CRT Shaders | Hacker News Reader

CRT Shaders

emulation.gametechwiki.com

26 pointstosh9 comments

Recent and related:

How Games Used to Look: Why Retro Gaming on a CRT Looks Different [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37808475 - Oct 2023 (167 comments)

I personally prefer to combine CRT-Royale with GTUv050. This is the closest I can get to the feel of what games liked like on my screens as a kid.

I'll also add that GTUv050 should specifically be thought of as an NTSC shader and not a CRT shader, specifically emulating the effects of Composite and S-Video.

Quick edit: Though now that I have a really nice HDR monitor, I might give Sony Megatron a shot.

So my question is, a) how far does this take things, and b) how far can it take things? My understanding, limited as it is, is that these work as GPU shaders, and as such modify each pixel before it’s sent to screen; could you write an entire video driver that emulates the process from a physical standpoint, right down to things like the deflection of the electron gun and the phosphor reaction times? (I guess that becomes diminishing returns though…)

For me, one of defining CRT qualities was the continuous, immediate, no-lag nature of display due to the scanning ray. Think of stuff like border color effects on ZX Spectrum. Probably it is possible somehow to approximate it, but probably would need a custom circuit to drive the panel.

CRT shaders are like Stockholm Syndrome. These shaders are replicating flaws of CRT displays. These filters ruin the retro pixel art look by making things blurry, making larger pixels, introducing a screen door, and more. These shaders are interesting as a challenge to try and emulate other displays, but I do not see a point to actually use them for gaming.

> These filters ruin the retro pixel art look by making things blurry, making larger pixels, introducing a screen door, and more.

I think there's an argument that pixel art was designed for CRT displays and thus optimized for it. I think of it like Pointillism: the work is made of little dots, but the point is for you to see the entire work blend together. And for low resolution works like retro games, they often hold up well on CRT (especially real ones). However, I think modern games with the pixel art aesthetic look best crisp.

To each their own tastes, though.

> I think there's an argument that pixel art was designed for CRT displays and thus optimized for it

In many cases there is no argument to be had.

https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/a/167807/6463

These sprites are terrible without CRT-ness (skeleton has pixels unbalanced, clearly placed for an antialiasing effect; beast is unshaded). Also, look at that waterfall, for which filters have a hard time, either inefficient or making the rest of the scene excessively blurry.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s4QOHe4bOZc

For some games I think the flat pixely look is OK, e.g Zelda III, although I personally prefer the darker, smoother, less saturated look of CRT which in my mind betters conveys the grim ambience than the unfiltered cel-shaded-y one.

For others, either specific bits (Chrono Trigger's overworld map) or the whole thing is plain bad.

> However, I think modern games with the pixel art aesthetic look best crisp.

I would concur. Old game art was designed for CRT... and on CRT, whereas modern games are designed for and on pixel-perfect LCDs, and there's nothing wrong with that.

It's a bit like viewing a hinted vector font with vs without antialiasing (old games)

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/elegantfigures/wp-co...

vs a bitmap font meant to land on the pixel grid exactly (modern pixel art)

https://pangrampangram.com/products/bitmap-fonts

Old games that were designed in the latter way are perfectly fine on LCDs, but those that hinged on it are terrible.

Dracula, Castlevania: https://twitter.com/CRTpixels/status/1408451743214616587

Tina, Final Fantasy 6: https://twitter.com/CRTpixels/status/1461386650039164932

(Amano concept art of her: https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/finalfantasy/images/b/b7/T...)

The "retro pixel art look" is misplaced nostalgia by people who were too young for the original releases of these games and may have played them on early emulators. Developers knew what they were doing and worked hard on making it look good on the actual hardware; we're just recovering that in software.

>This is the same TV I first played FF6 on and the softer brush strokes of Terra's portrait immediately feel so right to me.

This is an example of what I mean by Stockholm Syndrome. This person when they were young got used to the poor quality of the displays and now thinks it looks better. This person excuses the blur by just calling it "soft brush strokes."

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