[tadfisher]

This technique is very important for emulation and simulating the look of early games.

For example, the Genesis/Mega Drive did not support hardware alpha transparency. Many games (including the Sonic series) simulate the effect by alternating vertical lines, and relying on the "visual munging" of CRTs to produce a convincing effect. Here is a video that demonstrates the effect in Shinobi 3: https://youtu.be/YFOkbfpIlaY?t=2m52s

(You can also notice the stippled pattern in the pool of water to the right, used to produce the same effect.)

Another technique is the use of stippling to simulate smooth textures and surfaces. For example, this screenshot of the Super Metroid start screen looks pretty terrible by modern standards: http://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/original/0/4527/1093273-...

This would have looked much more convincing on a CRT display. Without simulating CRT distortion, you are not getting the same visual experience one would have had when running the game on hardware it was designed for. For modern games looking to simulate this experience, using these techniques along with a CRT shader will be very effective at bringing back the home console experience of the 80s and 90s.

[mrob]

It's hardly fair to call it "terrible" when you're scaling it with non-integer ratio nearest neighbor scaling (causing uneven original pixel sizes), then compressing with a lossy algorithm designed for completely different images.

SNES (and NES) screenshots are difficult to display well on modern systems because the (S)NES had rectangular pixels instead of square pixels as used today. I recommend scaling to some large integer multiple of the original size with nearest neighbor, and then scaling to the correct aspect ratio with your favorite resampling filter. And if you insist on using JPEG compression then at least use 4:4:4 chroma subsampling - chroma artifacts are very obvious in pixel art.

I also dispute the assertion that CRT artifacts were required or intended by all graphics designer back then. Evidence: LCD based portable systems and line doubled mode 13h DOS games both used the same dithering techniques, but they had sharp pixels. And many games used dithering type patterns to represent fine detail instead of blended colors, eg. the typewriter in the background near the start of Chrono Trigger. I grew up with DOS games so I personally prefer sharp pixels.

The most important feature of a CRT is the low persistence - eliminating sample and hold blur. This is now available in fast modern LCDs with strobing backlights, or with black frame insertion displaying 60Hz content on a 120Hz monitor. It makes a very big difference for fast scrolling 2D games.

[6502nerdface]

In addition to the physical characteristics of a cathode ray tube itself, there is an orthogonal set of visual artifacts that follow from quirks of the analog NTSC signal encoding, and in the case of the NES, certain technical compromises in the design of the picture processing unit (PPU) that result in "ragged" vertical lines and chroma/luma interference; see [1] for documentation and example images.

It would be cool to see an NES emulator that combined an accurate simulation of the PPU's quirky NTSC encoding logic (already present in some emulators) with the kind of CRT/phosphor-simulation shown in TFA.

[1] http://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/NTSC_video

[pdkl95]

Blargg's NTSC filters emulate NTSC artifacts such as the vertical jaggies and chroma bleed. These filters have been available in many emulators for quite a few years.

Also note that Blargg's filters are efficient integer-only CPU filters, as they are fast enough to not need a GPU.

http://slack.net/~ant/libs/ntsc.html (main page)

http://slack.net/~ant/old/ntsc-presets/ (lots of example images)

http://slack.net/~ant/old/ntsc-vs-palette/ (examples specifically about the color-"correction" that happens when using NTSC)

[rasz_pl]

>This technique is very important for emulation and simulating the look of early games

Why? I dont see people emulating the look and feel of 1920 black and white film projection, or Edison sound cylinders. Its because quality was SHIT, just like CRT.

[ChrisClark]

Because the art was generated in a way to take advantage of the blurring and inaccuracies of the screen. Showing just the pure pixels takes away the transparency effects, the shading that took advantage of the blurring, etc.

[burnte]

Actually, you DO see such emulations, just look at Instagram, or people using tube amps to get fuzier sounds, listening to vinyl records, etc. It recreates the sound/image one remembers from their youth and thus helps magnify the nostalgic effect, enhancing the emotional recollection.

[justifier]

i am less convinced

i read a long time ago someone's interpretation of the history of film as being invented in reverse: starting with impressionism and developing hyper realism;

it's an overly simplistic break down with all the standard caveats but it has a certain amiable pithiness to it

look at some of these movies that are attempting higher frame rates and you'll see the audience is suddenly unimpressed by the same set tricks and computer effects that were stunning them days before in another film at lower frame rates

i remember the first time i saw an HD tv that i was truly impressed by they were playing a battle scene from film i had seen many times before, i walked by and stopped in my tracks because the wall mount appeared to be a window, the title characters were riding horses on an expanse of pasture before the battle, it was stunningly beautiful, but after some dialogue they took off running down a hill to meet another army and the camera panned back and i could very easily pick out which ten of the hundreds of charging horses were real and which were drawn in triangles, i could nearly count the triangles

very similar to the effect while watching an animated film with lush painted backdrops: you see a forest scene and you just know that one tree branch is going to break off because it was painted by the animators and the hue and stroke is just slightly off

i think efforts like the one in the article, and the one in the comment above linking the shinobi 3 video, may come prebaked into visual media

i buy a copy of iron man 3 in the year 2071 and it will display on my super pixel screen in such a way to make it appear like it is being watched on the tech it was built for, smudging those lines between organics and triangles

with the option to turn it off, then right back on again