NESRGB New Firmware Palette Updates:

[tjstogy]

Yes a reference RGB monitor would seem to be necessary for this... also, athiestgod- perhaps sending your nesyuv adapter to fbx would also help in obtaining a more accurate crt/composite palette. Also, an unmodded NES might also be needed for the testing, as the standard composite out might be different than the composite out from tim's RGB board....

[ApolloBoy]

Also, an unmodded NES might also be needed for the testing, as the standard composite out might be different than the composite out from tim's RGB board....

It's quite different actually, composite video on the NESRGB is encoded from RGB generated by the board while composite video on a stock system is generated straight from the PPU and amplified.

[FBX]

Also, an unmodded NES might also be needed for the testing, as the standard composite out might be different than the composite out from tim's RGB board....

It's quite different actually, composite video on the NESRGB is encoded from RGB generated by the board while composite video on a stock system is generated straight from the PPU and amplified.

I actually have three NES consoles: Modded front-loader, unmodded front-loader, and an umodded top-loader.

But I was thinking that indeed what I really need is some sort of way to send RGB signals downscaled to 240p composite. The idea is to be able to send a color value and compare how it looks on-the-fly to a color entry from an unmodded NES.

Edit: Did some initial testing on the CRT, and yeah WOW, certain colors are handled entirely different on a CRT, especially the SMB sky. It's so sensitive to saturation levels on a CRT that, even at only 35%, the sky becomes a vibrant neon blue color. However, other swatches appear identical to the direct-capture. So I'm going to make the initial entries based on full-screen side-by-side, and then cross-reference with in-game content to make sure the brightness levels are kosher.

[austin532]

So to make things even more complicated it seems the first batch of NES systems had a slightly different palette. Whether it was the actual Ricoh chip doing it or something else that they fixed is unknown but since those are far and few between I wouldn't worry about it.

[paulb_nl]

So to make things even more complicated it seems the first batch of NES systems had a slightly different palette. Whether it was the actual Ricoh chip doing it or something else that they fixed is unknown but since those are far and few between I wouldn't worry about it.

I have one of the first batch NES systems and I always found the colors very washed out compared to my top loader. Recently I replaced the caps in the rf box but that didn't fix it. Then I did a PPU pin 21 video amp mod and that fixed the colors.

So its not a different palette but there is something wrong with the rf box in the early systems.

[FBX]

Spent a couple hours this morning slowly building the "Mimic CRT" palette. This one is going to take a lot of work to fine-tune. One thing I noticed concerning the SMB sky swatch of blue colors, is the brighter ones emit a color that appears to be outside the range of digital displays. That 'neon blue' for example, glows with a vividness that no digital scale can seem to reach. Obviously you have to put the blue value at a full 255, but then when you try to raise the red and green, it washes the blue to a dull-looking bright blue instead of intensifying the blue color as it gets brighter. One great CRT example is the first stage of Ninja Gaiden. If you notice on CRTs the highlight color on the grey background graphics is actually the brightest 'neon blue' from the SMB swatch. You can even see the blue glow from that highlight color. This is downright impossible to reproduce on a digital display. If you try to mimic the brightness with say 225-225-255, it just looks light grey with no blue neon glow to it. Try it out for yourselves to see what I mean.

[blizzz]

Try it out for yourselves to see what I mean.

I ran into the same issue when I tried to photoshop that screenshot to look like what my CRT shows. It was impossible to find a color that truly matches within the sRGB spectrum of my monitor.

[FBX]

Try it out for yourselves to see what I mean.

I ran into the same issue when I tried to photoshop that screenshot to look like what my CRT shows. It was impossible to find a color that truly matches within the sRGB spectrum of my monitor.

Indeed. I found my photography was running into the same issue (because it converts to digital RGB as well). Thankfully not too many of the NES colors exhibit this behavior, but those blue entries are a pain to try and approximate. What they need to do is come out with an LED display that somehow recreates phosphor glow.

My CRT is also exhibiting the brilliant gold colors for the olive swatch. Here's the RGB approximation progress in Contra:

[tjstogy]

Looking good FBX. Can you post pictures of unmodded composite on crt vs your wip on crt? (Instead of capture pictures)

[Elrinth]

are you hex editing these into the firmware or do you request viletim to recreate the firmware everytime you wanna test?
The mimic crt looks great! very vibrant colors.

[FBX]

are you hex editing these into the firmware or do you request viletim to recreate the firmware everytime you wanna test?
The mimic crt looks great! very vibrant colors.

Neither. I've got an unmodded NTSC NES hooked up in composite to a 13-inch CRT monitor, which is situated right next to my PC's monitor. My left eye sees the CRT image while my right eye sees the LCD image, and I adjust the hue and saturation of the LCD image until it looks the same approximate color. Then I run several game tests to make sure the overall color presentation is as close as it can get. This is where I ran into the SM sky swatch issue. Digital RGB cannot reproduce those particular colors the way a CRT shows them (i.e. Neon bright blue).

[FBX]

Update:

I started using a magnifying glass on the CRT screen to see how each of the elements react to change in color. It appears that although the red is sent a slightly higher signal than green when the SMB sky color is output from the NES, the actual reaction with the phosphor on the screen shows green outshining the red. So in reality, CRTs are showing a blueish cyan with some red increasing the overall brightness. See the new approximation of this effect below compared to direct capture:



Granted, it still doesn't capture the brilliant phosphor glow, but at least it now looks much closer to CRT behavior.

[blizzz]

Looks good. I bet this could become a popular palette. You'll just have to rethink your palette names, because this palette will probably feel more nostalgic to many users than the Nostalgia palette.

[FBX]

Looks good. I bet this could become a popular palette. You'll just have to rethink your palette names, because this palette will probably feel more nostalgic to many users than the Nostalgia palette.

True. I'd end up having to change Nostalgia to probably "Composite Capture" and then rename this one to "CRT Nostalgia".

At any rate, I was talking to Ste about these findings, and he sent me a neat PDF on video color. There's a page where the spectral density of a Sony Trinitron was measured for each of the RGB primaries. The blue and green spectral densities were a nice rolling hilltop with wide wavelength coverage, meanwhile the red graph was very narrow and spiky. This seems to fall perfectly in line as to why the SMB sky looks more blue than purple. The red light is simply too narrow to compete with the wide birth of the green phosphors.

[NJRoadfan]

I'm not surprised that some CRT colors can't be replicated. The NTSC color space requires a high gamut LCD panel to replicate but most panels are too cheap for any of that . Its likely those blue values aren't in the sRGB color space used by most PC monitors and software. I have a high gamut "pro" IPS monitor here, the colors on it are definitely brain searingly saturated on video sources unless sRGB emulation is turned on (The OS manages this with ICC profiles).

[nakedarthur]

Nice work, it's looking good!

[tjstogy]

But FBX are you putting it back into the crt in RGB to see how it compares to an unmodded NES in composite? You really would need two crts to do this correctly.... not just adjusting your LCD computer colors to look like that of a crt. They are two different animals. Someone needs to lend FBX two pvms.

[FBX]

But FBX are you putting it back into the crt in RGB to see how it compares to an unmodded NES in composite? You really would need two crts to do this correctly.... not just adjusting your LCD computer colors to look like that of a crt. They are two different animals. Someone needs to lend FBX two pvms.

I don't need more monitors, what I'd really need is a way to be able to program NESRGB on-the-fly so I could do feedback tests. Tim is very protective of his firmware source though, which is understandable.

[tjstogy]

Well in lieu of that.... since it's not going to happen....you may need 2 crts to do this the right way. Know what I'm sayin..?

[nakedarthur]

Well in lieu of that.... since it's not going to happen....you may need 2 crts to do this the right way. Know what I'm sayin..?

Every CRT is going to show it a little differently, there's no point trying to compare. Even 2 of the same model will look different due to hours used, calibration, etc.

[tjstogy]

Comparing an LCD to a crt would be better?

Well in lieu of that.... since it's not going to happen....you may need 2 crts to do this the right way. Know what I'm sayin..?

Every CRT is going to show it a little differently, there's no point trying to compare. Even 2 of the same model will look different due to hours used, calibration, etc.

[nakedarthur]

Comparing an LCD to a crt would be better?

Well in lieu of that.... since it's not going to happen....you may need 2 crts to do this the right way. Know what I'm sayin..?

Every CRT is going to show it a little differently, there's no point trying to compare. Even 2 of the same model will look different due to hours used, calibration, etc.

Which palette are you talking about? The one he's working on now is for duplicating CRT colors on an LCD.

[austin532]

Direct capture is for CRT users who want a 1:1 experience and Mimic CRT aka New Nostalgia is for LCD users but mimics the CRT colors coming off the TV using the Direct Capture palette as close as possible. The only problem with this and others have mentioned this as well is that every CRT is different so it may not look ideal to some people.

[tjstogy]

We've been talking about accurately playing RGB on a crt with composite colors. Not on a high def screen through a framemeister or whatever. At least I have been, the past couple pages.

[tjstogy]

And to reiterate, you can't tell me Nintendo was like hey fuck it whatever the colors are they are.... they obviously had colors in mind on a crt. Not an LCD. The question is, how can you get the intended CRT composite colors with tims RGB board, on a CRT. Maybe not "the" question, but my question.

People saying "you can't, because crts are all different" isn't a very good or productive answer. All lcds are different too. There was a baseline color palette made by Nintendo, for composite, for crts. The "direct capture" going through RGB yielded very different results in comparison on a CRT than in composite, as can be seen in pictures above.

So what does that mean? Capture cards aren't accurately picking up composite colors? Crts change the colors? Whatever the case- the RGB palettes so far don't look right on a crt. No NES RGB palette so far has had the same colors as composite on a crt.

There exists a monitor, which is of reference quality, and is discussed every day on these forums called a Sony pvm/BVM. Which, if you play an NES in composite should be pretty frickin' accurate. You can't tell me that these monitors are all that different. This would be the perfect monitor to obtain a baseline palette from. If your consumer tv outputs different colors than this, then so be it, but a Nintendo accurate composite color palette (for CRT use) can exist.

Basically what I envision in simple English: right now I play composite on my pvm. I'd like wave a wand and have it look identical in color, but in clean RGB.

[FBX]

And to reiterate, you can't tell me Nintendo was like hey fuck it whatever the colors are they are.... they obviously had colors in mind on a crt. Not an LCD. The question is, how can you get the intended CRT composite colors with tims RGB board, on a CRT. Maybe not "the" question, but my question.

The problem is this is impossible to figure out without the ability to program color values from a NESRGB modded console on-the-fly. Now I will say we already know what Nintendo themselves suggest should be 'accurate' colors with their NES Classic (which just so happens to be VERY similar to direct-capture results from original hardware). The problem is these color values behave quite differently on CRTs, and so direct-capture results don't really relate to the CRT experience. Since I have no way of testing CRT results on-the-fly with RGB NES signals, I'm left with trying to approximate CRT colors for modern digital display users.

[nakedarthur]

And to reiterate, you can't tell me Nintendo was like hey fuck it whatever the colors are they are.... they obviously had colors in mind on a crt. Not an LCD. The question is, how can you get the intended CRT composite colors with tims RGB board, on a CRT. Maybe not "the" question, but my question.

The problem is this is impossible to figure out without the ability to program color values from a NESRGB modded console on-the-fly. Now I will say we already know what Nintendo themselves suggest should be 'accurate' colors with their NES Classic (which just so happens to be VERY similar to direct-capture results from original hardware). The problem is these color values behave quite differently on CRTs, and so direct-capture results don't really relate to the CRT experience. Since I have no way of testing CRT results on-the-fly with RGB NES signals, I'm left with trying to approximate CRT colors for modern digital display users.

You can use CRT Emudriver and a compatible Radeon graphics card to output 15khz RGB to a CRT from your PC, so that's one way around it. I mentioned the other day I was playing Nestopia on my CRT with your Nostalgia palette (see my GroovyCube project for details)

[nakedarthur]

Btw, I will have my un-modded frontloader back on Sunday and will be able to compare with NESRGB w/Unsaturated 6 and RGB PC w/Nostalgia on both a consumer CRT (Toshiba 27A40) and Sony RGB Monitor (OEV 203 aka PVM-20M2U)

[FBX]

I've got the first CRT Nostalgia beta palette uploaded for testing:

http://www.firebrandx.com/downloads/CRT ... ta-01).zip

Let me know any game examples that look wrong and I'll cross-reference on my end.

[nakedarthur]

It's looking awesome so far! A lot of the colors are ringing very true for me (Mario sky, Double Dragon 2 street, etc). Two things worth mentioning, and both are just my opinion of course.

There's a little too much green in some of the browns and reds making it feel a little washed out.

Original / Brown and Red - Green



And the Mario underworld and Zelda Dungeon 1 blue could use some more green.

Original / Blue + Green


Like I said, just my opinion based off my memory and my CRTs.