.

[Grauken]

From the point of view of reproducing an image in the mathematical sense, VGA itself is bad and you should use a hardware line halver.

That's about how many people? 1 Licorice

 

[newtmonkey]

Here are some shots I took a while back:


Extreme zoom-in on a console game (Mega Drive) on a Sony PVM (SCART RGB)


Winning screen of a DOS game running on actual hardware connected to a CRT monitor



BONUS

FC plugged into a consumer TV (composite cables)


[EDIT: Replaced with full res images]

 

[Nutmeg]

Here are some shots I took a while back:


Extreme zoom-in on a console game on a Sony PVM (SCART RGB)

Interesting. I thought PVMs were aperture grille (trintron) and not slot masks.

 

[mondblut]

The glow and smear is not because of the CRT but because my phone is ancient and its camera sucks.

Judging CRT look by photos is silly to begin with (and using shaders/filters to replicate what you see of CRT imagery on photos is plain retarded). The matrix of a camera processes those tiny glowing lamps very differently than our eyes do. I've been glued to CRT monitor hooked to PC for over a decade, and I don't remember any scanlines, interlacing or dots. Nor extremely convex display surfaces; by 90s CRT monitors aspired to be as flatscreen as possible.

 

[newtmonkey]

Interesting. I thought PVMs were aperture grille (trintron) and not slot masks.

It might depend on the model/size? This photo is from a while back, but I remember taking it specifically because I finally got an RGB SCART cable for my MD and was blown away by the difference between composite and RGB for that system.

 

[Nutmeg]

It might depend on the model/size? This photo is from a while back, but I remember taking it specifically because I finally got an RGB SCART cable for my MD and was blown away by the difference between composite and RGB for that system.

Nice. I have a love hate relationship with composite. Especially with the MD. There's no denying artists created many effects with composite in mind. On the other hand, NTSC composite colors are horrible compared to RGB. PAL S-Video is a happy middle when it is an option (too many games are poorly PAL optimized, even downright broken). Another happy middle is low TVL displays (almost perfect blending on simple alternating dot dithers) with RGB.

 

[newtmonkey]

There's no denying artists created many effects with composite in mind.

Agree 100%, even a lot of FC games look completely different (and more detailed) in composite (sunsoft games in particular).

I personally wouldn't use composite for MD/SFC and later systems (though I acknowledge that the art for many MD games—particularly non-Japanese games—was drawn with composite in mind), but for FC/PCE I feel that composite video is essential. A nice comb/notch filter cleans up NTSC composite video very nicely.

 

[Raghar]

10 - awesome
1- abomination
5- mediocore

Pixel art is crap.
I didn't see this option in the poll.

 

[Grauken]

 

[Machocruz]

Judging CRT look by photos is silly to begin with (and using shaders/filters to replicate what you see of CRT imagery on photos is plain retarded).

That's me when I first got into emulation. I couldn't understand why Alien versus Predator (arcade) didn't look as smooth and complete as screenshots. Just on a whim I applied scan lines and it helped to smooth the image out, but at the same time it dulled the colors too much and the lines were too strong, so it still didn't look right.

Of course the small size of screenshots made it look sharper, smother, and brighter than the actual game could ever be on standard screen sizes at the time.

Still, I find some of the CRT filters on RetroArch to be useful. They restore blends and gradients, smooth the contours, mellow the colors without going too far into greyness, and I find the slight grain pleasing, like oil paint on a medium textured canvas.

 

[Raghar]

Arcade was designed for making profits on shit monitors. Basically something like a casino game. I'm actually glad piracy replaced these. At least children are spending money for something nice.
Proper comparison would be game designed to be used on PC monitors, or decent high end screens. But, before PC fans who made freeware, and wide availability of cracked games, most games were made for profit tailored to end device, and were designed with all limitations of games designed to generate profit. Thus the typical end result was "if that would sell it would be enough".

 

[Viata]

Arcade was designed for making profits on shit monitors

I take it you never played Darius on an arcade machine:

Yes, this baby had 3 monitors. Children will never be able to experience this since they are too busy playing among us.

 

[Grauken]

Arcade was designed for making profits on shit monitors

I take it you never played Darius on an arcade machine:

Yes, this baby had 3 monitors. Children will never be able to experience this since they are too busy playing among us.

Arcade machines are interesting for this topic, as each one had a unique setup in terms of display, with the later having no scanlines once they started to use LCDs

 

[Morenatsu.]

For example this is a photo i took from one of my CRTs:

Your set up is wrong. You clearly have more than one line per row of pixels. It looks like you're scaling the image up using nearest neighbor and then displaying it.

See Rincewind's photos for correct use of a CRT. Each line is one row of pixels (rather samples). Lighter colors expand the beam while darker colors contract it. This is an important effect when it comes to image reconstruction from discrete samples and by prescaling with nearest neighbor you lose that.

low-res VGA is double-scanned

I know VGA 13h 320 by 200 gets sent as 320 by 400 over the wire and it was wrong then and it's wrong now. From a signal processing point of view.

Gee, I don't know buddy, if that's the only way it was ever displayed, maybe, just maybe, it's actually correct? My monitor won't even display 320x200, the timings are too low. Isn't that interesting.

Arcade was designed for making profits on shit monitors

I take it you never played Darius on an arcade machine:

Yes, this baby had 3 monitors. Children will never be able to experience this since they are too busy playing among us.

yeah, very cool, it's just too bad the game sucks trolololo

 

[Viata]

yeah, very cool, it's just too bad the game sucks trolololo

 

[Morenatsu.]

it's slow and button-mashy and relies too much on power-ups while not at least being actually fun like Gradius. game sux

 

[tritosine2k]

Absence of high quality sprites is the defining* characteristic of "pixel art".

Because former allows scaling, while latter is such "clever" arrangement it breaks immediately once it's not clinging to the screen surface.

This also means games using former also made effort to convey visual depth, and latter is STILL neglecting.

*aside from embraced as grifter currency "NFT", lol

 

[Viata]

relies too much on power-ups

Gradius

Mate, the first thing you do in Gradius is use the speed power up.

 

[Morenatsu.]

relies too much on power-ups

Gradius

Mate, the first thing you do in Gradius is use the speed power up.

I said that Gradius was fun despite that, not that it didn't also over-rely on power-ups. lrn2read

 

[Nutmeg]

Gradius power ups aren't really power ups. It's more like a very clever shop system (think vending machine) or character building system that doesn't interrupt the action.

Mate, the first thing you do in Gradius is use the speed power up.

Have you played Gradius Gaiden? The game has a bar edit feature and one thing I've seen people do is pick the force field that provides full invincibility (even to terrain) but lasts only a few seconds, put it in slot 1 and then just invincibility hop their way from item to item.

 

[Nutmeg]

I take it you never played Darius on an arcade machine:

Is that your photo? I put a couple of credits in this one at Hey! in Akihabara in 2019 when I was last in Tokyo for a family matter.

 

[Viata]

Have you played Gradius Gaiden?

Not that I remember. I played mostly 1 and 3, 1 because the arcade place in front of my parent's house had it(and Darius 1) and 3 because I had the snes game.

 

[Morenatsu.]

Gradius power ups aren't really power ups. It's more like a very clever shop system (think vending machine) or character building system that doesn't interrupt the action.

It's effectively the same in terms of actual gameplay. Go pick up to the thing so you can shoot better, then die and lose them all so you can die again.

 

[Viata]

I take it you never played Darius on an arcade machine:

Is that your photo? I put a couple of credits in this one at Hey! in Akihabara in 2019 when I was last in Tokyo for a family matter.

Nope, from google. Mom lost our old pictures(which had me playing those games on arcade) when we moved out.

 

[Viata]

then die and lose them all so you can die again

Best thing in Gradius is dying and then being able to recover from a hard place with your ship slow as fuck and no option.