Scanlined look: Hardware vs Software

[fogueman]

Hello guys

I´ve been building a new emulation setup for myself, using native low resolution modes, groovyarcade and all that kind of stuff. Also with a good Crt, sony trinitron and all. Awesome quality and the real deal in terms of video output.

I also have had the Slg3k in the past, with another emulation setup I used on a Lcd screen. Also very good image quality if you disable bilinear filtering and take some time of configuration.

With the new emulation eye candy, the HLSL for mame and Crt shaders in other emulators like retroarch, what do you experts around here think that will provide the best quality for an EMULATION-ONLY setup? We´re not talking about upscaling, deinterlacing the original sources.

1.- Hardware solutions like Slg3k or Mini Slg

2.- Software configurations, like the Crt shaders or Hlsl.

[eightbitminiboss]

I'm not a regular user of scanlines, but I'm actually really impressed with software scanlines in CRT shaders.



From OpenEmu with SNES9x core.

[speedlolita]

I honestly don't see the appeal of scanlines in anything but their native form.

With a 240p game on my 1920x1200 display if I were to emulate I could scale 1 pixel to a 5x5 pixel grid and scale perfectly. There's no need to ruin the image with scanlines, as seen above.

RGB via my Trinitron though, cor.

[BuckoA51]

Without a doubt option 2, this can go way beyond what you can do with simple scanline generators. The only issue is configuring things, HLSL, Retoarch etc are pretty much at the cutting edge of emulation and you'll need some patience and a bit of technical know how (or the will to learn) to get things set up right.

[gray117]

Option 2 - let people tweak as much as possible to suit their personal taste; even if that's just 'off'...

... If I was selling people such games I'd give them options with a couple of presets and then a bunch of sliders or % scrollers in advanced options or something. Of course you've got to do it right like with minimal/no performance impact - like with mame's HLSL implementation - that shouldn't be an issue these days.

However, option 1 is not without it's merits - especially if retro fitting an already existing format/system/setup - particularly if you want to do without a crt, or you have a 31khz only crt.

[fogueman]

Well, I know of course that the extreme configuration available on HLSL is a good thing, and i´ve seen the results on my computer and it just looks gorgeus, at least on small screens. I haven´t managed to get it looking so good on larger (42 inch) screens because of scaling I think. Glsl is also extremely nice, in fact I use retroarch on my laptop very often and it´s looking stunning with the crt geom flat shader. Retroarch is extremely good news for people running osx, includes mame 151 core and manages crt shaders. Awesome.

s

The may advantage for the hardware solutions is the easy of use and configuration. You just have to setup output @ 480p and it gets awesome looking atm. Also you don´t sit 23cm away from the tv just to look at how glorious the crt shader´s quality is, or the perfect alineation of the scanlines, so it´s a good option. I sold my slg3k time ago to fund the framemeister, which I don´t regret having at all, but now I think i´m getting a slg mini for emulation on htpc computer and easy of use.

[ninn]

I pretty much remember super metroid looking like that.

[Overkill]

The emulator "Final Burn Alpha" http://www.barryharris.me.uk/fba.php mainly used to emulate Neogeo, CPS1,2, but it also emulates other arcade and console plataforms. It have a very good option for CRT emulation with scanlines, phosphor blur and even display a curved display. And all this with very little change in CPU usage from the computer used.