I find it stupid of people using enhanced photo mode screenshots when talking about current gen console games.
I agree with this. I've actually made a point of that a year back arguing why photomode distracts discussing/comparing the graphics of games on different platforms and kind of defeats the purpose of a screenshot thread specifically aimed at next-gen and should be excluded. That is the reason I stopped visiting the next-gen screenshot thread honestly.
On-topic: I believe there are 2 things people generally mix up when discussing ''graphics'':
1 The graphics aspect: I think emulators are absolutely a viable reason when comparing graphics of older games showing how older consoles actually rendered the graphics, when not being down-sided by bad video connection.
What you see in an emulator, is exactly what is rendered by the console theoretically (if it had HDMI output). Now i can hear you saying: ''but HDMI didn't exist back in the day''. While that may be true, it does not affect the theoretical rendering capability of older consoles. By the way, there is an HDMI mod on the way, which attends most older consoles and taps into the digital signal of those consoles; assemblergames user ozone. Another person is working on an HDMI FPGA for the N64 specifically, search retroactive HDMI on google.
Anyway, for captured images to become viable material when discussing older graphics,
they need to abide to the following rules:
-Only screenshots allowed, because most platform/emulators are not precise enough as opposed to the real hardware/framerate and may or may not miss effects in motion and/or act differently. So preferably screenshots form the most precise emulators there are (I believe Bsnes is quite close).
-Only NATIVE resolution of said platform (no scaling, or different rendering resolution, etc)
-All graphics enhancing and other parameters should be turned off. Whatever the original game didn't support should not be turned on. So no enhanced textures/mods, aliasing etc. Furthermore, if, for example, the emulated game didn't have texture filtering even though the hardware was capable of it, it should remain off anyway: We do not know what sacrifice would've cost the original hardware to make that happen. It may have affected framerate or other different things, which are simply not visible in screenshots, but only in video.
2 The other point some might be confused by is image quality and how the games looked back in the day. To me this should definitely be considered and belongs in the same discussion, but generally does not affect rendering capability (i.e. graphics). CRT's have different effects on image quality as modern displays such as LCD. Scanlines, colours, scaling and framerate are important differences affecting image quality.
Now there are some rare examples in which developers developed games with CRT's in mind, thus affecting graphics, such as the sonic example a few pages back which I didn''t know about. To me that is more of a grey area, and kinda falls in between: It definitely affected graphics when the game was made, but not the performance of the hardware when playing on screens of different technology; it doesn't change in proccessing power depending on the display technology being played on.
That and the above reasons is, in my opinion, why emulator screenshots
can be a viable reason when discussing graphics (if it holds true to the above mentioned requirements in order to become an accepted tool of discussion). Conclusively, both points should't be mutually exclusive to each other in terms of discussion, as they are intertwined. However, they are 2 different points nonetheless. For example the sonic Composite vs RGB example gave an interesting view regarding image quality inherent to CRT's rather than graphical powers, and is thus not visible on modern displayes/emulators. Alternatively, perhaps similar but opposite situations can be discovered when capturing an emulator screenshot. Thus both emulator screenshots and real hardware captures should be viable tools when discussing graphics of older machines.
