For example, the Genesis/Mega Drive did not support hardware alpha transparency. Many games (including the Sonic series) simulate the effect by alternating vertical lines, and relying on the "visual munging" of CRTs to produce a convincing effect. Here is a video that demonstrates the effect in Shinobi 3: https://youtu.be/YFOkbfpIlaY?t=2m52s
(You can also notice the stippled pattern in the pool of water to the right, used to produce the same effect.)
Another technique is the use of stippling to simulate smooth textures and surfaces. For example, this screenshot of the Super Metroid start screen looks pretty terrible by modern standards: http://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/original/0/4527/1093273-...
This would have looked much more convincing on a CRT display. Without simulating CRT distortion, you are not getting the same visual experience one would have had when running the game on hardware it was designed for. For modern games looking to simulate this experience, using these techniques along with a CRT shader will be very effective at bringing back the home console experience of the 80s and 90s.
SNES (and NES) screenshots are difficult to display well on modern systems because the (S)NES had rectangular pixels instead of square pixels as used today. I recommend scaling to some large integer multiple of the original size with nearest neighbor, and then scaling to the correct aspect ratio with your favorite resampling filter. And if you insist on using JPEG compression then at least use 4:4:4 chroma subsampling - chroma artifacts are very obvious in pixel art.
I also dispute the assertion that CRT artifacts were required or intended by all graphics designer back then. Evidence: LCD based portable systems and line doubled mode 13h DOS games both used the same dithering techniques, but they had sharp pixels. And many games used dithering type patterns to represent fine detail instead of blended colors, eg. the typewriter in the background near the start of Chrono Trigger. I grew up with DOS games so I personally prefer sharp pixels.
The most important feature of a CRT is the low persistence - eliminating sample and hold blur. This is now available in fast modern LCDs with strobing backlights, or with black frame insertion displaying 60Hz content on a 120Hz monitor. It makes a very big difference for fast scrolling 2D games.
It would be cool to see an NES emulator that combined an accurate simulation of the PPU's quirky NTSC encoding logic (already present in some emulators) with the kind of CRT/phosphor-simulation shown in TFA.
Also note that Blargg's filters are efficient integer-only CPU filters, as they are fast enough to not need a GPU.
http://slack.net/~ant/libs/ntsc.html (main page)
http://slack.net/~ant/old/ntsc-presets/ (lots of example images)
http://slack.net/~ant/old/ntsc-vs-palette/ (examples specifically about the color-"correction" that happens when using NTSC)
Why? I dont see people emulating the look and feel of 1920 black and white film projection, or Edison sound cylinders. Its because quality was SHIT, just like CRT.
i read a long time ago someone's interpretation of the history of film as being invented in reverse: starting with impressionism and developing hyper realism;
it's an overly simplistic break down with all the standard caveats but it has a certain amiable pithiness to it
look at some of these movies that are attempting higher frame rates and you'll see the audience is suddenly unimpressed by the same set tricks and computer effects that were stunning them days before in another film at lower frame rates
i remember the first time i saw an HD tv that i was truly impressed by they were playing a battle scene from film i had seen many times before, i walked by and stopped in my tracks because the wall mount appeared to be a window, the title characters were riding horses on an expanse of pasture before the battle, it was stunningly beautiful, but after some dialogue they took off running down a hill to meet another army and the camera panned back and i could very easily pick out which ten of the hundreds of charging horses were real and which were drawn in triangles, i could nearly count the triangles
very similar to the effect while watching an animated film with lush painted backdrops: you see a forest scene and you just know that one tree branch is going to break off because it was painted by the animators and the hue and stroke is just slightly off
i think efforts like the one in the article, and the one in the comment above linking the shinobi 3 video, may come prebaked into visual media
i buy a copy of iron man 3 in the year 2071 and it will display on my super pixel screen in such a way to make it appear like it is being watched on the tech it was built for, smudging those lines between organics and triangles
with the option to turn it off, then right back on again
Nostalgia aside, CRTs didn't actually look that good originally. They weren't used for their visual effects, they were used because they were cheap and easy. Why would you actively make your content look shittier?
I suspect if you went back, and offered the people developing these games the option to play them on a modern display, without all the distortion and such, they'd much prefer it over the "CRT look".
At least, please, PLEASE let the player turn the effects off.
What you're missing is that sometimes, the characteristics of a CRT are used for a visual effect that is completely missing on non-CRT displays.
For instance, it's arguable that a lot of low-res 16 bit sprites actually look better when on a technically inferior display because that's what the developers were using - and they would have drawn the sprites with the blur in mind. You remove the blur, and the sprites are a bit harder to look at [1]. (Take any of the SNES Squaresoft RPGs for a good example of this.) Scaliness were often used as a cheap method of texture blending.
A good description of this comes from here[2]: The chunky sprites with their often thick, cartoony outlines just weren't designed to be reproduced with sharp edges resulting from nearest-neighbor upscaling.
[1]: http://www.tested.com/tech/gaming/2982-a-link-to-the-past-ho...
[2]: http://cyber4education.blogspot.com/2010/12/crt-pixel-shader...
It's your system and you can play your games however you want, but it's not in question that many games were designed to be played on older displays.
And then you have modern games like the one posted here that aim to mimic those effects because they are now a style unto themselves. No need to denigrate it.
For the same reason Quentin Tarantino is pouring much of his personal fortune into a movie theater that will run films in celluloid only. For the same reason vinyl is making a huge comeback. People think the shitty output is "richer", "warmer", and "more authentic"; and the better output is "cold" and "mechanical".
It's post hoc justification of nostalgia: people want to recreate the experience they had when they first saw a movie/listened to a record/played a game. They want the thrill back, or at least a reminder of it.
I'm guilty of this myself; when I run an xterm it's usually green (#7fff7f) on black or amber (#daa520, X11 color "goldenrod") on black, in a nice pixely font like Glass Tty VT220. Because I'm on a Unix system and want to feel the thrill of Unixing.
http://slack.net/~ant/old/ntsc-vs-palette/
It was also very common to assume there wou9ld be darkening from the scanline effect on arcade machines, leading to brightness problem in the emulation of some ames.
I wouldn't even worry about doing stuff in real time to start with, instead just focus on the most accurate physical simulation possible. Then use the learnings from the simulation to try to create more accurate shaders that any program could use for simulating CRT tubes.
The comments in that C file show just how much attention to detail was made.
> you didn't notice them
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments
...anyway, the apparent presence of the motion trails would depend heavily on a person's use of the brightness, contrast and saturation setting per each individual television set.
It's a very subtle effect, and probably absent in more recent CRTs.