CRT-o-vision: on LCD

[charlesr]

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/05/01/git_crt_emulation/

Raised eyebrow smilies at the ready....

[Jebus]

Money has been spent on this?

[Magnakai]

You laugh, but how much better is this going to make SD content look on an HD screen?

Anyway, no money has been spent on this, it was a student project at a university. Read the article here, it was five compsci undergraduates.

[sj33]

You laugh, but how much better is this going to make SD content look on an HD screen?

This is where is will become a bit subjective, I've never regarded techniques that intentionally hinder the visual clarity of an image as actually making something look better, today's LCD's simply display the visual flaws that yesterdays TV's were unable to display because of the lacking clarity of those screens.

But I speak as one who doesn't like filters on emulators either. It'll be down to personal preference at the end of the day.

[MattyD]

I can see how this would be useful for retro games. Anyone who's tried playing an old machine on an LCD will tell you what happens when your sprite flickers such as when you're briefly invincible after getting hit / respawning. Because the LCD is de-interlacing the picture you can only see every other line of the sprite or sometimes nothing at all.

Another popular effect that relied on interlacing is the old HAM or 'hold-and-modify' hack used in a lot of Mega Drive / PCE games, especially in CD games with FMV. The programmers would get around the machine's relatively limited colour palettes by drawing the odd lines in one set of colours and the even lines in a slightly different set. When viewed with the human eye the gap between them is indiscernable and the effect is that the colours blend into eachother and create a mix of colours that would otherwise be impossible.

[Hohum]

Another popular effect that relied on interlacing is the old HAM or 'hold-and-modify' hack used in a lot of Mega Drive / PCE games, especially in CD games with FMV. The programmers would get around the machine's relatively limited colour palettes by drawing the odd lines in one set of colours and the even lines in a slightly different set. When viewed with the human eye the gap between them is indiscernable and the effect is that the colours blend into eachother and create a mix of colours that would otherwise be impossible.

The Apex brothers used that technique for Mayhem in Monsterland on the C64, pretty clever

[abigsmurf]

This is where is will become a bit subjective, I've never regarded techniques that intentionally hinder the visual clarity of an image as actually making something look better, today's LCD's simply display the visual flaws that yesterdays TV's were unable to display because of the lacking clarity of those screens.

But I speak as one who doesn't like filters on emulators either. It'll be down to personal preference at the end of the day.

I've always found that a game viewed on a pin sharp monitor looks much worse than when it was viewed on an old CRT, especially SNES games. There's also always been the issue with CRTs being able to natively display non-square pixels that LCDs will never match.

[Lyris]

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/05...crt_emulation/

Raised eyebrow smilies at the ready....

I've been wondering how long it will take companies to add an effect like this for older games, it's very welcome IMO. But looking at that picture, it looks like they chose to emulate a progressive CRT. Interlaced CRT did a lot for the look of older games and I'd like to see them try that.