Scanlines crt screen finally

[thenosid]

Using OBS Studio and the projection option, you can play doom with scanlines, no mods, no reshade.

You'll just need to raise up the gamma and the contrast of the scene

Here is an exemple and my scanline overlay

 

 

 

Edited May 25, 2019 by thenosid

[sualocin]

Quite interesting! This Style gives somehow a very sharp look for DOOM

Big thx for sharing! Gives really a nice Arcade Touch to it - Beautiful,

only a Score-system missing :) 

[Jon]

My actual CRTs never had scan lines 

[cybdmn]

Scanlines were very common back in the early 90ies, when game consoles had an internal resolution lower than PAL/NTSC.

 

PC Games like Doom had 320x200, which every CRT could handle. No need for Scanlines.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

Those scanlines are way too much compared to any CRT I've ever seen. Even arcade machines had less EXTRA THICC scan lines.

[⇛Marnetmar⇛]

OP CRTs on video aren't how CRTs actually look

[fraggle]

Here's a good thread on vogons.org including close-up images of CRT monitors, and this post in particular has some really good close-ups from DOS games. It's amusing how the whole thing about scanlines has become something of a self-perpetuating retro myth at this stage - not accurate for PC games but it "looks" retro so there are people who play it that way.

 

I think it would be really interesting to see something similar to the OP's mask filter that could maybe provide a simulation of a VGA monitor (ie. the aperture grille).

[cybdmn]

These scanline overlays are easy to create, while a proper emulation of a shadow mask, used in CRTs is by far more complex. i guess some kind of dithering coded into the game could come closer, than just an overlay filter.

 

Scanlines is more for emulation of console games or arcade cabinets. But even then a simple overlay doesn't fit really. It should emulate the typical interlacing of old gaming console stuff.

[xttl]

I'm almost sure at some point I played the original DOS Doom on a CRT monitor where it had slight dark lines between each pixel row or maybe every two pixel rows, nothing like the first picture though. The monitor might have been a bit larger and sharper than what most people used in the mid-90s. I used a pretty shitty (not very sharp) 14-incher when I first got into Doom on a 486 and that one didn't really show any noticeable "scanlines".

 

 

On 5/28/2019 at 4:25 PM, Pegg said:

Those scanlines are way too much compared to any CRT I've ever seen. Even arcade machines had less EXTRA THICC scan lines.

 

High quality CRT video monitors (especially Trinitrons I think) can have quite noticeable black lines between each pixel row when using them with old consoles or computers because they're very sharp displays and software on these old systems tend to use "240p" or "288p" modes where every other line on the display always stays blank. There probably are ordinary consumer TV sets which are recent/highend enough to have similar resolution as the earlier/cheaper Sony PVM models at least (generally 600 TVL, better PVMs have 800 and BVMs can go even further, average NTSC TV has 450 TVL), those should also make the lines really visible. This is also why some people don't like using high end CRTs with retro games, personally I think my 600 TVL PVM is just right (any more resolution and it could be annoying).

Edited May 31, 2019 by xttl

[thenosid]

There is scanlines because of the the 320x200 resolution, on a much higher crt resolution.

Also, check the full size image before replying.

[xttl]

10 minutes ago, thenosid said:

There is scanlines because of the the 320x200 resolution, on a much higher crt resolution.

Also, check the full size image before replying.

 

You can play DOS Doom on a 21-inch high quality SVGA CRT monitor and it still won't look anything nearly like the pic in the first post in full resolution. Trust me, I've done this. But yes, there will be most likely be slight lines there which would not appear on a smaller and not as sharp tube.

 

I'm actually going to receive a pretty good 19-inch aperture grille CRT monitor soon for my DOS PC, will be the first (S)VGA CRT I'm going to be using in a loooong time. I bet it's not going to look anything near like the first pic either, and it is already way better and bigger than what most people (or anybody really?) had in the mid-90s.

 

Your pic looks more like console Doom on a PVM or other high quality CRT video monitor or television if sitting close enough (too close? :D) to the screen.

[thenosid]

5 minutes ago, xttl said:

 

You can play DOS Doom on a 21-inch high quality SVGA CRT monitor and it still won't look anything nearly like the pic in the first post in full resolution. Trust me, I've done this. But yes, there will be most likely be slight lines there which would not appear on a smaller and not as sharp tube.

 

I'm actually going to receive a pretty good 19-inch aperture grille CRT monitor soon for my DOS PC, will be the first (S)VGA CRT I'm going to be using in a loooong time. I bet it's not going to look anything near like the first pic either, and it is already way better and bigger than what most people (or anybody really?) had in the mid-90s.

 

Your pic looks more like console Doom on a PVM or other high quality CRT video monitor or television if sitting close enough (too close? :D) to the screen.
 

If doom DOS on pc doesn't work the same on pc than console games on crt or pvm, please send me a pic when you can , I havent found a picture of actual Doom on a crt monitor.

Sure it will be closer to the truth with a picture of comparison.

[xttl]

It's difficult to take good pics of monitors in general but I can try when I get the monitor, sure. If you want to emulate the true '94 PC experience you need some blur (but not too much!) instead of scanlines, really.

[thenosid]

So in a 90's while playing doom , you dont see scanlines unlike console games? This is sure?

[elend]

Yes, at least not on progressive scan monitors which most PCs used. Maybe you are thinking about the older Amiga Computer monitors (Commodore 1084), those had scanlines.

[thenosid]

1 minute ago, elend said:

Yes, at least not on progressive scan monitors which most PCs used. Maybe you are thinking about the older Amiga Computer monitors (Commodore 1084), those had scanlines.

Okay, I'll need an image reference then. If somebody have the hardwares.

[kb1]

1 hour ago, xttl said:

 

You can play DOS Doom on a 21-inch high quality SVGA CRT monitor and it still won't look anything nearly like the pic in the first post in full resolution. Trust me, I've done this. But yes, there will be most likely be slight lines there which would not appear on a smaller and not as sharp tube.

 

I'm actually going to receive a pretty good 19-inch aperture grille CRT monitor soon for my DOS PC, will be the first (S)VGA CRT I'm going to be using in a loooong time. I bet it's not going to look anything near like the first pic either, and it is already way better and bigger than what most people (or anybody really?) had in the mid-90s.

 

Your pic looks more like console Doom on a PVM or other high quality CRT video monitor or television if sitting close enough (too close? :D) to the screen.

Luckily, it doesn't really have to look 100% authentic to be a nice effect. The effect in the above screenshot is nice, because it precisely splits lines along the exact pixel height. The effect is way too strong, in my opinion. A much more subtle darkening would be much more authentic, I think. But it is cool because it adds some sharpness to the pixels, accentuating them.

 

I think for it to work well, you must be running Doom at a resolution that's an exact factor of the native resolution of the monitor, otherwise you'll get a nasty blurring of both the scanline, and the surrounding pixels.

 

I remember my CRTs only having a very slight scanline effect - barely noticeable.

 

I must admit, I like the horizontal lines, but I'm not a fan of the vertical ones.

[xttl]

3 minutes ago, kb1 said:

Luckily, it doesn't really have to look 100% authentic to be a nice effect. The effect in the above screenshot is nice, because it precisely splits lines along the exact pixel height. The effect is way too strong, in my opinion. A much more subtle darkening would be much more authentic, I think. But it is cool because it adds some sharpness to the pixels, accentuating them.

 

I think for it to work well, you must be running Doom at a resolution that's an exact factor of the native resolution of the monitor, otherwise you'll get a nasty blurring of both the scanline, and the surrounding pixels.

 

I remember my CRTs only having a very slight scanline effect - barely noticeable.

 

I must admit, I like the horizontal lines, but I'm not a fan of the vertical ones.

 

Horizontal lines are the only ones that generally are visible on real CRTs anyway. LCDs with poor resolution/size ratio might have visible vertical lines between pixels or subpixels.

[OliveTree]

Unless im mistaken, aren't the scanlines on crt's horizontal? I feel very confused

[Space Marinara]

I don't have actual hardware but I can show you my take on scanlines/shadow masking in shader form:

Spoiler

 

[xttl]

31 minutes ago, EtherBot said:

Unless im mistaken, aren't the scanlines on crt's horizontal? I feel very confused

 

Yes. The electron beam always scans the display horizontally, line by line. Also, the darker or even black parts actually represent areas where the scan didn't hit the phosphors very much or at all either due to interlacing (SDTV stuff like old computers, consoles and some arcade hardware) or because the screen is too large/sharp for the vertical resolution which is currently in use.

 

So "scanlines" has always been a dumb name for them but at this point it's never going to change.

Edited June 6, 2019 by xttl

[thenosid]

19 minutes ago, Space Marinara said:

I don't have actual hardware but I can show you my take on scanlines/shadow masking in shader form:

  Hide contents

How did you do that?

 

[Space Marinara]

It's a GZDoom feature that allows you to write graphics code (GLSL) to the screen or directly on to sprites/textures. You can make menus to interact with the code too so that stuff like scanlines are fully adjustable. Here they are again at full strength (I just had to drag a slider):

Spoiler

 

[Bauul]

On 5/28/2019 at 12:48 PM, fraggle said:

Here's a good thread on vogons.org including close-up images of CRT monitors, and this post in particular has some really good close-ups from DOS games.

 

Holy moly, that image comparison between LCD and CRT is incredible. 

 

 

I always remembered that my old CRT seemed to handle Doom's low res better than my current laptop playing Chocolate, but I'd forgotten just how much better it did. I miss CRTs.

[DANZA]

11 hours ago, Space Marinara said:

It's a GZDoom feature that allows you to write graphics code (GLSL) to the screen or directly on to sprites/textures. You can make menus to interact with the code too so that stuff like scanlines are fully adjustable. Here they are again at full strength (I just had to drag a slider):

  Hide contents

 

It would be cool if you share that, I would like to give it a go o:

[Maes]

11 hours ago, Bauul said:

 

Holy moly, that image comparison between LCD and CRT is incredible.

 

Well, obviously the Next Big Thing in retro looks would be to emulate the actual CRT color mask and obtain this natural filtering/smoothing effect. This will mean sacrificing quite a bit of LCD or other non-masked display's resolution to emulate the actual CRT look, maybe even more than a factor of 5:1. That's similar to how watching an old VHS tape/video source on a TFT TV that's only SD (or SD video captures on a PC screen) looks like crap, but larger TV have enough resolution to spare to give it some CRT-looking smoothing (a lot will depend on the resizing algo, though).

 

Also...

 

 

[thenosid]

That is so interesting guys, so doom on an old crt, would looks more blurry rather than sharp scanlines. 

[deepthaw]

10 minutes ago, thenosid said:

That is so interesting guys, so doom on an old crt, would looks more blurry rather than sharp scanlines. 

 

Wouldn't be too blurry. Computer CRTs intended for use as monitors were still pretty darned sharp compared to TVs of the time.

[deepthaw]

I have a RetroPie configured and also do some classic game emulation on my PC. I usually use the following settings to emulate the feeling of old TVs on my HDTV or monitor:

 

Run at 720p, which allows a 240p picture to be upscaled exactly 3x so you get no artifacts from scaling vertically.

Force 4:3 aspect ratio, even for systems that ran at 256x224 (like the SNES). For the SNES and similar, I also use a minor blur in the x-axis to cover up the fact that we're trying to represent non-square pixels via an imperfect scaling algorithm.

Enable fake scanlines. Since we're running in a perfect multiple of 240 lines, we don't get the artifacting we do when running at 1080p (alas, I still end up with artifacting because my TV, despite being 4K, upscales 720p to 1080p but oh well.)

 

Thankfully, Retroarch has a shader (zfast-crtscanlines or similar) that'll do all of that for me. End result looks like this.

 

Edited June 6, 2019 by deepthaw

[deepthaw]

5 hours ago, Maes said:

Well, obviously the Next Big Thing in retro looks would be to emulate the actual CRT color mask and obtain this natural filtering/smoothing effect. This will mean sacrificing quite a bit of LCD or other non-masked display's resolution to emulate the actual CRT look, maybe even more than a factor of 5:1. That's similar to how watching an old VHS tape/video source on a TFT TV that's only SD (or SD video captures on a PC screen) looks like crap, but larger TV have enough resolution to spare to give it some CRT-looking smoothing (a lot will depend on the resizing algo, though).

 

Shaders have gotten really good at emulating an idealized form of the CRT, but there's something they still haven't managed to capture. The phosphor glow or bloom. Play a stark white on black Atari 2600 game and you'll quickly see what I'm talking about.