I am writing this post according to the setup I have mounted at home recently. I have and Eizo-Nanao 21'' vertical sit pc crt monitor connected directly to a dreamcast with vga cable
The thing that have surprised me most of this setup is that I can see scanlines in the 480p mode, they look sweet and nice. I don't know if the dreamcast have this ability to show in vga or it's the monitor that in it's lowest resolution make it appear.. But I am really happy about this retro style in 480p games
Here you can see some Shikigami no shiro II pics about it
One time, I tried running a SP1 mobo setup with Viper Phase 1 U.S.A. cart on a Supergun setup with an XRGB-2 piped through my cousin's 19" PC SVGA monitor and I was still able to see scan lines present. Yep, it's the PC monitor alrighty. ^_~
I didn't have any other vga crt monitor to check if it was dreamcast output or the pc monitor... and certainly I really love the look of dreamcast games in that monitor.... LCD and Plasma monitors will have to wait even more for his retirement
Hope that the new X360 shmups look the same way in 640x480
jandrogo wrote:Hope that the new X360 shmups look the same way in 640x480
As above, it's to do with how a CRT works, not the console. If you play the games at 480p on a CRT monitor, you will get scanlines.
Of course, if the game is sprite based, and the devs/publishers have pre-upscaled the sprites, then they'll look muddy and awful. But regardless, the scanlines will still be there.
If you don't like medium- or hi-res scanlines, a CRT gives you the option to change the shape of the electron spot. Get knowledgable and comfortable about high voltage, and it's easy. Leave analog convergence alone, though.
Mikey wrote:480i games on Dreamcast have visible scanlines on a CRT. They're not as visible or as steady as the ones you get in the 240p games, but they're there.
Of course they're there. They're just alternated every single frame, so it makes them hard to see.
RegalSin wrote:New PowerPuff Girls. They all have evil pornstart eyelashes.
A CRT monitor works by sweeping an electron beam across the screen which is modulated by the video signal. The video is maded up of a fixed number of lines which are called scanlines. A scanline is a line of active video. Now, if the monitor's CRT has good focus and a high dot pitch (the space between the RGB phosphor) relative to the number of lines in the video, you'll clearly see gaps between these lines.
Low res video will always have visible gaps but high quality monitors will also show gaps at video resolutions less than the maximum they are capable of.
