Achieving period-correct graphics in personal computer emulators

[Incognito]

Wrote them back to real disks using what? Surely not a stock Amiga drive as those copy protections are NOT writable by standard drives. That was the whole point behind them; you needed special equipment costing several tens of thousands of dollars to duplicate those master disks. The trick was those protected disks could be *read* by Amiga drives, but not written, and the presence of the intact protection was inferred by the software from side effects, e.g., small fluctuations in the data read speeds. I think these days the KyroFlux can in theory write those images, though.

Yeah, didn't think about that. Apparently archive.org has a bunch of .raw images, like the ones he used, from KyroFlux.

 

[caffeine]

Open in a new tab for full size if it gets resized

 

[deama]

Open in a new tab for full size if it gets resized
...

How'd you apply that? What's it from?

 

[caffeine]

How'd you apply that? What's it from?

RetroArch, it plays DOS games. But I suppose you can achieve something similar tweaking with ReShade.

 

[solemgar]

Open in a new tab for full size if it gets resized

That's pretty nice, can you please share the specific configuration?

 

[caffeine]

That's pretty nice, can you please share the specific configuration?

https://pastebin.com/R6b0YBBc

 

[Gerrard]

Open in a new tab for full size if it gets resized

 

[Rincewind]

The overall blur is too much and dudes, monitors from the 90s had geometry controls via the OSD. Everybody set up the image for perfect geometry as much as possible. You did not see this fish eye effect, unless your monitor was broken.

Also, the blur in the corners is too much.

 

[Rincewind]

...not to mention you can clearly see in the A/B comparison that you're applying the slightly overdone CRT shader on top of a nearest-neighbour upscaled image. That is garbage. Notice the uneven pixels on the "unshaded" image. Even with the overdone blur the uneven pixel-scaling shows through. Please just don't

 

[deama]

Hey Rincewind , do you know of maybe some tool or some way to convert an image into having those scanlines correctly? Like take a pixel image that's 720p, and basically convert it into having scanlines and maybe add in other affects to give a genuine old school look to it, and in the process I guess it would become like a 4k image or 1440p or so.
Is that possible?

 

[Rincewind]

Hey Rincewind , do you know of maybe some tool or some way to convert an image into having those scanlines correctly? Like take a pixel image that's 720p, and basically convert it into having scanlines and maybe add in other affects to give a genuine old school look to it, and in the process I guess it would become like a 4k image or 1440p or so.
Is that possible?

Yeah, this one:

https://int10h.org/blog/2021/01/simulating-crt-monitors-ffmpeg-pt-1-color/

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

There's a retroarch core that can capture any window, would probably be easier. Just make sure to switch the renderer to Vulkan, it's not well explained in the docs. https://forums.libretro.com/t/official-release-thread-for-windowcast-core/40464

 

[Sigourn]

There's a retroarch core that can capture any window, would probably be easier. Just make sure to switch the renderer to Vulkan, it's not well explained in the docs. https://forums.libretro.com/t/official-release-thread-for-windowcast-core/40464

It works wonderfully for me.
It's not without its flaws (I get a double cursor on games that don't have a cursor specific to the game).

To run this properly, because it took me some time to get it:

• partials-example.txt requires that you write part of the window's name on it to detect it and run it with RetroArch.
• You must run RetroArch, either or after you run the game it's fine, then load the WindowCast core, and afterwards run partials-example.txt. If the core finds a window with a matching name, it will automatically detect it and you could now apply shaders to it.
• Use CTRL+ALT+T to shift from RetroArch focus to game focus. This is required for games that require mouse input.

 

[Rincewind]

You could probably just use ShaderGlass with less pain. At least you don't need to deal with RetroArch — I don't wanna go near that thing. Whenever tried, I rage quit 5 mins later in frustration.

It can be a bit flaky, but probably WindowCast is no better. I've been using it successfully with a BBC emulator that has no shader support.

ReShader ports of your favourite shaders are also an option if it's an emulator that uses DirectX or OpenGL.

 

[deama]

Hey Rincewind , do you know of maybe some tool or some way to convert an image into having those scanlines correctly? Like take a pixel image that's 720p, and basically convert it into having scanlines and maybe add in other affects to give a genuine old school look to it, and in the process I guess it would become like a 4k image or 1440p or so.
Is that possible?

Yeah, this one:

https://int10h.org/blog/2021/01/simulating-crt-monitors-ffmpeg-pt-1-color/

It doesn't seem to work well, it sort of just adds an overlay, similar to using something like shaderglass, but I was after something like what you did for dosbox staging, properly adding in scanlines inbetween the pixels, rather than overlaying it.
Is that possible to do on an image to convert it?

 

[Rincewind]

Hey Rincewind , do you know of maybe some tool or some way to convert an image into having those scanlines correctly? Like take a pixel image that's 720p, and basically convert it into having scanlines and maybe add in other affects to give a genuine old school look to it, and in the process I guess it would become like a 4k image or 1440p or so.
Is that possible?

Yeah, this one:

https://int10h.org/blog/2021/01/simulating-crt-monitors-ffmpeg-pt-1-color/

It doesn't seem to work well, it sort of just adds an overlay, similar to using something like shaderglass, but I was after something like what you did for dosbox staging, properly adding in scanlines inbetween the pixels, rather than overlaying it.
Is that possible to do on an image to convert it?

It does do scanline emulation, just it's subtle. It's more apparent in the monochrome images, and you could tweak it to taste:
https://int10h.org/blog/2021/02/simulating-crt-monitors-ffmpeg-pt-2-monochrome/

Also, ShaderGlass applies RetroArch shaders, it's not "just an overlay". If you use ShaderGlass properly, the result will be the same as when using the same shader with the sane params in RA over the same input image.

 

[deama]

Hey Rincewind , do you know of maybe some tool or some way to convert an image into having those scanlines correctly? Like take a pixel image that's 720p, and basically convert it into having scanlines and maybe add in other affects to give a genuine old school look to it, and in the process I guess it would become like a 4k image or 1440p or so.
Is that possible?

Yeah, this one:

https://int10h.org/blog/2021/01/simulating-crt-monitors-ffmpeg-pt-1-color/

It doesn't seem to work well, it sort of just adds an overlay, similar to using something like shaderglass, but I was after something like what you did for dosbox staging, properly adding in scanlines inbetween the pixels, rather than overlaying it.
Is that possible to do on an image to convert it?

It does do scanline emulation, just it's subtle. It's more apparent in the monochrome images, and you could tweak it to taste:
https://int10h.org/blog/2021/02/simulating-crt-monitors-ffmpeg-pt-2-monochrome/

Also, ShaderGlass applies RetroArch shaders, it's not "just an overlay". If you use ShaderGlass properly, the result will be the same as when using the same shader with the sane params in RA over the same input image.

Ah ok yes it does, it's not very apparent at low resolutions, only at like 4k you can see it.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Anyone mess with this?

 

[solemgar]

Anyone mess with this?

Anyone mess with this?

I did. Will up some screenshots in a bit

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Anyone mess with this?

He sounds retarded. Retro Rigs don't "suck", he does. Nor do they require CDs. "Hurr they're loud". Aren't you a hardware expert who's supposed to be able to solve this? This zoomer content is brainrot inducing in real time.

PCem, last I tried it, couldn't emulate more than 133 Mhz on my high end cpu, so a lot if not most Win98 games are out the window. It's okay for early Win95 games.
I got DosBox-pure that runs Win98 and you can install 3Dfx drivers on it. I played through Fallout 1 like this through RA with CRT shaders, it was good. I haven't tried more demanding games.

What I'd ideally want is for either of those two programs to start emulating Sound Blaster Audigy. But it doesn't look like PCem had any major updates since 2021.

 

[Rincewind]

What Bester said. My frustration with PCem led me to build a real Win98 and a WinXP rig.

It can emulate really early Win98 games badly, and that's it. Also, the author wasn't really into games and it shows.

Sound keeps dropping out no matter what I do, it's very jarring. Then there's no proper SB Live emulation.

That video is both cool and a bit retarded. Fat dude is cool, though. Yeah, any normal person would use DaemonTools and/or Alcohol 120% and CD images, come on now... Even CD Audio works fine SB Live and DT 3.47 the way I configured it.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

It is probably why I just got a winxp sp3 laptop. The win 98 one is old and well, fucked. It isn’t even 98se. I can’t even get Dos properly. I mainly was interested if PCem was ok for dummies or the lazy. I could probably have found a better video without Linus.

I do wonder if I would ever need a good 95/98/se rig for various windows games or is the xp machine good enough?

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

I do wonder if I would ever need a good 95/98/se rig for various windows games or is the xp machine good enough?

For most of them, it'll do. But on a rare occasion, dual booting into 98se is necessary.

 

[Rincewind]

It is probably why I just got a winxp sp3 laptop. The win 98 one is old and well, fucked. It isn’t even 98se. I can’t even get Dos properly. I mainly was interested if PCem was ok for dummies or the lazy. I could probably have found a better video without Linus.

I do wonder if I would ever need a good 95/98/se rig for various windows games or is the xp machine good enough?

Most Win98-era games run fine on XP, or there are XP patches for them. Multi-core CPUs are a bigger problem I think, so even earlier XP games that assumed a single-core CPU will need patches and/or some hackery on dual-cores.

If you're fine with your XP laptop, there's not much reasons to get a dedicated Win98 box, IMO.

In my case, I wanted to use specific graphics cards (Matrox), CRT monitors, etc., so mostly for the nostalgia factor.

 

[Azdul]

Anyone mess with this?

PC emulation in MAME/MESS also made a lot of progress since humble beginnings in 2009.

The goal is accuracy without compromises - and you can learn a lot reading 270 pages long thread. For example - that cycle-accurate emulation of Sound Blaster is inherently slow - and machine speeds up a lot when it is replaced with emulated Gravis Ultrasound.

Of course don't expect miracles - full speed cycle-accurate Pentium 1 emulation requires insanely fast PC.