What's the proper way of playing old, low resolution games on modern monitors?

[taxalot]

Don't be ashamed to apply graphical filters on 320x200 games. People will tell you "that's not how they are supposed to look like", but they are not meant to be played on huge screens at high resolution too. CRT emulation shaders provide sometimes satisfying results ; Interpolation is often disgusting when there is text to read but can be okay in other cases.

IOW, it's a case by case basis.

 

[Dedicated_Dark]

Use reshade. use the CRT filter.

 

[FeelTheRads]

This should be memorialized on a plaque somewhere. The headaches I sustained from years of CRT gaming alone... no one should be so nostalgic for something they never enjoyed, and wouldn't enjoy because of the pain endured by those who did. The modern age is about 99% shit, but flat-screen LED/LCD monitors are a true miracle of technological advancement. I once had to help a relative get rid of her old box tv out of her room when she moved. Was just a regular old 32 inch box tv. I swear to god that thing weighed 200 pounds.

People wonder why the sea levels are rising. It's not global warming. It's water displacement. We're sinking our land 'cause it's filled with 60 years worth of CRT monitors and television sets. Those things weren't meant for entertainment, they were meant to stop nazi bullets and commie shrapnel.

It's not nostalgia about getting headaches. It's nostalgia about how the games from back then looked on them compared to how they look now, which is invariably shit.

Also, LCDs were absolute garbage in image quality, no matter the game, for a long time before we got to the "miracle" of today. So bad, that when they showed up they were likely more dangerous for your eyes than CRTs.

And yeah, such a miracle of technological advancement that when you buy an LCD you have to pray that you get one with not TOO many defects. Because there are defects that are actually not covered by the warranty. That's how shitty the tech actually is, that they simply can't reliably do it right.

 

[Beastro]

Spoiler

Fuckin' ViewSonic E655! 15 inches of radiation poisoning.

That was my first monitor, on my Win 98 machine. Fuckin' hated the thing, my eyes would start hurting after about 2 hours of staring at it.

And now you hipsters are lugging this junk around like it's some monocled holy grail of gaming.

FFS.

This should be memorialized on a plaque somewhere. The headaches I sustained from years of CRT gaming alone... no one should be so nostalgic for something they never enjoyed, and wouldn't enjoy because of the pain endured by those who did. The modern age is about 99% shit, but flat-screen LED/LCD monitors are a true miracle of technological advancement. I once had to help a relative get rid of her old box tv out of her room when she moved. Was just a regular old 32 inch box tv. I swear to god that thing weighed 200 pounds.

People wonder why the sea levels are rising. It's not global warming. It's water displacement. We're sinking our land 'cause it's filled with 60 years worth of CRT monitors and television sets. Those things weren't meant for entertainment, they were meant to stop nazi bullets and commie shrapnel.

Everything has the movement that reminds me of old cable access shows on massive flatscreens that kills the atmosphere. Watched Running Man a few weeks ago at my cousins and it felt completely different because everything about the movie was so off because of the screen.

Imma still using a CRT TV. When it dies I play on finding a new one to replace it.

 

[Wyatt_Derp]

This should be memorialized on a plaque somewhere. The headaches I sustained from years of CRT gaming alone... no one should be so nostalgic for something they never enjoyed, and wouldn't enjoy because of the pain endured by those who did. The modern age is about 99% shit, but flat-screen LED/LCD monitors are a true miracle of technological advancement. I once had to help a relative get rid of her old box tv out of her room when she moved. Was just a regular old 32 inch box tv. I swear to god that thing weighed 200 pounds.

People wonder why the sea levels are rising. It's not global warming. It's water displacement. We're sinking our land 'cause it's filled with 60 years worth of CRT monitors and television sets. Those things weren't meant for entertainment, they were meant to stop nazi bullets and commie shrapnel.

It's not nostalgia about getting headaches. It's nostalgia about how the games from back then looked on them compared to how they look now, which is invariably shit.

Also, LCDs were absolute garbage in image quality, no matter the game, for a long time before we got to the "miracle" of today. So bad, that when they showed up they were likely more dangerous for your eyes than CRTs.

And yeah, such a miracle of technological advancement that when you buy an LCD you have to pray that you get one with not TOO many defects. Because there are defects that are actually not covered by the warranty. That's how shitty the tech actually is, that they simply can't reliably do it right.

Fine. I'd prefer the defects exist within my monitor rather than my brain/optical nerve.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

News of the Esoteric (but on-topic): Nvidia just introduced integer scaling in their geforce drivers. Only works with Turing though.

 

[The Decline]

Spoiler

Fuckin' ViewSonic E655! 15 inches of radiation poisoning.

That was my first monitor, on my Win 98 machine. Fuckin' hated the thing, my eyes would start hurting after about 2 hours of staring at it.

And now you hipsters are lugging this junk around like it's some monocled holy grail of gaming.

FFS.

This should be memorialized on a plaque somewhere. The headaches I sustained from years of CRT gaming alone... no one should be so nostalgic for something they never enjoyed, and wouldn't enjoy because of the pain endured by those who did. The modern age is about 99% shit, but flat-screen LED/LCD monitors are a true miracle of technological advancement. I once had to help a relative get rid of her old box tv out of her room when she moved. Was just a regular old 32 inch box tv. I swear to god that thing weighed 200 pounds.

People wonder why the sea levels are rising. It's not global warming. It's water displacement. We're sinking our land 'cause it's filled with 60 years worth of CRT monitors and television sets. Those things weren't meant for entertainment, they were meant to stop nazi bullets and commie shrapnel.

Everything has the movement that reminds me of old cable access shows on massive flatscreens that kills the atmosphere. Watched Running Man a few weeks ago at my cousins and it felt completely different because everything about the movie was so off because of the screen.

Imma still using a CRT TV. When it dies I play on finding a new one to replace it.

That's because your cousin is an idiot and has the frame interpolation option on.

 

[Merlkir]

News of the Esoteric (but on-topic): Nvidia just introduced integer scaling in their geforce drivers. Only works with Turing though.

It's so funny how everyone mostly ignored this until 4k monitor owners started asking for a way to upscale 1080p.
Anyway, there's a way to do this on any card, for free:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/993090/Lossless_Scaling__Integer_Scaling_for_Games/

 

[newtmonkey]

Here's another (actually) free option:

http://tanalin.com/en/projects/integer-scaler/

 

[Bad Sector]

I'm intrigued by Nvidia's comment that Turing has a dedicated *programmable* hardware for the output since that means it will have zero overhead (other options mentioned in this thread rely on composition which creates a lot of overhead) but more importantly if it is really programmable then it should be possible to create additional scaling methods - for example one way would be to perform an integer scale *above* the closest that would fit for the monitor's native resolution and then a bilinear scale for exact fit (this should avoid the empty space around for non-exact integer fits without compromising too much on sharpness, especially for monitors with large pixel density).

Of course it all relies on how exactly this is exposed and assuming you can actually program it and isn't locked to Nvidia's programmers only. But i'd be very interesting if you could run something like a pixel shader that runs for everything that would be displayed on screen - be it a game, Windows desktop or whatever else.

 

[J_C]

I had an idea. Would you consider using these small, 800x600 resolution monitors for an old game? Something like this:

Spoiler

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/329..._expid=ab05b9c7-b5de-47d0-8d47-72a0a417d890-6

 

[Valky]

I had an idea. Would you consider using these small, 800x600 resolution monitors for an old game? Something like this:

Spoiler

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/329..._expid=ab05b9c7-b5de-47d0-8d47-72a0a417d890-6

I might, that looks pretty neat.

 

[Modron]

I had an idea. Would you consider using these small, 800x600 resolution monitors for an old game? Something like this:

Spoiler

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/329..._expid=ab05b9c7-b5de-47d0-8d47-72a0a417d890-6

I don't know some cheap monitor designed with utility in mind might have pretty slow whatever you call that time it takes a pixel to go from one color to another color, gray to gray, et cetera rates and not be suitable for gaming because of ghosting and so forth.

 

[J_C]

I had an idea. Would you consider using these small, 800x600 resolution monitors for an old game? Something like this:

Spoiler

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/329..._expid=ab05b9c7-b5de-47d0-8d47-72a0a417d890-6

I don't know some cheap monitor designed with utility in mind might have pretty slow whatever you call that time it takes a pixel to go from one color to another color, gray to gray, et cetera rates and not be suitable for gaming because of ghosting and so forth.

Yeah, we are talking about some chinese crap, but it might worth a try.

 

[Modron]

Chinese made lcd panels not even once kek.

 

[passerby]

Buy 4k display, integer scale 3x with black border around ( or without border, if you can go 1280x720 x3, with some widescreen hd patch ).

 

[DalekFlay]

Hasn't integer scaling now made this stuff irrelevant now? I haven't used it for a Fallout type game yet, but I believe it's supposed to fix the "lower resolution looks like ass" problem.

 

[agris]

I’ll add that the CRT pixel shader in dos box with no upscaling filter applied and a game like Betrayal at Krondor rendering at aspect-ratio fullscreen 1080p (so in 4:3) looks great. Not all games need integer scaling. I think games with smaller detailed art such as Fallout really benefit from it, but BaK with just a CRT PS looks amazing on a 55” TV. The text is super readable and none of the blurry shit filters messing up the art as with all upscaling filters.

 

[Gibson]

I had an idea. Would you consider using these small, 800x600 resolution monitors for an old game? Something like this:

Spoiler

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/329..._expid=ab05b9c7-b5de-47d0-8d47-72a0a417d890-6

for my nostalgia itches I bought an old HP laptop from around 2008 and installed WinXP and WIN98 on it. have all my favourite 90's-early 00's installed on it and literally nothing else.
a cheap (paid like 30€ for it) and highly recomended solution - no fucking around with fixes, mods, whatever. just install a game and play.

 

[J_C]

Hasn't integer scaling now made this stuff irrelevant now? I haven't used it for a Fallout type game yet, but I believe it's supposed to fix the "lower resolution looks like ass" problem.

I don't think so. Scaling a 640x480 game up to 1080p still makes it super pixelated, even with integer scaling. I'd rather play it close to its original resolution if there is an option.

 

[Alienman]

Kinda related thing I need help with.

So you can't run dosbox games in borderless window, but with certain programs you can force it. Links to the programs here. Anyway, I tried a couple and it seems to work except for one thing, and that is this:

Spoiler

Is it possible to align the game to the middle somehow? For some reason it gets stuck to the left with a big black bar on the right. The reason I want it to work is that while playing dosbox games through Steam works, the Steam overlay craps out. You can still take screenshots and such (my main reason for wanting it to work) but stuff get stuck on the screen. If you play the game in windowed mode it works, but well, you can't go borderless since dosbox don't have support for it...

The only thing keeping this from working for me is that this fake fullscreen borderless won't align properly, so if anyone know how to fix this (if it even is possible) it would be awesome!

 

[DalekFlay]

I don't think so. Scaling a 640x480 game up to 1080p still makes it super pixelated, even with integer scaling. I'd rather play it close to its original resolution if there is an option.

I think it has to be a multiple of your full resolution I think, so 480p wouldn't work, right? It would be like 1080p on a 4k screen or something. So you'd have to use the high-res mod, just not at full res. I honestly haven't looked into this much yet though, so I could be talking out of my ass.

 

[J_C]

I don't think so. Scaling a 640x480 game up to 1080p still makes it super pixelated, even with integer scaling. I'd rather play it close to its original resolution if there is an option.

I think it has to be a multiple of your full resolution I think, so 480p wouldn't work, right? It would be like 1080p on a 4k screen or something. So you'd have to use the high-res mod, just not at full res. I honestly haven't looked into this much yet though, so I could be talking out of my ass.

Yes I get that. 480p can't be properly upscaled to 1080p, it was a bad example. I'm just saying that even when you integer upscale to a big resolution, the game becomes much more pixelated than it was originally on a CRT monitor, using its native resolution.

 

[abija]

I don't think so. Scaling a 640x480 game up to 1080p still makes it super pixelated, even with integer scaling. I'd rather play it close to its original resolution if there is an option.

If you ignore the black borders, 27'' 1080p without scaling will look very similar to those 800x600 chinese junk monitors. Something like a 12-13inch 4k laptop screen with non-integer scaling would probably be your best bet.

It might also help to play on some old crt for a bit, get rid of some nostalgia effect.

 

[Norfleet]

I'm just saying that even when you integer upscale to a big resolution, the game becomes much more pixelated than it was originally on a CRT monitor, using its native resolution.

That's just your nostalgia talking. The game was really that pixelated. Source: I still play those games on an actual, old-as-fuck computer. The pixels really were that big. But I like big pixels and I cannot lie.