Greatest screen filter ever

[Udderdude]

Yes, CRTs have a tendency to smooth out low res graphics and make them look much better than they actually would be if scaled to such a huge (arcade monitor) size.

[austere]

I've just drawn a bunch of horizontal lines across my monitor with a Sharpie. Seems to have worked pretty well.

Near leave home without this:

I´ve read a very interesting article in the german "Retro" magazine that talked about how for example the barrier in Yars Revenge on the Amiga looks very ugly without the CRT blur and glow - an effect that the game designer had taken advantage of.

Yeah most arcade games I'm interested in were designed with a CRT as a target. Naturally, if they were low-res and touched up or drawn at the pixel level, they would take advantage of the average CRT display properties to enhance appearance.

One thing I´ve never even thought about before is that in that the CRT makes the low resolution of these games look very different than on modern LCD/LED screens. In that Metal Slug screen it seems to me that this filter makes the graphics look more detailed than they actually are - probably because our brains tend to fill in the gaps.

I gave a hypothesis on why it looks better here:

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... 06#p630206

bi-linear filtering et al. is a low pass on an image, destroying the details, while the presence of scanlines is like a hetrodyne modulation, forcing the retina to look at more "edges". This forces more attention to the details and is perhaps why it is pleasing, arguments of "intended viewing conditions", aside.

[alastair jack]

We need bigger 4:3 LCDs for this, 21" isn't big enough.

[Sumez]

I've just drawn a bunch of horizontal lines across my monitor with a Sharpie. Seems to have worked pretty well.

This

Aside from playing SNES and PS2 games on my old shitty TV (hooked up via RCA to make it even messier) I don´t really have any sentimental feelings for the CRT look.

Christ! Why would anyone even do that?

[fagin]

Very impressive! That MS snap looks like a crt.

It looks like a CRT with CRAP convergence! Not sure I would want to emulate that! roflol

[Udderdude]

Very impressive! That MS snap looks like a crt. :|

It looks like a CRT with CRAP convergence! ;) Not sure I would want to emulate that! roflol

Nice job not reading the thread. You can change the convergence.

[Dave_K.]

Now we just need a feature to add Sega Bass Fishing phosphor burn and the CRT simulation will be complete!

[fagin]

Very impressive! That MS snap looks like a crt.

It looks like a CRT with CRAP convergence! Not sure I would want to emulate that! roflol

Nice job not reading the thread. You can change the convergence.

I'm fully aware you could "alter" the filter.... my jokey (obviously lost in translation) comment was in reply to Skykid saying it looked like a CRT.

[fagin]

Now we just need a feature to add Sega Bass Fishing phosphor burn and the CRT simulation will be complete!

ROFLOL

[Frederik]

Aside from playing SNES and PS2 games on my old shitty TV (hooked up via RCA to make it even messier) I don´t really have any sentimental feelings for the CRT look.

Christ! Why would anyone even do that?

Because I didn´t have a better solution at that time Psyvariar was basically unplayable.

[Pulsewidth]

Combine this with hardware black frame insertion on a 120Hz LCD (maybe I could hack a V3D241wm-LED to flicker the backlight in sync) and it seems we finally have a worthy replacement for CRTs (for horizontal games only, TN panel color error is very obvious in vertical orientation).

[BuckoA51]

My friends have started timing how long it takes me to start a game/movie while I tinker round with the various scalers and/or filter options in emulators. I suspect this will add to that time, but I'm looking forward to playing with it, Mame scanlines look terrible generally.

[austere]

This is now part of mainline MAME (windows only), and cools will be happy to know there's proper shadow mask support. ;)

[neorichieb1971]

Can a hardware iteration of this screen effect be made?

Perhaps get these guys and the SLG3000 guys together to make something God worthy? Perhaps an adapter that fits with the SLG3000?

[emphatic]

This is now part of mainline MAME (windows only), and cools will be happy to know there's proper shadow mask support.

Awesome! Thanks for the news!

[cools]

This is now part of mainline MAME (windows only), and cools will be happy to know there's proper shadow mask support.

o//

And I just bought an LCD cab... Might be fun to play about with.

[austere]

Can a hardware iteration of this screen effect be made?

That's a pretty good idea, it would require specialised hardware though and the output format is quite taxing. Would make an interesting project for a final year project, I might suggest it to a student.

And I just bought an LCD cab... Might be fun to play about with.

Yeah there's about 54 parameters in the filter now so it'll take quite a while to fiddle around with it. Would be interesting if people posted their settings on here.

[emphatic]

There's an .avi file link posted over at mameworld.info. And now here: http://icips.us/emulation/crt/CRTTest_encoded.avi

[spadgy]

Moved to hardware. Despite that lovely Progear shot in the OP, I think this is better suited in its new home...

[StarCreator]

Uhh, why is this better suited to Hardware? I'm not following the logic. Every other emulation-related discussion is in Shmups Chat.

[spadgy]

I admit I um-ed and er-ed before the move, so I can see where you're coming from, but beyond the subject of the example image in the OP, nothing was about shmups. Much of the discussion has been about CPUs, GPUs, scanlines, CRTs, cabs and so-on, and very little has been about shmups. That considered, I've moved it here.

You're right about other MAME posts, but many have been far more close to specific shmup discussion. Let's face it; MAME stuff overlaps the grey area between Hardware and Shmups Chat, so it's always going to be a touch contentious.

If you want to disagree with me and argue the case, do shoot me a PM, but let's not fill this thread with debate, and instead keep it on topic and have a nice discussion about the pretty awesome looking filter.

[emphatic]

I wonder if the filter can be added to avi-write somehow, or how were those games captured in the video clip I posted? It would be awesome to record your runs in MAME, then put them on YouTube like this.

[austere]

Moved to hardware. Despite that lovely Progear shot in the OP, I think this is better suited in its new home...

Yeah, good call. I wasn't really sure if it belong in hardware when I posted it (actually I was leaning for off-topic...) because it's software running the filter. I guess in a way software doesn't really exist so you do have a good point. Sorry about the trouble.

I wonder if the filter can be added to avi-write somehow

No can do I'm afraid, not the way aviwrite is written at the moment (though it could be changed). Would be pretty sweet but youtube limits your frame rate to ~30fps which would degrade the jitter effects. Besides, I'm not sure if the harddrive could keep up for a full run of a STG. For example, my crappy runs go to around 10 gigs uncompressed or so. If we multiply the resolution by 3x3, that's 90 gigs or so.

Moogly does like your idea though.

[gray117]

Can a hardware iteration of this screen effect be made?

That's a pretty good idea, it would require specialised hardware though and the output format is quite taxing. Would make an interesting project for a final year project, I might suggest it to a student.

That would be a really cool idea; would need power and be bigger than the compact slg... I'd presume that [hopefully?] unlike a shader this device would almost inevitably add delay though?

It's a bit of a shame that this hasn't become a de facto part of porting a low res game, and instead we're looking to fix it on the back end... However, I guess we really are in the minority if even some posters on shmups are confused as to why you'd want the crt look.

I'm really curious to see what extent, or if, the options are tweakable/scalable [as opposed to just on and off] with this shader implementation - presumably some options come cheaply and others more expensively as regards shader/hardware integration, and performance?

[austere]

At the moment it's all clumped into one fixed shader pipeline where the calculations are done even in the absence of an activated option. In the future though, you could have a partial compilation of shaders.

A hardware version will not necessarily add any (full frames of) latency if you leave out some things like the pin-cushioning.

Also, I think when people actually see what this filter looks like under arbitrary scaling, they'll understand why people are trying to emulate the appearance of a CRT.

[Barrakketh]

Besides, I'm not sure if the harddrive could keep up for a full run of a STG. For example, my crappy runs go to around 10 gigs uncompressed or so. If we multiply the resolution by 3x3, that's 90 gigs or so.

Heh, I actually ran out of space on one of my partitions when recording PROMETHEUS' DOJ 2-5 run. That came out to approx 195 GB. Recording it with Fraps (RGB mode) cut it down to 97 GB, IIRC.

It kinda makes me want to try adding libav* support to MAME for personal use. FFV1 looks like a good choice for a lossless video codec.

[emphatic]

I wonder if the filter can be added to avi-write somehow

No can do I'm afraid, not the way aviwrite is written at the moment (though it could be changed). Would be pretty sweet but youtube limits your frame rate to ~30fps which would degrade the jitter effects. Besides, I'm not sure if the harddrive could keep up for a full run of a STG. For example, my crappy runs go to around 10 gigs uncompressed or so. If we multiply the resolution by 3x3, that's 90 gigs or so.

Would it be possible to create a VirtualDub filter from this? That way, you can use it with ANY video source. and possibly create interlaced 30 fps videos. Or would that look worse than what YouTube's doing?

Moogly does like your idea though.

[StarCreator]

Would it be possible to create an AVISynth filter from this? That way, you can use it with ANY video source.

Fixed~ =p

[austere]

Moogly added more features, this screenshot is almost too close for comfort:

http://img855.imageshack.us/img855/6620/mm5yiq134.png

[lewisit]

sorry if these questions are already answered in this topic - but either my english is too bad or my technical understanding too weak (or both...)

1. i think that this is about a new software-based filter for mame which makes games on a lcd-screen look like on a crt - right?

2. where can i get this filter, where do i put it & how do i run it? it doesn't seem to work the way other filters do in mame (properties -> advanced -> select effect) - or does it?

i am really confused so pls excuse if these questions are totally stupid!