Stella vs. Z26: Flickering

[+atari2600land]

Which Atari 2600 emulator is more realistic in the matter of flickering?

[supercat]

Which Atari 2600 emulator is more realistic in the matter of flickering?

 

Most computer monitors don't behave like old-fashioned televisions. Flicker really must be judged on real hardware. There is no alternative.

[SeaGtGruff]

Which Atari 2600 emulator is more realistic in the matter of flickering?

You can get excellent flickering from both emulators, but it depends on their settings. The secret is to make them sync the display with the frame rate of your monitor.

 

In Stella, go to the video settings, select OpenGL as the renderer (if your graphics card is compatible with OpenGL), and mark the GL VSync box. Also, be sure to disable the phosphor effect if it's on. That should give you excellent flickering.

 

In z26, you need to include the -r switch in the command line, which will make z26 sync the display with the monitor's rate. And you need to disable the phosphor effect. That should give you the same flickering as with Stella.

 

However, what supercat said is important-- most computer monitors won't give you the same results as traditional TVs with respect to flickering. This is due to a number of factors, but I guess they boil down to the difference in the palettes between an emulator and a real Atari, and the differences in the display devices themselves.

 

In fact, you can get different flickering results from one TV to another, depending on the TV's display type and capabilities-- as well as from one computer monitor to another. For example, my 1080p LCD HD-TV doesn't display flickering "properly," because it essentially displays two frames at the same time, as if they were two interlaced fields, which causes the flickered colors to be displayed as thin alternating lines, like the famous "Venetian blinds" technique used in some Atari games.

 

Michael

Edited November 21, 2008 by SeaGtGruff