"Retro" post processing (scanlines,etc.)

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Scanlines, edge of screen warping, color correction. In contrast to the blurry or blobby filters employed to "modernize" the look of classic games on modern hardware, others attempt to intentionally emulate quirks and imperfections of the hardware outputting them in their time.

Do you like these? Do you find them effective at recreating an accurate experience of what seeing the game was like when it was new?

For me they're a novelty, but after a while I want a cleaner look, whether unfiltered or (gasp, boothisman.gif) using one of the filters meant to make the game look better on HD displays.
 
I highly recommend using some CRT scalers on RetroArch. They do some other things like Phospher glow and trying to emulate beam scanning.
 
I only like scanlines

The virtual arcade cab view in darkstalkers and other collections is a waste of effort.
 
While the curvature filters are interesting I find that I can't stand them over long periods of time. I feel like gentle scanlines do a lot more to enhance the look of older 2D games. Sometimes a convincing CRT glow looks good as well.
 
Curvature I can do without, but god damn do I have a fetish for scanlines, banding and other fun visual glitchery reminiscent of the 80s-90s era. Reduce it down to a 32 color gif or 20% quality jpeg for extra fun.
 
I swear to god most CRT displays weren't that curved - even in the early to mid 90s. I personally think most curve filters over do it and I never use them.
 
I like scan lines in HD stuff, but I really just play my retro stuff on actual arcade monitors or regular CRTs.

Honestly it's all I really play these days.
 
Last time I gave this issue any thought was when I first downloaded ZSNES probably in 1997... I played a few ROMs and I just couldn't stand how perfectly square every single pixel was, it made them look completely alien from the SNES games I played on my TV, with everything naturally smoothed out by the standard def CRT. Then maybe a couple of years later I downloaded a new version of ZSNES, and was very happy that they had added smoothing to make it look more TV-like.
 
Depends on how I am wanting to play the game.

For doom's anniversary I cranked everything down to software rendering, the real resolutions of the day, took off all the extras from the port job and limited myself to classic keyboard movement. It was really fun.

But then again, I also like playing brutal doom at 1080p with 6x SSAA and perfect texture filtering (but not with texture upressing, do not like that effect).

I think it depends on my mood like in the OP. But I really have a horrible nostalgia for those scanlines and that slight interpixel blur. (thx for posting my KOF screenshot in the OP btw :D)
 
Not a fan of this sort of effect, personally. Tends to give me headaches, primarily because I would get ocular migraines from old CRTs, so I associate scanlines with headaches. It's a cool effect when done right, though. *shrug*
 
I really don't like the use of chromatic aberration and faux-interlacing in cuphead.

I hope they have it a toggle in the options on release.

I also don't like the current fad for a film grain post-processing technique.
 
Not a big fan of scanlines, honestly I never really notice them when playing on older CRT sets at least not to the degree that these filters exaggerate them.
 
Absolutely loved when MAME added HLSL support. I tweaked the settings and am loving it. The absolutely best CRT emulation I've seen so far is in the Micro64 emulator. The ammount of options and detail there is amazing.

What I absolutely hate howerver are unevenly stretched pixels and misaligned scanlines, as in when they're not pixel thick and perfectly aligned to the resolution.
 
Scanlines and curvature are a matter of taste, but there are some NTSC display features that are absolutely worth reproducing, like the color palette and a slight blur.

Allow me to demonstrate with some Final Fantasy VI screens taken by The Exodu5:

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Look at those Goddamn bricks!
 
Yeah, look at how blurry and terrible they are!

I find it funny that people complain about N64 games having a "vaseline filter" over everything, yet want blur and filters in pixelated games.
 
Superdead NinjaHouse has a really great scanline filter on default.
 
Yeah, look at how blurry and terrible they are!

I find it funny that people complain about N64 games having a "vaseline filter" over everything, yet want blur and filters in pixelated games.

FFVI is a SNES game, which means it has an internal aspect ratio of 8:7, which would have been stretched horizontally for display on a 4:3 TV. If it has sharp, perfectly square pixels, it's wrong. The top picture isn't how the game's developers intended it to look.

Do you also play Doom at an unstretched 300x240 resolution? Do you set your TV's display mode to stretch content so you don't have to look at black bars?
 
can someone recommend me a universal retro post processor for PC? most of the time though, they over do it. the curves are way too drastic etc...

This is my setup on GGPO, very slight scanlines, no curves. looks amazing in motion:
 
Yeah, look at how blurry and terrible they are!

I find it funny that people complain about N64 games having a "vaseline filter" over everything, yet want blur and filters in pixelated games.

I hate filters as well, as I like clarity over everything else. Even on EPSXE, I keep unfiltered textures but in much higher resolution
 
FFVI is a SNES game, which means it has an internal aspect ratio of 8:7, which would have been stretched horizontally for display on a 4:3 TV. If it has sharp, perfectly square pixels, it's wrong.

Funny, if you grew up on the GBA version the fucked up aspect ratio will look right to you. That might explain it.
 
Yeah, look at how blurry and terrible they are!

I find it funny that people complain about N64 games having a "vaseline filter" over everything, yet want blur and filters in pixelated games.
Look again. The pixels were placed very carefully by the artist in order to exploit the blur and distortion of the hardware. It is very obvious on the bricks on the left of the image - they appear to show more detail and depth once the correct distortion is applied. Yes, the pure pixels is the actual data, but you were never supposed to see it like that. The 'blurry and terrible' one looks much more like bricks - the outlines between the bricks become thinner, making the bricks more defined. And look at the curve of the tower wall nearest the character (going into shadow). The top edge of each brick has a subtle brightness that is an obvious edge highlight in the filtered version, but just looks like one bright pixel on the raw data.

You have to squint really hard looking at the pure pixels to get the same effect of depth (or resize it veeery small so that each pixel was 1 to 1 with your monitor).
 
FFVI is a SNES game, which means it has an internal aspect ratio of 8:7, which would have been stretched horizontally for display on a 4:3 TV. If it has sharp, perfectly square pixels, it's wrong. The top picture isn't how the game's developers intended it to look.

Do you also play Doom at an unstretched 300x240 resolution? Do you set your TV's display mode to stretch content so you don't have to look at black bars?

Yes, because I prefer to play my games without feeling as though I have a visual impairment of some sort.

I don't stretch them, I scale them up by nearest neighbor so it keeps the pixels sharp.
 
I feel a lot of these filters kind of miss the point and they look horribly fake. You show me something with fake scanlines and do you know what it looks like to me? Fake scanlines.

The emulating tired tubes and curvature is also bizarre, two of the least liked aspects of arcade gaming and people are trying to copy that thinking it's the genuine experience? When you're playing on a curved CRT, looking straight at it, the lines do not look curved unless the monitor chassis has fucked geometry, so there's no sense making them look obviously curved trying to fake it. Any machine correctly configured doesn't stretch the picture to cover all the edges either, so if you really want to do it properly you want a curved edge area of black around a square image.

Every time I see this stuff I just quietly say to myself "god damn you're missing the point". I have a big collection of actual arcade games, best money I ever spent was buying up some of the last remaining NOS CRTs to replace tired old ones. If you want a CRT experience, buy a CRT - there are still plenty of very serviceable Trinitrons around which will actually run the games at the right resolution with zero display lag and scanlines which are there because they're part of the (analogue) technology.

I wonder if someone has emulated screen burn yet? On second thoughts I think I'd prefer not to know.
 
Scanlines and curvature are a matter of taste, but there are some NTSC display features that are absolutely worth reproducing, like the color palette and a slight blur.

Allow me to demonstrate with some Final Fantasy VI screens taken by The Exodu5:

1LLpZbg.png


NcPEkjH.png


Look at those Goddamn bricks!

This is *exactly* what I was referring to. In fact it was even an FFVI ROM I remember playing the most that day.
 
can someone recommend me a universal retro post processor for PC? most of the time though, they over do it. the curves are way too drastic etc...

This is my setup on GGPO, very slight scanlines, no curves. looks amazing in motion:

Phawx mentioned Retroarch which does have some great CRT emulation. But other than that, I don't think there's anything near a universal post processor for any application (well, maybe SweetFX), if that's what you meant.

Here's my current MAME HLSL look:
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Also, regarding 3D graphics, I tend not to add these kind of filters. I love crisp, unfiltered PS1 graphics. That's the reason I don't dig the N64 filtered textures very much. The PS1 version of Megaman Legends looks like heaven to me:
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It's like a natural extension of pixel art in 3D form. There's a whole thread on the polycount forums about low poly, sub 1000 tris 3D graphics with some unbelievable stuff.

This is what I fap to:
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That's why I like the graphics in Minecraft or Eldritch, although they could always be better. Much better unfiltered IMO.
 
Look again. The pixels were placed very carefully by the artist in order to exploit the blur and distortion of the hardware. It is very obvious on the bricks on the left of the image - they appear to show more detail and depth once the correct distortion is applied. Yes, the pure pixels is the actual data, but you were never supposed to see it like that. The 'blurry and terrible' one looks much more like bricks - the outlines between the bricks become thinner, making the bricks more defined. And look at the curve of the tower wall nearest the character (going into shadow). The top edge of each brick has a subtle brightness that is an obvious edge highlight in the filtered version, but just looks like one bright pixel on the raw data.

You have to squint really hard looking at the pure pixels to get the same effect of depth (or resize it veeery small so that each pixel was 1 to 1 with your monitor).

That doesn't make it look like any less of a blurry mess, though.
I know exactly what the intention was and what it was meant to convey, but that doesn't make it good.

I have to squint on the blurry image to make the bricks not look like they've been run through gaussian blur in photoshop too many times and the character just looks formless because the filter blends him into the door behind him.
Even scaled down to 1:1 size, the filtered image just looks like a bad screenshot scanned out of a magazine or something.

"Correct" or not, the fact remains that filtering and simulated scanlines are NOT a real CRT, so if your problem is with the game not looking correct, you should play it on an actual CRT.

In other words,

I feel a lot of these filters kind of miss the point and they look horribly fake. You show me something with fake scanlines and do you know what it looks like to me? Fake scanlines.

The emulating tired tubes and curvature is also bizarre, two of the least liked aspects of arcade gaming and people are trying to copy that thinking it's the genuine experience? When you're playing on a curved CRT, looking straight at it, the lines do not look curved unless the monitor chassis has fucked geometry, so there's no sense making them look obviously curved trying to fake it. Any machine correctly configured doesn't stretch the picture to cover all the edges either, so if you really want to do it properly you want a curved edge area of black around a square image.

Every time I see this stuff I just quietly say to myself "god damn you're missing the point". I have a big collection of actual arcade games, best money I ever spent was buying up some of the last remaining NOS CRTs to replace tired old ones. If you want a CRT experience, buy a CRT - there are still plenty of very serviceable Trinitrons around which will actually run the games at the right resolution with zero display lag and scanlines which are there because they're part of the (analogue) technology.

I wonder if someone has emulated screen burn yet? On second thoughts I think I'd prefer not to know.

Thank you.
 
Fun to look at but I prefer no filter. I want games to look how they are supposed to look, not how they look via hardware limitations.

Seeing pixels in all of their jaggy glory is fine by me. I don't need fake retro.
 
It's like a natural extension of pixel art in 3D form. There's a whole thread on the polycount forums about low poly, sub 1000 tris 3D graphics with some unbelievable stuff.

This is what I fap to:
lowpoly_taxi.gif

tumblr_mt8ltqzVuL1s1maq9o7_400.png

chunkbot.png

sYrgJ2S.png

tumblr_mofr5uKUiQ1svbgupo2_1280.png

tankbot.png


That's why I like the graphics in Minecraft or Eldritch, although they could always be better. Much better unfiltered IMO.

Let's fap together!
This is exactly that indeed, unfiltered low poly, with a good enough rez for the edges, looks like pure 3D pixel art. Some psp games also are crazy for that, like Persona 2 where the isometric background look 2D, or Tactic Ogre.

I have a fav list on deviantart.
 
Fun to look at but I prefer no filter. I want games to look how they are supposed to look, not how they look via hardware limitations.

But what if the developers accounted for the hardware limitations, so the game would look correct on older TVs, without anticipating modern displays?

Although blurry, the colors and contrast of that FF screen look a lot better, and more "correct" (the greyness of the castle compared to the tinted unfiltered one).
 
Fun to look at but I prefer no filter. I want games to look how they are supposed to look, not how they look via hardware limitations.

Seeing pixels in all of their jaggy glory is fine by me. I don't need fake retro.

The limitations are part of how the games were supposed to look. This affects things like color reproduction and using dithering to make fake transparencies or blend colors together.

EDIT: I'm referring to older games. New ones simulating CRT attributes may or may not take advantage of it.
 
Older games were designed around the presence of scanlines, so I like having them there. At the same time, though, they should be subtle. Like this:

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That's on a shitty TN monitor and looks great.
 
I prefer scanlines and slight blur when they look nice. If an emulator has some lazy scanline option there's no point in using it. In MAME/MESS I use nicely-configured HLSL settings when possible over the usual prescaling. Don't jump to assume that I prefer this for the sake of "authenticity" or that I give two shits about what "the least liked aspects of arcade gaming" are, though: this is purely about aesthetics. Huge razor-sharp pixels on razor-sharp displays can look nasty to me, sometimes even to the point of being distracting in comparison to a slightly softened image.

Those are my preferences. I used to be more strict about them, but I've come to care much more about timing aspects (vsync, lag, and stutter) than purely static visual aspects, assuming the filter isn't genuinely abhorrent. Maybe when gsync rolls around I can stop thinking about timing and wrap back around to caring about filtering, lol.
 
I hate NTSC filters. All my gaming in ancient times was done on RGB SCART (and PAL) and I can't stand NTSC ugly blurry filters, I just don't see the appeal.

[edit] by that I didn't mean the FF6 screens posted above. But if anything it's a crt filter, not an ntsc filter.
 
I like NTSC filters on my old 8 and 16 bit games, they look the way how I remember they looked like.

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This looks right.

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This just looks wrong, the colors are just fucked up.
 
Even RGB signals on low resolution CRT displays have some level of "blur" to them. Certainly more than a nearest-neighbor integer-scaled image.
 
I hate NTSC filters. All my gaming in ancient times was done on RGB SCART (and PAL) and I can't stand NTSC ugly blurry filters, I just don't see the appeal.

The best I could do at the time was S-Video on my Trinitron. When I saw SCART, I was blown away at how clear it was.
 
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