next »

[MeshGearFox]

So I see a lot of people enabling horizontal scanlines in emulators.

Question: Why have I never had a CRT with visible horizontal scanlines? Mine have always had like, visible square pixels that you can see /up close/ but not really at a distance, and sort of apparently vertical lines between these.

But I can't say I've ever seen horizontal scanlines on anything except for maybe like:

A) Jacked up arcade monitors.
B) If you film a CRT and then rewatch the film it'll look weird, but it doesn't if you look at it in person.

[s0]

i never saw scanlines on a crt tv either

[Torchkas]

people playing emulators with filters are being really dumb anyway

[Schoq]

hope u realize those games were never intended to be played seen as a mosaic of sharp squares though

I kinda like soft scanlines sometimes together with bilinear, it creates some illusion of simultaneous sharpness and smoothness

[Torchkas]

I have a SNES with a CRT and I can't say that there's a real difference in how I perceive that over emulation on my monitor. I feel like it's just faux nostalgia or delusion.

[s0]

i can definitely tell a difference between the blurrier rendering on the original hardware + crt and the "crisp" rendering on emulator.

i think the latter often makes games (depending on game ofc) look slightly more "lifeless".

[Schoq]

uh yeah the difference was always super noticeable actually? what kind of CRT do you have?

[s0]

for me it's more noticeable with games that have "simpler" graphics (meaning shit like NES games or early 3d console games). with SNES games i don't notice it super strongly, tho i do notice it.

[Schoq]

shit maybe I just have really good eyes

[Torchkas]

perceive as in the way I look at the graphics and actual experience of the game. Of course there is a difference.
The SNES even has a hardware quirk that slightly offsets every other scanline, making things even "blurrier". I just have no issue with emulated pixels at all.

[s0]

i kind of do, because if im playing games for nostalgia reasons i want them to feel the exact same as they did back then, DAMMIT

[Schoq]

what's even the point of playing an nes game if I can't see bright fields deforming the image by widening the scanline

[Sik]

Question: Why have I never had a CRT with visible horizontal scanlines? Mine have always had like, visible square pixels that you can see /up close/ but not really at a distance, and sort of apparently vertical lines between these.

I once had such a monitor actually. A monochrome one, too!

But that's it, and that was a PC monitor, not TVs which is what should be aimed to simulate in this case. I never had a TV show scanlines with one exception: when colors are not bright enough (like, shades that are close to black) scanlines do indeed become visible because the light beam is thin. But for bright colors you can't see them. So huh yeah, scanlines are way more complex than just darkening a few rows. (also they need to align with the simulated resolution, which screws you over when the height isn't a multiple of the real one) On a similar note: curvature, CRTs were curve, but at the distance you played the games, you really wouldn't notice it so you may as well not try it. (the bezels on the other hand were notoriously not flat, this is something NES emulators tend to get right)

From what I've heard old TVs (like the kind you'd find during the Atari 2600 era) had some rather notorious scanlines, but I haven't had one of those to tell you for sure =P

[gimymblert]

I'm super happy with super sharp square pixel, I also like filter like hq4x for some game

[MeshGearFox]

Every evening my father would come in and smear chicken grease all over the family TV to, and I quote, "keep the demons from getting out of it." I want a filter to perfectly emulate that level of smear.

I mean I guess I could just put chicken grease all over my current monitor but that defeats the purpose of emulation.

[Cobralad]

the problem with some games, nintendos in particular, is that pallete was desaturated so it wont look dark on screens.
Because of black gap between pixels it looks darker than it is.
Also no one was bothered with clusters, because isolated pixels could connect with blur and noise. Some unfiltered games often look like mess of different colored pixels.
Basically unfiltered nintendo games reveal shitty palletes and really chaotic pixelart.

[Egberto]

I like to enable scan lines.

... for nostalgic reasons too ... damn it! I feel old now.

[Sik]

the problem with some games, nintendos in particular, is that pallete was desaturated so it wont look dark on screens.

It's the exact opposite, the NES doesn't have any saturation levels beyond 0% and 100% o.O (it's the main complaint from homebrew artists, the complete lack of pastel colors)

But yeah on the 3rd generation it was pretty much a colorfest. But for the 4th generation all of this is still relevant and those games were way more likely to have darker tones (especially those aimed at teens rather than kids) since they could display more subtle shades. I know the Streets of Rage options menu shows some rather blatant scanlines (the unselected options show with a 25% gray shade against a black background - yeah, they're that dark)

EDIT: also Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 has dark colors all the way =P

[FK in the Coffee]

I like to enable scanlines on Crysis because I'm nostalgia trash

[Schoq]

I actually don't get why pixelly indie games don't make an effort to put in display options. locmalito does it sometimes but other than him basically nobody bothers to allow anything but nearest neighbour, at most letting you set the scale

e: actually maybe this changed though? I haven't been keeping up much