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by Wowfunhappy 1027 days ago
...I find this hard to believe. A modern high-quality 4K HDR screen is exceedingly good at recreating all sorts of lifelike imagery. You're telling me the one thing it can't effectively recreate is a CRT television?

Input lag is probably the biggest issue, but you can get very low-latency screens nowadays! None of them are actually 0ms, but neither were CRTs unless you're measuring only the top of the screen and not the bottom.
2 comments
tracker1 1027 days ago
It depends.. the waterfall effects in the likes of Sonic are pretty hard without a real CRT.

If you're using an emulator, there are quite a few filters that can help to recreate that old feel, none are quite right though.

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pezezin 1027 days ago
The waterfall effect of Sonic is more of a result of composite video artifacts. Using a RGB cable, the effect is much less pronounced.
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tracker1 1026 days ago
I know.. and it was designed that way. It wasn't a bug but a feature of the game where the designer/developer knew how that would artifact on the screen, and was done intentionally. It really doesn't emulate/simulate well on a modern display.
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Wowfunhappy 1027 days ago
The waterfall effect is basically just blur! The problem with adding blur is that—although it makes the waterfall effect work—it makes the image blurry.

Personally, I don't think it's that the CRT is better than the filters, I think you're just used to the imperfections of a CRT.

Also, I really do think you need a 4K HDR screen (with good HDR, there's a lot of variance) in order for filters to really emulate the look of a CRT.

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tracker1 1026 days ago
It's not a blur so much as intentionally designed to use how a CRT/Composite video would artifact on a CRT. It's not a matter of better or worse, just that filters/simulation won't work well for that same effect.

Also, in a lot of ways a good CRT does look significantly better than all but OLED displays for games. The down side is they're heavy. I used to have two 22" calibrated flat screen displays that I loved, and only very recently are new displays visual quality on par. I stopped using them more because of space and size than quality. They weighed 85# each and had a permanent bow in the desk I was using back then. Moving 3x in one summer I decided to go with flat pannel. Not as good, but was doing less design work and more programming since then.

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kgwxd 1027 days ago
No matter how nice a tv, when someone shines a flashlight at the camera, it won’t make you squint. Same problem. Plus, no static.
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Wowfunhappy 1027 days ago
> No matter how nice a tv, when someone shines a flashlight at the camera, it won’t make you squint.

It actually can on a really good hdr tv! And there's no reason a crt filter couldn't add static.

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kgwxd 1026 days ago
I meant physical static. How are my overlays supposed to stick?
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