[HN Gopher] The Effect of CRTs on Pixel Art
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The Effect of CRTs on Pixel Art
Author : zdw
Score : 38 points
Date : 2024-07-31 02:57 UTC (20 hours ago)
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| bitwize wrote:
| CRTs just have a richer, warmer picture.
| 73kl4453dz wrote:
| For an even richer, even warmer picture, be sure to outline the
| circumference of the screen in green Marker.
| Dwedit wrote:
| Let's not discount the years since 1997 when people actually did
| play retro games on high resolution computer monitors, with big
| chunky pixels.
| blargey wrote:
| Notably, pixel art has been developed for and played on LCD
| screens since 1989 with the Gameboy.
|
| Including the entire Pokemon series until its move to 3D, as
| well as many ports and continuations of older "pixel art"
| series originating on the NES/SNES.
|
| The blockiness wasn't exaggerated, of course, but there wasn't
| any CRT magic obfuscating it either, so that would change later
| generations' experience of the medium.
| scheeseman486 wrote:
| For Gameboy, Game Gear, GBC and GBA in particular there's
| pixel art and graphical effects that are often designed in
| mind for the characteristics of the LCDs in those handhelds.
| The slow pixel response is used to fake more shades of
| grey/colour and fonts in games for the GBC/GBA often lean
| heavily on the subpixel arrangement that ends up making them
| look much worse if you simply scale the pixels up. As a
| result most modern emulators have features that emulate the
| LCD panels as well.
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| I'm guessing the blur in the SMRPG Peach screenshot comes from a
| combination of an out-of-focus camera shot of phosphors, and
| possibly an older 2-PPU SNES's slow color transitions due to
| flawed silicon design. I don't see any composite artifacts but
| don't know if the image is RGB or S-Video.
|
| > When it comes to computer screens, there are always two
| resolutions involved: the one produced by the computer, such as
| 320x200, and the dot pitch, or "dots per inch", of the screen
| proper.
|
| The fun thing about CRTs is that there's always more things
| affecting resolution, like spot size (PVMs/BVMs and their narrow
| spots made interlacing more obvious) and amplifier bandwidth (if
| you run at a high enough hsync rate, you can get horizontal blur
| because the electron gun changes brightness slower than once per
| phosphor).
|
| As I understand, 320x200/240 on a VGA monitor is actually line-
| doubled because VGA cards and displays can't take hsync rates
| below 30 kHz. This can be seen in your Duke Nukem 3D screenshot
| if you watch the source video, switch to 4K resolution, and zoom
| into the HUD or main screen. Line-doubling affects the appearance
| of pixel art in complex ways (taking it partway to how a LCD
| would look with blocky pixels, you've said later in the article
| it looks "basically as crisp and blocky").
|
| Even among VGA monitors, the same resolution can look different;
| my newer VX720 has sharper focus (a smaller spot size) with
| visible gaps at 640x480 (and even faint gaps up to 1024x768),
| while I didn't see any scanline gaps in the Scandisk section of
| the video, even when I could make out phosphors.
| evaneykelen wrote:
| Previous related discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35115703
| jbverschoor wrote:
| This guy records games on a CRT
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWv-rnSAzVw
| titusjohnson wrote:
| One piece of hardware I periodically search the internet for, is
| a CRT emulation box. I want a piece of physical hardware I can
| place between my 4-port RCA switcher, and an HDMI connected
| modern TV, that emulates the display properties of a CRT.
|
| I know that a real CRT would be the best for my nostalgia vibes,
| but honestly they take up so much space. This theoretical product
| doesn't need to be perfect, just give me a few knobs to turn to
| adjust whatever settings are available, and inject vertical bars
| to fix the aspect ratio. I'd pay good money for such a device.
| scheeseman486 wrote:
| https://www.retrotink.com/product-page/retrotink-4k
|
| It does all of what you ask, plus a lot more. CRT filters that
| emulate CRT shadow masks from different manufacturers, HDR to
| boost the max brightness to emulate the phosphor glow, VRR to
| allow for arbitrary refresh rates (useful for arcade
| superguns).
| titusjohnson wrote:
| Oh excellent, that's exactly what I'm looking for! Not quite
| impulse-buy territory but now I know what it'll take.
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| As I understand, the OSSC Pro is significantly cheaper for
| most of the feature set, while the RT5x and OSSC provide
| varying feature sets (the OSSC only has a line buffer, not
| framebuffer, which affects the resolutions it can output).
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