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Cathode-Retro: A collection of shaders to emulate the display of an NTSC signal

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Re: Cathode-Retro: A collection of shaders to emulate the display of an NTSC signal

#61

Post by bane »

andai wrote: post #51
bane wrote: post #49

I love the current infatuation with modeling old CRT display systems. Old graphics and videos from the "time before" rely a bit on how those display systems and signals worked in order to make low-color and resolution artifacts look "better" in terms of smoother color gradients and softer edges and diagonals. The shift to modern displays mades everything form that era look blocky and chunky. The thing that makes this…

>having reflections of the screen in the bezel are chef's kiss At first I thought this was a strange thing to ask for, but then I saw the image in the link and suddenly I agree 100%. This is beautiful!

It's really striking in action, how the two things (the screen geometry and the bezel reflections) really make it feel like you're looking at a television. At times I completely forget the rest of the giant flat panel even exists.

Re: Cathode-Retro: A collection of shaders to emulate the display of an NTSC signal

#62

Post by 0134340 »

dylan604 wrote: post #8

I'd love to see an option to have the image pincushion and introduces a buzz in the audio from an video signal that was too strong? That was one of my favorite. Everyone focuses on the interlacing, giant pixels shapes, and the fun with chroma bleed, but some of the most bizarre things could happen when you pushed the analog signal too far. The 1 volt peak-to-peak was a rule for a reason, and going past was possible.…

Audio buzz emulation has been done already with a Gameboy emulator and from what I could recall when trying it, it was pretty dead-on. I wished I could remember which one it was but indeed, it's a rarity that emulators emulate some of the more esoteric, some might say 'unwanted', faults of the system.

Re: Cathode-Retro: A collection of shaders to emulate the display of an NTSC signal

#63

Post by ShadowBanThis01 »

bane wrote: post #49

I love the current infatuation with modeling old CRT display systems. Old graphics and videos from the "time before" rely a bit on how those display systems and signals worked in order to make low-color and resolution artifacts look "better" in terms of smoother color gradients and softer edges and diagonals. The shift to modern displays mades everything form that era look blocky and chunky. The thing that makes this…

I used my Atari computers on a black-&-white TV for years until I finally got a Commodore 1702 (JVC)... and it was like looking at candy.

The Atari and that monitor had separate luma & chroma ("S-video") so it was sharper than anything else most people could buy at the time. Most CRT simulators introduce too much degradation by comparison. This one looks pretty good.

Re: Cathode-Retro: A collection of shaders to emulate the display of an NTSC signal

#64

Post by [deleted] »

bane wrote: post #49

I love the current infatuation with modeling old CRT display systems. Old graphics and videos from the "time before" rely a bit on how those display systems and signals worked in order to make low-color and resolution artifacts look "better" in terms of smoother color gradients and softer edges and diagonals. The shift to modern displays mades everything form that era look blocky and chunky. The thing that makes this…

[deleted]

Re: Cathode-Retro: A collection of shaders to emulate the display of an NTSC signal

#65

Post by VikingCoder »

andai wrote: post #51
bane wrote: post #49

I love the current infatuation with modeling old CRT display systems. Old graphics and videos from the "time before" rely a bit on how those display systems and signals worked in order to make low-color and resolution artifacts look "better" in terms of smoother color gradients and softer edges and diagonals. The shift to modern displays mades everything form that era look blocky and chunky. The thing that makes this…

>having reflections of the screen in the bezel are chef's kiss At first I thought this was a strange thing to ask for, but then I saw the image in the link and suddenly I agree 100%. This is beautiful!

Which image are you talking about?

I've played with Retro Emulators that add screen reflections and scratches and bezels that look like the original artwork on the arcade cabinets, and... I love it.

Re: Cathode-Retro: A collection of shaders to emulate the display of an NTSC signal

#66

Post by Philpax »

VikingCoder wrote: post #65
andai wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>having reflections of the screen in the bezel are chef's kiss At first I thought this was a strange thing to ask for, but then I saw the image in the link and suddenly I agree 100%. This is beautiful!

Which image are you talking about? I've played with Retro Emulators that add screen reflections and scratches and bezels that look like the original artwork on the arcade cabinets, and... I love it.

Click through to the megabezel website - there’s a few examples there. I agree that it’s pretty compelling!

Re: Cathode-Retro: A collection of shaders to emulate the display of an NTSC signal

#67

Post by karmakaze »

crazygringo wrote: post #21
karmakaze wrote: post #15

The shadow mask is overly represented. This may work better on a yet even higher resolution display, or perhaps there's an option to reduce the shadow mask effect. The other thing that this emulation can't get right is that phosphor-based displays had more vibrant colors (at lower intensities) than currently popular (IPS) LCD panels. VA panels are better for this.

> The shadow mask is overly represented. Is it? When I look up "CRT macro lens" on Google Images [1] the shadow mask is extremely pronounced -- possibly even more than here. I've just tried looking at the screenshots on both a Retina and non-Retina display, and they seem pretty faithful to what I remember growing up. I'm really quite impressed. Also -- what do you mean by "more vibrant colors"? If you mean (presumabl…

The vertical RGB shadow mask specifically wasn't unconsciously visible at normal viewing distance--usually only the raster lines were. On these screenshots, I can see and almost count horizontal pixels. This could also be because most shadow masks weren't the RGB stripes like most LCDs--the Trinitron was with a cylindrical CRT. The shadow mask was usually also more fine than the max resolution so there was no 1:1 (or 3:1) mapping to pixels as there is in this simulated display.

I don't mean wider color gamut, I mean that for lower intensities, the saturation can remain high. Most current IPS panels at lower intensities, the color saturation gets washed out (think DLP projector). This correlates with having deep AND distinguishable blacks. IPS has high brightness, VA has higher contrast ratios.

Because of this, I probably won't buy an IPS panel except for 'business' text use.

The LG/Dell Nano IPS Black (aka IPS Black and different than Nano IPS) is reported as being better--I haven't seen it in person so can't comment.

Re: Cathode-Retro: A collection of shaders to emulate the display of an NTSC signal

#68

Post by max-m »

0134340 wrote: post #62
dylan604 wrote: post #8

I'd love to see an option to have the image pincushion and introduces a buzz in the audio from an video signal that was too strong? That was one of my favorite. Everyone focuses on the interlacing, giant pixels shapes, and the fun with chroma bleed, but some of the most bizarre things could happen when you pushed the analog signal too far. The 1 volt peak-to-peak was a rule for a reason, and going past was possible.…

Audio buzz emulation has been done already with a Gameboy emulator and from what I could recall when trying it, it was pretty dead-on. I wished I could remember which one it was but indeed, it's a rarity that emulators emulate some of the more esoteric, some might say 'unwanted', faults of the system.

You are probably thinking of SameBoy :)

Re: Cathode-Retro: A collection of shaders to emulate the display of an NTSC signal

#69

Post by layer8 »

crazygringo wrote: post #57
layer8 wrote: post #12

They should show comparison photos like the ones from https://wackoid.com/game/10-pictures-that-show-why-crt-tvs-a... . Additionally, LCD and OLED have their own subpixel artifacts, so I wonder if that has to/can be compensated for when displaying a CRT emulation.

> Additionally, LCD and OLED have their own subpixel artifacts Can you elaborate? I've never heard anything about that, regarding a regular grid of R/G/B stripes. Or are you talking specifically about the weird PenTile layouts?

See here for example the black edge (or the white edge on the opposite side): http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/subpixel.php#subpixel.png

Windows ClearType text rendering exploits subpixel artifacts to increase horizontal text resolution.

Any kind of subpixels will result in some sort of artifacts. Tne higher the resolution, the less visible it will be, but it probably requires around 300 DPI to become imperceptible.

Re: Cathode-Retro: A collection of shaders to emulate the display of an NTSC signal

#70

Post by PumpkinSpice »

bane wrote: post #49

I love the current infatuation with modeling old CRT display systems. Old graphics and videos from the "time before" rely a bit on how those display systems and signals worked in order to make low-color and resolution artifacts look "better" in terms of smoother color gradients and softer edges and diagonals. The shift to modern displays mades everything form that era look blocky and chunky. The thing that makes this…

I'd go a bit further with this claim. Most of what's being done in this space is about inventing new retro aesthetics, not about faithfully approximating how things worked in the 1980s and 1990s. For example, color TVs of that era didn't really have pronounced scanlines. They also didn't have thick, lightly-colored, reflective bezels.

I get that it looks cool and makes old games more aesthetically pleasing. But the reality is that we liked these visuals back then because we had much lower standards, not because CRTs had some magical properties that made the games look awesome.

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