Cool. xconfig all over again. :+
Scanline screenshot thread. Because 240p is all the p's I need.
- Thread starter Peltz
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Tarin02543
Member
Looks awesome for an emulator
I could be wrong since its been a really long time since I just looked at a CRT but isn't that ringed darkening an artifact of recording a CRT display and viewing the recording on a screen? I thought it didn't typically happen when just looking at CRTs?
potatohead
Member
Yea I think so.
Yes, you're 100% correct. That filter is atrocious and exemplifies how little people actually remember what old school games look like on a CRT.
I think the effect is more convincing if you make the outer edges of the screen (the sort of tunneled in part) have the same black depth as what would be the TV border.
Something like this:
vs this
For what you're going for it's a pretty good effect!
Edit: Interestingly, if you resize with Nearest Neighbor it even has the correct amplification effect where the pattern changes =p
The scanlines here look weird. At certain intervals they're arbitrarily thicker and spaced unevenly. I also think the curvature is too exaggerated. It should be a subtle effect or not emulated at all since in-person viewers of a CRT typically don't/barely notice the screen curve.
Top one seems the best of the bunch yeah.
2nd is too bloomy and loses detail, 4th is washed and looks like it has blue turned up too high. Realistically though, I don't see much of a difference between the 1st, 3rd, and 5th.
And yeah I'd agree the pincushion should be dialed back.
Another thing that I'm not certain is in your control, and may just be a by product of using pincushion, but at some spots it seems like the CRT lines may not be properly aligned with the pixels? Might be worth seeing if it can be adjusted to map perfectly with them.
2nd is too bloomy and loses detail, 4th is washed and looks like it has blue turned up too high. Realistically though, I don't see much of a difference between the 1st, 3rd, and 5th.
And yeah I'd agree the pincushion should be dialed back.
Another thing that I'm not certain is in your control, and may just be a by product of using pincushion, but at some spots it seems like the CRT lines may not be properly aligned with the pixels? Might be worth seeing if it can be adjusted to map perfectly with them.
I need some opinions (constructive) been playing with some settings trying to get (Arcade cab mame) Street Fighter Turbo as accurate as possible in terms of scanlines and CRT look.
Can you guys/girls tell me what picture you think looks "better" and what you think I should change or improve?
My gut tells me the top one with less pincushion.
This looks most accurate from what I recall.
The colors in that one are the most accurate, but it's way too sharp. You shouldn't be able to tell that it's being playing on an HD display... and the dithering effect should work more on the background colors to make somewhat smoother gradients. You can see every pixel way too clearly imo.
qa_engineer
Member
My eyes hurt. What are you doing to my eyes?
ichtyander
Member
There are some pretty uneven scanlines in those examples, I'm not sure why that's happening exactly but it probably depends on a number of factors.
You should at least try to get something like this for the scanlines, even and maybe not as dark. The screenshot was taken in MAMEUIFX64 0.155 with slight HLSL tweaks.
You should at least try to get something like this for the scanlines, even and maybe not as dark. The screenshot was taken in MAMEUIFX64 0.155 with slight HLSL tweaks.
There are some pretty uneven scanlines in those examples, I'm not sure why that's happening exactly but it probably depends on a number of factors.
You should at least try to get something like this for the scanlines, even and maybe not as dark. The screenshot was taken in MAMEUIFX64 0.155 with slight HLSL tweaks.
This is way better.
Agree on the SFII image.
Posting a few BVM and PVM shots I had lying around, some new.
These SK shots are old and I posted the cutscene one before in another thread. I have an HD CRT now. Should be able to get better pics of proper resolutions and proportions for Steam games that previously did not look right because they were a bit beyond the capabilities of my 15Khz monitors (Axiom Verge for example).
Posting a few BVM and PVM shots I had lying around, some new.
These SK shots are old and I posted the cutscene one before in another thread. I have an HD CRT now. Should be able to get better pics of proper resolutions and proportions for Steam games that previously did not look right because they were a bit beyond the capabilities of my 15Khz monitors (Axiom Verge for example).
eso76
Member
Please, don't post images of the old konami logo.
There are some pretty uneven scanlines in those examples, I'm not sure why that's happening exactly but it probably depends on a number of factors.
You should at least try to get something like this for the scanlines, even and maybe not as dark. The screenshot was taken in MAMEUIFX64 0.155 with slight HLSL tweaks.
Uneven scanlines happen when game is upscaled in non integer values. There should be an option somewhere to only enable integer multipliers when scaling, although you won't always be able to fill the entire screen.
Nailed that sf2 look, although you had lots of different sf2 cabinets using anything as monitors: everyone's experience with the GameCuk is probably different in terma of for contrast, colours, pincushion, sharpness and bloom. Those can be completely different from one machine to another.
I finally got a DSLR that's a bit better than my cellphone cam and can post a few pics. I'm still learning on how to take good pictures off my PVM, and my kit lense isn't a very good one either. If anyone has tips on the taking-the-photos - part, feel free to share.
But here's a few assorted pics from my RGB AV Famicom and Astal, since it's a beautiful game.
But here's a few assorted pics from my RGB AV Famicom and Astal, since it's a beautiful game.
I think it's my overhead room light, but Sony pro monitors do not look good in a normally lit room, whereas my JVC pro monitor has better anti-reflective properties and looks great. I find dimming the lights or being in a dark room helps with reflections and taking photos.
Do full manual for the aperture and shutter speed. Handheld I do ISO 400, F 4.0 or so, 1/50 or 1/60 shutter speed, no flash. I'm using the 16-50mm stock lens on a Sony mirror less APS-C camera and zoom in to about 24mm, so a little under halfway for best lens sharpness and so that the aperture is still fairly open (aperture narrows as you zoom in all the way). You could do better with a tripod.
I find that manually focusing is also beneficial. The light/refresh coming off the CRT throws off sensors and will often cause out of focus images... and poorly exposed images which is why I suggested full manual above. Shooting at an angle and coming in a little close so that part of the screen is cropped out yields aesthetically pleasing images. Fullscreen, dead-on shots seem to have a dullness to them most of the time, like something is clearly off. I also "pixel peep" to make sure the TV lines in the in-focus area is as sharp as possible... camera shake should not be an element in the photo because it adds to the misperception that CRTs are inherently blurry or fuzzy. Retake shots so that light or dark bands do not tarnish the shot... this is random/trial and error so just shot several pics at once and keep the best one.
Play with white balance, over saturating, if you have a nice preset for that, and slight overexposing to make whites pop and not look grayish. A surprising number of properly taken shots come out too dark and color muted compared to what I'm seeing IRL. Avoid too much over exposure. I see a few too many shots blown to hell and people incorrectly attribute this to "dat CRT glow!" I mean there is a nice little glow, but it's not that exaggerated that details are gone and text looks radioactive. Eyeball match your camera's preview side by side with what you see on screen. I'm satisfied if I come to a 90-95% match.
Do full manual for the aperture and shutter speed. Handheld I do ISO 400, F 4.0 or so, 1/50 or 1/60 shutter speed, no flash. I'm using the 16-50mm stock lens on a Sony mirror less APS-C camera and zoom in to about 24mm, so a little under halfway for best lens sharpness and so that the aperture is still fairly open (aperture narrows as you zoom in all the way). You could do better with a tripod.
I find that manually focusing is also beneficial. The light/refresh coming off the CRT throws off sensors and will often cause out of focus images... and poorly exposed images which is why I suggested full manual above. Shooting at an angle and coming in a little close so that part of the screen is cropped out yields aesthetically pleasing images. Fullscreen, dead-on shots seem to have a dullness to them most of the time, like something is clearly off. I also "pixel peep" to make sure the TV lines in the in-focus area is as sharp as possible... camera shake should not be an element in the photo because it adds to the misperception that CRTs are inherently blurry or fuzzy. Retake shots so that light or dark bands do not tarnish the shot... this is random/trial and error so just shot several pics at once and keep the best one.
Play with white balance, over saturating, if you have a nice preset for that, and slight overexposing to make whites pop and not look grayish. A surprising number of properly taken shots come out too dark and color muted compared to what I'm seeing IRL. Avoid too much over exposure. I see a few too many shots blown to hell and people incorrectly attribute this to "dat CRT glow!" I mean there is a nice little glow, but it's not that exaggerated that details are gone and text looks radioactive. Eyeball match your camera's preview side by side with what you see on screen. I'm satisfied if I come to a 90-95% match.
Days ago i tried making my own very basic scanline shader
I'm not a fan of round borders so i didn't do them.
I also did a almost round pixel shader but the effect is almost unnoticeable!
original image(4x bigger than the original street fighter 2 resolution)
scanlines only
scanlines + some color alteration(imo colors were warmer and more contrasted on CRTs)
I'm not a fan of round borders so i didn't do them.
I also did a almost round pixel shader but the effect is almost unnoticeable!
Thanks for your input! It's still not what I see in real life, but the quality is getting better.
One more from SOTN (Saturn)
It was pretty much impossible to get the sprites to display correctly for Breath of Fire 3 in ePSXe. All sorts of weird artifacts going on like pixel-wide lines tearing right through characters, as if the different tiles they are made of weren't aligning correctly. Friend hooked me up with Mednafen in RetroArch instead and the difference is like night and day.
Usually I'm pretty averse to these kinds of cartoon filters, but in thise case coupled with the scanlines and stuff I think it doesn't look half bad. Using the 2xbr Hybrid v4 shader.
This is what it looks like in ePSXe:
Usually I'm pretty averse to these kinds of cartoon filters, but in thise case coupled with the scanlines and stuff I think it doesn't look half bad. Using the 2xbr Hybrid v4 shader.
This is what it looks like in ePSXe:
Great pics!
Convergence needs a bit of fixing in some spots though... that's why I'm for the BVMs over the PVMs, despite some disliking the extra sharpness and thick scanlines. Easy to fix in the menu.
Yep, there's a color problem on the upper left corner (convergence?) and I can't get the screen to align properly on the left side (it curves a bit no matter what) so I tend to hide it with overscan. I've tried doing various things in the menu, but it's never the same for two different games. So I tried making a solution that will work with most.
I have no experience with psx emulators so i don't know anything about them but in the last image the number and thickness of scanlines are obviously wrong, like that the emulator thinks that the game original resolution is double of what really is, is there any setting for that? Another thing is that in the bottom right or the first image foliage is really pixelated while in the last it's not, maybe you should try changing some texture filtering option.
Or maybe epsxe just can't run it properly.
The rendering resolution in ePSXe is higher. Mednafen renders at the original resolution, then with shaders on top. ePSXe doesn't even seem to support 240p in fullscreen mode. 480p was as low as it would go. But ultimately the resolution doesn't seem to matter much as the sprites will display incorrectly regardless. The artifacts/non-linearities just get worse at higher resolutions. I've tried different plugins like the software renderer but the problem persists.
The filter in conjunction with the scanlines does look a lot better, good idea and execution.
I'm pretty jelly since I have the same PVM but you get perfect geometry on yours. Although I've learned that CRT's and PVM's rarely have 100% geometry, it still bugs me a bit. I still need a better camera, but here's a comparison shot:
Extreme close-up! Woah!
Oh, so that's what that's called.
OnionPowder
Member
I'm picking up a CRT from a coworker this week, I'll make sure to post some screens from NES/SNES/Genesis
The top right corner of my 20M4U is curved downward like the crushed corner of a box... I also hid it with overscan. Watch this video and take note of what they do at the 2:45 minute mark for convergence and then the part after with the magnetic strips. I saw another video where a guy did the same thing with his PVM. If your monitor was serviced in the past it may already have round magnets or strips on the tube (it may also have been placed there from the beginning, during the factory calibration).
Interesting video. I've watched Phonedork's videos on opening up a PVM, but personally I will not do it because I like living and don't like getting electrocuted. My technical knowledge is limited to somewhat fiddling with picture settings from the menu but I'm more of a type that uses machines but doesn't know how they work.
Though I haven't really contributed a lot on this thread, scanlines and CRT tech are among my main gaming fetishes. Still to get a decent monitor, but in the meantime I have been playing on a Samsung Tantus from 2004, which is not too bad. Took this two pics just now. not as sharp as a PVM/BVM, but I like this sets picture..
For the sake of completeness; you mean less barrel distortion instead of less
pincushion.
I don't even know why the word pin is used at all to describe the pincushion
effect. The so-called pincushion effect for TV has nothing to do with a
classic pincushion, i.e. a cushion where one puts some pins on. The pins have
no meaning in describing the effect. It basically should only be called
cushion distortion (like barrel distortion) which is also the term used in
non-English languages like German or Russian, i.e. Kisseneffekt or
Kissenverzerrung in German. The associations with a cushion basically stems
form the fact that the corners of squares, when projected by a TV (under
certain conditions), form elongated points on the screen.
The real classic (pin-)cushion effect in TV stems from trying to project an
orthogonal raster on a flat screen under magnetic deflection. If one has a
uniform magnetic field for deflecting the beam horizontally and vertically,
then one will come to the conclusion that the horizontal deflection depends on
the vertical one, and wise-versa, in a non-linear fashion. So basically, to
project a linear raster on a flat screen under uniform magnetic deflection
produces a non-linear dependency of the horizontal and vertical deflection
(which is quit interesting on its own). Hence, using linear deflection
currents to drive the coils won't work in producing a linear raster on the
screen. This discrepancy was a core issue in TV design, because to get a
uniform raster again on the screen under uniform magnetic deflection requires
a rather complex non-linear current which is very difficult to produce with
analog circuits. This issue is basically the reason for all the additional
permanent magnets placed around the neck of the tube.
Well, how does the current needs to look like? I "needs" to look like this;
Code:
i(x) = x*arctan(sqrt(x²+y²))/sqrt(x²+y²) // horizontal deflection current
i(y) = y*arctan(sqrt(x²+y²))/sqrt(x²+y²) // vertical deflection currentcenter of magnetic deflection equals 1 (normalized TV), sensibility of the CRT
equals 1 in x and y, coils produce a uniform magnetic field, and we do not
consider any flyback.
So for i(x) we see the non-linear dependency on y, similar for i
. Producingsuch a current shape is very difficult. So what was done to counter this
probem? Roughly speaking, the ideal current was approximated and the remaining
distortions were countered by distorting the magnetic field by shaping the
coils and by using some additional magnets around the neck of the tube. Hence,
the better the shape of the current, the less corrections one needs to make.
But since no magnetic field is linear, the non-linearity of the magnetic field
produced by the coils on the far end of the deflection system and all the
additional magnets around the neck of the tube were factored in to produce a
less demanding non-linear current.
Guess we could have the best possible current shape, i.e. linear one;
Code:
i(x) = x
i(y) = yto shape the magnetic field rather drastically (doesn't really work, will
produced lots of distortions which can't be countered solely by rigging the
magnetic field on certain points). So a compromise was found by balancing the
shape for the current with respect to the shape of the magnetic field in
balancing the non-linearity on both, i.e. for the current and the magnetic
field. That's why we see the interestingly shaped coils and all the magnets
around the neck of a common TV tube - they match (as good as possible, for the
better TVs) the slightly non-linear current driving the deflection coils.
There is one more interesting thing. The arctan behaves linear around zero,
hence, if the deflection isn't large, i.e. a small TV, we can use an almost
linear current and only need a minor if any correction of the magnetic field.
For example;
Code:
i(x) = x*arctan(sqrt(x²+y²))/sqrt(x²+y²)
arctan(sqrt(x²+y²)) ~= sqrt(x²+y²) for sqrt(x²+y²) < epsilon
[arctan(x) = x - x^3/3 + x^5/5+ O(x^6) (Taylor series)]
Code:
i(x) = x*sqrt(x²+y²)/sqrt(x²+y²) = x.ones. As larger a TV becomes, as more difficult it becomes to counter the
geometric distortions making a TV more expensive when required to retain
an almost distortion free image.
Edit:
Let me express the stuff written above with modern terms. The modification of
the magnetic field due to the placement of permanent magnets around the neck
of the tube or by geometrically adjusting the coils is called static
convergence. Modifying the shape of the deflection currents (to counter the
distortions towards the edges of the screen) is called dynamic convergence. The
text of mine tells you why the separation exists and how they depend on each
other.
Cross-posting from the Upscalers, CRTs, PVMs & RGB thread.
Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, Wii 480p, JVC DT-1710CG
Although 480p, you can still see clear scanlines in these -- especially in the full-size originals:
http://i.imgur.com/ypedGqH.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/U60cgOS.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/d69pycO.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/RK8MgTi.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/bFDMUic.jpg
Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, Wii 480p, JVC DT-1710CG
Although 480p, you can still see clear scanlines in these -- especially in the full-size originals:
http://i.imgur.com/ypedGqH.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/U60cgOS.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/d69pycO.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/RK8MgTi.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/bFDMUic.jpg
I can't let this entire post go by unlauded. Incredibly detailed stuff there.
Looks really awesome!
Thx a lot, Sir! Yeah, but all the details are a bit off-topic, unfortunately.
Well, I think we may need a thread solely covering CRT technology some day.
Non of the current threads talking about CRTs do its technology justice,
neither this one, nor "RETROARCH - The all-in-one emulator dreams are made of,
son", nor "Upscalers, CRTs, PVMs & RGB: Retro gaming done right!". They all
just cover a slice of it. I think CRT technology holds a good portion of the
success of video gaming and computer graphics in general. But then everything
may stay as it is, because writing about CRT technology might be too technical
to spur any long lasting discussions on it own.
So good. Keep those 480p Wii shots coming.
Thanks but I'm actually unsatisfied with the photo results! The action moves so fast that the camera doesn't capture the best moments in this game without it being a blur. It took a lot just to get these although I could sacrifice minute detail by bumping up the ISO really high to get a very quick shutter speed.
And it all looks kinda dark despite fidgeting with the settings. The Batsu/Mega Man shot is the worst... I could not get the background details to come out. The stage is not so severely covered in shadow. I'll have to keep trying. This thing photographs very different from the Sony monitors.
And it all looks kinda dark despite fidgeting with the settings. The Batsu/Mega Man shot is the worst... I could not get the background details to come out. The stage is not so severely covered in shadow. I'll have to keep trying. This thing photographs very different from the Sony monitors.
