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Atari Emulation of CRT Effects On LCDs
An anonymous reader writes "A group at Georgia Institute of Technology has developed a fun little open source program to emulate the CRT effects to make old Atari games look like they originally did when played on modern LCD's and digital displays. Things like color bleed, ghosting, noise, etc. are reproduced to give a more realistic appearance."
I think this is one of the most justified uses of the 'brokenbydesign' tag ;)
And does their program eliminate motion blur and the poor contrast of LCD to make it looks like a CRT?
Reminds me about the various NTSC filters used in various emulators (such as Nestopia). It's kind of funny how some people strive for simulating the original display, but I have to admit that I personally use the NTSC filter when possible. (and I avoid using filters like super eagle which have a tendency to make stuff look like blobs...)
The effect is great in theory, but I think they over did it. Old arcade games are certainly a bit blurry, and have some ghosting issues, but this effect makes every little sprite into a pile of fuzzy crap. It's too bad to be true, and it ends up looking fake. Reminds me of those pre-faded jeans, with so much added wear that its easy to tell the wear and tear is not natural. Instead of looking like a pair of old jeans, they look like a pair of new jeans that someone split bleach on. Like these
Honestly, craig's list is riddled with people throwing away CRT's. Why run a crappy emulation...if that is what you call it, when you can go next door and get CRT?
Looks similar to the efforts the xscreensaver developers, with their m6502 and Apple2 hacks that simulate CRT artifacts such as static, colour separation, and shear.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
And does their program eliminate motion blur and the poor contrast of LCD to make it looks like a CRT?
No but the 21st Century did.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
... since they were referring to realistic emulation... meaning closer to the reality of the system being emulated.
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Because old systems counted on it. They were designed around working on low rez NTSC displays. You find that the color bleed and fringing and such helped smooth out the image and make it more natural. When you display it on a modern high resolution LCD it looks extremely blocky. So you emulate the problems with the older technology and you get a better looking picture for it.
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I don't remember my Atari looking like that on my TV. Sure it wasn't LCD perfect but it didn't suck that that does.
It is beyond me why anybody would want to make something look like it did, instead of how it should look.
But this IS how it "should look". It was designed for that display. People want it to look like it originally did for the same reason that people like muscle cars, vinyl records (complete with the hiss and wow and flutter that they try so hard to eliminate), valve amplifiers. It's because sometimes the inaccuracies in equipment change the signal for the better, and people like that.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
I've been working on an 800+ character MUGEN game for quite some time, now. My primary monitor is a 32" 1080p LCD made by Samsung, and there are NO timing issues. I even have an X-Arcade controller for testing. No lag. That's like 50 feet of wire/cable between controller and monitor.
The biggest problems most games have these days on LCD screens is their own inputs. Every guitar hero/rockband controller I've touched likes to double-strum, even on touchier movements. While DBZ BT3 on the Wii is great, part of the control interface lags when doing a gesture movement, or double-taps for you if you press a button only once.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Vector graphics may be the most difficult to emulate because of the potential brightness of specific spots. The brightest white on most LCD monitors cannot compare to such a spot. Asteroids is probably the most famous vector game. Basically, the electron beam could be controlled to "draw" the game via lines and dots instead of merely scanning back and forth at a fixed pace like traditional CRT's. The beam could "dwell" on a specific spot or line if needed, making it glow like nobody's mamma.
Table-ized A.I.
Since the fastest runners in the world have reaction times in the 170-190ms range, and unofficially at least the fastest "clicks" are all above 100ms (I averaged 232ms myself, just below average), I'd doubt you could notice, let alone be affected by, a 10-50ms disparity.
And I'm not sure how you can say 2ms response time leads to a 50ms disparity anyway, that doesn't make sense. Hell, there was a 70ms difference between my slowest and fastest clicks, and I couldn't notice the difference. The tech to get the response times so low does tend to jack colors and produce some odd artifacts, but none of those relate to how quickly it displays the data on the screen, not as far as I've ever heard anyway. Since the color/artifacting issues are relevant, and since 15ms vs 2ms is not noticeable, it's better to pick a 15ms LCD anyway.
Plus, a frame will generally be displayed at least 10 times, if it is displaying at 15ms, before you can actually react to it. Again, the response time argument for not going LCD is tired and nearly worthless.
The problem is probably just that you've been reading weird crap about LCDs, and haven't used them much yourself. Most likely to keep from justifying an upgrade.
Actually, if you really want to prove me wrong (and find out for yourself if the LCD response time is really the issue), go to Humanbenchmark.com and compare your OWN clicks on a CRT with your OWN clicks on an LCD. I'm assuming you have access to one, of course, but it shouldn't be hard to get access to one anyway.
I'm betting there is less than a 5ms difference in your 10 click averages.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
CRTs have better black levels and better colors. On the other hand, they have fussy geometry adjustments (and you can never get them as perfect as an LCD), moiré patterns, and are generally much fuzzier than LCDs.
My LCD provides a sharp, high-resolution image with low power consumption in a small package at a low price. All of those factors (sharpness, resolution, power cosumption, size, price) matter more to me than the areas where CRTs continue to lead (color reproduction, black level).