CRT Magic on modern LCD Monitors? Featuring UPERFECT UGame K118
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- Опубликовано: 30 ноя 2023
- Can modern CRT Shaders successfully replicate the look and feel of an old PC CRT monitor? We are using an 18" portable monitor, the UGame K118 from UPERFECT.
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The conclusion i came to on this is that (most) LCDs just suck, and the ones that don't have some sort of deal breaking compromise. I get why large scale manufacturing switched when it did but it was clearly to an inferior quality product. Unfortunately all the replacements are also fixed pixel displays, but when push comes to shove OLED are not as bad and with the right shader they do an OK job of looking "right" with retro content.
I have a few CRTs. A rare one I own is a 27inch Pioneer S-video, but it has the user knobs on the side and no audio output. It is marketed as a TVM (television video monitor) with quality similar to PVMs I've seen. It is under my LG OLED C1. Still, I find that my LG and my retrotink or mister look better for most retro systems I play. So I rarely play on my CRTs anymore, and I've thought about selling them after the new retrotink 4k comes out. I just think most of the rationale, except for nostalgia, for holding on to CRTs are gradually fading away. But you are right, the bulk of LCDs aren't going to produce the quality of my setup.
That really depended on the use case - for games and movies early LCDs were not great but for doing hours of office work the sharpness, flat surface and lack of flicker compared to a CRT was a significant improvement.
This post reminds me of another video I saw years ago of an Amiga being used to play Cannon Fodder and the guy used the original Commodore monitor to show it off.
The pixels on that monitor had some phosphor fade which was not strictly square, and so each individual pixel looked round from a short distance. The game didn't really look pixely on that screen. He showed an LCD monitor displaying the same game and same scene to show the difference and it was flatout hideous by comparison, each pixel was sharp and the lack of colour fade led to the contrast being clearly wrong as well.
They don't suck in the slightest, they're just not made for this old content.
Back when LCD monitors became the standard offering over CRT's, in the early 00's it was absolutely an inferior tech PQ wise! TN+Film anyone?. It took many years for even expensive LCD monitors to get even close to the PQ and resolutions that cheap CRT's offered. Most CRT's offered up to 120HZ to 200Hz refresh rates, way better color accuracy, contrast and resolution; Somehow we went from that to crappy 1024x768 (and later 720p) LCD's that couldn't display black, had horrible color banding and viewing angles and maxed out at 75Hz
LCD's did however offer way lower energy consumption, physical footprint and even at the lower refresh rates is way easier on the eyes regarding to eye-strain; unless you upgraded your office lighting to compensate for the flicker.
The correct display is the one that triggers your nostalgia. Some people need scanlines, some folks want original hardware, for others it's just the gameplay that counts. Don't let the quest for perfection get in the way of those old, warm feelings!
I'm genuinely impressed with the CRT shaders I've used, but I'm still looking for the horizontal blur that quite a few graphic designers took advantage of when working on a CRT display. Objects that are supposed to be transparent, or translucent, are really just straight lines, and sometimes a glowing point is really just one bright pixel. The inherent blur of a CRT is relied upon to make these sights happen, and that magic is gone on a fixed pixel display.
My thought is that people are thinking about CRT shaders completely wrong. More thought needs to be put into subpixel arrangement on the LCD display because really the CRT isn't displaying one color image, its overlaying 3 monochrome images to give the illusion of being full color. The biggest difference between the way this is done on a CRT and an LCD is that the technology causes different response curves to switching each pixel of each monochrome image on and off rapidly in a line. With LCDs the response is perfectly linear, any bleeding over into the pixels next to them is considered highly undesirable and explicitly designed out of the spec.
But with CRTs this couldn't be designed out, not fully. Being a physical analog phenomena changing the brightness of the beam as it scans across the screen has inertia. It can't replicate the perfect square edges of a square wave so turning each pixel on and off rapidly in a single line results in the accompanying moire patterns that you'd think of when trying to display such high frequency patterns on old CRT screens. This is a very specific and distinct visual artifact caused by the frequency response of the electron guns not being good enough to replicate the image but trying anyway resulting in an aliasing distortion. What it does not look like is a blur filter applied to the whole screen with some black lines. And until people start realizing this and moving away from the idea of just blurring the whole screen at once all CRT filters are going to look very inauthentic.
Till we get affordable 8k micro led screens I don’t think we will be able to accurately emulate crt. Retrothink 4k gets close but I think to fully emulate individual “dots” of crt 8k should be enough.
@@kamilpotato3764 You don't need to perfectly emulate the look of a CRT to get the feel for it. You can't get the feel for it tho because the approach is fundamentally flawed that people use. Which was the point of my comment. Even with 8k micro led screens it won't look right if you try and do it from a "whole picture as one thing" approach.
This is the best explanation as to why all retro games look... off on flat panels I've ever seen. Even someone as greenhorn as I am when it comes to retro gaming on a flat panel (because I don't anymore atm; I have a good CRT TV for consoles that don't have hdmi output nor do I have a retrotink or OSSC... yet lol), when someone throws scanlines up, my first thought is exasperation because that doesn't at all look like what a real CRT does.
So, oleds/qd-oleds then? They have a similar structure to crt. Could be in inverted if the sub pixel is opposite on oleds.
@@TewaAya Only real OLED has the same subpixel layout as CRT, that is RGB-OLED, most OLED now days is the awful Pentile-OLED or the slightly less awful WOLED, neither are much good, I'd take RGB-Stripe IPS-Black or Dual-Cell-RGB-LCD over either of those all day, dual-stack RGB-OLED will be incredible though and be able to match or at least get close to some of the best CRT monitors luminance/greyscale/fill-rate.
When I was young I had a small black and white TV. When I got an Atari my parent's let me hook it up to the color TV in the den. It was amazing. Later on I got a Commodore 64 and a Commodore 1084 Hi-Res monitor. It did a max of 640 x 480. That was a HUGE jump for me. I could not believe how much better it looked than hooking the computer up to the TV which I had been doing with a Vic 20 for years prior. A few years later I got an Amiga 500 and of course the jump in visuals on the same monitor was amazing. Back then I would always hook my consoles up to my TVs so the PCs I had always looked better. Until I got my first flat screen and all of a sudden if the resolution wasn't high, native games looked like trash and most emulators looked like trash. Then they started adding different methods of displaying graphics to make those emulators look like they are on a CRT or a close proximity there of and games started to use 16:9 natively with at least HD (720p) and we had some great looking graphics. I also remember those first emulators on digital CRTs and they looked like trash without the filters. The same filters they'd retool to make the flatpanels look better. Although I will say they always worked better on the CRTs.
I like how you're always down to earth, Phil. You share your passion for old stuff, but are also not too snobby about it to see the good points of new monitors emulating CRT monitors. Good stuff!
Thank you 😊
It’s awesome that DOSBox did this with shaders. I can’t wait to try it!
Actually, this is specific to the "DOSBox Staging" fork. You won't get this in standard DOSBox or any other forks.
@@InsaneWayne355 No, you can use shaders in other DOSBox variants as well. DOSBox Staging's unique new feature is the auto-detection of which shader to apply to which content, although in the current alpha version it always just applies integer scaling for VGA content, which means it doesn't try to make it look like a CRT. I have no clue if they have plans to change that or if they gonna extend the config options which auto-applies a certain shader of your own liking depending on the content.
EXCELLENT shots of the "CRT magic"! It really looks like pixel art painted on a canvas this close with the exposure you used.
The DOSBox shaders are quite impressive looking too. They might even just nail it with a high pixel density OLED.
I love my CRT for my retro rigs, but it's tough getting used to how dim it is compared to my modern LED/LCD panels.
Morning and yes, it's a great development. It can only get better from here and once 8k or maybe something in-between like 6k becomes more mainstream, well it will be awesome! I hope NVIDIA or AMD also pay more, they could implement a low level shader and scaler that is smart...
At my wife's cabin up on Lake Michigan, we don't allow much modern technology (we have to go into town to get cell phone service). The most high-tech appliance we have there is a CRT/VCR combo. It just went out this summer, and we fortunately anticipated this and bought a backup. But the backup won't last forever. We'll be sad when we have to donate all of our VHS tapes to GoodWill when it dies. :(
A side by side comparison between CRT and LCD pictures would have made judging the quality of the shaders much easier. Nevertheless, great video, i really love that kind of content.
Wow! I have been waiting for such CRT shaders for 20 years, when my old CRT died and I had to replace it with a new LCD. And then once seeing how bad even the boot console fonts look like I new that certaing era is over and now we will need to get use to to the sharpy edges of everything. Now the magic seems to be back! Thanks Phil for bringing this up - definitely will test it over the weekend!!!
I'd be interested to see this on an OLED. CRTs have a much wider dynamic range than LCD, with better blacks.
The other aspect is response time.
If they can get an OLED with really low latency, then I'm sure with high enough resolution you couldn't tell the difference when using shaders.
It's like Nyquist Shannon
HDR with at least 600nits, but preferably 1000 is an absolute necessity to tone map a correct CRT like color profile and get the correct contrast and simulated glow. On an SDR display the crt emulation inherently implies that lots of pixels on the LCD will be black, which means a huge loss of brightness. Especially on poor TN panels with low brightness (150-200) nits, it becomes a lifeless unsaturated mess.
OLED is the only acceptable display tech. It still sucks ass but it's all we get.
It's pointless to care about this, CRTs maxed out at 100 nits and were strictly SDR, whereas OLEDs can easily reach 400 nits even in SDR content nevermind HDR.
Response time is already sub-millisecond with OLED even factoring in fall+rise (a full 0%-100% transition for each subpixel, not just gray-to-gray [0%-50%]).
It takes a 3X3 grid of pixels (RGB stripe) to faithfully represent a single RGB phosphor triad on a CRT with a shadow mask. What does this mean? It means a 3840x2160 UHD RGB OLED can faithfully emulate a CRT monitor with an effective color resolution of 1280x720, which is the minimum we should be accepting at this point.
In order to match the motion blur rating of a typical CRT running at 60 Hz, which is roughly 1.5-2 ms*, an OLED must be running at a minimum of 240 Hz, with BFI set to 100%. This automatically halves the effective brightness of the display due to the way black frame insertion functions.
*: Motion blur is traditionally counted as lines of motion resolution, which for a fixed-pixel, sample-and-hold display like an OLED/LCD, is 16.66 ms at 60 Hz (no strobing or BFI) in terms of MPRT (Motion Picture Response Time), or, effectively 300 motion horizontal lines of vertical resolution. An OLED not attempting to emulate a CRT's color mask using pixel shaders can therefore match the motion clarity of any CRT provided it's at 240 Hz with BFI set to max.
@@NUCLEARARMAMENT BFI inserts passive black frames, they are completely no-responsive to user-input-feedback, therefore are only a visual aid, with CRTs every single frame responds to user-input, even at 60hz they feel incredible smooth and responsive, and this just gets better and better with each level, 70/90/120/144/160/200, nothing comes close to a CRT @ 120hz much less 200hz, the only way to match a 60hz CRTs near perfect 0.2ms g2g/MPRT with sample & hold OLED is via brute force refresh rates, 1000hz OLED is 1ms, so still a way of from 0.2ms, mLED (true micro LED are 7680Hz for first gen panels, but already this is scalable to well over 15000Hz, if they can adapt that to a good rolling bar/scan impulse algorithm, then 0.2ms is well within reach.
Add to that mLED has 100 to 1 pixel density vs OLED and DVLED, which means huge PPI/resolution/fill-rate improvements, which in turn means near perfect scaling is not out of the question for mLED, so accurate CRT emulation will be very much possible thanks to the fill-rate mLED can achieve (should be able to keep up with the best CRT monitors), just one small snag, consumer mLED is 10-15 years away, so don't sell that beautiful CRT monitor just yet.
I have a feeling once I see it in person I will not be able to unsee it either.
Great video! I think CRT shaders can look very nice on still pictures, but the motion clarity of the real CRTs can't be matched by the modern screens, unfortunately.
Great video Phil and thanks for the extra mention and linking to my blog 😎 I'll finish the second part of my "authentic shader" series (sometime 😅) which will tackle PC monitors and the DOS era. As an idea, it would be interesting to demonstrate these shaders on single-scanned CGA/Composite/EGA/Tandy content as the sharp pixel vs shader difference is a lot more pronounced there.
Calibrating a CRT is very easy actually. People seem to have trouble with the "dimness" of CRTs, but they get it wrong.
Brightness is for *black* levels. Contrast is for *white* levels.
If you do your tests with a black picture, you need to push the brightness as much as possible without the black turning dark grey. Similarly with white text on black, you need to push the contrast without the white becoming overblown.
All my retromachines run on a properly calibrated Trinitron, and they look much more vibrant with deep blacks than on an LCD+shader (my favorite being CRT Geom, although it's far from being perfect, especially colour-wise).
Gamma Oled or LCD tv settings have a brightness CRT effect like
A Hungarian guy wrote a C64 emulator that can run in browser, he also implemented a neat CRT shader with glass curvature too :) He's called Krissz.
Look up Denise as a pretty new C64 & Amiga emulator!
I do like the look of CRT's. Fortunately I kept 2 CRT monitors- 1 black and one white for use with my older computers. I also have several good condition CRT TV's I've rescued over the years, knowing they would become a rarity. Unfortunately my Dad got rid of a beautiful 36" Sony Wega monster a YEAR before I bought my house. I would have absolutely used it in my basement occasionally. That thing was still MINT. I was sad when we took it to the recycling center. :(
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In 2009, Anti-Monitor was ranked as IGN's 49th-greatest comic book villain of all time.[3]
LaMonica Garrett portrayed the character as the main antagonist in the Arrowverse crossover "Crisis on Infinite Earths", as well as The Monitor." -Wikipedia
My original 1996 PC came with a CRT but it died in 2007. It made quite a smell, in its death throws. I've had LCD ever since.
A feeling for me, which gets lost in modern lcd monitors, is the "fluency" of the image which a CRT can provide so much better! It is some kind of 'image retention' of the phosphorus, which make the images go smoother, because of that, even at lower fps games, the image still looked fluent enough, and that feel is lost with lcd monitors. I have a rather old crt monitor, the tube itself is quite good, very sharp and the image is clean, but the circuit board is in a bad shape! Somebody way before me stored it in a damp basement, which did it's job! It still works fine, but the brightness is all over the place as it heats up, the capacitors look really bad, corrosion everywhere! I am stunned the thing didn't pop! But i will restore it if i can find the right caps for it. Great video and that crt filter can give back some of the feel, but the one i just described, is impossible on an lcd.
I find the shallower contrasts of IPS panels suites CRT emulation better too. A lot of VA panels these days have insanely deep blacks for not being oled/FALD which is great for modern gaming, most of all dungeon/spacers; but makes them look too contrasty and punchy to mimic a CRT.
That's a good point!
I think that depends on the CRT. While many CRTs do have more of a grey tone (especially those with burn-in), some have darker screens. I have a an old 17" Sony monitor that I polished off the anti-glare. While the resulting glass is more reflective, the base tone is more black compared to your average LCD or even other CRTs. When in use, the contrast is incredible and the image pops in a way you just don't get with an LCD.
It depends of the ambient light: time of day and year. CRTs due to their construction has insane contrast and perfect black during low light condition and nighttime. But when ambient light is plentiful their contrast decrease to non-existent.
@@shponglefan I know some CRTs have vastly better contrast than others, but latest gen VA can look to artificial: 6500:1 contrast range where as a very contrasty CRT is around 500:1 at most (typical is 150-200:1) and IPS 1200:1 (typical 600-1000:1). Great for movies and current day 3d gaming... but too distracting for my smaller 4k TV to use with a CRT filter even at range. I should have clarified it's not just the blacks being too black, it's how bright the brights are within the exact same frame. It's not ugly, it just doesn't look retro, even top shelve Trinitron retro.
IPS is a must, you are absolutely right.
I have a OLED portable next to my CRT. I'm a fan of crt shaders too! They look cool on OLED even at a lower resolution. 1080p OLED has it's own "structure" when combined with CRT shaders. The 1080p matrix of OLED lights complements the image much like a shadowmask would. Another plus of OLED, It's nice to not have "glowing" black bars on the side when going 4:3. OLED OLED OLED
Now I want to try an OLED 😁
As someone who had a hard time finding a CRT I really appreciate that all these shadders are there to preserve the original feel and look of these games because I feel like these CRTs will likely retire before I do and its really worth preserving that old tech ourselves because I doubt any corporation will bother. I also can't wait to see all.of this running on a 8k oled in hopefully a few years!
I also forgot to add... but Reshade is also becoming a decent option to apply filters for early 2000ies games that support DX6-8
Always nice to see Winter, one of my favorite DOS games 👌
Nice to see that some alternatives are here but i'll bet the original CRTs will outlive the new stuff easy. I have an old only green CRT which my Dad used back on his own build computer when I was a kid and it still works fine.
I get eye strain and headaches from crts so I don't miss them. Still I have to admit they are great at multiple resolutions and those filters look interesting to try out on my current ips monitor.
I’m trying to learn about how some people are negatively affected by crts are you more prone to motion sickness also do you live in a PAL or NTSC region?
I have quite a few crt's including some cute little Atari monitors. Nice to see some modern ideas to make a new screen work better for old games.
The crt for me is a must for any retro gaming. Not just the look, but also the responsiveness. I got a couple of them collected. But in case they all somehow manage to die i will be happy playing retro games with crt shaders. I think they do go a long way of making your flat screen give you the look.
But i dont think someone can go wrong with any option if they had to pick today. Shaders get better with higher resolutions. And respone times are starting to slowly close the gap.
Glad to see some love for Winter Challenge. Was one of my first games on DOS, after using the C64, so for me it was an example of "Look how much better the same game looks on a PC", the "same game" being Winter Challenge vs Winter Games ofc. Not entirely the same game, but you get the idea.
Yes it has really nice VGA graphics!
The shader looks really nice.
In a way, it's a problem akin to what we used to talk about back in the old CRT TV days when it came to 3D animation and CGI in general that we called "RF Antialias". Stuff that looked a bit rough on a CRT or a broadcast monitor looked just fine on a TV. It was not uncommon to have a CRT and TV side by side to look at both so we could determine how low a level of antialias we could get away with when doing stuff for TV because of cpu/time constraints.
CRT Shaders can make upscaling a little less "harsh", but only if you have enough resolution to work with. "Mask filters" will need some of that resolution, "Phosphor glow" filters some more, etc. At best it will look ok, at worst it will be like modern games with their "shader abuse" of fake motion blur and lens bloom. It looks like crap. Not to mention the extra processing power needed. That said, as 4K becomes standard, you'll have enough spacial resolution to play with so...
One thing that might be interesting to explore is something like DLSS where you just teach the ML model "this is what it looks like, this is what it should look like". It's quite not uncommon for "self taught" models to totally outperform the best "human handcrafted" solutions. Problem would obviously be the resources needed to capture all those frames from both a framebuffer and a CRT to teach the model.
More Info: ALL monitors, including Arcade game monitors, have a Shadowmask. The shadowmask on older monitors, has a much larger "Dot Pitch". Meaning, that the mask lines are thicker... and the phosphor pads are much larger. The larger color pads, generate more Light... which tends to LEAK over to the other nearest pixels (phosphor pads)... which results in great color blending abilities... that many Artists took advantage of. You could place two colors near each other, to make a completely different color, that wasnt supported on the actual hardware. But the best use of this blending... was in making Translucency effects, on hardware that didnt have it... by making a black checkered pattern. The fine checkered pattern, becomes distorted with the other colors.. and forms a shadowed color... that looks like a Translucent shadow effect (you dont see the checkered Pattern at all).
Another thing about larger dot pitch shadow masks, is that the larger black lines.. cause the image to be more Textured in appearance... as well as add a bit more of a color change to the overall image that is being displayed. This is because more of the image is actually "Blackened" by the lines. A great example is the 1980s Arcade game "TURBO" by Sega. If you look at a snapshot of an emulated screen... you will see that most of the colors are solidly blocked in... like a flat MS Paint "FILL". However, when you compare this against an actual Low-Res (320x240) Arcade monitor... you will notice that the grass, and road... has a textured look... and the colors are not "flood-fill-flat". This effect makes the games look a lot more dynamic.. sort of like an Oil Painting... and it looks well beyond the standard hardware graphical capabilities, of that Era.
Smaller Dot Pitch monitors... have far less Light Leak issues... and so the colors do not Blend as well. You tend to see the Individual Pixels much better... and you will see the Checkered patterns, rather than the Truly Translucent effects.
Curved monitors did have a slight effect... but it wasnt really all that notable. The effect was mostly, how you remember and experienced these games. Not so much the actual displayed differences. Meaning... if they would have made a flat CRT with the same low-res shadowmask... there would likely have been almost no notable graphical differences. The curve itself was probably less than 1cm from the outside edges, to the center of the monitor.. and even on curved monitors.. a lot of the Display is actually centered in the middle of the monitor, with a large outter edge / bezel, that surrounds the image projection area / shadowmask.
That said, they do have Curved CRT Shader Effects, on many emulators.
One thing that many people Confuse is the Shadowmask, from Scanlines. A CRT can draw lines, at different widths apart... because its completely Analog. This makes it much better, for displaying different resolutions... such as a slightly lower resolution than "standard-res". The image will be automatically adjusted, so that the beam will draw less lines, with them being slightly further apart from each other... so that the image scales to fit the screen perfectly. With a Standard Res image being displayed... you dont actually have much in the way of spaces between each line. However, due to the time it takes to draw each line... and the phosophors slightly dimming until the next beam comes... you can sort of see a slight optical illusion of slightly translucent black lines. Of course, with a Video Camera, you can sort of see the actual drawing.. since the Drawing Refresh isnt sync'd with the cameras framerates.
Of course, if the image is lower resolution... then you will actually see a slight black gap between each drawn scan line.
To be ultra clear, a Scan Line isnt a Black Line. It also is NOT the lines between the drawn lines. In fact, a scan line, " IS " the actual drawn lines. The monitor draws each line on the monitor... from left to right, and top to bottom... just like how we read English text / books. Somehow, people in the Emulation circles, have misunderstood what Scanlines actually mean... completely.
I could care less about RF noise, and Sounds of the CRT itself. What is far more important to me.. .is the sound of the old video game Cabinets. You see... the speakers that were installed in them... were not Sealed boxes. They were Open in the back... and used the entire cabinet, as a massive speaker box. As such, there were some very unique sound characteristics that happened... from this method. Deep Cabinet Resonating Bass effects, was one of them. A slight echo like effect, was another. The sound was a lot bassier and "Fuller".
Of course, if you Build a Cabinet Replica, you should be able to copy the original sounds of the machine. Then all you need are coin mechs, and tokens... and of course, the proper Authentic Arcade controllers (which is the most important of all).
The biggest Issue with Arcade emulation today.. I believe they do not yet have surround sound output. This makes it impossible to replicate the cabinets that have 3 or 4 channel speakers... like Atari's TX-1. I read that there was a possibility of using two sound cards to get the rear channels... but I never tried.. and Im not certain if that feature was ever functional, and or if it still exists. All I do know, is that its difficult to have two sound cards in a PC, to begin with.
Amazing comment 👏
I find a lot of CRT filters can be awkward to look at, but I honestly prefer it to perfect pixels for 320x288 or lower. With 640x480 and higher, I don't mind as much, but on the chunkier pixels of lower resolutions just don't look right when perfectly sharp.
I also find that a really good filter can be a good way to disguise imperfect pixel ratios.
Another excellent video. I was not aware that DOSBox Staging was a thing!! I recently bought a 4k monitor and wow what a difference it makes on a 27" screen!! Going forward it's all >= 4k for me.
Fantastic!
Interesting topic, and interesting video, Phil! I'm astonished how good those shaders look, and they could really fool me, despite having quite some CRTs here (funnily about the same Acer one).
One remark on the "beauty" of modern monitors: I'd call that missing color calibration! Old CRTs in the 90s more or less followed the sRGB standard, while newer ones have a wider color gamut like Adobe RGB oder DisplayP3. Looks like there's either no profile loaded for that monitor in WIndows, or that DosBOX doesn't handle the correct gamut well....
Another wonderful video Phil. Thank you
At least here in portugal CRT monitors are still being sold by the buckets for 5 euros
When it comes to emulating CRTs, the real question is whether the screen-ripple effects from the Copper demo work. Those involve messing with the VGA signal timings, and many monitors glitch and either shut off or switch modes during those parts of the demo.
I use this EXACT screen with my docked ROG Ally and it's amazing. I've used a monitor stand with a swivel arm so I can use it on the couch & playing DOS games like this (combined with the new 8bitdo Retro Keyboard) is amazing. 2560x1600 is definitely the best resolution for CRT filters & retro games because it's 16:10. Uperfect makes great portable monitors and the price is surprisingly cheap considering how bright these monitors are. Just be aware the VESA mount on the back is rather flimsy - I would not use it myself. This is why I stuck to a swivel arm with a clamping system instead.
What I'd really love, is a project where they mimic the beige look of a crt monitor but where you can fit a portable screen like this inside. It doesn't have to be as thick, just be aesthetically similar. I have 5 working CRTs but if I ever do have to move towards LCD monitors, I don't want the black bezel to clash with my all-beige keyboard, speakers, mouse, PC case, etc.
Yes I'm thinking of buying a Vesa arm for this one...
Great content. I have 3 CRT monitors and 8 CRT TVs ranging from 15"-35" and they all have a special and different look. My current fav is a 1991 32" Sony Trinitron for consoles supporting a 4x3 ratio. I'll say this, the only monitor that can look like a faithful CRT up close using a shader in my eyes is my 5K Retina on my Mac... but there are fewer emulators and shader options available.
There are also other factors where LCDs are lacking compared to CRTs in retro gaming.Yes, shadow masks is a one thing and shaders can improve things considerably, as well as reproducing scan lines (especially important for 240p content). I think when 8k monitors become more mainstream, we have the resolution to pretty accurately reproduce these physical qualities for old monitor and TV sets. However, there are couple of other qualities that may be more difficult, although with high resolution displays and other software tricks may be possible. CRTs have in general different color reproduction qualities and this can make things look very different. For example, I have seen comparisons where certain shades may clearly look reddish on LCD, but on CRT color is clearly purple. These kind of anomalies can also be caused by AD signal converters. While some vintage system outputs analog RGB or composite and your display or some other converter handles the conversion to HDMI, for example, odd things may happen. Another aspect is pixel blending, which are especially noticeable and important with 15kHz stuff. Same goes with other analog imperfections which are all part of that organic CRT look.
And we shouldn't forget the fact that with original hardware, shaders and other high res "tricks" are out of the question and CRT remains pretty much the only option for that original feel. It is still nice to see that things are moving forward and improving. I have several different kinds of CRTs and considering the hours my displays nowadays get, I think I'm good for a long time, but things are getting more difficult as time progresses.
It would be awesome if we could get these advanced shader effects in the future with external hardware, such as Retrotink and equivalent scalers. Post processing those kind of effects wouldn't probably be impossible, but I think the lag would increase just too much them to be a feasible solution, possibly ever. Producing simple scan lines is much more simple task compared to more complex effects as scalers just can pretty much drop lines from the output signal.
Yeah, more accurate colour reproduction is not impossible at all by doing some colour mapping. I'm using such a colour transform for my Amiga shader setup that replicates the yellowish response of a Commodore 1084S monitor rather well. I think with wide-gamut flat panels with OLED blacks the colour response of pretty much any CRT can be faithfully emulated (as in you wouldn't notice much of a difference side by side). But true blacks are a problem with IPS panels, especially when playing in a dark room which I tend to do...
I've thought of making a pass-through device for my Apple IIGS I've had for decades and still use all the time for personal projects. Something to completely handle scaling, the Apple II's system of using artifacts for color, and after creating a proper image that isn't a blurred banded purple green mess would apply proper shaders over the image to give a look similar to these dosbox results. I love my little IIGS color monitor, but it's somewhat of an extreme rarity to have one at all, much less one with a mint image like mine. It's starting to get a bit tired and I wanted to retire it from frequent use before having to see if I could replace the tube.
That kind of sums it up in general. I love my CRTs, mostly old monochrome, composite, or RGB monitors along with my Macintoshes, but as time goes on they'll get more and more tired through use and caps will get dubious with age. Both are repairable, but for the average user, I don't really think it's worth it with the quality of those dosbox shaders. It'd be nice if MAME had full integration of that quality of shader package, since it supports a decent range of old computer platforms. Maybe it does, I haven't used MAME in years.
I want to see a small 4k panel emulate phosphor dots. HDR displays should have enough brightness to compensate for the darkness of the emulated shadow mask.
Shaders are the heritage of CRT. We just have to wait OLED or MiniLED 4K with HDR to be affordable. IMO, Retroarch has the best shaders, and you can use them with ANY core, including DOSBox of course. Mega Bezels Reflection Shaders by Hyperspace Madness are awesome. The reflection in the CRT frame is very realisitic. For Arcade games is a MUST.
Thanks Phil for helping keep eXoDOS alive!
Curious about this comment as I haven't done a video on eXoDOS yet, but planning to 😊
@@philscomputerlab eXo now owns most of the retro computer stuff I bought as a result of your videos years ago. Notably the MT-32, SC-55, AWE64, Voodoo 1 and other items.
Although CRT is the best in Retro Gaming, I have to admit, the cost of maintenance of this in terms of future repairs and parts will be scary, so I have to gave up (sold as junk my 2007 defective CRT) before having a heavy emotional attachment on it and move... 2019, Sold all my Retro Console and Emulate it all with my 2019 Rig with PS4, XBOXONE, and Switch Controller. The only (will keep forever) Retro Tech in my possession is XP Rig Pentium 4 S478 with FX5500 and 2002 Samsung 15' Square LCD, my little time machine of old simple happy tech days...
The problem is that most shaders just want to imitate this shadowmask, which was common on flat screen monitors and with digital controls in the 2000s. But until the end of the 90s, the vast majority were curved tube monitors, which They didn't have shadow masks, and they were better for pixel art games, as they "blurred" the image better. A famous and very popular monitor was the Samsung SyncMaster 3(Ne), completely analog, which worked at 800x600 (some accepted 1024x768, but the definition was blurry and tiring). I've never found a shader that replicates it perfectly.
Now, when it comes to video games and imitation televisions, I get even more frustrated, because there is no software that reproduces the RF interference and sounds from the old device. I clearly remember my TV emitting a certain noise when the SEGA screen appeared with a white background, and this noise changed to a much quieter noise when the screen went dark. In addition to a secondary, low-volume sine wave noise that the speaker emitted, simply because the TV was on.
ALL monitors, including Arcade game monitors, have a Shadowmask. The shadowmask on older monitors, has a much larger "Dot Pitch". Meaning, that the mask lines are thicker... and the phosphor pads are much larger. The larger color pads, generate more Light... which tends to LEAK over to the other nearest pixels (phosphor pads)... which results in great color blending abilities... that many Artists took advantage of. You could place two colors near each other, to make a completely different color, that wasnt supported on the actual hardware. But the best use of this blending... was in making Translucency effects, on hardware that didnt have it... by making a black checkered pattern. The fine checkered pattern, becomes distorted with the other colors.. and forms a shadowed color... that looks like a Translucent shadow effect (you dont see the checkered Pattern at all).
Another thing about larger dot pitch shadow masks, is that the larger black lines.. cause the image to be more Textured in appearance... as well as add a bit more of a color change to the overall image that is being displayed. This is because more of the image is actually "Blackened" by the lines. A great example is the 1980s Arcade game "TURBO" by Sega. If you look at a snapshot of an emulated screen... you will see that most of the colors are solidly blocked in... like a flat MS Paint "FILL". However, when you compare this against an actual Low-Res (320x240) Arcade monitor... you will notice that the grass, and road... has a textured look... and the colors are not "flood-fill-flat". This effect makes the games look a lot more dynamic.. sort of like an Oil Painting... and it looks well beyond the standard hardware graphical capabilities, of that Era.
Smaller Dot Pitch monitors... have far less Light Leak issues... and so the colors do not Blend as well. You tend to see the Individual Pixels much better... and you will see the Checkered patterns, rather than the Truly Translucent effects.
Curved monitors did have a slight effect... but it wasnt really all that notable. The effect was mostly, how you remember and experienced these games. Not so much the actual displayed differences. Meaning... if they would have made a flat CRT with the same low-res shadowmask... there would likely have been almost no notable graphical differences. The curve itself was probably less than 1cm from the outside edges, to the center of the monitor.. and even on curved monitors.. a lot of the Display is actually centered in the middle of the monitor, with a large outter edge / bezel, that surrounds the image projection area / shadowmask.
That said, they do have Curved CRT Shader Effects, on many emulators.
One thing that many people Confuse is the Shadowmask, from Scanlines. A CRT can draw lines, at different widths apart... because its completely Analog. This makes it much better, for displaying different resolutions... such as a slightly lower resolution than "standard-res". The image will be automatically adjusted, so that the beam will draw less lines, with them being slightly further apart from each other... so that the image scales to fit the screen perfectly. With a Standard Res image being displayed... you dont actually have much in the way of spaces between each line. However, due to the time it takes to draw each line... and the phosophors slightly dimming until the next beam comes... you can sort of see a slight optical illusion of slightly translucent black lines. Of course, with a Video Camera, you can sort of see the actual drawing.. since the Drawing Refresh isnt sync'd with the cameras framerates.
Of course, if the image is lower resolution... then you will actually see a slight black gap between each drawn scan line.
To be ultra clear, a Scan Line isnt a Black Line. It also is NOT the lines between the drawn lines. In fact, a scan line, " IS " the actual drawn lines. The monitor draws each line on the monitor... from left to right, and top to bottom... just like how we read English text / books. Somehow, people in the Emulation circles, have misunderstood what Scanlines actually mean... completely.
I could care less about RF noise, and Sounds of the CRT itself. What is far more important to me.. .is the sound of the old video game Cabinets. You see... the speakers that were installed in them... were not Sealed boxes. They were Open in the back... and used the entire cabinet, as a massive speaker box. As such, there were some very unique sound characteristics that happened... from this method. Deep Cabinet Resonating Bass effects, was one of them. A slight echo like effect, was another. The sound was a lot bassier and "Fuller".
Of course, if you Build a Cabinet Replica, you should be able to copy the original sounds of the machine. Then all you need are coin mechs, and tokens... and of course, the proper Authentic Arcade controllers (which is the most important of all).
The biggest Issue with Arcade emulation today.. I believe they do not yet have surround sound output. This makes it impossible to replicate the cabinets that have 3 or 4 channel speakers... like Atari's TX-1. I read that there was a possibility of using two sound cards to get the rear channels... but I never tried.. and Im not certain if that feature was ever functional, and or if it still exists. All I do know, is that its difficult to have two sound cards in a PC, to begin with.
@@johndough8115 There is a clear difference between the image produced by a curved monitor and a flat one. I can see the shadow mask on the plane, on the analog curved the image is a little blurrier. No shader I've tried has managed to replicate this. They are all a caricature of a CRT monitor
I tried dosbox staging may be a year ago, it had already some shaders there, this is really a good thing.
I still got 3 CRTs in use, Compaq 7550, SyncMaster 500s, and a dell one. Good times still, my favorite game ive played on my crts has got to be baldurs gate for sure along with some old turn based games. My dell crt i got for free can do 100hz at 800x600 so not all bad!
Nice to see CRT shaders in DOSBox Staging, Since I cannot afford fitting one CRT in my room! (Too small of a Room to fit that behemoth.) As Much I would love a real CRT, it's just nice to make a LCD monitor feel like CRT for at least tiny bit.
I sometimes dislike the scaling on LCDs, seems to be wacky at times, On one PCs the Windows 98 Boot looks fine, but on another it looks like it wants to leave the screen. But I guess that's something I grew up with, and I suppose I don't mind it that much like I would years ago.
I am all about trying to emulate the look of a CRT on a modern display, as art for games back in the day were designed around how the screens work. At the same time, it’s hard for me to compare any modern display to my HP licensed Sony FW900!
Recent CRT shaders look great! I recall when some early ones didn't even account for VGA's scan doubling for lower resolutions. A game at 320x200 has 400 lines, for instance. I think on some other emulator there was even one that simulated the curvature of the glass, but I don't care for that kind of distortion.
Yes for a long time people would just add Amiga style scanlines to DOSbox...
Nice review
Thanks!
I must admit that I'm not so nostalgic about CRTs as other retro hardware. Modern 4K TV's look gorgeous if the device connected is well configured. I don't mind "blocky graphics" if they are sharp. An extreme example is GameBoy emulation on a 4K TV... It just look amazing. You have endless options for configuring to your liking. The problem with PCs, however, is that some effects were made taking in consideration the technology of CRTs, so that may be lost if it's not considered. But there are super amazing people out there that in lot of cases achieved great workarounds for those effects. I really like (nowadays, not at first) how 4K TVs look and how them handle retro inputs. What I really didn't liked at first and had to get used to it was wide-screen. I loved square screens back then and it took me a while to get used to wide.
The best display i own is in my 2005 emac wish i could use it with my old pc's and switch between the mac and other other inputs as crts take up so much space. I just love the way content looks on a crt vs flat panels its just amazing.
DOSBox is great , it's what I use most often when I need a quick way of satisfying my retro needs.
However, when it comes to using my retro computers (486, K6-2 , P3 and Athlon XP) , nothing beats my 22" Samsung 1200-series CRT.
The challenge, is when you're not using DOSBox , which has these fancy filters - but using real hardware and still don't have space for a huge 30+kilograms CRT (my 22" weighs just above 35kg).
I''d love to get rid of the CRT and replace it with a 19" OLED and more modern 4:3 or 5:4 solution , if that solution could do the shaders with some smart built-in technology or through on-screen configuration (just like you can adjust brightness and stuff). If it can be done in software, with DOSBox , then the question is if it could be done by a small tiny controller-board inside a modern monitor?
soon to release retrotink 4k?. not sure about getting input to it from pc as its designed for consoles. maybe just vga to component.
also, expensive.
@@danielberrett2179 RT4K not only does support PCs through the VGA port, it does so with aplomb, from what I've gathered from various videos on the device (those from DigitalFoundry and Modern Vintage Gamer, certainly). Handles all of the usual standard Windows resolutions and refresh rates, standard DOS resolutions and refresh rates, heck even some weird, off-spec resolution/refresh rates like _Jazz Jackrabbit_ and its "let's render 320×200 but with the timings of 320×240” mode. It also supports various CRT shaders, much like the RT5X does, but with added resolution (albeit 4K is limited to 60Hz, which might be an issue for 70Hz DOS games).
This is legitimately fascinating. I'm shocked by how closely it resembles a genuine CRT on close inspection like that. Love it! Also, slick lil' monitor, really a shame about that backlight issue.
Also, kudos on somehow getting so many clean shots without tremendous moire patterns, how'd you do that? lol
ALSO also, what do you typically use to capture footage of oddball resolutions/framerates from older machines these days?
In the end I just used my phone 😂
The biggest challenge trying to replicate a CRT display is the overall brightness and saturation. I have old CRT monitors from the 1980s that look so vivid and saturated compared to an LCD. Put them side-by-side with a modern LCD, and the LCD looks washed out in comparison.
The lack of true blacks on flat panels have something to do with it, in my experience. Especially in a dark room, an IPS panel will always look woefully washed out compared to the vivid output of a CRT with the black levels adjusted properly. Of course, in a bright room the opposite could happen; the CRT can look washed out in non-ideal lighting conditions.
Color me surprised. I'll be honest: I wasn't expecting as great of results as were shown. I was fully expecting the answer to be 'no, crt shaders cannot replace crt tvs', but that crt shader on that flat panel looks *_really nice._* Like the pinned comment by Marco said, though, LCDs just plain suck ass most of the time, and manufacturers have little incentive to actually improve on them. Thankfully OLEDs have come a *_LONG_* way since the days of the PS Vita (which, mind you, its screen is legit better than the second gen slimmer version by a country mile... at the expense of ~2 hours' battery life :/ ), so it'll be awesome to see what will come. The only REAL issue by then would be trying to get light gun games to work since those specifically utilized the CRT inside the chassis. I know there are lightguns out there that can bypass this and work on LCDs, but I've yet to test one to see if it'd work.
Glad to see that there is indeed hope for the future, as that little flat panel from uperfect shocked me with how nice the pixels looked with that CRT shader. And the fact that it's a 16:10 (superior in every way to 16:9, I don't understand why that ratio became the "standard") only makes it that much better. Gotta love linear scalability for retro games!
Yea 16:10 is better especially for productivity...
When I play legacy games in DOSBox, I play without shaders, and I'm delighted with the sharpness of the pixels.
HOWEVER - I tend to play in Windowed mode at modest real resolutions like 800x600 (Or more recently with aspect-ratio correction, at 1600x1200). As resolutions and window sizes increase, the physical size of each "virtual" pixel will increase, and yeah, maybe at a certain point the sharp blocks will start annoying me.
Every time I've experimented with CRT shaders in the past they've looked absolutely terrible, but that was a long time ago. The photos you've taken look pretty good.
1600*1200 is pixel-perfect for 320*200 and 320*240 games (5x/6x and 5x/5x respectively). 3200*2400 would do the job for 640*400 and 640*480 (5x/6x and 5x/5x) plus 800*600 and 1600*1200 (3x and 2x). The main common resolutions that wouldn't fit would be 512*384 and 1024*768.
I'm someone that isn't that nostalgic for CRT, after having used an 15" 1024x768 85Hz LCD with the family (later my second) PC from around 2003-2004 onwards. Don't miss the constant whine that I experienced wile playing Xbox on our old cheap Palsonic TV, or the eystrain from the 60hz flicker.
Had a couple for a short while in around 2016-2017 and while the image is fantastic, it wasn't good enough for me to tolerate them over the LCD (which only recently needed a new power brick - old one started running hot and the 12V output is unstable).
it would be sooooo easy to add scanlines to modern monitors and fix all problems with low res content but since companies are focused on big numbers that sell more units rather than useful features, its unlikely we get an easy solution... i have an old LG 1080p passive 3D tv and single side polarized glasses that gives the effect of tiny scanlines just like old CRT tvs and low res content looks amazing on it. we just need a feature on newer panels that dims every odd line when watching lower than native resolution content.
Yes! NVIDIA and other GPU manufacturers could easily do this!
Hi Phil, thanks for this video! Especially the info about Freesync + DOSBox Staging was interesting. However there is one thing I'd like to know more about: do these shaders support deinterlacing interlaced video? Is there any chance you tested it? I couldn't find out a lot doing a quick internet search. I remember the interlacing of the cutscenes in Red Alert 2 being bad on LCDs but completely fine on CRTs. Afaik RA2 is not really the focus of DOSBox but maybe there are more examples. I just would like this feature for having the best possible CRT emulation :-)
I remember eXoDOS has this option but it might use a specific DOSBox version to accomplish this on a per game basis. Best is to test it or check the documentation but it's not something I've heard about to be honest....
We will arrive at the perfect emulation. Great thing, CRT monitors take up space, weigh and are not eternal
Perhaps but in the meantime I would love to find a CRT for my DosBox setup. I imagine the ultimate best of both worlds would be finding the best LCD/LED display to use with the shader and install the screen in the shell of a dead CRT (Would probably be best with a shell from a flat panel CRT)
@@JohnSmith-xq1pz i agree, the CRT feeling is magic. At the time i have 2 Samsung Syncmaster 17" but I am dreaming to find a Sony Trinitron 19" for my 90' setup. Sorry for my english 😅
@@efpcvintageplanet3406 Nice 👍 I'd love to have one of those Sony Trinitron too lol
I had a Sony 19" Trinitron for my windows 98 setup, from new, but it went to heaven after 10 years service @@efpcvintageplanet3406
What about plasma screens? They work in a similar way to CRT, well closer than LED screens anyway. I have 2 50" 1080P plasma screens, 1 in the living room and 1 in the bedroom, we have had them for probably 15 years now, and I keep on hoping 1 of them will fail so I can get a new 4K, probably bigger screen, but they just won't die, which is ironic as plasma screens were so unreliable.
As the owner of a 42" 480p plasma (not powered on for 10+ years!) - plasmas were always good for low res content. So yes an SD plasma, likely quite good, and absolutely perfect for 640x480 vesa
A Plasma this size can weighs over 30 kg and consume well over 500 watt (generating a lot of heat)....not worth (imho)
I love plasma technology myself, but the biggest drawback is due to the ridiculous amount of latency plasma's have. I'd leave a link, but RUclips usually will hide comments with links... anyway, if you search for "cnet plasma latency" you'll see that, even with game mode ON, they have 32-73ms of latency! That's just completely unacceptable for most gaming besides certain RPGs and point & click games. Take Panasonic's final flagship models, the VT60 & ZT60 for example, they have a whopping 48ms of latency... yikes! Plasma and gaming = no deal... for me, anyway.
@@federicocatelli8785 We live in Scotland, we need all the hear we can get, lol. You're right thou, I might but my power meter on the TV and see what they are drawing, might be the excuse I need to replace them.
I expected that 4K upscaler here, it has some Shadow mask and stuff
Awesome insights man👍👏 I can live with compromise. For old school consoles i use the zfast shader on retroarch (batocera). Also the megabezel package is worth a try. For newer generation games, the upscaling does a wonderful job. Nds in 4k is awesome.
Great Video, any shader recommendations for scummvm to recreate a crt screen?
Happy Friday Phil!
Thank you, you too!
I also still own two CRT monitors (NEC 19" and míro 17" that were refurbished in 2015 just before I got them) but now I am curious how my LCD with an old iPad retina display (9,7", 2048×1536p - perfect for 4:3 content) I bought for the MiSTer will look with these shaders enabled. Guess this will be some kind of holiday project for me this year. 😂
I heard somewhere we could emulate them almost perfectly in theory, but we would need something absurd like 16k displays. 4k seems fairly close though
What we would need is a display where the subpixels are the same size and arrangement as a CRT's shadow mask, and a way of translating the source image that takes that into account. Currently LCDs arrange their subpixels in perfect squares with visible gaps between each trio. And the average HD monitor already has finer dot pitch than consumer TVs from the CRT era. It's just a matter of making all the pieces come together.
I'm also a fan of big sharp pixels. I don't really think CRT effects were a thing people liked in DOS era. This was more important to NTSC televisions which we didn't have to suffer. I'll stick to regular integer scaling.
Another crucial point you leave out of the equation is CRT motion clarity, which you'll never see anything close to on an IPS no matter if it's 360 Hz or above.
ATM Alibaba has "New" CRTs still, most likely the tube is new old stock or refurbished but the flyback is new in them but it's only a matter of time before they run out of tubes as nobody is making them anymore
Need HDR to mimic the shadow mask properly but still, these shaders look way better than the crappy overlaid scanlines of the past
It is very true as you say and sadly true that all CRT monitors are steadily dying, all my larger CRTs have died on me, I had 24" Trinitron and the picture was gold with it, also a 19" Trinitron, But the tubes were completely used up when I got rid of them. the 24" had only the Red electron gun working, it first began to be red tinted in the color and I had to adjust down the red color and eventually reached 0 on that so I had to adjust up the Blue and Green instead and eventually reached 100 on them and the picture was still really red, all black was red too in the end and picture very pale and blurry with poor focus. I got that screen used and I had it for many years and used it all the time so the picture tube just got used up on it. I only have one 19" CRT left which is a regular AOC monitor but with a flat tube and it is also slowly loosing brightness now but I also had this for ages now, when it dies I only have 3 17" CRTs left at the time but I kinda feels it is a bit small for optimal gaming. but hey, I will keep trying to use the real deal for as long as possible because I am a retro gamer!
As a content creator I'd be more interested in "how to" do that for regular youtube videos, even recording original VGA footage. I think for now it's impossible, because the majority is still not using 1440p or even 4k screens to watch youtube content (I am myself still using 1080p). So you would need to make it work on 1080p resolutions. (from my viewers more than 50% use windows/pc to watch the content, about 30% mobile devices, and 20% undefined/smart TV, RUclips doesnt list output resolution). And as you stated in a previous video, 1080p is still not enough to make these filters work sufficiently.
I guess the retrotink 4k will also have a good solution integrated for 4k. Would be cool if you could test it (costs 750 USD though)
Also an idea could be to use broken CRT monitor shells/cases and modifying them with a modern 4:3 IPS panel instead.
Playing dos games at 15khz is pretty amazing too. Takes away the square pixels.
If you used a VGA card or later, it would have been at 31kHz. 15kHz was for CGA and EGA only. VGA doubled-up 200 line modes to 400 when sending them to the monitor.
@@Roxor128 I know, but there are downscalers and other ways to actually run the games in VGA in real 200 line mode on 15khz displays. It's like fixing design flaws from 30+ years ago. You can do it on MiSTer FPGA and there are also software programs for certain video cards to run dos at 15khz.
Eager to try this on my new 4k Neo QLED from Samsung!
i have one 2000 LCD beige color with a weird DVI connector for the monitor side
There are some younger devices which are available for a low price. I love plasma TVs for retro gaming. It is not exactly the same like CRT monitor but has these glowing pixels which are not that sharp.
This looks promising indeed
The day my 19" flat tube 1600x1200 @120Hz CRT dies, will be a very sad day. Until then, I'll be enjoying those deep blacks a proper looking pixels :)
Great I will test this with my 4k 27" screen. Then I can sell some of the CRTs which are taking a lot of space at my place.
This discussion got me wondering - all attempts I've ever seen at CRT shaders are at the emulation level. But what about at the hardware level? Would there be any way to design an LCD monitor that actually has a physical shadowmask just on the outside of the screen? Or even a replaceable mask that would just slide out so that you could use different masks with different resolution patterns? I'm envisioning like a super-thin black plastic sheet the same size of the screen that has a bunch of holes poked in it.
@PhilsComputerLab
I haven't used a CRT for nearly 20 years. Scanline/CRT filters have never looked good to me. I'll use them if nothing else is available, but generally will prefer bilinear/trilinear filtering as it looks great, smooths out the jagged raw pixel appearance and just has a softer "feel". Not sure why you stated 1080p isn't good enough. 1080p is fine for most scaling filters and always has been. Sure, higher is better, but higher resolutions are not critical. 1080p has been very popular since 2009 and nearly everything is well optimized for it.
awesome, i love your vids! i have installed the current stable version of dosbox staging, can i just install the development build on top? will mi cfg remain? would you recommend to unnistall the stable version before trying the newest build? thank you for your efforts and awsome tutorials!
Yes that should work but make a backup just in case!
thank you! @@philscomputerlab
DOSBox Staging dev here. Definitely install the stable and dev build into two separate folders, otherwise you'll experience issues.
Have to say I prefer the shaders. Always drove me nuts if I could see the shadow mask on a CRT.
Id like to give a shout out to how crazy our tech would sound to someone from like the 18th and 19th century.
A ray-gun you shoot at a phosphor screen to make it light up
Liquid crystals we twist to control how much light passes though
The only 19th century folks who'd even heard the term "electron" would have been scientists from the last two decades of it.
SONY Trinitron flatscreen with it's slit mask really makes me really "hot" 😜
This made me think about projectors for old or retro-new low res stuff, have you tried that?
I have not!
I think CRT monitors are also more easy to replicate than CRT TVs, as monitors already are quite sharp, while the TVs "round" "pixels" far more. The higher the resolution, the better the shaders will get.
The colours of the IPS panel are too strong though, making the image look unnatural. I tried changing my 4K monitor's colours to look similar to the my CRT but didn't work out, but this is something that differs between monitors anyway. In Ultima 6 the gargoyles in the intro have more of a brownish tint to them on the CRT, while being very red on the 4K. Even changing colour levels, I couldn't reach a setting where they look like on the CRT, especially not without making everything else look bad.
Flat panels have different colours, kinda, but if you try 5 different CRTs from different manufacturers, or even different models from the same brand, you will find all sorts of subtle and not so subtle colour differences. So it's a moving target, anyway. I wouldn't be too fussed about the differences between one particular flat-screen and one particular CRT. The other thing is many PC CRTs defaulted to cool colour temperatures around 9300K, so that definitely makes the colours look different too (blues are more "electric", in particular, and less purple). Some PC CRTs don't even have adjustable colour temps, they are just at 9300K and that's it. That was kind of a standard for office use.
You guys should just calibrate your screens with a hardware calibrating device like a Spyder to sRGB which targets 6500K IIRC. Trust me it's worth it although you may need to get used to your displays pictures looking less impressive but more realistic instead. With such a device you'd also find out if your CRTs are worn out already or if they can still achieve accurate colors.
I miss having a CRT sigh
Edit
Crazy thought. What if you used this kind of modern display and shader and installed the screen in the shell of a dead CRT, would it be enough to emulate/fool you into thinking it was the real thing?
If you kept the glass it might help. There's a certain depth there that's important. You also would have, obviously, no analogue image adjustment.
@@blunderingfool that glass is the front of the CRT picture tube not a separate glass panel. As for adjust I'm sure someone could figure out access to the buttons
@@JohnSmith-xq1pz I should have written that you'd need glass to keep the depth effect, sorry, should have said what I meant.
@@blunderingfool No problem. True unless you where faking a flat panel CRT you would need to fake the curved glass
@@JohnSmith-xq1pz I have a flat panel, iiyama vision master pro 455. There's still a depth effect because you see the phosphore excited on the other side of the glass, that's the hard bit to replicate. D=
Hi Phil! Do you know if these shaders are available outside of dosbox staging? I just created a Pentium 166 in 86box with Windows OSR2 to play Windows 95/Pentium 1 and late dos games on it and I came across your video and think that it would be awesome to try out!
I don't know.
Thank you for your reply! I tried the ones with Staging, but get a black screen, unfortunately. I'll keep trying out various shaders.@@philscomputerlab
Excellent comparison. This is great for those of us that don't have the space for a CRT. I've also been watching the reviews of the RetroTink 4K. And while it seems to be an excellent device that handles just about anything, it can't output 4K above 60 Hz, and while it can support 120Hz at 1440p and below, I don't think it supports FreeSync. So, even though it has a VGA input and built in shader support (thought shader might be the wrong word to use, but it can do a realistic Trinitron aperture grill), no outputting VGA at 70Hz for it. So for PC, it's not ideal, unfortunately. Great that we have things like DOSBox-Staging to get us as close as possible. Now I just wish there was a way to apply these shaders to modern games that use retro styled graphics. I know ReShade is a thing, but I have no idea how to actually use it, and if it would even work for such a task. Excuse my rambling, please.
That's some great info! So that's a hard NOPE then for such an expensive gadget... I guess their target audience is 60Hz (and maybe 50Hz) console gamers anyway, so probably they don't care much about those 1% of people using their scalers for DOS...
Thanks for pointing this out! That is a shame actually. For the purpose of the channel, scaling into a capture card, I think this product makes sense, but for retro gaming in DOS, maybe not that great. I will try find out more.
@@philscomputerlab I still plan on getting one myself as I do have other use cases for it. It is advertised to handle VGA 70 Hz input at least, even if it won't do 70 Hz output. And it does seem to be developed as more than a game console centric device. I'm sure for video capture it will be excellent. The addition of HDR and color correction when applying the scanline/shadow mask/aperture grill filters also helps. Maybe because of the high price the developer felt it was too much to add FreeSync and 4k above 60 Hz. But that's just a guess. Maybe some of this can be added as an upgrade, who knows.
So I heard back and this is what I found. With 1080p and 1440p displays, higher refresh rates are supported and so is VRR / FreeSync. With 4K it's a bit tricky because 4K70 is beyond HDMI 2.0 specifications. BUT it can do 2880x2160@70. This is a 4:3 4K resolution and I'm told not all displays support it... @@christopherbaar4498
@@philscomputerlab that’s great to know. Will be interesting to see what monitors can support the odd resolution. I understand the limitations of HDMI 2.0, but it’s excellent news that VRR is supported. I wasn’t finding anything to confirm or deny it.
Happy Philday
Phil, I was expecting a side by side comparison with the shaders on and off for Dosbox. Either way, I mourn the fact I had a very nice 20" Gateway CRT that looked great, but I thought an upgrade to a widescreen Dell 24" LCD at 1080p would free up some desk space. I was never satisfied with the image, and I still sent the CRT to the landfill about 6 years ago. 🤦♂- If only I had found your channel before the pandemic. I also sent a Voodoo 2 to its demise and a P2 350 system, major regrets now that I am getting lots of DOA components off ebay.
my last crt has died. it was put in storage 2 years ago and i suspect moisture or bugs are the problem. it turns on but only for a second or 2, then turns off and back on. i haven't tested if this keeps happening after leaving it be for some time just in case something is shorted. i'll open it up some other day and wash what i can with water.
yes i will be careful, is not the first time its getting cleaned but it is the first time its had issues and i have no hopes for it. hopefully one day i'll learn to fix these things.
In my experience, to get something that looks like a good CRT shadow mask on an HD panel with almost no input lag, takes a lot of money and effort. You are better off getting a real CRT if you have the space. It is much easier/cheaper. HD displays would need a combination of good nits, HDR, VRR, BFI, low input lag and good upscaling to even get close, and by the time you get all that equipment ready, you´ll be in the thousands of dollars. On the other hand, if the HD TV is not next to my CRT for me to compare, then with the right CRT shader filters I tend to think it looks OK. Once they are together I can totally see why CRT tech is superior for retro. And also, I understand how most people with only HD displays would find the CRT shaders to be OK or good enough. But not me.