As a pixelartist. I can only say that I am thankful that both developers and users are starting to take CRT-filters seriously. There are so many pixelart techniuques that just look wrong without the proper output of the intended display. Especially for things like Amiga games, where you had a pretty extravagant selection of colors, but were often limited in terms of numbers of colors to display. In those cases, you often had to be pretty creative with color theory using blending techniques as a crucial part in both creating palettes as well as the way you color your art or game assets. On PC this isn't really that much of a case, but the authenticity of playing games "how they ACTUALLY looked" is a great development. Especially since we need to preserve "the look" as old CRTs are dying every year.
I know some people online like making games for newer OS's and using newer game engines but I do believe learning how to make a game for older systems is the best way to learn programming / game design. After I've made my small mod for Dues Ex ! I'm going to try and make a small game that will work with Dosbox thanks for making this video on the improvements in Dosbox.
Check out the video about making Retro City Rampage for different types of hardware, esp. the DOS and NDS version. The DOS version RCR 486 runs on 386 DX and faster! Yes, it's one of the few new games actually made for DOS. The author showed different restrictions, needed to exchange some graphics to fill it onto one floppy disk and use the memory limits for DOS as best as he can. Most modern devs couldn't imagine a) that limitations exist and b) that those limitations will be creative in a certain way to c) reach better programming skills. While the NDS version even has some advantages like pixel matrices making the game easier to program he initially didn't count in. Forking his own game to other machines and explaining it is very interesting. I think that's the video, explaining all the restrictions and how-tos about memory, resolution, matrices, color palette and so on: The Making of: ROM City Rampage (Retro City Rampage) It's like a "remake" of GTA 1-2.
@@philscomputerlab oh, that makes sense. Are these in the .slangp format BTW? I'd love to try them in Retroarch, because I would actually use these as opposed to the usual CRT shaders
@@philscomputerlabI always liked the scanlines in the 350 line EGA mode, it has the same timing as 400 but inverted sync to tell the VGA monitor to stretch it vertically.
WOW, the thought of 3Dfx support is mind blowing, having bought an Orchid Righteous (4MB Voodoo 1) when it came out back the day this hits me particularly hard.
Great news! As much as I like tinkering with, and assembling old hardware, I'm really looking forward to the day I can confidently repurpose something like a z67 system from yesteryear to an end-all-be-all retro-system, just so I won't have to break out a bounch of old crt's and rolands, hoping all of this overly expensive, period correct hardware never fails. It would be great to streamline my hobby and pass everything vintage on to a collector. Don't know if we're quite there yet, but this does look promising. 👍
3dfx Voodoo support definitely needs it's own 3dfx shader(s), something similar to how it was implemented in PCEM - the closest approximation of how 3dfx Voodoo graphics cards rendered the image I've ever seen. For people who don't know, 3dfx accelerators had very specific quirks in it's output render, very recognizable image qualities and PCEM does them the best of any implementation I've seen. Right now what we have in DOSBox Staging is just vanilla clean render, nowhere near how it looked on a real 3dfx Voodoo 1, 2, or 3 (they all did it a bit different to each other).
Author here, I agree with you there, and it will come. But we need a multi-pass shader pipeline in place for that first because that needs to be an additional "blur pass" before the final CRT shader pass. Rest assured, it will come! 😎
Yeah this and the lack of filters and layers for different brands of GPUs back then. It looked different on many different GPUs. Nowadays we have all details, but back then it was limited. And those are authentic. Only people who saw the originals can imagine and want those let's say accurate high quality, but somehow Lo-Fi details.
@@sebastianebert4295 Yeah, it's nostalgic value mainly, but it also represents "how it really used to look" sentiment, so might have some preservation/historical value for people who want to have more authentic experience w/o investing in the real old hardware which becomes more and more expensive and in many cases broken due to old age.
@@johnnovak1979 Great! Here's the quote I found from leileilol, the guy who made the 3dfx Voodoo shader for PCEM. He's spent a lot of time researching and trying to recreate what exactly Voodoo was doing to have the output picture it had and as far as I know, he is one of the best experts. "Like say, on texture shaders for example: 1. Apply a 4x4 or 2x2 dither (whichever one that's called by Glide, or always 2x2 for Direct3D if Voodoo1/2 or optional if Banshee+) 2. On blended textures, try to subtract the dither (if glide calls for dithersub, in Direct3D it doesn't if Voodoo1/2 or optional if Banshee+) 3. and then 16bpp clamp and on the screen buffer, the applied petroleum jelly before the color control happens (which varied between hardware and driver options) - 4x1 linear four pass 3dfx V1/Banshee+ filter - 4x1 one pass 3dfx V2 filter - 2x2 Banshee+ filter (aka "22-bit") ....then the games will have that alleged "3dfx just looks better!!! IDK why!!!!!!!" look." What's interesting, on the real Voodoo the last filters (like 4x1 linear filter) and some additional gamma and color manipulation procedures were applied directly at RAMDAC (the very last output stage), so they don't show up when capturing from the framebuffer, only by an external capture card. That's why there are not many videos around of the real deal. Most people capturing Voodoo do it the wrong way and capture framebuffer AFAIK.
As an old fart who lived the old monitors, I've never been a scan line guy. My memories of the 70s and 80s screens don't have scan lines in them. All the fake scan line stuff has been so over the top I hated them. These ones look the best out of all I've seen though. Would love to see a video where you compared the before/after of the same game.
they are useful shaders for 320 x 224 arcades. on the most modern games, the 496x384 ones on high quality monitors, I have never seen the dots and lines. the VGA, SVGA and PAL home games were very clear, the shaders only reproduce very poor or very old hardware.
I've started using seriously the builtin dosbox debugger working on oldgame translation project and it was a blast, very well done, I think it should worth a video phil!
This is wonderful stuff. As for these days, I have recently hooked up a CRT monitor as a 2nd screen to my system and just play on that again. I still will add shaders to the CRT to make it look the absolute best. The 3dfx addition is great when I don’t want to have to pull out my real Voodoo2 setup.
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Thanks for the information! Because of your channel, I've been able to invest in some older hardware and software (GOG has been a goldmine!). I have already shared about my Pentium 2 with the proper parts and I can't thank you enough for your tips and materials on your website. Currently, one of my "retro" rigs is an i3 4th generation with an SSD and a GTX 650 with a Samsung Syncmaster 753DF CRT monitor. I use it because - if memory serves - that is the most recent architecture to be supported in Windows XP. This is where I play all my GOG retro games. I've been using D-Fend Reloaded for some other MS-DOS stuff and loving the CRT look and feel in this machine. Mushy membrane keyboard and loud mouse clicks are also a part of the experience! I had never given much thought to how different games look on CRT x LCD/LED monitors. Guess that I now have something to tinker with next weekend since my MS-DOS (14 inch Compaq CRT monitor) Win XP (Samsung) and Win 10 (LG) machines are sitting side by side! Guess I'll be going through Flashback, Jazz Jackrabbit, Rise of the Triad, Wacky Wheels, and all that good stuff! Thank you once again for sharing this great information and serving the community!
Thanks so much for sharing your information Phil .Just retired my sony 19 inch monitor after twenty years of service loved the crt monitor.Cheers from Turkey mate.
I heard people saying Core i gen. 3 is the last for XP w/o modding stuff. But not sure, tbh. I have an i5-3570, but SFF size. Maybe I use it with a riser cable to add EAX sound or just use older C2D or Athlon II x2 with a GTX 645 OEM, ATI HD 4550, Nvidia NVS 310 or similar, then try to add Matrox Millenium and Voodoo 1. Guess what? A pal laughed at me having a 19 " CRT when most people got 1st TFTs. But tbh., those TFT had low res, while my CRT had up to 2048x1536 and real scanlines. Back then I didn't appreciate that CRT was better. My 32 " LED TV has 1920x1080, which is lower than the 19 " CRT. But the most difference I saw is that with VGA using the ATI HD 4550 on the newer LED TV, the image was warm white. But when choosing HDMI on the same HD 4550 card, the image was cold white, very uncomfortable. Ofc. we can use shifted colors, but when seeing the difference I really thought man VGA is much better than HDMI. Now people would laugh when others don't have CRT (again), lol. It's good to know both pros and cons, so we can decide what to use. People being born in 2000+ won't get that much love for old systems ofc. New babies nowadays grow up with 8+ core CPUs and everything in games looking like a photo, maybe added some unrealistic HDR effcts. How could they appreciate the older tech when not having used it before? It's hard to explain. Tbh., I'd love to have lived through the 70s even, to see even older tech, all the small bits and bytes, to appreciate it even more. The old guys understand better how computers work, because they know all the basics I didn't. I mean there were books full of explaining how floppy drives work, what sectors are and so on. People nowadays take anything for granted, but can't imagine nor explain how it really works, lol.
Same here. Also DOSBox-ECE (claims to have more accurate OPL sound f.e.), SVN Daum (easy to configure with mouse and context menus) and Boxerapp on Mac (easy to mount CDs, has a "D-Fend Reloaded" like shelf GUI to easily start games) have some pros and cons. It's good that other devs get inspired sooner or later. The whole emu scene is, having way more than 100 emulators in f.e. Batocera or RetroBat alone. Those are some of the most easiest to use multi emulator systems. Batocera Linux runs off a USB stick. It has slightly more free resources, may profit for PCSX2 or RPCS3 over using Windows. While RetroBat runs on top of Windows, making it most easy for most of the people. Those basically just use RetroArch + 100+ emus + easy to use EmulationStation GUI. And f.e. 3 or more DOSBox versions you can choose. Nowadays even with zipped folder support, making it easier than some years ago.
the old CRT filters were just basically a layer on top of the graphics. Emulating the actual subpixels and geometric arrangement of pixels is totally different! Looks great!
CRT/NTSC shaders really couldn't be a thing until the 2000s. before then most computers were just barely able to run a rather rough emulation of many systems at a reasonable speed/frame rate, so the extra computation of those effects was impractical. Also probably just not as well researched/understood among hobbyists. Many at least did give you some scanlines and/or interpolation though, to help fuzz things up enough, but yeah hardly an accurate representation.
You might also want to take a look at DOSBox-X , it has 3Dfx support as well. Not sure if DOSBox-x supports the shaders though. Thanks for yet another quality video. Keep up the good work!
@@sofakng163 PCem / 86Box are closer to hypervisors than emulators in the way they emulate real hardware compared to how DOSBox works as an emulator. That's the "short" description. It's also why PCem and 86Box takes much more resources compared to DOSBox. But the end result is a lot closer to the real deal.
Not a fan of scanlines personally, but for games that use dithering, I like to use a composite filter to properly blend the colours together, so hopefully custom filters will be available at some point. Or maybe already are. My Amiga was always hooked up to a TV via RF modulator until I get RGB out(was VGA, rather than SCART) which provided 720x576 in progressive scan. I still had to keep my TV connected to RF out, as most games would revert back to PAL and my monitor didn't like it. It did really help with spreadsheets, word processing and web browsing, though.
Maybe Denise (C64 and Amiga emulator) is good enough for that purpose. I've seen a video showcasing the Denise C64 capabilities and saw the most complex CRT emulation in this emulator, next to also very complex floppy sound emulation. The author of this quite new emulator does love all the details and it's even having more % compatibility of C64 software than VICE, which exists since 3 decades.
@@sebastianebert4295 It's not just C64 and Amiga games that are dithered. Several of the PC only games demonstrated in this video use it, too. It may not be an accurate experience, but for me it just looks better when dithering is blended out to create the colours intended by the effect.
I still have 5 different CRTs monitors for PC RetroGaming for sake of accurate look. Packed with USB MIDI out, SoundCanvas SC55, DosBox and GOG Games - those shaders can ease my pain of carrying such bulky monitors
As someone with a 'higher end', late CRT (Samsung Syncmaster 1100DF) I love to see these. It is nice having a CRT but we will be out of them someday; sooner rather than later short some company mad enough to create new ones for people like us. They have done an AMAZING job. My jaw dropped more than once watching this. It provides some comfort knowing that we will have some options once the remaining ones are laid to rest.
Author of the feature here. I have 9 SVGA CRTs at present, but yeah, my motivation for doing this was due to very personal reasons: I'm not looking forward to the day when my last CRT inevitably dies. So I wanted to "future proof" myself until I am able to use actual real-world CRT references to tweak the shaders. Glad you're enjoying it man :)
I have a nearly 30 year old SVGA monitor that still works today. The picture is still crisp and the colours are still vibrant. I’ve had countless flat panel monitors and tv’s over the years that never survive the 10 year mark. Shows you how quality has dipped due to mass manufacturing of consumer goods.
Actually there are quite a few old DOS games that used GLIDE. It was "the" standard for 3D at the beginning. Like Descent, Carmageddon, Blood, and more. I'm sure someone's got a list lying around. Remember even when Windows 95 launched there still wasn't any such thing as DirectX, so GLIDE stuck around for a bit even after that and some native Windows titles also used it exclusively (though that's less germane to a discussion about DOSBox.....except I think I've heard of people trying to get Windows 95 running under DOSBox which would be freaking awesome!)
There is a list somewhere on Vogons forums of all Glide-supported games (both for DOS and Windows). It's quite impressive. But for me, as the owner of 3dfx Voodoo 1 and 3dfx Voodoo 2 cards the "ultimate" Glide game was always the first Unreal. Even some years after it's release 3dfx graphics card was the best way you could play it. And it looked freaking great on 3dfx with all the effects that were supposed to be there (unlike DirectX and OpenGL renderers that were buggy and lacked many for years and just didn't look as good and vibrant on other - non-3dfx - cards). Personally, I still think the Glide version looks better on 3dfx Voodoo 2 than even the same game with all the modern mods on DX11.
Ah yes I forgot about Descent being DOS. I just remembered Tomb Raider and then also having Windows 95 for games such as Wing Commander Prophecy, G-Police, Moto Racer and many more...
I'm planning a video along the line of Real CRT vs CRT shader but will be another month at least. I plan on using a smaller LCD monitor that is of similar size as a 15" LCD monitor.
About dosbox-x i found that by using it in Linux i can pass on to it easily the midi synth from my sb audigy rx, this way i have this very nice early 2000s hardware synth combined with using a modern pc for playing dos games
@@KaziQTR nope, it can use midi devices with a relatively straight forward gui settings and linux is very good at enabling the usage of old pci cards and midi devices, the audigy rx is also a pcie card featuring the chip from the audigy 4 series which in turn is a revision of the ones used in the audigy 1 and 2/2zs series which is based on the sb live architecture, so basically you are using essentially an improved version of the sb live midi synth as a midi device in linux that you can then pass to dosbox enabling you to have a very similar midi experience as the live series under windows 9x and dos, only thing to note here is that in linux you need to load the sound font into the card's dma memory by first running a program called asfxload into the terminal, nothing fancy as far as terminal commands go tbh
@@piecaruso97 I have a bunch of Sound Blasters laying around. I’ve used them on Linux before (my main OS). I’m using a USB sound card now so I took it out. I’ve never had issues with the emulated MIDI. I want to check this out later. Thanks.
Just, tried it out myself and it works great, even though I didn't compare it to my CRT yet. Also didn't try 3Dfx yet, how it compares to other SVNs. Would be nice if Staging would offer stuff like a menu bar and save states, just like DOSBox Daum had already many years ago.
Btw., there's also DOSBox-X / ECE / SVN Daum, Boxerapp on Mac and some more apps. And the community profits from all those ideas, being backported to other DOSBox forks sooner or later. Like WINE - CrossOver - ReactOS - Steam Beta all profit from each other. Or like DXVk doubles FPS for old games. The last 5-10 years did bring more advantages into emulation world then never before. When you look at how much Lakka, RetroArch, RetroPie, RecalBox, RecalBox Remix aka Batocera, RetroBat, Dig, Lemuroid changed over the last years. They had like 70 emulators some years ago, now it's like 120+ and raising, including multiple cores per emulated machine even (like 3+ different DOSBox versions), runahead for controllers, Floppy/HDD sound emulation, new CRT shaders, bezels to use the black borders of pixel perfect integer scaling, scraped video previews.
What we retro people need is actually a monitor/display/screen driver/program that is totally independent of whatever emulator program is making use of it regardless if it is DOSBox, VICE, UAE, or whatever. E.g. a program that just emulates one or more CRT's depending on what program connects to it. That way a user could have their size, scaling and colors set up exactly like they want all the time without having to fiddle with different setups for ScummVM , VICE, UAE, DOSBox, and you name it!
I think for me it's playing with the parts that is what drives me. But if you "just" want to play games, yea DOSBox is awesome especially with modern conveniences like nice joysticks and whatnot.
It's not so much scanlines as it is slight fuzziness or bloom. CRTs weren't as sharp as modern displays. There were a fair number of visual effects that took advantage of dithering, too, which some shaders do a great job of reproducing.
I did a test some days ago about the dosbox-x as well and it was working flawlessly, you should make a video on those someday as well. It is even possible to install Windows 95 and 98..
DOSBox-X also supports Japanese DOS/V and PC-98. I'll need to re-check it for that, because Neko Project II is a bit complicated. When thinking about games like 4D Sports Drivin' for PC-98 or FM Towns, Cobra Mission or Rusty...those are different on Japanese machines. DOSBox-ECE also is interesting. Or DOSBox SVN Daum with easy config using mouse/menus. I mostly only miss an integration of easy CD mounting and shelf GUI for your games like D-Fend Reloaded or Boxerapp for Mac has.
That's a very nice new option having adaptive resolution CRT shaders. LHX, Epic Pinball...man I love the old games so much. Which reminds me there's a new emulator for C64 and Amiga called Denise, which has the most complex CRT and Floppy sound emulation I ever saw. It would be nice if you could test it. Bruce Lee 1-2 (the new game is even better), Saboteur 1-2, Uridium, Trailblazer on C64; Gods, Wings of Fury, Gobliiins III on Amiga...there's so much fun. Which reminds me that I saw different colors playing Indy 4 in ScummVM using the Amiga version vs. the DOS version. I like to discover different stuff just because we can. Indy 3 FM Towns also is interesting having CD music. Or Hard Drivin' on Arcade/MAME, 4D Sports Drivin' on FM Towns / PC 98.
@@philscomputerlab yeah that's sadly true for like 95 % of all C64 games. But we loved the hand full of games we had, re-tried even when failing 100 times. Different times for sure. At least Bruce Lee 1+2 aren't thaaaat hard. You actually can enjoy those, getting better and better. I just hated the mine fields or what that moving trap things were supposed to be. Back then we also optionally used the green Samo with 2nd joystick (instead of having him as hard 2nd CPU opponent) to help Bruce Lee fight the Ninja, so the opponent was no real deal anymore, but only the obstacles. When you made it through the last level screen facing the magician, the game just repeats and only gets harder each re-play, until you reboot the game ofc. Those emus integrate netplay nowadays, btw. Nowadays with save states or even easier with on the fly rewind option it's way easier. Just rewind some secs when you loose a life, lol. And even back then. I had MagicCopy / BetaDisk hardware on a ZX Spectrum, where I could save anything onto Floppy 1 pressing a button, up to 13 times I think it was, then the 800 KB Floppy was full. You could load those snapshots at any time from the GEM like GUI called "Vision" and also copy those to other floppies. If not, the oldest snapshot on the floppy would be overwritten with the newest one. So you basically could just revert to old save states. I read for C64 such things also exist. It's a bit like suspend to disk aka hibernation mode and for the delection part of oldest file like Apple time machine "backup". Imagine you would be able to save, copy and even better read a whole hiberfil.sys to just reload a game savestate. But the ZX Spectrum didn't have BIOS, only a fast booting minimal OS and fast booting floppies next to slow cassettes ofc. While Cauldron 1+2, Uridium, Trailblazer, Impossible Mission, Saboteur 1-2, Mephisto and I think all other games I had were super hard. But back then, when you didn't have anything else but to play outside, you enjoyed even re-trying to play a hand full of level screens. Kids playing on 8+ core CPUs with photo-realistic and mostly very easy games can't imagine nowadays how we suffered and loved the old hard games at the same time, haha.
I am glad to see native Glide Support in a version of DoxBox because very few versions had it out of the box as it is without the need of setting it up to get it to work and getting Glide Support to work under DosBox was a huge pain and I never bothered with it.
I have zero luck with setting up DOSBOX flatpaks on Linux. Not only can I not find the directory it's installed in to search for a config file, but I can't for the life of me work out how Linux directories translate to MS-DOS directories for mounting (both C drive and D drive). Every time I try, I end up giving up and just sticking with RetroArch. Keep in mind this is only an issue for me when using Linux and not Windows.
Great improvements and very informative video. I was just wondering however what about 70hz content like most VGA titles back in the DOS days ran at. Any support for that yet, maybe through adaptive sync?
Author here. Variable refresh rate monitors are fully supported. All DOS resolutions are presented at their exact authentic rates on such monitors. Then there are lots of options to dial in how to present frames on fixed rate monitors, but this is power user territory. Check out the config setting descriptions for details.
Everytime I look to DL DBS I find a remake of the game that will run on my modern machine. There are so many. I just Got IT Came From the Desert's remake on Steam, and the FFVIII remake is also on steam. For one I would usually run an Amiga emulator and for the other, DosBox, but now both are remade.
Much more than that. Dosbox 0.74 was released in 2010. There were several bug fixes updates since then, but overall they didn't change much in terms of features, support or any significant changes. Tbh the OG Dosbox feels like abandonware rn.
@@kosmosyche There's a DOSBox 0.74-2 and 0.74-3 you know... Those versions did improve the performance of DOS Games immensely. Those versions finally run The Settlers II from 1996 very well. No popping sounds, no high pitch noises and no that chugging performance when you move around the map.
@@Super123456789Kuba I know. I've been using DosBox since around 2008. In my experience, nothing really changed much in terms of performance since 0.74, but I might be wrong or didn't look at the right games.
Hi, thx for video! Just want to ask, what do you thing is better PCem or new DOSBox with Voodoo 1 support for early games, does it supports windows 95 and glide? Again thx for video 🙂
Dosbox Staging is getting better. However the problem of running it on a LCD is the pixel response time, input latency and motion clarity will never come close to a real CRT. In short it might look the same but it will never feel the same.
@@philscomputerlab I agree. Channels such as yours raise awareness which leads to people understanding value of their items and therefore more hardware comes in circulation instead of getting scrapped/wasted. While some individuals likely want to grab stuff for next to free from stock previously untapped into I personally don’t find that kind of ventures a fair market.
To more convincingly emulate a CRT it's going to take a lot more than a 4K monitor. I don't know exactly what kinds of resolutions will be needed, but each individual LED is going to have to get a lot smaller and a lot more densely packed together before a convincing emulation is possible. Even with this new emulation, it still doesn't do it for me and I just do not like it. The scanlines are still too noticeable. On a true CRT monitor you don't notice the scanlines unless you are specifically looking for them and move a little closer to the screen. At least on VGA. In EGA, they are more noticeable generally. It also tends to darken the display too much on LED screens. LED screens push the contrast ratios as high as they can to create the "truest blacks" which doesn't work exactly on a CRT. The color bleed of a CRT monitor means that scanlines were never pure black and that's why you could hardly notice them if you were sitting a normal distance from the screen. The emulation is getting better, but it's still in sort of an "uncanny valley" effect for me. It's close, but not close enough and it looks too strange and distracting. But the day will come when it will be nearly impossible to tell the difference between a properly rendered image on an LED monitor and a real CRT. I'm glad there is such effort being put into this.
@@philscomputerlab I don't know any CRT monitor displaying scan lines like this. It looks like a badly configured filter. You should get something more "homogeneous", not horizontal clear lines packed like that. not in 240p, nor 480p. But you know CRT VGA monitors very well, did you see one with this kind of output ?
@@philscomputerlab unfortunatelly not so much better (or my knowledge is not enough for it) i used VirtualMIDISynth with general midi but Awe32 is not only for midis for example but some games like Croc also upload custom soundfonts to the AWE memory for background noises but they don't do that to VirtualMidiSynth ...
@@philscomputerlab Well some games did utilize custom soundfonts via their AWE32 mode for music/sound effects playback through the card's EMU8000 synth. Not very many of them mind you (and even fewer for DOS), but they definitely existed. Bullfrog-developed games were pretty big on it at the time. That said, if 86Box is anything to go by, the current state of AWE 32/64 emulation is pretty awful sounding.
3DFX Voodoo would be awesome when you could run Windows 95/98 on it to be honest. You would benefit much more with that. Running games like NFS II, International Rally Championship and such. (I'm aware of PCem and 86Box obviously, but every program differs with their certain set of challenges. So it could be nice to run those OS'es on DOSBox Staging as well.) Sadly I was a bit too young to remember the CRT look of DOS Games (By that I mean the details of it) so perhaps once I will get my hands on CRT Monitor at some point to check how it is/was It could change my mind of using those CRT Filters in DOSBox Staging. Right now I have no opinion on it. There's a funny story - I used OpenGLB to run games better than on DDraw, since the latter's performance a bit... Meh, felt like using DDraw was just a struggle.
Phil, do you ever worry that if DOSBox gets SO good at emulation (which it seems do be getting better and better at doing) that it will make all the great work and hard work you put into retro hardware content become less important or redundant? Especially as DOS hardware gets more and more expensive with time and locks more people out of doing it with the real hardware.
Nah, two different groups one is the retro dos gamer and the other is the retro hardware gamer. The retro dos gamer may not be want actual hardware but still enjoy videos on the hardware, maybe more so! Just like people enjoy classic car videos but dont own them.
Well, the real worry is that one day all existing retro hardware will stop functioning. At that point, only emulation will be available. So we need to perfect it *before* that day comes, otherwise all our references will be gone.
You all realize the irony in this, right? Back when DOS was a current operating system and everyone was using CRT monitors, everyone wanted to sharpen the image. Even on systems like the C64 and Amiga, we tried every trick in the book to get a better picture. "Use this type of cable! Attach a resistor between these two pins! Wrap foil around the cable!" Of course none of it worked. Back then we would have jumped for joy at having a razor-sharp image. Now we have razor sharp images and everyone wants all the imperfections of CRT monitors back.
Define "better". More, bigger, louder is not always "better". We wanted all that, we got it, then we realised "razor sharp" is not desirable for low-res game content. Sure, makes text more readable, but that's about it. I wouldn't want to use my 90s small TV with my C64 for any "productivity" work, but for _games_ C64 over composite into the small TV beats any flatscreen and square pixels in C64 emulators. Bit like how everybody was crazy about "digital audio" in the 80s. Then came the big disappointment with the sterile, cold sounding DDD CDs. Then after a while people learned how to integrate the best of the analog and the digital world. Shaders are a bit like that. We emulate the desirable characteristics in the digital realm; just like all those "analog emulation" audio plugins and DSP processes. But we can do so in a controlled manner, only taking what's desirable, and leaving out what no one wants (geometry distortion, flicker, hum, etc...)
@@johnnovak1979 Personally, I hated the way the colors bled over horizontally on a CRT, on systems like the C64 or the Atari 2600. I was always trying to find ways to minimize, or even eliminate that.
@@lurkerrekrul Tastes differ; I'm looking to recreate the authentic experience. Luckily for you, the sharp pixels option is the easiest to recreate in emulation.
@@johnnovak1979 You're really not though. For the most part, DOSBox has all the drivers and everything you need built in so that you don't have to deal with drivers, memory managers, and the like. For a truly authentic experience, you need to drop DOSBox and go with something like PCem, where you need to install MS-DOS and all the drivers from scratch, just like on a real machine. I wouldn't want to do that though. I've never even attempted to setup PCem. Frankly, I'd glad I skipped over DOS and all the problems it entailed. I had an Amiga back then and basically the only two compatibility issues I had to worry about were PAL/NTSC video, and which version of the OS a game needed, both of which were easy to switch.
Might have been wise to mention that the video needs to be watched on a 4k screen as well, otherwise...it will not really convey what you saw on your screen. ^^ In the past I also hated artificial scanlines and I kinda still do on 1080p, because they are always overpronounced, which might have been that way on TVs, but not on proper monitors. But after I set up my retro PC here with my CRT and then switching back and forth, I would also say, that without these scanlines its missing something. The core issue as a content creator is - like for you in this video, even though its a different case - how to "convey" the experience. Yes, an artificial scanline filter is one thing. But will not work properly on 1080p. So no matter what you do, if the viewer of the video either doesnt check the 4k version, or doesnt have a 4k screen it will not work. And until people all have 4k screens...well... That Tomb Raider footage was kinda horrific though, the performance in regards to sound stuttering was painful to listen to. ^^
@@philscomputerlab Ah, at 4:07, yeah, when I watched it the first time I felt like this was meant for using dosbox. I dont think that for Phone screens it would be a big issue anyways, because of the small screens no matter the resolution (my phone only has 1080p btw). Unfortunately no stats on resolution on youtube analytics. But on my two main channels the percentage of phone users for viewing hours (not clicks) is 18.3% and 25.8%, vs 50%+ on both channels watching on PC and 16.3% / 13.7% watching on TV.
@@philscomputerlab It fixes almost all the bugs (timer bugs, game bugs) You don't have to type DOS commands. It has everything Dosbox has and more. It is a much easier experience overall. Best wishes.
@@ajax700 Time bugs happen on machines that run too fast. It also happens in real machine. Bugs have patches and ScummVM adds another layer of other potential issues. It also doesn't have CRT shaders like DOSbox staging and the scope of games is very very limited.
@@philscomputerlab ScummVM fixed most timing bugs for most games, while on Dosbox emulators you have to fine tune Cycles, install patches if there are any, etc. I wouldn't call the scope of ScummVM "very limited" haha. It supports a very big list of adventure games. Best wishes.
There is something screwy with this video. I'm seeing wide vertical banding,thought it was a shader artifact but then you cut to camera and it's there too.
Author here. Silly to you, essential to me 😄 But usability enhancements will be coming too. Remember, we are volunteers: we do what's fun for _us_ and what we consider important in our spare time 😄
![Felix "Unfair" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Oswujxm2Ag0/mqdefault.jpg)
Adaptive shaders is such a good idea, makes me wonder why wasn't it implemented before, at least as a mod.
As a pixelartist. I can only say that I am thankful that both developers and users are starting to take CRT-filters seriously. There are so many pixelart techniuques that just look wrong without the proper output of the intended display. Especially for things like Amiga games, where you had a pretty extravagant selection of colors, but were often limited in terms of numbers of colors to display. In those cases, you often had to be pretty creative with color theory using blending techniques as a crucial part in both creating palettes as well as the way you color your art or game assets. On PC this isn't really that much of a case, but the authenticity of playing games "how they ACTUALLY looked" is a great development. Especially since we need to preserve "the look" as old CRTs are dying every year.
I know some people online like making games for newer OS's and using newer game engines but I do believe learning how to make a game for older systems is the best way to learn programming / game design. After I've made my small mod for Dues Ex ! I'm going to try and make a small game that will work with Dosbox thanks for making this video on the improvements in Dosbox.
Check out the video about making Retro City Rampage for different types of hardware, esp. the DOS and NDS version.
The DOS version RCR 486 runs on 386 DX and faster! Yes, it's one of the few new games actually made for DOS.
The author showed different restrictions, needed to exchange some graphics to fill it onto one floppy disk and use the memory limits for DOS as best as he can.
Most modern devs couldn't imagine a) that limitations exist and b) that those limitations will be creative in a certain way to c) reach better programming skills.
While the NDS version even has some advantages like pixel matrices making the game easier to program he initially didn't count in.
Forking his own game to other machines and explaining it is very interesting.
I think that's the video, explaining all the restrictions and how-tos about memory, resolution, matrices, color palette and so on:
The Making of: ROM City Rampage (Retro City Rampage)
It's like a "remake" of GTA 1-2.
Absolutely incredible CRT emulation, love this version!
It's very subtle, but I like that. Usually these CRT shaders are way overdone compared to how VGA monitors looked
It's overdone because they use shaders aimed at consoles with HUGE scanlines. VGA was double scanned and has very thin ones...
@@philscomputerlab oh, that makes sense. Are these in the .slangp format BTW? I'd love to try them in Retroarch, because I would actually use these as opposed to the usual CRT shaders
@@philscomputerlab I personally think they are also overdone on Consoles, yes, it depends on your TV, but i never had one with SUCH Scanlines.
@@philscomputerlabI always liked the scanlines in the 350 line EGA mode, it has the same timing as 400 but inverted sync to tell the VGA monitor to stretch it vertically.
@@Azuris190 They obsess over these Sony look. On such screens scanlines looked a bit larger.
WOW, the thought of 3Dfx support is mind blowing, having bought an Orchid Righteous (4MB Voodoo 1) when it came out back the day this hits me particularly hard.
Great news! As much as I like tinkering with, and assembling old hardware, I'm really looking forward to the day I can confidently repurpose something like a z67 system from yesteryear to an end-all-be-all retro-system, just so I won't have to break out a bounch of old crt's and rolands, hoping all of this overly expensive, period correct hardware never fails.
It would be great to streamline my hobby and pass everything vintage on to a collector.
Don't know if we're quite there yet, but this does look promising. 👍
3dfx Voodoo support definitely needs it's own 3dfx shader(s), something similar to how it was implemented in PCEM - the closest approximation of how 3dfx Voodoo graphics cards rendered the image I've ever seen. For people who don't know, 3dfx accelerators had very specific quirks in it's output render, very recognizable image qualities and PCEM does them the best of any implementation I've seen. Right now what we have in DOSBox Staging is just vanilla clean render, nowhere near how it looked on a real 3dfx Voodoo 1, 2, or 3 (they all did it a bit different to each other).
Interesting. Do you know of any video that showcases this? Phil would do one.
Author here, I agree with you there, and it will come. But we need a multi-pass shader pipeline in place for that first because that needs to be an additional "blur pass" before the final CRT shader pass. Rest assured, it will come! 😎
Yeah this and the lack of filters and layers for different brands of GPUs back then.
It looked different on many different GPUs.
Nowadays we have all details, but back then it was limited.
And those are authentic. Only people who saw the originals can imagine and want those let's say accurate high quality, but somehow Lo-Fi details.
@@sebastianebert4295 Yeah, it's nostalgic value mainly, but it also represents "how it really used to look" sentiment, so might have some preservation/historical value for people who want to have more authentic experience w/o investing in the real old hardware which becomes more and more expensive and in many cases broken due to old age.
@@johnnovak1979 Great! Here's the quote I found from leileilol, the guy who made the 3dfx Voodoo shader for PCEM. He's spent a lot of time researching and trying to recreate what exactly Voodoo was doing to have the output picture it had and as far as I know, he is one of the best experts.
"Like say, on texture shaders for example:
1. Apply a 4x4 or 2x2 dither (whichever one that's called by Glide, or always 2x2 for Direct3D if Voodoo1/2 or optional if Banshee+)
2. On blended textures, try to subtract the dither (if glide calls for dithersub, in Direct3D it doesn't if Voodoo1/2 or optional if Banshee+)
3. and then 16bpp clamp
and on the screen buffer, the applied petroleum jelly before the color control happens (which varied between hardware and driver options)
- 4x1 linear four pass 3dfx V1/Banshee+ filter
- 4x1 one pass 3dfx V2 filter
- 2x2 Banshee+ filter (aka "22-bit")
....then the games will have that alleged "3dfx just looks better!!! IDK why!!!!!!!" look."
What's interesting, on the real Voodoo the last filters (like 4x1 linear filter) and some additional gamma and color manipulation procedures were applied directly at RAMDAC (the very last output stage), so they don't show up when capturing from the framebuffer, only by an external capture card. That's why there are not many videos around of the real deal. Most people capturing Voodoo do it the wrong way and capture framebuffer AFAIK.
As an old fart who lived the old monitors, I've never been a scan line guy. My memories of the 70s and 80s screens don't have scan lines in them. All the fake scan line stuff has been so over the top I hated them. These ones look the best out of all I've seen though. Would love to see a video where you compared the before/after of the same game.
they are useful shaders for 320 x 224 arcades.
on the most modern games, the 496x384 ones on high quality monitors, I have never seen the dots and lines.
the VGA, SVGA and PAL home games were very clear, the shaders only reproduce very poor or very old hardware.
I love dosbox staging ❤
Thanks for the heads up Phil, this is looking great!
I've started using seriously the builtin dosbox debugger working on oldgame translation project and it was a blast, very well done, I think it should worth a video phil!
Hmm I feel such a topic is over my head 😭
...and again I feel like developers read my mind... well I used to have in my head years ago :)
Looking forward to trying this out, I think we finally have the scanline shader cracked, same on the general emulation side. It's about time.
This is wonderful stuff. As for these days, I have recently hooked up a CRT monitor as a 2nd screen to my system and just play on that again. I still will add shaders to the CRT to make it look the absolute best. The 3dfx addition is great when I don’t want to have to pull out my real Voodoo2 setup.
Thanks for the information! Because of your channel, I've been able to invest in some older hardware and software (GOG has been a goldmine!). I have already shared about my Pentium 2 with the proper parts and I can't thank you enough for your tips and materials on your website. Currently, one of my "retro" rigs is an i3 4th generation with an SSD and a GTX 650 with a Samsung Syncmaster 753DF CRT monitor. I use it because - if memory serves - that is the most recent architecture to be supported in Windows XP. This is where I play all my GOG retro games. I've been using D-Fend Reloaded for some other MS-DOS stuff and loving the CRT look and feel in this machine. Mushy membrane keyboard and loud mouse clicks are also a part of the experience! I had never given much thought to how different games look on CRT x LCD/LED monitors. Guess that I now have something to tinker with next weekend since my MS-DOS (14 inch Compaq CRT monitor) Win XP (Samsung) and Win 10 (LG) machines are sitting side by side! Guess I'll be going through Flashback, Jazz Jackrabbit, Rise of the Triad, Wacky Wheels, and all that good stuff! Thank you once again for sharing this great information and serving the community!
That's awesome 😎
Thanks so much for sharing your information Phil .Just retired my sony 19 inch monitor after twenty years of service loved the crt monitor.Cheers from Turkey mate.
I heard people saying Core i gen. 3 is the last for XP w/o modding stuff.
But not sure, tbh.
I have an i5-3570, but SFF size. Maybe I use it with a riser cable to add EAX sound or just use older C2D or Athlon II x2 with a GTX 645 OEM, ATI HD 4550, Nvidia NVS 310 or similar, then try to add Matrox Millenium and Voodoo 1.
Guess what? A pal laughed at me having a 19 " CRT when most people got 1st TFTs. But tbh., those TFT had low res, while my CRT had up to 2048x1536 and real scanlines. Back then I didn't appreciate that CRT was better.
My 32 " LED TV has 1920x1080, which is lower than the 19 " CRT. But the most difference I saw is that with VGA using the ATI HD 4550 on the newer LED TV, the image was warm white. But when choosing HDMI on the same HD 4550 card, the image was cold white, very uncomfortable. Ofc. we can use shifted colors, but when seeing the difference I really thought man VGA is much better than HDMI.
Now people would laugh when others don't have CRT (again), lol.
It's good to know both pros and cons, so we can decide what to use.
People being born in 2000+ won't get that much love for old systems ofc.
New babies nowadays grow up with 8+ core CPUs and everything in games looking like a photo, maybe added some unrealistic HDR effcts.
How could they appreciate the older tech when not having used it before?
It's hard to explain.
Tbh., I'd love to have lived through the 70s even, to see even older tech, all the small bits and bytes, to appreciate it even more.
The old guys understand better how computers work, because they know all the basics I didn't.
I mean there were books full of explaining how floppy drives work, what sectors are and so on.
People nowadays take anything for granted, but can't imagine nor explain how it really works, lol.
Looks amazing
I used DOSBox-X to play 3DFX Voodoo games. It has native voodoo support and more for a long time now.
Same here. Also DOSBox-ECE (claims to have more accurate OPL sound f.e.), SVN Daum (easy to configure with mouse and context menus) and Boxerapp on Mac (easy to mount CDs, has a "D-Fend Reloaded" like shelf GUI to easily start games) have some pros and cons.
It's good that other devs get inspired sooner or later.
The whole emu scene is, having way more than 100 emulators in f.e. Batocera or RetroBat alone.
Those are some of the most easiest to use multi emulator systems.
Batocera Linux runs off a USB stick. It has slightly more free resources, may profit for PCSX2 or RPCS3 over using Windows.
While RetroBat runs on top of Windows, making it most easy for most of the people.
Those basically just use RetroArch + 100+ emus + easy to use EmulationStation GUI.
And f.e. 3 or more DOSBox versions you can choose. Nowadays even with zipped folder support, making it easier than some years ago.
the old CRT filters were just basically a layer on top of the graphics. Emulating the actual subpixels and geometric arrangement of pixels is totally different! Looks great!
I love the effort modern emulators put into the CRT replication. When emulators first came out many didn't take color artifacting into account.
CRT/NTSC shaders really couldn't be a thing until the 2000s. before then most computers were just barely able to run a rather rough emulation of many systems at a reasonable speed/frame rate, so the extra computation of those effects was impractical. Also probably just not as well researched/understood among hobbyists. Many at least did give you some scanlines and/or interpolation though, to help fuzz things up enough, but yeah hardly an accurate representation.
Makes sense that they include roland support now that I bought an original one :D Thanks for a good overview of coming features!
You might also want to take a look at DOSBox-X , it has 3Dfx support as well.
Not sure if DOSBox-x supports the shaders though.
Thanks for yet another quality video. Keep up the good work!
I'm also curious on the differences between DOSBox-X, DOSBox Staging, and PCem/86Box for Voodoo support...
@@sofakng163 PCem / 86Box are closer to hypervisors than emulators in the way they emulate real hardware compared to how DOSBox works as an emulator.
That's the "short" description. It's also why PCem and 86Box takes much more resources compared to DOSBox. But the end result is a lot closer to the real deal.
Not a fan of scanlines personally, but for games that use dithering, I like to use a composite filter to properly blend the colours together, so hopefully custom filters will be available at some point. Or maybe already are.
My Amiga was always hooked up to a TV via RF modulator until I get RGB out(was VGA, rather than SCART) which provided 720x576 in progressive scan. I still had to keep my TV connected to RF out, as most games would revert back to PAL and my monitor didn't like it. It did really help with spreadsheets, word processing and web browsing, though.
Maybe Denise (C64 and Amiga emulator) is good enough for that purpose.
I've seen a video showcasing the Denise C64 capabilities and saw the most complex CRT emulation in this emulator, next to also very complex floppy sound emulation.
The author of this quite new emulator does love all the details and it's even having more % compatibility of C64 software than VICE, which exists since 3 decades.
@@sebastianebert4295 It's not just C64 and Amiga games that are dithered. Several of the PC only games demonstrated in this video use it, too. It may not be an accurate experience, but for me it just looks better when dithering is blended out to create the colours intended by the effect.
I still have 5 different CRTs monitors for PC RetroGaming for sake of accurate look. Packed with USB MIDI out, SoundCanvas SC55, DosBox and GOG Games - those shaders can ease my pain of carrying such bulky monitors
Nice!
But the day of retiring it is becoming close with such advancements in shaders, APIs and such ♥ @@philscomputerlab
And you play a big role in my Retro PC life, ty ♥@@philscomputerlab
I’ll check this out thanks Phil!
Great stuff as always.
Haha nice video Phil. I think steam survey was like 90% are using 1080p so not many 4k lol.
🤔😂
There where also DOS 3Dfx patches for Shadow Warrior and Screamer 2 (Bleifuss 2)
As someone with a 'higher end', late CRT (Samsung Syncmaster 1100DF) I love to see these. It is nice having a CRT but we will be out of them someday; sooner rather than later short some company mad enough to create new ones for people like us. They have done an AMAZING job. My jaw dropped more than once watching this. It provides some comfort knowing that we will have some options once the remaining ones are laid to rest.
Author of the feature here. I have 9 SVGA CRTs at present, but yeah, my motivation for doing this was due to very personal reasons: I'm not looking forward to the day when my last CRT inevitably dies. So I wanted to "future proof" myself until I am able to use actual real-world CRT references to tweak the shaders. Glad you're enjoying it man :)
I have a nearly 30 year old SVGA monitor that still works today. The picture is still crisp and the colours are still vibrant. I’ve had countless flat panel monitors and tv’s over the years that never survive the 10 year mark. Shows you how quality has dipped due to mass manufacturing of consumer goods.
Thankfully I won't need the CRT shader. I can just use my Iiyama Vision Master Pro 455. :P
I hope there are better fullscreen options now.
😊
I recycled one 5 years ago, stupid me! :)
@@stephanemignot100 You're not getting that back, that's for sure! XD
I'll have to give this a try. I usually hook up my CRT for dos gaming, but often feel like it isn't worth the hassle.
Actually there are quite a few old DOS games that used GLIDE. It was "the" standard for 3D at the beginning. Like Descent, Carmageddon, Blood, and more. I'm sure someone's got a list lying around. Remember even when Windows 95 launched there still wasn't any such thing as DirectX, so GLIDE stuck around for a bit even after that and some native Windows titles also used it exclusively (though that's less germane to a discussion about DOSBox.....except I think I've heard of people trying to get Windows 95 running under DOSBox which would be freaking awesome!)
There is a list somewhere on Vogons forums of all Glide-supported games (both for DOS and Windows). It's quite impressive. But for me, as the owner of 3dfx Voodoo 1 and 3dfx Voodoo 2 cards the "ultimate" Glide game was always the first Unreal. Even some years after it's release 3dfx graphics card was the best way you could play it. And it looked freaking great on 3dfx with all the effects that were supposed to be there (unlike DirectX and OpenGL renderers that were buggy and lacked many for years and just didn't look as good and vibrant on other - non-3dfx - cards). Personally, I still think the Glide version looks better on 3dfx Voodoo 2 than even the same game with all the modern mods on DX11.
Ah yes I forgot about Descent being DOS. I just remembered Tomb Raider and then also having Windows 95 for games such as Wing Commander Prophecy, G-Police, Moto Racer and many more...
Check out the DOS port of Turrican II back to the Amiga.
Great video
Can't wait for it to be release.
Hi Phil. Could you please take macro photo of crt mode differences for the next vidéo? Thank you.
I'm planning a video along the line of Real CRT vs CRT shader but will be another month at least. I plan on using a smaller LCD monitor that is of similar size as a 15" LCD monitor.
About dosbox-x i found that by using it in Linux i can pass on to it easily the midi synth from my sb audigy rx, this way i have this very nice early 2000s hardware synth combined with using a modern pc for playing dos games
DOSBox-X does sort of PCI passthrough?
@@KaziQTR nope, it can use midi devices with a relatively straight forward gui settings and linux is very good at enabling the usage of old pci cards and midi devices, the audigy rx is also a pcie card featuring the chip from the audigy 4 series which in turn is a revision of the ones used in the audigy 1 and 2/2zs series which is based on the sb live architecture, so basically you are using essentially an improved version of the sb live midi synth as a midi device in linux that you can then pass to dosbox enabling you to have a very similar midi experience as the live series under windows 9x and dos, only thing to note here is that in linux you need to load the sound font into the card's dma memory by first running a program called asfxload into the terminal, nothing fancy as far as terminal commands go tbh
@@piecaruso97 I have a bunch of Sound Blasters laying around. I’ve used them on Linux before (my main OS). I’m using a USB sound card now so I took it out. I’ve never had issues with the emulated MIDI. I want to check this out later. Thanks.
Just, tried it out myself and it works great, even though I didn't compare it to my CRT yet. Also didn't try 3Dfx yet, how it compares to other SVNs.
Would be nice if Staging would offer stuff like a menu bar and save states, just like DOSBox Daum had already many years ago.
Bonus video! 🎉
😍
Btw., there's also DOSBox-X / ECE / SVN Daum, Boxerapp on Mac and some more apps.
And the community profits from all those ideas, being backported to other DOSBox forks sooner or later.
Like WINE - CrossOver - ReactOS - Steam Beta all profit from each other.
Or like DXVk doubles FPS for old games.
The last 5-10 years did bring more advantages into emulation world then never before.
When you look at how much Lakka, RetroArch, RetroPie, RecalBox, RecalBox Remix aka Batocera, RetroBat, Dig, Lemuroid changed over the last years.
They had like 70 emulators some years ago, now it's like 120+ and raising, including multiple cores per emulated machine even (like 3+ different DOSBox versions), runahead for controllers, Floppy/HDD sound emulation, new CRT shaders, bezels to use the black borders of pixel perfect integer scaling, scraped video previews.
What we retro people need is actually a monitor/display/screen driver/program that is totally independent of whatever emulator program is making use of it regardless if it is DOSBox, VICE, UAE, or whatever. E.g. a program that just emulates one or more CRT's depending on what program connects to it. That way a user could have their size, scaling and colors set up exactly like they want all the time without having to fiddle with different setups for ScummVM , VICE, UAE, DOSBox, and you name it!
Probably should have lead with ... "What is DOSBox Staging". For those of us not familiar with that particular DOSBox fork.
seems software become more stronger, perhaps better than having multiple retro pc's
I think for me it's playing with the parts that is what drives me. But if you "just" want to play games, yea DOSBox is awesome especially with modern conveniences like nice joysticks and whatnot.
I can only imagine Need for Speed SE on my native 480p Plasma TV 🤤
Nice review, can you recommend a good front end support DOSBox Staging ?
Hey! Great news, someone's going to start delving into older AGP style cards to do repairs! Northwest Repair, if you need one fixed.
I honestly don't remember ever seeing scanlines on my pc monitor. I used crt monitors till like 2008 I think.
I don´t get it either. I never stopped using a CRT to this day, these scanlines thing is more of a CRT TV than a CRT monitor.
It's not so much scanlines as it is slight fuzziness or bloom. CRTs weren't as sharp as modern displays. There were a fair number of visual effects that took advantage of dithering, too, which some shaders do a great job of reproducing.
Phil, what is the model of your monitor? looks really nice. Thank you, really like your channel.
Nice video! is it possible to get a fullscreen image witouth the black borders on top and bottom?
Putting "integer_scaling = off" inside the config solved the Problem
I did a test some days ago about the dosbox-x as well and it was working flawlessly, you should make a video on those someday as well. It is even possible to install Windows 95 and 98..
DOSBox-X also supports Japanese DOS/V and PC-98. I'll need to re-check it for that, because Neko Project II is a bit complicated.
When thinking about games like 4D Sports Drivin' for PC-98 or FM Towns, Cobra Mission or Rusty...those are different on Japanese machines.
DOSBox-ECE also is interesting.
Or DOSBox SVN Daum with easy config using mouse/menus.
I mostly only miss an integration of easy CD mounting and shelf GUI for your games like D-Fend Reloaded or Boxerapp for Mac has.
That's a very nice new option having adaptive resolution CRT shaders.
LHX, Epic Pinball...man I love the old games so much.
Which reminds me there's a new emulator for C64 and Amiga called Denise, which has the most complex CRT and Floppy sound emulation I ever saw.
It would be nice if you could test it. Bruce Lee 1-2 (the new game is even better), Saboteur 1-2, Uridium, Trailblazer on C64; Gods, Wings of Fury, Gobliiins III on Amiga...there's so much fun.
Which reminds me that I saw different colors playing Indy 4 in ScummVM using the Amiga version vs. the DOS version.
I like to discover different stuff just because we can. Indy 3 FM Towns also is interesting having CD music.
Or Hard Drivin' on Arcade/MAME, 4D Sports Drivin' on FM Towns / PC 98.
Hey great games you mentioned! I did have a C64 but found the games just so hard! It was more an exercise of frustration 😂
@@philscomputerlab yeah that's sadly true for like 95 % of all C64 games.
But we loved the hand full of games we had, re-tried even when failing 100 times.
Different times for sure.
At least Bruce Lee 1+2 aren't thaaaat hard.
You actually can enjoy those, getting better and better. I just hated the mine fields or what that moving trap things were supposed to be.
Back then we also optionally used the green Samo with 2nd joystick (instead of having him as hard 2nd CPU opponent) to help Bruce Lee fight the Ninja, so the opponent was no real deal anymore, but only the obstacles.
When you made it through the last level screen facing the magician, the game just repeats and only gets harder each re-play, until you reboot the game ofc.
Those emus integrate netplay nowadays, btw.
Nowadays with save states or even easier with on the fly rewind option it's way easier.
Just rewind some secs when you loose a life, lol.
And even back then. I had MagicCopy / BetaDisk hardware on a ZX Spectrum, where I could save anything onto Floppy 1 pressing a button, up to 13 times I think it was, then the 800 KB Floppy was full.
You could load those snapshots at any time from the GEM like GUI called "Vision" and also copy those to other floppies.
If not, the oldest snapshot on the floppy would be overwritten with the newest one. So you basically could just revert to old save states. I read for C64 such things also exist.
It's a bit like suspend to disk aka hibernation mode and for the delection part of oldest file like Apple time machine "backup".
Imagine you would be able to save, copy and even better read a whole hiberfil.sys to just reload a game savestate.
But the ZX Spectrum didn't have BIOS, only a fast booting minimal OS and fast booting floppies next to slow cassettes ofc.
While Cauldron 1+2, Uridium, Trailblazer, Impossible Mission, Saboteur 1-2, Mephisto and I think all other games I had were super hard.
But back then, when you didn't have anything else but to play outside, you enjoyed even re-trying to play a hand full of level screens.
Kids playing on 8+ core CPUs with photo-realistic and mostly very easy games can't imagine nowadays how we suffered and loved the old hard games at the same time, haha.
I am glad to see native Glide Support in a version of DoxBox because very few versions had it out of the box as it is without the need of setting it up to get it to work and getting Glide Support to work under DosBox was a huge pain and I never bothered with it.
might be down to the VR Headset i have (Quest 2) but theres a pretty decent CRT shader in use in EmuVR
If it gets to play 8088 MPH with no issues, I'm down with it.
What if we use a actual crt monitor? What should be the crt settings of Dosbox in this case?
I'm not sure never attempted this!
I wish WinUAE or fsuae could also emulate the Amiga CRT look, if it's not possible already.
Yes it can!
You can but it's fiddly. You have to mess with settings and sliders until it looks right.
I have zero luck with setting up DOSBOX flatpaks on Linux. Not only can I not find the directory it's installed in to search for a config file, but I can't for the life of me work out how Linux directories translate to MS-DOS directories for mounting (both C drive and D drive). Every time I try, I end up giving up and just sticking with RetroArch. Keep in mind this is only an issue for me when using Linux and not Windows.
Great improvements and very informative video. I was just wondering however what about 70hz content like most VGA titles back in the DOS days ran at. Any support for that yet, maybe through adaptive sync?
Yes variable refresh rate!
@@philscomputerlab nice
Author here. Variable refresh rate monitors are fully supported. All DOS resolutions are presented at their exact authentic rates on such monitors. Then there are lots of options to dial in how to present frames on fixed rate monitors, but this is power user territory. Check out the config setting descriptions for details.
Everytime I look to DL DBS I find a remake of the game that will run on my modern machine. There are so many. I just Got IT Came From the Desert's remake on Steam, and the FFVIII remake is also on steam. For one I would usually run an Amiga emulator and for the other, DosBox, but now both are remade.
It runs on my steam deck!
How can I stretch the image to a 2560x1440 without borders? So that the whole monitor is filled up?
@@SithNazgul You want to avoid that, as this isn't how these old games are displayed...
Love these adaptive shaders. Can they be mixed with the 3Dfx emulation or that's still a no-go?
Yup it was activated in these captures!
Bonus!
I can't type / : and the lot in it. Am I doing something wrong?
I like this version of Dosbox, I want to migrate to it. Is the CRT shader already available or is it on the unstable versions only?
Yes younger it from the daily builds.
It would be nice if the OG DosBox got an update... It's been what 3 or 4 years now?
Much more than that. Dosbox 0.74 was released in 2010. There were several bug fixes updates since then, but overall they didn't change much in terms of features, support or any significant changes. Tbh the OG Dosbox feels like abandonware rn.
They may have given up. The newer branches have really improved dosbox.
@@kosmosyche There's a DOSBox 0.74-2 and 0.74-3 you know... Those versions did improve the performance of DOS Games immensely.
Those versions finally run The Settlers II from 1996 very well. No popping sounds, no high pitch noises and no that chugging performance when you move around the map.
@@Super123456789Kuba I know. I've been using DosBox since around 2008. In my experience, nothing really changed much in terms of performance since 0.74, but I might be wrong or didn't look at the right games.
Hi, thx for video! Just want to ask, what do you thing is better PCem or new DOSBox with Voodoo 1 support for early games, does it supports windows 95 and glide? Again thx for video 🙂
I haven't tried DOS with these emulators yet!
Dosbox Staging is getting better. However the problem of running it on a LCD is the pixel response time, input latency and motion clarity will never come close to a real CRT. In short it might look the same but it will never feel the same.
What implications this would eventually have on retro hw market though
A positive! It will get more people excited and some will want to get the real thing. What are your thoughts?
@@philscomputerlab I agree. Channels such as yours raise awareness which leads to people understanding value of their items and therefore more hardware comes in circulation instead of getting scrapped/wasted. While some individuals likely want to grab stuff for next to free from stock previously untapped into I personally don’t find that kind of ventures a fair market.
To more convincingly emulate a CRT it's going to take a lot more than a 4K monitor. I don't know exactly what kinds of resolutions will be needed, but each individual LED is going to have to get a lot smaller and a lot more densely packed together before a convincing emulation is possible.
Even with this new emulation, it still doesn't do it for me and I just do not like it. The scanlines are still too noticeable. On a true CRT monitor you don't notice the scanlines unless you are specifically looking for them and move a little closer to the screen. At least on VGA. In EGA, they are more noticeable generally. It also tends to darken the display too much on LED screens. LED screens push the contrast ratios as high as they can to create the "truest blacks" which doesn't work exactly on a CRT. The color bleed of a CRT monitor means that scanlines were never pure black and that's why you could hardly notice them if you were sitting a normal distance from the screen.
The emulation is getting better, but it's still in sort of an "uncanny valley" effect for me. It's close, but not close enough and it looks too strange and distracting. But the day will come when it will be nearly impossible to tell the difference between a properly rendered image on an LED monitor and a real CRT. I'm glad there is such effort being put into this.
Can it also simulate the flickering of CRT screens? That's also part of the experience.
And what about SCUMMvm?
Scanlines look uneven in the video, on a 1080p screen
Yea it's captured at 4k.
scan lines aren't supposed to look like this (3:58)
Tell us more.
@@philscomputerlab I don't know any CRT monitor displaying scan lines like this. It looks like a badly configured filter. You should get something more "homogeneous", not horizontal clear lines packed like that. not in 240p, nor 480p.
But you know CRT VGA monitors very well, did you see one with this kind of output ?
Hmm seems like how the video is rendered on my pc. I don't get those artifact when playing it Fullscreen or on my phone...
i hate crt shaders, they mess mess my eyes but this looks great
do you know if there will be a new update of dosbox pure?
nice
Where is AWE32 Support??
Why? General MIDI and MT-32 is so much better.
@@philscomputerlab unfortunatelly not so much better (or my knowledge is not enough for it) i used VirtualMIDISynth with general midi but Awe32 is not only for midis for example but some games like Croc also upload custom soundfonts to the AWE memory for background noises but they don't do that to VirtualMidiSynth ...
@@philscomputerlab Well some games did utilize custom soundfonts via their AWE32 mode for music/sound effects playback through the card's EMU8000 synth. Not very many of them mind you (and even fewer for DOS), but they definitely existed. Bullfrog-developed games were pretty big on it at the time.
That said, if 86Box is anything to go by, the current state of AWE 32/64 emulation is pretty awful sounding.
3DFX Voodoo would be awesome when you could run Windows 95/98 on it to be honest. You would benefit much more with that. Running games like NFS II, International Rally Championship and such. (I'm aware of PCem and 86Box obviously, but every program differs with their certain set of challenges. So it could be nice to run those OS'es on DOSBox Staging as well.)
Sadly I was a bit too young to remember the CRT look of DOS Games (By that I mean the details of it) so perhaps once I will get my hands on CRT Monitor at some point to check how it is/was It could change my mind of using those CRT Filters in DOSBox Staging. Right now I have no opinion on it.
There's a funny story - I used OpenGLB to run games better than on DDraw, since the latter's performance a bit... Meh, felt like using DDraw was just a struggle.
dosbox pure allows you to do that
Currently, on linux, stock Dosbox is no match for Dosbox-X
Phil, do you ever worry that if DOSBox gets SO good at emulation (which it seems do be getting better and better at doing) that it will make all the great work and hard work you put into retro hardware content become less important or redundant? Especially as DOS hardware gets more and more expensive with time and locks more people out of doing it with the real hardware.
Nah, two different groups one is the retro dos gamer and the other is the retro hardware gamer. The retro dos gamer may not be want actual hardware but still enjoy videos on the hardware, maybe more so! Just like people enjoy classic car videos but dont own them.
I see the opposite. The more people get a taste through emulation the more they want the real thing.
The point of emulation is preserving this old games the hardware will eventually be extinct.
Thanks, interesting points all round there.
Well, the real worry is that one day all existing retro hardware will stop functioning. At that point, only emulation will be available. So we need to perfect it *before* that day comes, otherwise all our references will be gone.
I love the features but unfortunately the games don't run as smooth as they used to in regular DosBox.
DOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am razor sharp pixel myself.
The lack of a GUI on DOSBox Staging is a really turn off for me. I will keep using DOSBox-X
Psssstttt... It's coming 😎Just be patient.
You all realize the irony in this, right? Back when DOS was a current operating system and everyone was using CRT monitors, everyone wanted to sharpen the image. Even on systems like the C64 and Amiga, we tried every trick in the book to get a better picture. "Use this type of cable! Attach a resistor between these two pins! Wrap foil around the cable!" Of course none of it worked.
Back then we would have jumped for joy at having a razor-sharp image. Now we have razor sharp images and everyone wants all the imperfections of CRT monitors back.
Define "better". More, bigger, louder is not always "better". We wanted all that, we got it, then we realised "razor sharp" is not desirable for low-res game content. Sure, makes text more readable, but that's about it. I wouldn't want to use my 90s small TV with my C64 for any "productivity" work, but for _games_ C64 over composite into the small TV beats any flatscreen and square pixels in C64 emulators.
Bit like how everybody was crazy about "digital audio" in the 80s. Then came the big disappointment with the sterile, cold sounding DDD CDs. Then after a while people learned how to integrate the best of the analog and the digital world.
Shaders are a bit like that. We emulate the desirable characteristics in the digital realm; just like all those "analog emulation" audio plugins and DSP processes. But we can do so in a controlled manner, only taking what's desirable, and leaving out what no one wants (geometry distortion, flicker, hum, etc...)
@@johnnovak1979 Personally, I hated the way the colors bled over horizontally on a CRT, on systems like the C64 or the Atari 2600. I was always trying to find ways to minimize, or even eliminate that.
@@lurkerrekrul Tastes differ; I'm looking to recreate the authentic experience. Luckily for you, the sharp pixels option is the easiest to recreate in emulation.
@@johnnovak1979 You're really not though. For the most part, DOSBox has all the drivers and everything you need built in so that you don't have to deal with drivers, memory managers, and the like. For a truly authentic experience, you need to drop DOSBox and go with something like PCem, where you need to install MS-DOS and all the drivers from scratch, just like on a real machine.
I wouldn't want to do that though. I've never even attempted to setup PCem. Frankly, I'd glad I skipped over DOS and all the problems it entailed. I had an Amiga back then and basically the only two compatibility issues I had to worry about were PAL/NTSC video, and which version of the OS a game needed, both of which were easy to switch.
Might have been wise to mention that the video needs to be watched on a 4k screen as well, otherwise...it will not really convey what you saw on your screen. ^^
In the past I also hated artificial scanlines and I kinda still do on 1080p, because they are always overpronounced, which might have been that way on TVs, but not on proper monitors. But after I set up my retro PC here with my CRT and then switching back and forth, I would also say, that without these scanlines its missing something.
The core issue as a content creator is - like for you in this video, even though its a different case - how to "convey" the experience. Yes, an artificial scanline filter is one thing. But will not work properly on 1080p. So no matter what you do, if the viewer of the video either doesnt check the 4k version, or doesnt have a 4k screen it will not work. And until people all have 4k screens...well...
That Tomb Raider footage was kinda horrific though, the performance in regards to sound stuttering was painful to listen to. ^^
I did mention best watched on 4k TV. Funny, most are actually watching in phones that are 1440p at least...
@@philscomputerlab Ah, at 4:07, yeah, when I watched it the first time I felt like this was meant for using dosbox. I dont think that for Phone screens it would be a big issue anyways, because of the small screens no matter the resolution (my phone only has 1080p btw). Unfortunately no stats on resolution on youtube analytics. But on my two main channels the percentage of phone users for viewing hours (not clicks) is 18.3% and 25.8%, vs 50%+ on both channels watching on PC and 16.3% / 13.7% watching on TV.
What a weird looking retro PC.
It's useless to play adventure games in DOS emulators, ScummVM does a much better job.
Best wishes.
How so?
@@philscomputerlab
It fixes almost all the bugs (timer bugs, game bugs)
You don't have to type DOS commands.
It has everything Dosbox has and more.
It is a much easier experience overall.
Best wishes.
@@ajax700 Time bugs happen on machines that run too fast. It also happens in real machine. Bugs have patches and ScummVM adds another layer of other potential issues. It also doesn't have CRT shaders like DOSbox staging and the scope of games is very very limited.
@@philscomputerlab ScummVM fixed most timing bugs for most games, while on Dosbox emulators you have to fine tune Cycles, install patches if there are any, etc.
I wouldn't call the scope of ScummVM "very limited" haha.
It supports a very big list of adventure games.
Best wishes.
There is something screwy with this video. I'm seeing wide vertical banding,thought it was a shader artifact but then you cut to camera and it's there too.
why do they add silly features like more shaders instead of making Dosbox easier to use?
Dosbox staging really improved that front. There's not much left to do beside using one of the many frontends I guess ?
Author here. Silly to you, essential to me 😄 But usability enhancements will be coming too. Remember, we are volunteers: we do what's fun for _us_ and what we consider important in our spare time 😄