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[tsumake]

In my experience, trying to emulate the look of a CRT on a modern flat panel has had disappointing results. Scanlines and filters help but I haven't seen anything that accurately mimics feeling and glow of a CRT.

Has anyone had good experiences with CRT emulation, software or hardware wise? Do high end scalers like the OSSC do a good job? Does it help to have an OLED and/or 120hz monitors with black frame insertion?

 

[madjackal]

From my experience, the OSSC does a really great job at replicating that CRT look and feel. I use it with my KS8000 and the results always amaze me. The obvious drawback is that you need original hardware, games, and cables but you get a more consistent and overall better result than emulation.

 

[GriffinCorp]

I would like to try out the OSSC, I really enjoy playing the N64. It looks awful on an LED TV, so it forced me to look at professional boardcast monitors, which I ended up hunting them down all over Dallas. Then I purchased the D24 which everything old school looks great on, SNES pops on it. Those are rare and take up a huge amount of space and good luck moving it on your own.

I wanted to get the N64 HDMI mod, I hear that looks the most "CRT like" for adding smoothing and scanlines to the image. But I haven't had much luck getting one of those ordered.

 

[rabbity-thing]

In my experience, there's a few retro collections for modern consoles that have had some okay results, but I can't think of any perfect solution yet. Upscalers like the OSSC are great, but they aren't really giving CRT quality. Their output is more akin to emulator performance on a PC. The trick would be to have realistic understated scanlines, an authentic level of bloom, effective lagless deinterlacing when needed (NOT bob deinterlacing!), and (most importantly) effective dither blending.

As of yet, I haven't seen a solution I am happy with.

 

[tsumake]

In my experience, there's a few retro collections for modern consoles that have had some okay results, but I can't think of any perfect solution yet. Upscalers like the OSSC are great, but they aren't really giving CRT quality. Their output is more akin to emulator performance on a PC. The trick would be to have realistic understated scanlines, an authentic level of bloom, effective lagless deinterlacing when needed (NOT bob deinterlacing!), and (most importantly) effective dither blending.

As of yet, I haven't seen a solution I am happy with.

Exactly. That's what I'm looking for.

Bob from RetroRGB said that you'd need an 8K display in order to properly replicate a CRT, but I don't know exactly why.

 

[Gamerguy84]

I gave up and got an old CRT for my older systems.

 

[Keihart]

Besides playing in an actual CRT, the only similar experience for me has been in VR.

Exhibit A

 

[YCoCg]

In my experience, trying to emulate the look of a CRT on a modern flat panel has had disappointing results. Scanlines and filters help but I haven't seen anything that accurately mimics feeling and glow of a CRT.

Has anyone had good experiences with CRT emulation, software or hardware wise? Do high end scalers like the OSSC do a good job? Does it help to have an OLED and/or 120hz monitors with black frame insertion?

Wait until OLED with FALD takes off combined with people hacking HDR to create a fake scan glow, etc.

 

[Faithless83]

OSSC is a no brainer. Best scanlines implementation that I've seen so far.
Also 0 input delay (only monitor/TV added lag).


Currently bookmarked on the OSSC part but a very informative video about the alternatives to it.
Also, all backgrounds in the episode were captured using OSSC. This is also an old video.
There is hdmi support to the current versions of it.

 

[evanft]

Emulating the CRT look is a waste of time. If you want that look, find a good CRT and play on that.

 

[GamingArena]

Mame gets closest with HLSL filters, emulates everything even hum_bar, phosphor glow etc.

 

[Futaleufu]

Just in case people arent sold on HLSL in MAME

 

[baphomet]

Exactly. That's what I'm looking for.

Bob from RetroRGB said that you'd need an 8K display in order to properly replicate a CRT, but I don't know exactly why.

People said the same thing about 4k.

There's nothing stopping someone from emulating a shadow mask or aperture grill for each individual pixel on a current display. Once it's done it'll definitely be sweet though. Especially if it has HDR bloom where it should.

 

[llien]

OLED with FALD

Huh?

 

[Gavin Stevens]

It's really simple, just sellotape a silver box to the back of your flat panel monitor. Boom, that classic CRT look.

(In all seriousness though, there's nothing like that old CRT look. For some reason everything just looks so... nice...?)

 

[hyperbertha]

Install Retroarch. Its a software that acts as a hub for every emulator you can possibly have. It has highly customizable but graphically demanding shaders for getting perfect scanlines and CRT glow that can be applied on each of your emulators. I played Zelda OOT with it and it was perfect. Its parameters are infinitely customizable, but you'll need a decent GPU to avoid slowdown.
It can even mimic the CRT curve.