nature Cathode Tubes used to display the image. Not every game took advantage of these techniques but the ones that do are nothing short of amazing when you think about it. They make filters these days that emulate some of these effects but analog is still analog and isn't something a digital display can always emulate regardless of resolution. I would say for most people it just doesn't matter that much but if your a retro gamer you want the OG experience. It's difficult to emulate these analog techniques because they are specific to an era and the techniques can sometimes be unique or trial and error by the devs.

There are other things as well for example light guns which just straight do not work on a newer display. Games that had live action recorded video look hilarious because the same techniques that were used to make things look better were applied in make up form to the actors.

What is a bit sad is the specific techniques these developers used aren't being well recorded and documented which I think would be very useful for future emulation and filtering.

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[-] scutiger@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

Yeah, of course games made back then are going to look ridiculous scaled up to 1080p or higher. The SNES had a resolution of 256×224, and the graphics were designed with the drawbacks of 50/60hz interlaced displays in mind. Nowadays, we have progressive scan consumer-grade TVs at 4K resolutions and refresh rates of 120hz. It doesn't make sense to scale the graphics up directly.

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[-] TowardsTheFuture@lemmy.zip 23 points 1 year ago

More about size. We play shit on screens WAY bigger than we used to back then. That image is just an icon. not meant to be that large or on a computer monitor that close to your face. CRT can help it look less bad when that big and that close, but can also remove detail when small and far.

[-] pete_the_cat@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I have a MiSTer and was telling my friend about it. We started playing SNES games on my 65" OLED TV and he was like "this looks like shit and it cost you about $500?! The Raspberry Pi looks way better than this!" and then I told him it's because the MiSTer is an accurate recreation of what the actual console was like and the Pi attempts to make everything look good on modern hardware. If you could connect a NES up to a 65" flatscreen it would look the same way as the MiSTer since the NES was meant to be played on a 15-25" CRT screen not a 65" inch OLED screen. It's no different than trying to watch a show or movie from the 80s or 90s where it's 480p on a 4K TV, you're stretching the picture out to like 8x larger than it's supposed to be.

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[-] AlternateRoute@lemmy.ca 23 points 1 year ago

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.

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[-] AphoticDev@lemmy.dbzer0.com 23 points 1 year ago

One of the best things you can get on some emulators are the CRT filters you can apply to give it that authentic look.

CRT filters are a huge cheap and easy blessing for retro gaming. Absolutely essential.

[-] greatley@lemmy.fmhy.ml 19 points 1 year ago

There's this profile on pixelfed that posts very nice pixel pics with and without CRT emulation - lashman

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[-] Encheiridion@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago

It's not only 2D games. Super Mario 64 looks terrible on a modern panel imo, and it still looks great on a CRT, as if the CRT has some kind of texture filtering lol. Not only the jagged edges are gone, but the textures look smoother too. You don't want to see low res textures in perfect contrast, brightness and sharpness lol.

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[-] Izzy@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago

I agree if we are talking about being this zoomed in. However, at standard viewing distances the difference becomes negligible. As well as on small retro devices with 3-4 inch screens.

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[-] Pumpkinbot@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago

Eh, I -like- the clear, chunky pixels. No filters, integer scaling.

[-] Nilz@sopuli.xyz 17 points 1 year ago

Just curious, did you grow up in the era of crt low pixel games? I suspect there is some form of nostalgic preference to whatever someone is used to playing.

[-] Carter@feddit.uk 10 points 1 year ago

I grew up with SNES games on a CRT and would absolute choose sharp pixels over a CRT filter. Blur hurts my eyes just thinking about it.

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[-] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 16 points 1 year ago

I remember not knowing what, like, 40% of the shit on a given screen in a video game was meant to be because it was all a blurry mass of pixels. Important shit looked better than background stuff (in a decent game, anyway) and the characters were always the most detailed thing.

Now I can play the 17th iteration of a game series that went from the above, to being able to count the individual fibers of a berber carpet.

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[-] dudebro@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago

Did they? Considering, you know, we can make them look like this on an LCD.

[-] idunnololz_test@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago

This might be a hot take but I actually prefer the version on the right.

My take is this is because they were made with dithering in mind. Modern pixel art games like Iconoclasts, Eastward, Owlboy, Hyper Light Drifter, Moonlighter look pretty without dithering.

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[-] Fedizen@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

They didn't all benefit from this and many CRTs looked like shit regardless (I recall having multiple CRTs where certain colors looked off or bled too much). Specifically, the numbers on most games (Specifically Zelda:A Link to the Past) had a tendency to bleed if the device brightness was set to anything near visible in a room during the day.

There was a device to let you play gameboy games (native LCD) on like a super nintendo or something, and they actually looked better there because of the native filtering. I'd argue the filters you can apply to gameboy games look even better now, even on LCDs.

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[-] Delphia@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

A really great hack for retro gamers who dont want to have a CRT tv hanging around the house is buy a cheap 1080p projector and project it onto an unprepped painted wall. The slight blur and bleed really smooths everything out.

I bought all those rerelease retro consoles and Metal Slug on a 3 meter screen is pretty badass.

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[-] DidacticDumbass@lemmy.one 12 points 1 year ago

One thing I love to collect are tiny CRTs. I actually grew up watching Star Trek on a boom box with a television built in (what the hell happened to it, I dont know).

They are awesome! All the fun of a CRT without the pain of it being heavy and taking up a lot of space.

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[-] CarlsIII@kbin.social 10 points 1 year ago

I may be the only person in the planet that doesn’t agree. The left image just looks darker and blurrier to me. And I understand a lot of people think the blurring as makes it look better because it hides the pixels, but I suppose it just doesn’t work for me, since I can still see all the pixels just fine.

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[-] TugOfWarCrimes@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 year ago

I've personally been replaying Chrono Trigger recently on PC using Reshade with the CRT-Royale settings for exactly this reason.

Of course there's also a setting in most emulators to do the same thing.

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[-] ZILtoid1991@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago

Depends on the game and the CRT. Not all CRTs were made equal, my old Eizo FlexScan had a near LCD like quality as long as you didn't go above 800×600 (above that, the filtering kicked in with some additional blur), so is my professional HP monitor with a Trinitron tube (RIP).

Some games also took advantage of color artifacts. Some didn't.

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[-] skellener@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago

Better is subjective

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this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2023
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