@nostupidquestions Why do people like crt shaders in the retroarch community. There’s so many videos about it. Is it a product of their time or are non-crt experiencers doing it?
Maybe it’s a way for their smoothening upscaling shaders to look more pixelated and retro?
Old games were designed for CRTs. The way lines were rendered on the screen led to blurring and bleeding of colours which made them less pixely and looking like they’re much more detailed.
As a kid that grew up in the NES / SNES era and played these games on a CRT television, I think the sharp pixels look better. This is just going to be one of those subjective things.
TV pixels were also generally not square. And if the device was a TV and not an actual video monitor (both were used with home computers), it was a little slow and blurry. And overscan existed. There’s a lot of things that will be a bit different when you look at an emulated display.
Same. I played a lot of the originals. I now emulate a lot on Steam Deck, and they always look better without the CRT stuff.
It hurts me that the Castlevania screenshot does not match the pattern of the other screenshots with filter on the left and raw on the right.
EDIT: Thank you for fixing it.
These actually look fantastic with the filter on. Another commenter’s examples were bad and I too thought it’s just nostalgia, since the filtered ones looked worse there. In particular, the skeleton you showed gains so much depth.
Lots of these games were designed on and for CRT screens and they look worse on a modern one without filtering.
I disagree. I emulate a lot, and the CRT stuff makes them look worse to me. Just adds noise to the image.
Sorry to be dumb, but which ones are the crt ones?
The right ones.
CRT pixels weren’t perfect blocks, making them look better with special care. It actually made some processes much easier to calculate as they could rely on that method to “round out” the image.
Edit: Except the second image
It only looks better because of nostalgia. I think the filter-less ones look better.
I think people who played those games on CRTs originally remember the feel of the visuals. It is a rather nostalgic thing.
The filters aren’t the same, but they’re not a bad approximation. Mist of those games were not meant to be played on modern hardware and look worse for it too.
Then there will be a ton of folk who just do it because they see other people do it. That’s fine too, especially if they are enjoying themselves.
That’s the point. If the filter makes you feel happier, go for it. It’s an aesthetic choice.
Its more than nostalgia. The games actually look better because thats what they were designed with.
Nowadays people seem to use “nostalgia” as some hand waive to dismiss something as unnecessary or invalid. But in this case it is actually necessary, old games just do not look good on any display technology other than CRTs. Shaders come extremely close, and if you have an HDR compatible screen that gets bright and vibrant enough, shaders can be nearly comparable to real CRTs.
Now that I have a lovely HDR display, I kinda want to give this a bash. It also makes me wonder about CRT filters for non-emulated games. Fallout 2 looked amazing on a CRT, for example.
Fuck yeah it is. I still remember playing ff6(3us), a defining gaming moment for me, and it was played on a crt. Yeah I can emulate it on my current console, but that does almost no justice to the nostalgia of having first learned turn-based rpg combat.
This from a person that remembers their Dad’s 2600 and playing Yar’s Revenge on it, and him taking me to the local arcade where his favorite game was without a doubt Ms. Pac-Man, while I tried to figure out what the fuck this “Super Street Fighter II Turbo” wizardry was.
Fuck yeah, nostalgia. All generations will have it, including those that succeed us, and those that succeed them.
People will knock nostalgia … They see it as a sort of softness, a yearning for the past…
But what they miss is the way that it can create intergenerational connections.
That’s a really lovely thing to hear about your relationship with your dad and Ms Pac-Man.
Wait, that sounds libellous.
Wait, that sounds libellous.
Made me actually laugh out loud
Another commenter already gave a great example, I grew up using a crt for gaming and I turn the filter on on a game by game basis. It really does improve the quality of some games. Other games do not rely on it as much.
Mostly game with detailed art look better with it.
I love using CRT shaders on a game by game basis. As others commented, if it’s more detailed artwork, I’ll flip it on. Other times I don’t like how it looks with some classic games.
The only mod I do want is a way to replicate, on a modern monitor, the feeling of turning it off and putting your arm against the screen to get that sweet sweet static discharge that only CRTs could give you.
Edit: Removed my joke at the end of my original comment.
I did use CRT TVs and monitors, but only when very young. Man you just made me revisit a part of my brain long dormant! I loved the sweet static discharge as well, it was so f*ing rad!
I got this on my front page and holy crap you used so many words I have no idea what they mean. Hope you get good answers to your question though!
I can explain a few terms, if you’re interested. I’m simplifying so nobody murder me:
Retroarch is basically a program that lets you emulate (basically make your computer mimic a console to play the games from it) a bunch of different videogame consoles. Mostly old ones, but some newer things like the Switch.
Shaders are complicated to ELI5 but it’s easiest to think of them as a filter you can apply to a videogame in real time, like you would apply a filter to a photo or something. You can get some absolutely crazy effects with filters- generally the simpler the game the more shaders will accomplish. Here’s a minecraft screenshot of the same thing with and without shaders.
And just in case, CRTs are those old school tube tvs.
He’s basically just asking if shaders for old games intended to make things look more like a CRT are just nostalgia bait or if they actually make things look better.
This is so you’ll know this question is not stupid.
I was just trying to wish them good luck on finding the answer…
