[Wowfunhappy]

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.

[tracker1]

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.