Scanline screenshot thread. Because 240p is all the p's I need.
- Thread starter Peltz
- Start date
Laevateinn
Member
I played Dragon Spirits recently on my X68000. Doesnit force tate on PCE too?
There is a code where you press SELECT and RUN 57 times to reset then it goes into Tate-ish
EDIT
I was really getting back into STHA (and Golden Sun) then my pal modified saturn gets sick! Strangely at the same time I use my new RGB cable which was Sync over luma since I was going to use it between my japanese and pal saturns.
EDIT
I was really getting back into STHA (and Golden Sun) then my pal modified saturn gets sick! Strangely at the same time I use my new RGB cable which was Sync over luma since I was going to use it between my japanese and pal saturns.
davidwhangchoi
Member
Dragon Spirit is hot!
It could be very low res such that the scanline effect is very subtle. Anything under 500 lines of resolution doesn't produce very discernible scanlines.
Many consumer sets are around 350 lines. Try to snap a picture of the pixels up close when playing 240p content and letting us see it.
Oh. I'll take a picture of the pixels then when I get home.
Laevateinn
Member
This looks like my kind of game. I'll have to keep an eye out so I'm ready when I finally RGB mod my PCE.
Beer Monkey
Member
(Gapped) scanlines were never very common back in the day outside of the arcade, where the monitors were were tightly focused and large. Also Amiga/Atari computer monitors had a big of a scanline effect when fed by consoles; typical consumer TVs not as much.
The bigger the screen and the tighter the focus of the electron beam the more likely you'll see scanlines. PVMs and BVMs have a much tighter focus than consumer sets.
High "TVL" aka "lines of resolution" doesn't really cause the 'scanline' visibility; that's just bullshit that YouTubers say; they spread so much myth in this hobby. TVL is just horizontal resolution. It's just that most sets that are engineered to have high TVL also have tighter focus of the electron beam!
https://imgur.com/a/cPLmj
Lunar SSSC with ScaleFX and Easy Mode CRT tuned to my liking
ScaleFX is at about a 23 threshold and Easy mode is slightly different than default. A little less sharp and some other settings tweaked.
I actually like both filters here. Text is really nice with ScaleFX, and some things come across as more cartoony. The CRT looks pretty great on most things besides text.
ScaleFX doesn't look as good as with Yoshi obviously, where to me it is easily definitive, but it still looks very nice and cartoony when you get used to it. Some will hate it.
Overall I really like Easy mode setting on this comparison. All it needs is less annoying text.
Aria of Sorrow: https://imgur.com/a/Qb9SL
I been tuning my masks and gammas for each of the SNES, PS1, and GBA games. With GBA typically I like a slightly stronger mask for these side scrollers. Not too strong though. I love retroarch man. Makes tuning so damn easy and even fun. I think I'm at .3 actually for these CV games. Less mask seems to kind of make things too chunky for me. And the darker tone of the game suits it.
I been using .18 mask strength on SNES as I feel too much and the simplistic graphics start to seem a bit too dark, yet too little and the graphics have no detail. Still much prefer ScaleFX on Yoshi. Amazing filter there. PS1 mask is toned down as I don't think it suits the material for Lunar. So like a .12 vs .3 mask strength on GBA. I tried bigger masks but it doesn't seem to lend that colorful fantasy vibe a better look.
I think I'm at about .4 vs .75 on the horizontal and vertical settings in CRT Easy.
Lunar SSSC with ScaleFX and Easy Mode CRT tuned to my liking
ScaleFX is at about a 23 threshold and Easy mode is slightly different than default. A little less sharp and some other settings tweaked.
I actually like both filters here. Text is really nice with ScaleFX, and some things come across as more cartoony. The CRT looks pretty great on most things besides text.
ScaleFX doesn't look as good as with Yoshi obviously, where to me it is easily definitive, but it still looks very nice and cartoony when you get used to it. Some will hate it.
Overall I really like Easy mode setting on this comparison. All it needs is less annoying text.
Aria of Sorrow: https://imgur.com/a/Qb9SL
I been tuning my masks and gammas for each of the SNES, PS1, and GBA games. With GBA typically I like a slightly stronger mask for these side scrollers. Not too strong though. I love retroarch man. Makes tuning so damn easy and even fun. I think I'm at .3 actually for these CV games. Less mask seems to kind of make things too chunky for me. And the darker tone of the game suits it.
I been using .18 mask strength on SNES as I feel too much and the simplistic graphics start to seem a bit too dark, yet too little and the graphics have no detail. Still much prefer ScaleFX on Yoshi. Amazing filter there. PS1 mask is toned down as I don't think it suits the material for Lunar. So like a .12 vs .3 mask strength on GBA. I tried bigger masks but it doesn't seem to lend that colorful fantasy vibe a better look.
I think I'm at about .4 vs .75 on the horizontal and vertical settings in CRT Easy.
Those colours are great. Makes it look like you are playing on an emulator.
Playing the translated rom of Tower of Druaga - pce
davidwhangchoi
Member
hey guys, just grabbed psx Alundra over the weekend
so i took 2 shots on BVM:
so i took 2 shots on BVM:
Danny Dudekisser
I paid good money for this Dynex!
The PS1's output just looks so damn good. Perfect fodder for this thread.
ZeroMaverick
Member
These look really good
Ivan
Member
So true... I still can't believe I sold my 1084s. Stupid kid.
GeorgioCostanzaX
Member
While were on the subject would modern games look like CGI with scanlines? Im half serious...
Judge for yourself I guess? They do have a very unique look with scanlines.
Note: open these in a new tab and see them at 100% scaling; GAF is somehow messing up some images.
The main problem here is interface elements and how they're scaled/presented at modern HD resolutions. If you process the image the same way you do with retro games designed for small resolutions, text often becomes very hard to read.
davidwhangchoi
Member
sidearms was one of my favorite games in the arcade as a kid. i can beat it in a quarter.
pc engine is much harder bc the timing is off vs. the arcade. wow! if you were able to beat it on PCE, you were damn skilled bc i would get wiped out so fast. (i was so used to the arcade and couldn't adjust)
Laevateinn
Member
My RGB Twin Famicom modded by Baphomet arrived! Crossposting from RetroAV.
Unfortunately, I hit a milestone.
This is what I get.
There are scanlines visible in the blue green area. The white area of the screen has no separation between the lines and shows full bloom/color bleed. It would be easier to see the effect if you zoomed out a bit and we could see more of the screen.
But a lot of consumer CRTs are not be very susceptible to the scanline effect in general.
Here's a zoomed out one. Honestly, I can't see scanlines from a meter away from this CRT TV.
They are there, looks like yours has vertical lines but they are not very prominent.
That's the most sluttiest scart switch box I've ever seen!
Bloody Wolf - pce. The colours here makes me think NES.
That's the most sluttiest scart switch box I've ever seen!
Bloody Wolf - pce. The colours here makes me think NES.
HNNNNNGGGHHH. I absolutely ADORE early 90s anime cutscenes in video games. These shots push ALL my buttons.
That's very common for a consumer set. The scanlines are there but very subtle. If you want thicker black lines, you'll need a sharper CRT.
Different CRTs just show 240p differently. In fact, some people would consider your set to be more authentic for having such subtle lines if it's what they grew up with.
Oh. Cool. It confuses me though. How else are others able to say that the intended look of retro games includes scanlines if the average consumer CRT television doesn't even have visible scanlines? Honestly, I don't remember scanlines at all during the 8bit and 16bit generations. Anyway, thanks for the input.
Laevateinn
Member
I'm sure developers had reference monitors that they used to design the "true experience" on. Due to the nature of analog signals and the inconsistency in television quality you would never know exactly what an image would look like but you could at least have something held up as a gold standard.
I mean, your scanlines are visible, just not prominent. Still, even if you back away, your set doesn't show the same type of pixelization that would occur if a 240p game were scaled up to 1080p for a fixed pixel HDTV. Plus, it depends on when you're talking about - consumer sets in the mid to late 90s had more prominant scanlines than consumer sets in the early 90s and 80s.
Prominent scanlines or not, 240p definitely wasn't meant to be upscaled into an overly blocky, sharp, and heavily pixelated image. I think the presence of the lines themselves is missing the point to an extent.
But certainly, if you do upscale, adding in fake lines gives the image a more coherent look than otherwise:
In that sense, as the resolution of the monitor increases, the need for scanlines to make the image look more authentic increases as well. This occurs naturally in CRTs - higher res monitors that render 240p natively will have thicker black scanlines which offsets the increased pixelization. But the same isn't true on a fixed pixel display (e.g. a modern flat screen). That's why adding in the scanlines for high res fixed pixel screens is "more authentic" than simply upscaling without them.
So did artists intend for their artwork to have the lines there? Well I don't really think it's a relevant question. However, I think it's pretty clear that they intended for home console games to be played on CRTs, and scanlines help you get closer to that specifically on high res displays.
cyborgnumberblue
Member
The prominence of scanlines with regards to image quality in terms of retro systems is extremely overblown. There are more factors inherent to the configuration of a typical consumer CRT display than just the presence of scanlines.
Then again, I am saying this in the scanline thread.
Theonik
Member
Two points:
1) Scanlines are only really an effect on 240p content.
2) Consumer CRTs don't always show them in the way people's monitors here do because the scanlines are a result of the screen having a very fine dot pitch which is more common on expensive monitors or TVs.
TheMoon
Member
Yeah. I have come to realize the 2nd point which also means having scanlines isn't the intended look but more like a preference since the average consumer TVs didn't have them visibly.
davidwhangchoi
Member
Saturn / S-Video on a Toshiba 36AF41 which is not in the best of shape but certainly usable.
(Salamander 2).
i want that game!!!! nice pic!
Thx - I wish it would come out on Arcade Archives for current consoles so everyone could enjoy it.
cyborgnumberblue
Member
Salamander 2 gets slept on, it'd better than any other Gradius game to me. Very much a standout game in that series.
cireza
Member
Is this a 240p game ? If this is a 480i game, you won't see any scanline which is absolutely normal.
Looking at the picture (some kind of artwork), I have some doubts about the fact that it is 240 lines. Looks 480 to me.
It's 240p. It's from the 240p test suite.
Well surely the artist of these game created the sprites with scanlines in mind as they'd know that every other line would be blanked out and design the sprites based on this!?
I would think so. You can see it in a lot of promo shoots from back then. I don't have a lot of pictures on hand to show this, but I've certainly seen it before. From my personal collection, here's a picture of a manual from Nazo No Murasamejou on Famicom Disk System:
From another Famicom game manual who's name escapes me:
If you look in off-screen photos old videogame magazines and manuals, you'll see a ton more with scanlines. It was typical in the NES days specifically before developers had screenshot tools and relied on photographs to make their promo stuff.
TheMoon
Member
just shots from crt mode in general or you want shots from it running on a crt? the former I can do, the latter I can't (no way to get the hdmi connected a crt)
Snes mini in pixel perfect mode with a scanline generator/OSSC on a pc CRT monitor:
The additional scanlines aren't perfectly matched to the res, unfortunately, if you look at Guile's health bar you can see that the top white border is thicker than the lower when it should be the same. That being said it looks better than the inbuilt blurry CRT filter.
The additional scanlines aren't perfectly matched to the res, unfortunately, if you look at Guile's health bar you can see that the top white border is thicker than the lower when it should be the same. That being said it looks better than the inbuilt blurry CRT filter.
That's how I intend to roll with my SNES mini but now on the hunt to find a HDMI to VGA adapter. I just got a cable of ebay which I was hoping would have been an easy no fuss HDMI to VGA cable but alas it doesn't work. Requesting a refund..