Filters, Shadowmask and LCDs

[Duffygag]

Sometimes I am shocked about threads on Reddit and videos of retro youtubers (with the usual abysmal following) pushing this new features like the holy graal...

I mean it's great having more options, but is anyone with functioning eyes really thinking that these abominations, are on pair or even remotely comparable to what a crt look like?

[Bas]

Do you have a better suggestion?

[akeley]

I'm a CRT fanatic and certainly quite capable of some criticism towards their substitutes, but this kind of trololo toxic hyperbole is a) not true b) pointless & damaging. It will achieve nothing but only reinforce some of the already present ill will towards "purist" CRT users.

It's also factually incorrect, seeing as these methods have reached a stage where they are very much comparable. I had a little try recently and while I definitely am not getting rid of my tubes collection yet (well, ever, but that's not the point), I was quite impressed. My biggest gripe was with motion blur, bu that's an inherent feature of LCD panels, nowt to do with shadowmasks etc. The smaller one is the usual flatnes, lack of glow, etc, but that could be perhaps alleviated on an OLED. Overall, it's good progress, and definitive step up from basic "Scanlines" MiSTer has started with.

[Bas]

So you're posting on a forum to criticize YouTubers and people on Reddit? Intriguing choice of venue but ok, I didn't catch what you were actually railing against but I see that now.

I personally don't own anymore CRT's. My last one died years ago, but I have fond memories of my C64 and the Commodore branded monitors I used with it. I was intrigued to find a Commodore 1084 shadow mask for my MiSTer. Sure it looks weirdly out of place on my 55" OLED, but it does add the grungy blurry vibe to the picture that is nostalgic to me. My kid? He finds me weird for turning on the blurry stuff.

You're never going to match the exact characteristics of a CRT on a completely different kind of display technology. What makes CRT's unique are properties which are widely considered undesirable in a display. Nobody *wants* scanlines, color bleed, flicker, magnetic distortion, barrel or cushion distortion, high-pitched whine, motion blur and whatnot on a screen they use for Netflix. All those things got innovated out of display tech for good reasons.

Now we want them back, yikes! For what it's worth, I think the shadow masks on MiSTer do a very good job considering what we have to work with on both ends: no zillion teraflop GPU on the DE10, and utterly unforgiving pin-sharp display panels on the other.

[DevilHunterWolf]

I mean it's great having more options, but is anyone with functioning eyes really thinking that these abominations, are on pair or even remotely comparable to what a crt look like?

The general consensus is... yes. People do think they're at a stage of being very comparable to a CRT. It's not replicating the glass curve and how reflective it is but the overall image can be pretty close if not downright uncanny. The newer in progress adaptive scanlines brings it even closer to a proper CRT since it's taking brightness of the image into consideration when showing how visible scanlines are. There are some wonderful things happening because of some very talented folks in this community.

It can take some configuration and testing, though. I've been using MiSTer on an Asus ProArt monitor that the community figured out custom settings for and it's been my primary display. But as I found out when trying to demonstrate the scanline options to a friend recently using a 4K TV instead, it didn't line up or change as nicely as the options did on my ProArt monitor. I had used the same TV previously before the revamp of filters and shadow masks so I just need to figure out what options broke what. But as my experience showed me, the choice of display and the settings used can make a big difference to what you see which may be why you've been less impressed as others have been. But I can honestly say I can configure my MiSTer and the ProArt monitor to give a strikingly close picture to my CRT TV with Composite. And I don't have any high performance OLED or microLED displays where things could improve even more in terms of brightness and colors so others have had an even better experience than I have.

Take some time to dive into the different settings. If you have a commonly used display, maybe check around to see what others have set their ini display settings to. But if you've given it a real honest try and you still don't agree, then that's your opinion to have. Remember to be respectful of others and we can all continue to have constructive conversations.

[DiamondDave]

Sometimes I am shocked about threads on Reddit and videos of retro youtubers (with the usual abysmal following) pushing this new features like the holy graal...

I mean it's great having more options, but is anyone with functioning eyes really thinking that these abominations, are on pair or even remotely comparable to what a crt look like?

You go on Reddit??

[Insert Disk Two]

Just let people enjoy things...

[Mr. Encyclopedia]

I never liked CRT filters and shadowmasks and always played my emulated retro games with razor sharp pixels, until MiSTer. I don't know if it's the minimal latency or what, but games on the MiSTer with scanlines and horizontal blur look and feel more like how I remember them being back when they were new. I think MiSTer's main goal should be to replicate how it felt to play those games back then so I welcome the addition of these filters.

[Neocaron]

I never liked CRT filters and shadowmasks and always played my emulated retro games with razor sharp pixels, until MiSTer. I don't know if it's the minimal latency or what, but games on the MiSTer with scanlines and horizontal blur look and feel more like how I remember them being back when they were new. I think MiSTer's main goal should be to replicate how it felt to play those games back then so I welcome the addition of these filters.

This 100% my take!

[FoxbatStargazer]

Nothing I've seen really replaces a real CRT, but I still appreciate these options because they compliment some of the original art better. Game art wasn't designed with any specific CRT in mind, just some general properties, some of which you can implement pretty effectively in the Mister options now.

Also these effects look universally pretty horrible under youtube compression (at least at full game resolution), so hopefully you aren't judging based on that.

[Duffygag]

Thanks for the feedback, I also enjoy scanlines on some of those ((few) LCD session...

[ferropop]

Playing around with ShaderGlass, I've found that adding Film Grain completely tricks my brain into 90s gaming nostalgia.

Fully aware that Film Grain had no place in the CRT experience, but I think it's triggering the NTSC artifacting / RF signal-noise associations of our old setups. I'll bet you that a properly tuned grain layer on top of the Shadow Mask / Scanlines would skyrocket the experience to a new level of authenticity.

[LamerDeluxe]

Shadow mask patterns on a TFT or OLED display will never look exactly like a CRT, simply because they already have their own sub-pixel patterns. Also, a shadow mask pattern is an image made out of pixels with a limited resolution, versus a physical shadow mask, it cannot look exactly the same.

That said, they help break up the large pixels of those old systems, similar to the effect of a CRT display. The scan-line filters and their blurring options help even more with that. Then there's adaptive scan-lines, which surprisingly make the whole image feel more similar to a CRT. And you can also choose a more CRT-like gamma curve.

All these combined give an impression that is much more like a CRT than standard, perfectly sharp, even colored pixels, which are much further away from the CRT display that the graphics designer originally made his graphics on.

[AtomicShroom]

I recently got the chance to play on a genuine Nintendo VS Wrecking Crew arcade machine and I was floored to notice that I had seemingly forgotten how amazing old games looked on an actual CRT display.

I took up close pictures of the monitor even:

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This makes me wonder if the way we think CRTs work, especially in relations to "scanlines", is even close to being right. What I observed looked more like a LCD grid, where black lines exist both horizontally AND vertically. While the beam is skipping every other vertical line, it appears to make no difference in the resulting image, as the distance between horizontal and vertical "dots" is the same. The large glow of the phosphor seems to make up for whatever line skipping is occurring. It's really just the grid that seems to be generating black lines.

[AtomicShroom]

All these combined give an impression that is much more like a CRT than standard, perfectly sharp, even colored pixels, which are much further away from the CRT display that the graphics designer originally made his graphics on.

This makes me wonder just how much care and attention graphics designers actually put into making sure games looked a certain way on the final CRT display. I'm sure it must have varied absolutely wildly from person to person, company to company.

Back then all sorts of development environments were used, and they evolved over the course of console generations. Most graphics were first drawn on paper with square grids by artists before being handed off to people to manually type onto the computer. Some videos exist of Nintendo artists using a paint program with a mouse on a computer to draw NES graphics and place tiles.

This can also explain why so many games, despite being displayed on a 4:3 display, feature ovals instead of circles and generally appear "stretched": The graphics were painted on a computer with square pixels, unlike the final CRT display. Very few devs actually bothered to intentionally "squish" their graphics so that they would display right on a 4:3 CRT. I have to assume that some of them noticed and made the change, or that their paint program was natively hooked up to a TV instead of a computer monitor.

There's so many factors and variables, and I'm pretty sure no one answer is the right answer.

[Mr. Encyclopedia]

This makes me wonder if the way we think CRTs work, especially in relations to "scanlines", is even close to being right. What I observed looked more like a LCD grid, where black lines exist both horizontally AND vertically. While the beam is skipping every other vertical line, it appears to make no difference in the resulting image, as the distance between horizontal and vertical "dots" is the same. The large glow of the phosphor seems to make up for whatever line skipping is occurring. It's really just the grid that seems to be generating black lines.

The main problem with this is every CRT is different. I have a VGA monitor that I've hooked up to my MiSTer before and there's little to no black lines, horizontal or vertical. It's capable of native 1600x1200 and you have to get extremely close to see any kind of phosphor pattern, the lines and shadow mask are that fine. It, like many of the PVMs and late-model CRT TVs you see advertised on Craigslist these days, were optimized to make those patterns as invisible as possible. The crummy composite-only TVs a lot of us grew up playing games on were worlds apart from these models. Ultimately, this is why there's thousands of different shadow masks and filters in the MiSTer repo now, because there's no right or wrong way to do it. Modern displays will never exactly capture what these CRTs truly looked like, but there's enough options and possibilities there that you can find something that feels right.

[Phaedrus]

Sometimes I am shocked about threads on Reddit and videos of retro youtubers (with the usual abysmal following) pushing this new features like the holy graal...

I mean it's great having more options, but is anyone with functioning eyes really thinking that these abominations, are on pair or even remotely comparable to what a crt look like?

Abominations is a bit harsh, don't you think?

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[Duffygag]

Well those last Zelda screenshots look banded as hell, far from what they are on a crt, also if on screenshot some of these looks pretty decent (they really do), the difference in motion and real life usage is just staggering...

[pbsk8]

how to enable adaptive scanlines on mister cores?

[Bas]

@Duffygag flat panels from the 2020's will never equate a CRT from the 1980's. Just move on already and keep using a CRT. You are apparently not the target audience for this particular feature.

[Duffygag]

@Duffygag flat panels from the 2020's will never equate a CRT from the 1980's. Just move on already and keep using a CRT. You are apparently not the target audience for this particular feature.

Bas we are discussing and sharing opinions on a forum, if you are not interested, don't tell me what I should be interested on and move along, you are apparently not the target of this thread, 3rd pointless message from you here, need an hobby ?

[Bas]

You are not discussing. You are only sharing opinions and making an effort to be as abrasive as possible doing it. That's called a troll and I'm going to stop feeding you now.

[Duffygag]

You are not discussing. You are only sharing opinions and making an effort to be as abrasive as possible doing it. That's called a troll and I'm going to stop feeding you now.

4 messages too late mate and sry for your crt

[Phaedrus]

Well those last Zelda screenshots look banded as hell, far from what they are on a crt, also if on screenshot some of these looks pretty decent (they really do), the difference in motion and real life usage is just staggering...

The bottom 2 Zelda shots are at 1080p through a capture device. The others are phone shots of a 1440p display.

Don't take whatever the forum software did to the image with resizing as an example of what it looks like in person. There is no banding in person. Perhaps open in a new window to see the image at full size to see if that changes what you see?

I do have a CRT to compare with. And I agree there are things about the CRT display that it can't match, but it also lacks all of the draw backs of an actual CRT like bag geometry, fading colors, distortion, large size, power draw, heat production, scarcity.

What it does provide however is a pretty good way to alter the raw pixel output in a similar way to how a CRT did to allow for the artistic style to shine through. From couch distance the image looks really good and allows the art to shine through. That's the big thing. CRTs are harder and harder to find. Eventually they will be essentially extinct. Hopefully by then the emulation of CRT aesthetics will be advanced enough that you'll be happy enough with the results.

[Phaedrus]

how to enable adaptive scanlines on mister cores?

Currently you need to use test builds of the cores and use an unreleased filter pack that has a light and dark value for scanline thickness. Check the settings-workshop channel of the mister discord for more info, or wait for the final release, which hopefully won't be much longer.

[LamerDeluxe]

All these combined give an impression that is much more like a CRT than standard, perfectly sharp, even colored pixels, which are much further away from the CRT display that the graphics designer originally made his graphics on.

This makes me wonder just how much care and attention graphics designers actually put into making sure games looked a certain way on the final CRT display. I'm sure it must have varied absolutely wildly from person to person, company to company.

Back then all sorts of development environments were used, and they evolved over the course of console generations. Most graphics were first drawn on paper with square grids by artists before being handed off to people to manually type onto the computer. Some videos exist of Nintendo artists using a paint program with a mouse on a computer to draw NES graphics and place tiles.

I've done a lot of pixel art professionally, from the nineties on. In the eighties and nineties, D-Paint (originating on the Amiga) was the most used application for doing pixel art for games. When you zoomed in to hand-pixel properly, you would always see a 100% scale view of your work on the right. The most used displays on the Amiga were PAL or NTSC resolution CRTs. So you'd see how your pixels blended together, combined with the CRT gamma curve. It would look quite different on a TFT monitor.

I've done graphics on paper and typing them in as well, but that was for 8-bit computers in the early eighties.

This can also explain why so many games, despite being displayed on a 4:3 display, feature ovals instead of circles and generally appear "stretched": The graphics were painted on a computer with square pixels, unlike the final CRT display. Very few devs actually bothered to intentionally "squish" their graphics so that they would display right on a 4:3 CRT. I have to assume that some of them noticed and made the change, or that their paint program was natively hooked up to a TV instead of a computer monitor.

The very commonly used 1081/1084 style monitors in the eighties and early nineties had a number of knobs for setting scale and offset of the image. Nobody bothered to properly calibrate that. I don't remember if D-Paint used proper pixel aspect ratio when drawing circles. Drawing a circle by hand is much easier when you assume square pixels. And indeed, if you would draw something on a VGA monitor, for use in a PAL or NTSC game, your aspect ratio would be wrong.

[Duffygag]

Thanks Lamer, it's fantastic to hear the whys from someone whom actually created some of these marvels

[mahen]

Hi ! Still tearing my hair out and looking for the optimal combination of filters, masks (or shaders on RA) etc. My ageing eyes don't make it easier as I tend to find very difficult to stand stuff that tries to replicate CRT renderings... But I find it very difficult to stand blocky pics too

Hey guys, what strikes me the most is, in my memories, not only did games look "sharp" but they also looked butter smooth. Now, even when I apply to best possible combinations of filters / shaders etc. on RetroArch or on the MiSTer, the scrollings never feel "butter smooth" anymore. Except if I use some special monitor mode with black frames insertions which casts tons of light and destroys my eyes even more...

sigh

At the moment, I tend to find more relief when using a scalefx + crt-lottes shaders combinations than when using the MiSTer. Or I have to stick to a small scaling factor. But that kinda changes the picture compared to what it use to look like.

[AtomicShroom]

I've done a lot of pixel art professionally, from the nineties on. In the eighties and nineties, D-Paint (originating on the Amiga) was the most used application for doing pixel art for games. When you zoomed in to hand-pixel properly, you would always see a 100% scale view of your work on the right. The most used displays on the Amiga were PAL or NTSC resolution CRTs. So you'd see how your pixels blended together, combined with the CRT gamma curve. It would look quite different on a TFT monitor.

I've done graphics on paper and typing them in as well, but that was for 8-bit computers in the early eighties.

The very commonly used 1081/1084 style monitors in the eighties and early nineties had a number of knobs for setting scale and offset of the image. Nobody bothered to properly calibrate that. I don't remember if D-Paint used proper pixel aspect ratio when drawing circles. Drawing a circle by hand is much easier when you assume square pixels. And indeed, if you would draw something on a VGA monitor, for use in a PAL or NTSC game, your aspect ratio would be wrong.

Awesome insight! Thanks!

[FoxbatStargazer]

Hey guys, what strikes me the most is, in my memories, not only did games look "sharp" but they also looked butter smooth. Now, even when I apply to best possible combinations of filters / shaders etc. on RetroArch or on the MiSTer, the scrollings never feel "butter smooth" anymore. Except if I use some special monitor mode with black frames insertions which casts tons of light and destroys my eyes even more...

Yeah there's no replacement for the motion clarity of a CRT. (Except Plasma but they often have at least a bit of lag.) Even BFI is much dimmer/ more flickery than consumer NTSC CRTs.