Do You Use The CRT Filter On Emulators?

[Magmavision2000]

The only CRT filters I use are the ones on the NES/SNES Online, and Arcade Archives. All the other ones I tried just look like they put lines on the screen (which they technically do) and call it a day. 

[Keatah]

Depends on the emulator and my mood. Sometimes I want a real-CRT look. And other times I want a zero-filter raw-pixel look.

 

But most of the times I use something in-between. A little bit of blur and smoothing with good color saturation. Something that looks like the proverbial "SuperMonitor". Something we might have envisioned as the next level-up from VHS and RF way way back in the day.

 

And while it's cool to look at and reminisce over geometry distortion like curves and bezels and rounded corners, blooming and scanlines, I don't run with it as a normal mode of operation. I don't like bulging in my game images and I don't like bulging in fat women either.

 

In any situation I keep the effects and stuff turned down to a minimum subtle level. Like fine spice. A little flavoring here and there.

Edited August 1, 2020 by Keatah

[juansolo]

Always. Having grown up with CRT's, seeing the games without scanlines just looks wrong to me.

[ventrra]

I have problems with most CRT filters as they really don't look much like most of the TVs I grew up with. Instead of scan lines, several of them had a sort-of pincushion look to them (aperture-grille perhaps?).

[youxia]

I couldn't use an emulator without them. Some of them have very decent built-in CRT filters/shaders (my favourite: Retro Virtual Machine) but you can't beat Retroarch in this respect, so if I have to emulate I just use that.

[zzip]

I like having the scanlines at minimum, because without them everything looks more pixelated than I remember

 

But scanline/CRT emulation quality varies from emulator to emulator.  Vanilla Dosbox is horrible for scanlines.   I use Dosbox-X which handles them better.   Hatari (Atari ST emulator), scanlines are barely tolerable and harsh in fullscreen mode.   I'll use them, but sometimes I will have to switch them off.   

 

I think the wrong way to do scanlines is to erase every other line, but some emulators do that.   It's better to dim the line so it doesn't look so harsh.

 

Some emulators go beyond scanlines and will emulate the curvature of a CRT screen and color bleeding that is common.   Those are cool, but not always what I want

[negative1]

What filters. I have 3 CRT monitors, a 17 inch, a 19 inch, and 25 inch.

 

later

-1

Edited August 10, 2020 by negative1

[youxia]

On 8/7/2020 at 3:29 PM, zzip said:

But scanline/CRT emulation quality varies from emulator to emulator.  Vanilla Dosbox is horrible for scanlines.   I use Dosbox-X which handles them better.   Hatari (Atari ST emulator), scanlines are barely tolerable and harsh in fullscreen mode.   I'll use them, but sometimes I will have to switch them off.  

That's why I use Retroarch for shaders, even for Dosbox. Their collection is just the best out there, and you can tweak it too. Though it's worth remembering that DOS period PC VGA monitors (14-15") did not really have scanlines. Even on my 17" they are very subtle. It is fun to apply them though (and shadow masks), because bare VGA looks pretty bad...too sharp and blocky.

 

@negative1: I do have several monitors, and I'm picking my 6th Trinitron TV tomorrow (I know, oughta seek help) but sometimes I need to use emulators too.

[zzip]

2 hours ago, youxia said:

Though it's worth remembering that DOS period PC VGA monitors (14-15") did not really have scanlines

This is true, but games from that era that ran at 320x240 look very blocky on modern displays,  and this may be personal preference, but I find scanlines somehow make things feel less blocky, so that's why I like to have them at low resolutions like that.