Comment by trenchpilgrim
1 day ago
Some images to demonstrate how retro games look on CRT vs unfiltered on a modern display:
https://old.reddit.com/r/crtgaming/comments/owdtpu/thats_why...
https://old.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/anwgxf/here_is_an_e...
Modern emulators have post-processing filters to simulate the look, which is great. But it's not quite the same as the real thing.
This helps validate my memories of SNES and PS1 games looking so much better when I was a kid than on an emulator today.
> But it's not quite the same as the real thing.
To be fair, with modern "retina" HDR displays, it should be very very close.
The most important element of the CRT look is the fast phosphor decay. This is why CRTs have so little sample-and-hold blur. No other hardware can simulate it perfectly, but a 480Hz OLED display comes close:
https://blurbusters.com/crt-simulation-in-a-gpu-shader-looks...
> it should be very very close
It should. It isn't. For some obscure reason, VGA colours look different on every modern LCD.
Most modern displays are calibrated, to some reasonable level, and can easily accommodate the very limited gamut of an old CRT, especially anything supporting HDR10. I suspect this is more of "they need to be fudged so they're wrong" more than anything.
Most modern displays are calibrated, to some reasonable level, and can easily accommodate the very limited gamut of an old CRT. I suspect this is more of "they need to be corrected so they're wrong" more than anything.