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[Skyfox]

So much input lag!

 

[Larxia]

We regressed in terms of display technology. Lcd tech is smaller, more efficient but games simply looked better on crt tv's and monitors. I recently visited my buddy from another city, he has an old school crt monitor and still plays modern games on that screen. He even repaired it twice, I think the caps went bad and the other time the something related to the tube itself went wrong. It's crt but it has rgb analog inputs. I played a little bit bfV on that screen and I was amazed. That thing in 720i resolution looks better then modern flat panel lcd tv's reproducing 4k content. I was shocked. And the refresh rate, my god how we regressed.

I remember how disappointed I was with some games when I got my first HD lcd screen.
I remember playing the demo of Vanquish on ps3 on a CRT tv, and it looked amazing, I know it's hard to believe because the game was never an incredible game technically, but when I first tried it on a CRT TV, it had a very, almost cgi-ish look, it looked incredibly good.
I then got my first HD lcd screen, bought the game, and... it really didn't look the same. You could spot more details, it was sharper, but it really lost all of that special "cgi", super smooth look that it had before, now it was full of aliasing and looking a lot less realistic.

It was the case with a lot of games, but I think Vanquish is the one that really shocked me the most.
However LCD screens are an improvement for texts and other things like that.

Also that first picture of earthworm jim looks bad in my opinion, it gives me some kind of "off" look, like if my eyes were going weird with some astigmatism.

The only games that almost gave me this "super smooth" feeling again, were games compatibles with SGSSAA, sparse grid supersampling anti aliasing, it was a specific type of anti aliasing that you could force with Nvidia inspector on some games, and it made the games look super, super clean, having this very "soft but not really blurry" look. I remember mafia 2 looking almost like a pre rendered video.

edit :
found back a few old screenshots I took of mafia 2 with that AA:

 

[nkarafo]

Someone needs to make a video comparing the motion clarity of CRTs to high refresh monitors honestly. I used to have a VG248QE and it didn't really come close to old CRTs.

You mean a video explaining, not showing. Because you won't be able to see the clarity difference in a modern screen.

 

[Nethernova]

I *love* me some sharp pixels and I own a crt and a pvm

 

[Nightrunner]

You mean a video explaining, not showing. Because you won't be able to see the clarity difference in a modern screen.

Hence the term comparison. An informative video highlighting all the differences.

 

[Dazrael]

I’m not a fan of the sharp pixel look at all, old 2D games were made with CRTs in mind. In fact I try to avoid games without a scanline option. Unfortunately most filters that allegedly offer a scanline option are terrible, blurry messes that usually make the screen look worse. It’s rare to find developers that care enough to put decent scanlines in their games. I thought that M2 were usually good enough to make decent scanlines a priority but even they falter from time to time. Just look at the options in the Megadrive Mini and the Konami collections, they look trash.

It can’t be that difficult to incorporate decent scanline options in most games surely, lacklustre scanlines give the process a bad name.

 

[EverydayBeast]

Rich history but the last 20 years games haven't aged well.

 

[Sakura Doritos]

I have a 36” Wega and a 65” Aquious. I put the Classics on both and ofc they look different with the tube looking better overall usually.

But.... it’s the same hardware pushing two different looks.

So I’d say it looks exactly how it’s supposed to. It is just that there is a superior look and that happens to be in older TVs.

 

[nkarafo]

It can’t be that difficult to incorporate decent scanline options in most games surely, lacklustre scanlines give the process a bad name.

Apparently it is... RetroArch being the only platform that does this right.

Many CRT shaders have a lot of passes and many lines of code, it's not like how some developers put a scanline option and it's nothing but an overlay of lines over the screen. It's not that simple, there are a lot of things going on, CRT TVs did more than just a bunch of lines. And the shaders that give you the best, closest look to a CRT, can take a significant amount of processing power that current consoles with their measly CPUs couldn't even handle.

 

[theclaw135]

I’m not a fan of the sharp pixel look at all, old 2D games were made with CRTs in mind. In fact I try to avoid games without a scanline option. Unfortunately most filters that allegedly offer a scanline option are terrible, blurry messes that usually make the screen look worse. It’s rare to find developers that care enough to put decent scanlines in their games. I thought that M2 were usually good enough to make decent scanlines a priority but even they falter from time to time. Just look at the options in the Megadrive Mini and the Konami collections, they look trash.

It can’t be that difficult to incorporate decent scanline options in most games surely, lacklustre scanlines give the process a bad name.

Even without blurring, uniform black bars isn't completely accurate to how scanlines look (though it might be the best LCDs can do).
CRTs are made up of glowing 'pixels' that aren't always square or arranged horizontally.

 

[ethomaz]

They looks exactly like it looked in the past.
I don't see diference and I appreciate that... some old games looks gorgeous.

Ohhh you are talking about emulation is actual hardware... well emulation is just emulation and it is far from perfect.

I have for example SNES working fine at home and even playing today it looks exactly how I remembered in old days.

 

[nkarafo]

Ohhh you are talking about emulation is actual hardware... well emulation is just emulation and it is far from perfect.

Not at all. Plenty of emulators are almost perfectly accurate, especially for older consoles.

I'm talking about how the games are presented. In modern TVs, without a filter or a proper CRT shader, the games are presented as raw, sharp pixels. And this makes the games look not how the developers intended because they lack the CRT layer (which developers at the time had in mind while designing the graphics). They lack filtering, blending, glow, etc. And this can lead to missing colors, effects, make the art look too pixellated, etc.

 

[Whitesnake]

It’s the difference between seeing the game as it was programmed vs. seeing the game as the devs thought you’d see it.

Back then TVs were small crappy CRTs so they could just use things like dithering to create illusions of effects that weren’t actually possible with the hardware at the time. Now you can see the game’s true output, and everything that comes with it.

If an emulator or rerelease adds a CRT filter then I appreciate that, but if they don’t then I’m just fine with sharp pixels. My enjoyment of Sonic is not determined by a waterfall not being blurry enough.

As has been said in this thread, this is a good problem to have. Displays and emulation have improved much over the years.

The only time this difference is annoying to me is GBA. Most spritework on the GBA is hot garbage, and the blurryness would help make it tolerable. Luckily most of the best games look just fine with sharp pixels because they made the sprites look good regardless (Metroid, Pokemon, Fire Emblem).

Overall this doesn’t really seem like something worth being concerned about.

 

[nkarafo]

My enjoyment of Sonic is not determined by a waterfall not being transparent enough.

Fixed that.

See, you think i make this issue seem bigger than it is and you are maybe right. Most non-purists will not care. But i feel like some people make this issue look smaller than it is. Like how you describe the correct look of the Sonic waterfall as "blurry" because that word usually describes something negatively. Some people would probably sacrifice the sharpness to make the waterfall look transparent but nobody would do that just so it looks "blurry".

It's not about making games look blurry, it's about making them look correct, or as close to how the developers intended. It's a sharpness VS intended look apparently. It's fine if you prefer sharpness but for others it might be useful to know what they are missing.

 

[lukilladog]

Dithering is no big deal to me, arcade quality picture is a much higher priority:

 

[Xdrive05]

The solution needs to be the return of CRT technology to the actual market. Not holding my breath but a boy can dream. Watch some recent digital foundry videos for context.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

We regressed in terms of display technology. Lcd tech is smaller, more efficient but games simply looked better on crt tv's and monitors. I recently visited my buddy from another city, he has an old school crt monitor and still plays modern games on that screen. He even repaired it twice, I think the caps went bad and the other time the something related to the tube itself went wrong. It's crt but it has rgb analog inputs. I played a little bit bfV on that screen and I was amazed. That thing in 720i resolution looks better then modern flat panel lcd tv's reproducing 4k content. I was shocked. And the refresh rate, my god how we regressed.

There was no realistic path for CRT TV's larger than about 30-40 inches without going to rear projection which was horrible. Yes there are trade-offs going to various flat panel TV technologies but the reason you can buy a 65+ inch TV and have it weigh 40 lbs. instead of 400 lbs. is because of this changeover.

 

[diffusionx]

And now you have a million indie games with this awful pixelshit artwork. It looks like something that professionals in the 80s and 90s would have been ashamed to put their name on but persists because people don’t understand how old games looked back then.

 

[Whitesnake]

Fixed that.

See, you think i make this issue seem bigger than it is and you are maybe right. Most non-purists will not care. But i feel like some people make this issue look smaller than it is. Like how you describe the correct look of the Sonic waterfall as "blurry" because that word usually describes something negatively. Some people would probably sacrifice the sharpness to make the waterfall look transparent but nobody would do that just so it looks "blurry".

It's not about making games look blurry, it's about making them look correct, or as close to how the developers intended. It's a sharpness VS intended look apparently. It's fine if you prefer sharpness but for others it might be useful to know what they are missing.

But the waterfall factually isn’t transparent. The devs used the fact that a 1-pixel-wide gap would be blurred together by the low picture quality to create an illusion. Most people do not wish to downgrade the picture quality of the entire game to make some waterfalls look kinda transparent.

With few exceptions, I’d rather just see the game as it is rather than how it looked on lesser technology.

Anyone who cares about those waterfalls can get a secondhand CRT or find an emulator with a satisfactory effect. It’s not like there’s a lack of ability to see the games on the intended hardware; Those TVs are still in existence, and people are trying to make it look like that in emulators.

I’m acting as if it is a small issue because it is a small issue.

 

[nkarafo]

But the waterfall factually isn’t transparent. The devs used the fact that a 1-pixel-wide gap would be blurred together by the low picture quality to create an illusion. Most people do not wish to downgrade the picture quality of the entire game to make some waterfalls look kinda transparent.

With few exceptions, I’d rather just see the game as it is rather than how it looked on lesser technology.

Allow me to disagree then. Yes, you are looking a game as it is, it's RAW output. But it's not that a game looks as it looks on lesser technology because of said technology. It looks as it is because the developer used said lesser technology to his advantage in order to create fake extra effects that are a part of the overall art direction. It's not only the transparencies. It's also the extra colors and how the pixels get rounded at their edges, if you zoom in on a CRT you can see that.

You can see in the EWJ images how the correct image literally has more colors because of the blending. When the artist designed that image he had the CRT composite blending in mind as the final layer, which the RAW pixel look lacks. Otherwise he would not bother with the dithering and just make the image with the available 64 colors.

Again, it's fine if you don't care about this and you just want sharp pixels. Sharpness is good. But it's not the intended look in this case and many people prefer accuracy over sharper visuals.

 

[nkarafo]

Anyone who cares about those waterfalls can get a secondhand CRT or find an emulator with a satisfactory effect. It’s not like there’s a lack of ability to see the games on the intended hardware; Those TVs are still in existence, and people are trying to make it look like that in emulators.

The issue is that most people don't know better. They just buy a "retro" game on some service and have no idea how these games are really supposed to look or at least, how they looked. And the majority of "CRT filters" in official releases are barebones, nothing more than an overlay of lines (and let's not even talk about emulation inaccuracies that don't exist in proper homebrew emulators).

People are looking at sharp, fat pixels and think that's how these games looked in the past. Which, for me, is a misrepresentation of these old games.

 

[Virex]

Play them on a crt and they still will look amazing.

 

[KloetenQuetsche]

Oh Boys, you're all going wrong thinking new technologies are always better than the old ones.

As I was a young boy, now I am 40 Years old, i listen to my music via some thin called CD. Uncompressed Music was saves on this thing.

Now..... 90 percent listen to streams mp3s...

I reactivated my portable CD Player some weeks ago and was totally shocked that it sounds much better than what I expected.


The same is it with crt and lcd.

 

[nkarafo]

Oh Boys, you're all going wrong thinking new technologies are always better than the old ones.

As I was a young boy, now I am 40 Years old, i listen to my music via some thin called CD. Uncompressed Music was saves on this thing.

Now..... 90 percent listen to streams mp3s...

I reactivated my portable CD Player some weeks ago and was totally shocked that it sounds much better than what I expected.


The same is it with crt and lcd.

 

[Shangounchained]

Was watching a couple of DF Retro videos showing some Genesis games and they looked horrible with all those raw pixels and heavy dithering.

And it's the same thing with modern releases of old games. At best you get a bilinear filter and a very simple scan-line overlay.

RetroArch is the only platform where i can see these games look somewhat correct, if i use a good CRT shader that also blends dithering.

Here is a very good video that explains what i'm talking about:




And here are some other examples. Here's how people today think a Genesis game looks like:

Here's how it's supposed to look:

Notice how the colors blend with each other. This creates extra colors and even transparencies in other cases. More examples here: http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-case-for-composite.html


And here are some RAW screen-shots VS CRT captures. Look how rounded the sprites in the CRT images look despite the zooming.

In conclusion, these games are not supposed to look like a sharp, pixellated mess. The common CRT and even the composite blending was something the developers had in mind when designing these games. Without those its like you are missing an important layer and it's not the result the developers wanted. And this is why most indie "retro" 2D games look so dad IMO, it's because they get their reference from raw emulator images instead of how the games actually looked. We never had to see sharp, fat pixels on our CRTs with our composite cables.

Nope it actually doesn't bother me at all the defects of older games is art in itself and I wouldn't change a thing! I loved how earthworm jim looks like don't even want to play it in 4k, it's defects give me that nostalgia goosebumps and that's fine already! When im retired and rich I'd want all 90-70-60 and below films and every game I loved from ps2 and back, that's me grumpy old and hard.

 

[dark10x]

This is an awesome video by DF but in other videos of retro games they still show them as raw pixels

I would expect something more accurate from them, or at least mention something about it. The Sparkster video was especially painful to watch because that game uses a lot of dithering that needs to be blended.

Maybe D dark10x could comment on that?

No good solution. If you show scanlines or filters in a YouTube video, due to scaling variation between devices, it winds up looking horrible and messy. Raw pixels are the only way to ensure a clean presentation. That's why filmed shots are often mixed up in there to demonstrate what it can look like on a real CRT.

 

[nkarafo]

No good solution. If you show scanlines or filters in a YouTube video, due to scaling variation between devices, it winds up looking horrible and messy. Raw pixels are the only way to ensure a clean presentation. That's why filmed shots are often mixed up in there to demonstrate what it can look like on a real CRT.

You are right, scanlines always look uneven in videos. But is any other filter like composite blending or bilinear possible? At least for games that use a lot of dithering?

But anyway, at least im glad you are aware of this.

 

[Charlie Tunoku]

This video is so misleading... Not long ago i used to play with a playstation 3 in and 26” CRT TV, and was almost impossible to read the subtitles, and was hard to see the details. Maybe the ultra high-end CRTs where better but not what everbody had.

 

[cireza]

This video is so misleading... Not long ago i used to play with a playstation 3 in and 26” CRT TV, and was almost impossible to read the subtitles, and was hard to see the details. Maybe the ultra high-end CRTs where better but not what everbody had.

The video makes this pretty clear actually. Of course it won't be readable on a 480i CRT TV. These should be kept for 240p sources, which they are perfect for.

 

[Belmonte]

The question in title of the thread assumes that sharp pixels are a wrong way to experience the games. I understand the reasoning but I don't agree with it.

Filtered by TV is the most nostalgic way to play the games, no doubt about that, but I'm sure many artists didn't think their unfiltered pixel art was inferior and the wrong way to experience it. Some points I wish to make:

* There were no options at that time. It is not like the artists had a choice of "filtered" and "unfiltered", and they choose filtered. Everyone had to work with the technology of the time so it wasn't an artistic choice.

* Many players and devs, old and new, like how sharp pixels looks. I would switch my old TV for my current without blinking an eye as a kid if I could.

* When we jumped to HD, many companies, when releasing a retro game, didn't though about adding any filter. Someone can argue that this isn't relevant and point to S-E butchering their classic Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest pixel art, but I don't think every dev and company doesn't have respect for their history. Nintendo has a huge respect for its legacy games for example.

* Pixel artists don't filter their art when showing their portfolios. At sites like http://pixeljoint.com/, where many professionals of the craft, old and new, show their art, their pixel art is raw 99% of time. If it wasn't how it supposed to be, they would not show any unfiltered pixel art. Perfectionism is a common trait among artists and they find great shame in showing something which is incomplete or not their best.

Both ways, filtered and unfiltered are cool to me.

 

[alabtrosMyster]

I know that the dithering you see in the old Mega Drive/Genesis games was a trick to fake transparency, but...I actually like the way it looks on modern displays. Very crisp, and to me aesthetically pleasing for some weird reason...

When it comes to the question of aspect ratio, I tend to ignore the "correct aspect ratio" when using emulators since fairly recently, simply because a lot of games stretch too much horizontally (circles becoming ovals, etc.).

I'm kind of thorn between the NTSC / CRT filters and clear image, so I switch from clean to dirty from time to time.

However I think it's a sin (mortal no less) to allow not use the correct aspect ratio option when emulating old games, they are meant to be seen in 4/3 aspect, no matter how some stuff may seem distorted.

 

[diffusionx]

Oh Boys, you're all going wrong thinking new technologies are always better than the old ones.

As I was a young boy, now I am 40 Years old, i listen to my music via some thin called CD. Uncompressed Music was saves on this thing.

Now..... 90 percent listen to streams mp3s...

I reactivated my portable CD Player some weeks ago and was totally shocked that it sounds much better than what I expected.


The same is it with crt and lcd.

Same with Blu-Ray/UHD discs vs. streaming. Thing is, "the market" consistently trades quality for convenience/price and that won't change.

It is the reason why streaming gaming has a chance to catch on.

This video is so misleading... Not long ago i used to play with a playstation 3 in and 26” CRT TV, and was almost impossible to read the subtitles, and was hard to see the details. Maybe the ultra high-end CRTs where better but not what everbody had.

The first big game where this happened was Dead Rising, where it was unreadable on a regular CRT. But the problem isn't the CRT tech. CRT still produces the best picture, and it does so with no input lag, but was pushed aside because LCDs were cheap, thin, and "good enough."

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Old games looked better on CRT. Those big ass 150 lb tvs were like mini anti-aliasing boxes that partly smoothed out edges.

Might have been a by product of the time, but it makes games look more natural.

Then in 1999, you download some games on emulators and it's so blocky you can literally count the pixels and colour shades like a staircase. Gross.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

We regressed in terms of display technology. Lcd tech is smaller, more efficient but games simply looked better on crt tv's and monitors. I recently visited my buddy from another city, he has an old school crt monitor and still plays modern games on that screen. He even repaired it twice, I think the caps went bad and the other time the something related to the tube itself went wrong. It's crt but it has rgb analog inputs. I played a little bit bfV on that screen and I was amazed. That thing in 720i resolution looks better then modern flat panel lcd tv's reproducing 4k content. I was shocked. And the refresh rate, my god how we regressed.

Refresh rates are a laugh. I remember buying my first HD tv in the 2000s and was like WTF? Everything had this slight comet trail effect. After a while you get used to it, but for something that was around $2,000, you'd think it would be as good as basic colour tv technology from like 1962.

 

[dark10x]

This video is so misleading... Not long ago i used to play with a playstation 3 in and 26” CRT TV, and was almost impossible to read the subtitles, and was hard to see the details. Maybe the ultra high-end CRTs where better but not what everbody had.

No no, it's not misleading at all. You're talking about a television - we're talking about computer monitors. They are *VERY* different things.

I wouldn't suggest using a modern system or PC with a CRT TV. I use a PVM for low-res consoles and that looks great but it's not designed for high resolutions and refresh rates. That's where PC monitors come in - and not just expensive ones either.

 

[DanielsM]

Yeah, reason why I wish my 480p projector hadn't died on me. Silent Hill 2, Halo, and Doom 3 on the original Xbox looked awesome on it, looks like poo on a modern display.

Generally speaking, older games are going to look bad on newer displays - of course, trying to explain this to someone that is less then 25 years old is almost an impossible task.

 

[sunnysideup]

This video is so misleading... Not long ago i used to play with a playstation 3 in and 26” CRT TV, and was almost impossible to read the subtitles, and was hard to see the details. Maybe the ultra high-end CRTs where better but not what everbody had.

Its because of the ps3, and not your tv. Ps3 sucks when it comes to sd resolutions.

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

Raw pixels are a sin.

You can argue all you want about those games looking exactly like they look unfiltered when devs were making them, but I can't find any value in the idea that they were meant to look like that to the final consumer. S-Video and RGB cables clean up the image from old analogue consoles but they also get rid of all the image artefacts that give the games their intended look in the process (OK, I'll admit that the use of "intended" here is questionable).

Dithering is Exhibit A in this case. I remember A/B-ing a composite and an RGB cable out of my SNES while playing Starfox, the shadow from the Arwing looks solid and convincing in composite but becomes a dithered mess in RGB.
Back in the day I also used an RGB cable for my PlayStation 1, yeah the image was cleaner but also jaggy as hell. RGB cables really started making sense in the 6th gen instead.

Scanlines and CRT artefacts are integral to the analogue video game look in my opinion. A good CRT filter makes the difference between foreground and background much, MUCH more recognizable than the raw unfiltered pixels. The image is smoother, shadows look like they should, and stuff like waterfalls in the Sonic games actually look like waterfalls and not like bead curtains.

Games like Donkey Kong Country are absolutely hideous unfiltered, all backgrounds look like colored blobs and it's impossible to make out what they should represent.

There's some modern filters that absolutely nail the original look of the games though. The green Game Boy filters are outstanding, and some old games collections also have some nice filters (the Street Fighter 30th anniversary collection looks great with the arcade filters). Nintendo's filters for their Mini consoles and the Nintendo Online NES and SNES games are acceptable, but much less refined. Too bad because their GB Virtual Console on 3DS was totally like playing on a good ol' OG GB again! If you have a 3DS and some GB VC games, just switch between green and B/W look and tell me if the green one doesn't display the contrast between foreground and background that much better.

I still have CRTs lying around. Emulation is a very, very good thing but seeing Donkey Kong Country 2 run on a CRT from an original SNES is like watching butter melting (and yes, that's a good thing, LOL).

 

[Rolling_Start]

Raw pixels are a sin.

You can argue all you want about those games looking exactly like they look unfiltered when devs were making them, but I can't find any value in the idea that they were meant to look like that to the final consumer. S-Video and RGB cables clean up the image from old analogue consoles but they also get rid of all the image artefacts that give the games their intended look in the process (OK, I'll admit that the use of "intended" here is questionable).

A lot of arcade games from the day used RGB. Master System and certainly Megadrive supported RGB natively. Sega even shipped the Saturn in Europe with an RGB scart cable, originally. Amiga owners preferred monitors if they could afford them too. Magazines used to use RGB sources for screenshots where possible. It was a source of frustration to have beautiful sprite work corrupted by interferrence and loss in the analogue signal.

CRTs forever, but RF and even S-video at times make me want to clean my eyes out with bleach. Going from RF to RGB was like ascending!

 

[lock2k]

I have no interest in nostalgia,.

What does this have to do with nostalgia?

Media of all times can be consumed and liked and not because of nostalgia only.

Last time I saw a King of Fighters 97 arcade machine some 10 year old kids were eating it up, playing and loving it. They have no nostalgia for a game released way before when they were born.

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

A lot of arcade games from the day used RGB. Master System and certainly Megadrive supported RGB natively. Sega even shipped the Saturn in Europe with an RGB scart cable, originally. Amiga owners preferred monitors if they could afford them too. Magazines used to use RGB sources for screenshots where possible. It was a source of frustration to have beautiful sprite work corrupted by interferrence and loss in the analogue signal.

CRTs forever, but RF and even S-video at times make me want to clean my eyes out with bleach. Going from RF to RGB was like ascending!

I am not questioning this.

The differences between image rendering on a CRT and a digital screen also play a very important role in how older games are displayed. RGB on a CRT is unquestionably different from how older games look when displayed on a modern TV or monitor, be it through an original console via RGB/component or modern retro collections via HDMI. And yes, the difference between the fuzzy RF/composite signal and RGB is striking, especially in color. Colors just pop in RGB where they're very muted in RF/composite. But stuff like shadow dithering just doesn't look right in RGB, and background/foreground contrast in those games could actually benefit from a less clean signal.

A case can also be made around the fact that while some consoles back then were indeed RGB-out compatible and official cables were made for SCART-enabled European TVs, RGB connections weren't really seriously considered in the two biggest markets for video games, i.e. America and Japan. The original Famicom didn't even have composite out and only had a RF connection, and some GameCube cables were basically region-locked (the GC S-Video cable wouldn't work on a PAL GC and the European SCART cable wouldn't work on a NTSC GC, IIRC).

 

[theclaw135]

Arcade games are a great point. RGB was the only video format defined in the JAMMA standard.

 

[Portugeezer]

I think most old 2D games look better on a crisp LCD screen, there are some exceptions, usually when it comes to those realistic sprites. No one can tell convince me SMW looks better on a CRT.

 

[Wonko_C]

What are some good Retroarch shaders for SNES that approximate an old CRT TV with composite A/V Cables? I just slap in NTSC Gauss Scanlines 256 or something like that, but I think it blurs the image a bit much. OTOH using it without some kind of gaussian blur makes it look too pixelated and sharp. Maybe I've been playing without filters for so long I just need to get used to it?

 

[I Love Rock 'n' Roll]

No no no no, it's a typical USA problem only. In Europe and Japan we had SCART aka RGB. 16 bits games look great with a Super Famicom or MD from Japan.

I still have a 1080p Philips with SCART and a Saturn hook on it. Games are beautiful. USA did not have SCART, that's the reason your games look that bad, even today.

People should make worldwilde comparaisons.

 

[nkarafo]

What are some good Retroarch shaders for SNES that approximate an old CRT TV with composite A/V Cables? I just slap in NTSC Gauss Scanlines 256 or something like that, but I think it blurs the image a bit much. OTOH using it without some kind of gaussian blur makes it look too pixelated and sharp. Maybe I've been playing without filters for so long I just need to get used to it?

Here's what you can do:

If you are using the Snes9X core (which is good), there is a setting in the core options called "Blaarg NTSC filter". There are a few options like composite, try enabling the filter from there instead of a shader.

Then use a scanline shader with good sharpness like CRT geom.

However, i don't think you need to enable composite mode in the core options. Just make sure bilinear filtering is enabled in the general"video" options. Then, whatever shader you use it should be good enough.

 

[Zog]

that's the reason your games look that bad, even today.

The games don't look bad on a CRT.

 

[nkarafo]

Here's Donkey Kong Country as RAW pixels, without any kind of filtering:

And here's the same game on RetroArch + a good shader:

Look how rounded and smoother everything is. I simply can't believe there's a single soul who would prefer to play the game as raw pixels....

And yes, it's a little darker due to the scanlines but that's easily fixable by adjusting the gamma or brightness in the shader. Personally, i prefer the slightly darker look myself for this game.

 

[SuperGooey]

Holy shit.

*goes to thrift shop to pick up an old CRT monitor for $20*

 

[Reon]

CRT is the superior technology and it sucks that they're so tough to get your hands on these days. Most of the times they're crazy expensive or just complete shit quality/broken. Nobody is making any new ones anymore.

I really hate the threads that come up every now and then where people slag on old N64/PSX games for looking awful while they're running them unrezzed to 1080p with all of these graphical "improvements" from their emulators emulator fucking up the image quality. It's the most zoomer shit in the world.