To those of you running a PC VGA CRT.....

[Deezdrama]

Do you prefer scan double in the ini with crt 25,50,75% scan double fx

Or

VGA scaling in the ini and then being able to use all the filters albeit with a tiny bit of latency?


I have 2 19" gateway VGA PC crt's .... A vx920 bubble glass and a vx930 silver flaty.

I find with low lag mode, and scandoubler enabled .... Man its super sharp and the scan lines look great on 75%!!!
Sadly.... On both of these displays its very dim
Even with scandoubler fx CRT set to 25% its dim and both my displays are maxed out with contrast and brightness but again.... Super sharp and responsive .... I imagine with the right brightness it would be very pvm-like (I missed that boat)


But if I disable scandoubler and run VGA scaling .... I get to see the mister menu all the time, I can use the scanline filter I usually use on my HDMI display and my brightness looks fine.
It looks really really good, just not razor sharp like it does with doubling and fx CRT 75%. And there may be a touch of input lag, not really noticeable but it has to be there.


Sooooo........

What do you guys prefer??
Does your VGA crt's run out of brightness and look too dim in scan double mode with fx CRT 25,50,or 75%

I'm really tempted to snatch the housing off this monitor and do some pot tweeking on the flyback to try to get some more brightness to run in scan double 75% or at least 50%

Or should I be content with VGA scaling and its benefits?
Oh.... I almost forgot, you can keep 5x with VGA scaling that's another huge bonus.... With scan doubling you loose that option on your HDMI display.

Thoughts?

[FoxbatStargazer]

I picked up two monitors that are just too dim to use scandoubler lines at all, and another that can just about manage 75%. This all depends both on the quality and wear of the monitor and your lighting conditions.

The lag in vsync_adjust=2 is measured in lines, not frames. It's really irrelevant and should not be holding you back at all from using vga_scaler.

The annoying part of vga_scaler is if you go down a rabbit hole trying to get your resolution to be a perfect integer scale all the time, for maximum clarity... unlike an LCD monitor, a VGA monitor can perfectly scale any resolution you throw at it, including odd aspect ratios, so this is very much something you can get caught up in. Its also tempting to try and eliminate any black borders on your 4:3 display...

Another neat trick is to try forcing 120hz@240p with a custom video_mode and vsync_adjust=0, this will let you view 240p on a VGA monitor with absurdly sharp natural scanlines, albeit the lag may be a bit annoying.

[bazza_12]

i don't get the whole scanline thing.. i must be missing something.. i don't remember scanlines on my original machines, not sure why i'd want to emulate them on a vga monitor.. but each to their own

[Deezdrama]

I picked up two monitors that are just too dim to use scandoubler lines at all, and another that can just about manage 75%. This all depends both on the quality and wear of the monitor and your lighting conditions.

The lag in vsync_adjust=2 is measured in lines, not frames. It's really irrelevant and should not be holding you back at all from using vga_scaler.

The annoying part of vga_scaler is if you go down a rabbit hole trying to get your resolution to be a perfect integer scale all the time, for maximum clarity... unlike an LCD monitor, a VGA monitor can perfectly scale any resolution you throw at it, including odd aspect ratios, so this is very much something you can get caught up in. Its also tempting to try and eliminate any black borders on your 4:3 display...

Another neat trick is to try forcing 120hz@240p with a custom video_mode and vsync_adjust=0, this will let you view 240p on a VGA monitor with absurdly sharp natural scanlines, albeit the lag may be a bit annoying.

Yeah I'm in the same boat, 2 VGA monitors that are too dim for scan doubling but otherwise look and perform great. I kind of remember all my VGA monitors being kind of dim back in the day but that was the norm I guess then so never paid much attention to it.

I thought about trying custom resolutions to get 240p 120 but read a lot of threads about people experiencing jitters due to no black frame insertion option, has that ever been implemented?
I don't know.... It would be nice but worried about making my INI unstable by editing it so much, when I had an emulation PC setup to output 15khz to a CRT I used about a dozen custom super resolutions and was a pain to setup and although I'm sure its easier on mister I just have the urge to avoid it lol.
Scan doubling with CRT fx 75% looks so damn good, if the brightness could just be turned up a smidge.
I think I may open this monitor up today and adjust the image potentiometer to get some more brightness.... It may lower the lifespan but I don't think it would be dramaticly only playing a couple hours here and there.

[Deezdrama]

i don't get the whole scanline thing.. i must be missing something.. i don't remember scanlines on my original machines, not sure why i'd want to emulate them on a vga monitor.. but each to their own

I'm mainly just playing consoles, I remember my consoles in the 80s and 90s having scan lines they just were not so pronounced since we probably had crappy rf or composite CRT TVs when I was a kid.
Later in life when I started getting into emulation and learned more about video signals and s-video,component, scart rgb ect and trinitrons, pvms ect its just kind of one of those things as a hobby you constantly try to get is the clearest scan lines that you couldn't get as a kid.
I don't know.... They look great to me and I much prefer them. There's just nothing quite like a CRT with sharp scan lines , that phosphor glow, and smooth scrolling, but if its not your thing I understand.

I missed the boat on getting a pvm. They are pretty much non existent here and would have to take a loan on the house to buy one online in good working condition, with a VGA monitor you can add the scanline effect and pretty much get an image close to a pvm without spending a fortune since VGA monitors are still available free or dirt cheap.

[akeley]

I love CRTs and it's the only way I can play retro games, but I consider the extreme scanlines/sharpness craze to be a strongly overhyped trend (not an unusual thing in the social media era). But it really doesn't make much sense to have big horizontal gaps in your image, and also spending a fortune to achieve it, hence I'm more than happy to stick with decent consumer sets which are more than capable of producing stunning results for very little investment.

I use VGA monitors for my retro-PC, and VGA-only MiSTer cores, and did try to run the scanline filters as well on other cores, but I didn't rate the results too highly, at least compared to my TVs. The dimness is one reason, the other the fact that the current scanline filters are pretty simple - just some lines, really. It's a good option to have though, and I may yet actually have to use it (moving to NTSC land soon). But next time I'd much rather try the new shadowmask filters - unless it turns out that they dim the image even more.

One other option could be the latest Retrotink, with its in-built "advanced" scanlines and masks/apertures, but that thing also costs arm and leg...

[Deezdrama]

I took the cover off and adjusted the pots....
Increasing brightness just washes the black level and colors out.
I did turn it up a hair so I didn't have to max it in the display menu.

I did get a touch more sharpness though by tweeking focus.

I just think being somewhat dim is part of these entry and mid level VGA crt's due to their high resolution masking?

Hard to tell from pics. In real life its much more dim, like its lacking that "CRT glow" idk

20211102-103826.jpg (5.99 MiB) Viewed 3563 times

20211102-103916.jpg (9.12 MiB) Viewed 3563 times

[FoxbatStargazer]

Well one issue is many of these monitors are more tilted towards 70/75hz, as the refresh goes up the image does get more vivid. That's the neat thing about forcing 120hz/240p, you both get natural scanlines, and its more than vivid enough to be usable, compared to fake scandoubler lines at 480p/60. But yes there's going to be more jitter involved, still its fun to try if for no other reason than the novelty.

Another thing you can do to try and compensate for washed-out look is to play with the mister's gamma correction filters, most of them are oriented towards lowering gamma and increasing saturation, and they work on both pure (scandoubled) output as well as vga_scaler.

Vga_scaler with a 4 or 5x scale does get slightly more complex scanline filters to play with compared to scandoubler, there's a smoother tapering off between the scanlines, though as I mentioned it can be a trap if you get perfectionist about the optimal resolution for each core...

[MiSTer_Kirk]

What also makes me laugh is that people think putting lines across your screen, instantly means scanlines - it doesn't. It's just lines on your screen, which is why your image is now darker. Another hilarious "Feature", is the up and coming shadow masks. Seriously, these look nothing like a real CRT, and you are only deluding yourself if you think it does. And that is the problem with today's LCD/OLED crowd, their arrogance in thinking that if they get these "Features" then you can throw CRTs in the bin - well no, they're not going in the bin, rather your crap LCD will be bin bound as soon as a new model is released. That, and the fact that even 4k resolution isn't high enough to give realistic shadow masks. But keep pretending it does, lol.

You will NEVER match a CRT, when it comes to playing these old retro games that were designed for CRTs from the off.
So you can keep your silly pixel perfect crap, I actually prefer wobbly pixels, noise, and low resolutions. The lovely warm glow of that CRT will never be matched by any OLED crap. And don't get me started on Vector monitors, I have yet to see a single shader that comes even close to a real vector monitor.

[Deezdrama]

What also makes me laugh is that people think putting lines across your screen, instantly means scanlines - it doesn't. It's just lines on your screen, which is why your image is now darker. Another hilarious "Feature", is the up and coming shadow masks. Seriously, these look nothing like a real CRT, and you are only deluding yourself if you think it does. And that is the problem with today's LCD/OLED crowd, their arrogance in thinking that if they get these "Features" then you can throw CRTs in the bin - well no, they're not going in the bin, rather your crap LCD will be bin bound as soon as a new model is released. That, and the fact that even 4k resolution isn't high enough to give realistic shadow masks. But keep pretending it does, lol.

You will NEVER match a CRT, when it comes to playing these old retro games that were designed for CRTs from the off.
So you can keep your silly pixel perfect crap, I actually prefer wobbly pixels, noise, and low resolutions. The lovely warm glow of that CRT will never be matched by any OLED crap. And don't get me started on Vector monitors, I have yet to see a single shader that comes even close to a real vector monitor.

I never said using scanline filters means real scan lines but when you use them on a VGA CRT along with its inherent CRT properties is pretty convincing.... I explained I missed the pvm boat so I'm just playing around with this VGA CRT that's seen no other use in 10 years.
I wouldn't call myself the LCD oled crowd but its a part of life that old CRT tech is dying and people are looking for displays that can come close to filling the gap when these crt's are gone.
I've had my mister connected to 4k lcd's , various 15khz CRTs, and this VGA CRT. I also have 27" consumer CRT in soldering room and one in the garage that im recapping for preservation right now so your kind of preaching to the choir about crt's.... I don't have a pvm to play with but did have a couple VGA CRTs to mess with and think VGA scaling with scanline filter looks quite good.
I understand adding black lines dims the screen but still wanted to try it, what's wrong with using a mister to all its capabilities? The scandoubling with fx CRT 75% looks damn good if your display is bright enough to push through the black bars to give a glow...sadly mine is not but if it was it would look great.

And yeah.... I hated playing retro games on modern lcds before mister but scanline filters with 5x scaling on my 4k display looks pretty damn good to me.... No its not real but it smooths the giant pixelation and gives the look.... Its a personal preference, I like to run on a CRT and a LCD at the same time and often bounce back and forth but without scan lines I wouldn't play on the LCD at all, but that's just me.

I don't think I would use any mask filters either but I'm sure there's some who like them and why not have options? Not everyone has the room or knowhow to maintain a CRT , then there's some of us who have and enjoy playing on both and having options

[Deezdrama]

Well one issue is many of these monitors are more tilted towards 70/75hz, as the refresh goes up the image does get more vivid. That's the neat thing about forcing 120hz/240p, you both get natural scanlines, and its more than vivid enough to be usable, compared to fake scandoubler lines at 480p/60. But yes there's going to be more jitter involved, still its fun to try if for no other reason than the novelty.

Another thing you can do to try and compensate for washed-out look is to play with the mister's gamma correction filters, most of them are oriented towards lowering gamma and increasing saturation, and they work on both pure (scandoubled) output as well as vga_scaler.

Vga_scaler with a 4 or 5x scale does get slightly more complex scanline filters to play with compared to scandoubler, there's a smoother tapering off between the scanlines, though as I mentioned it can be a trap if you get perfectionist about the optimal resolution for each core...

I looked and played with gamma filters. Can't remember if they were in audio/video or in the cores settings but didn't think they worked in scandoubled mode.... Maybe I need to look again.