Scanlines or NO scanlines?

[Photon]

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

Anyway, I [ Show youtube player ] that half of the lines are darker on a real 1084

I'm not sure... do you have an LCD for WinUAE or a CRT? If CRT, it's 5 minutes' work to see what Maren means.

On LCD, a 2x scaled (scanlines on, no filters), every other line is perfectly black. On a CRT, pixels (and pixel rows) are not a fixed size or in fixed locations, so squeezing the lines together will make the black lines thinner. And since pixels on a CRT have a bit of a glow, the lines should melt together nicely.

You know all this, but you (and I!) don't know if it _looks good_ until we've seen it on a CRT. That's why you're skeptic, I guess, but to me it does sound better than 2x without scanlines - even if you squeeze that too, the twice-duplicated pixels cause much more square pixels (compare quake in 320x240 (becomes 640x480) on a 19" CRT!!) Square City. Instead of Glowing Pillows.

I'll try it right away

[Photon]

OK, tried it, here are two comparison pictures:


Speedball Logo





Detail





Both were taken with the same settings in WinUAE and on the monitor (except scanlines ofc, duh!) in 720x576 mode - but resolution only affects the size of the Amiga screen, the effect of the "glowing scanlines" is the same for example for 800x600.

Any moire patterns is a product of my camera and are not present when viewing. Unfortunately the no-scanlines detail pic got blurred a bit and I'm too tired to do/write more. But for example the sloping metal edge by the bottom looks much nicer and less like a stairway to hell with squeezed scanlines. Also, the 45 degree lines in the logo melt together to form a line rather than the usual low-res doublescan PC DOS game look.

Naturally pixels are doubled horizontally too, and this monitor from 2001 is good enough to make the edges between differing colors more distinct than on an RGB monitor from 1987. The only way to make them more pillow-shaped horizontally too, is to apply a filter, but with only double resolution it's hard to not make it look artificial or even good, I think.


As you can see in the scanlines pics, on a CRT the "abyss" between pixel lines shrinks with pixel intensity, and is almost never as high as the pixel line. See for example the white colors in the Speedball letters.

[TCD]

I see what you and Maren mean Photon, still I prefer the second version (although with a bit less brightness). As with filters, everybody should try and see which settings look best on ones monitor (regarding the subjective preference). I was kinda joking about the 5:8 ratio Maren mentioned, but of course it's fine for using low-res with scanlines.

[Retro-Nerd]

But you can't compare a WinUAE CRT scanline filter with a real Amiga monitor/TV+RGB cable. It looks indeed different, the scanlines aren't that intensive but clearly visible.

[Photon]

Well, the poll is about the scanlines option in WinUAE. For scanlines, it's not so much comparing with a proper display, as trying to get as close to the real thing as possible. But I guess the people who prefer the original monitor are as rare as those who still prefer CRT for PCs, who are as rare as those who prefer scanlines.

[Retro-Nerd]

This poll is not exactly for WinUAE scanlines imho, check the forum/threat title.

Anyway, i prefer the scanlines in WinUAE because the ugly pixelated double pixel setup isn't the look we know from a real monitor/TV. Especially letters are awful without scanlines in WinUAE/lowres. I still think that it looks really good with a 25% scanlines filter.

http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=...&postcount=185

[DH]

For me, scanlines disrupt the artists work and people never see it in the way it should be seen. I know this is for Amiga and each to their own, but come on, if all my GFX had scanlines incorporated, I don't think anyone would of even sniffed at anything I had done.

Now a bit of advertising *cough* Check my logos album, and see if there's anything in there that would benefit from scanlines

[Retro-Nerd]

None of your graphics/logos are in 320x256.

[DH]

I know, scale them down and put scanlines into them, you'll lose all that lovely detail

[Retro-Nerd]

This is not the same. Pixel something with D-Paint IV in 320x356.

[Photon]

I agree, Demon that was actually support for that scanlines is the way to view low-res retro graphics. Because they drew it on a low-res monitor and chose to add/remove a pixel base on what hit their retinas. They chose to use a darker color for some detail if it looked better on a low-res 14" monitor. They added another precious "between-color" to the palette ONLY if it didn't already look OK on the monitor. See for example some hand-antialiased logos.

Scanlines gets closer to what they saw and thus what we should see. No scanlines turn it into PC DOS low-res game graphics, and ofc they didn't draw their gfx on PC. (Can you tell what I voted in the poll!!? Hehe.)

I'm sure you know all this, since you're an artist. But it really is hard to make something look really great in 320x256 32 colors (especially lots of objects with shared palette in games), and no-scanline amplifying of all the tricks used really makes it hard to appreciate. Scanlines is closer to the real thing, ie. almost as forgiving as a proper Amiga monitor with its savory melted glowing pixel-pillows <3

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Belgarath

Does HOL have any screenshots with scanlines?

NO because they're shite!

Nuff said!

^

[Retro-Nerd]

Of course HOL shots has/need no scalines. The shots are in 320x256/single pixel and looks fine. WinUAE shots in 640x512 are another (ugly) story.

[Photon]

TCD, you're on a roll! If you go on you risk proving that pixel-doubling is bad for lowres graphics, oh no ARGH! hehe

[TCD]

Never said anything about pixel-doubling, did I? Go on, add your black lines, I don't care!

[DH]

In this day and age scanlines are a no go, but I can see why people would like to add that authenticity to their own displays when using WinUAE. It doesn't bother me one bit, as I like my GFX to look as sharp and as detailed as possible for you, the people to enjoy

It's the way I am, I think

EDIT: Take a look at my lovely AMP Logo which is half perfect and half scanlined

[Marlon]

Originally Posted by DemonHellraiser

In this day and age scanlines are a no go, but I can see why people would like to add that authenticity to their own displays when using WinUAE. It doesn't bother me one bit, as I like my GFX to look as sharp and as detailed as possible for you, the people to enjoy

It's the way I am, I think

EDIT: Take a look at my lovely AMP Logo which is half perfect and half scanlined

And that DOES look terrible - as you have it set - but messing with scanline settings will produce a MUCH clearer, brighter picture. In these cases, transparency is your friend. Tsk.

[Maren]

For Amiga purists like me who won't touch higher resolutions or filters with a ten foot pole, the bottom line is that you gotta fill the rest of the screen somehow. You can increase the vertical resolution by interpolating the existing pixels and get a bright but overly pixelated image, or you can use scanlines and get a far less pixelated, yet darker image which can be more or less successfully corrected by tweaking the gamma.

CRT + 320x512@50hz + scanlines is where it's at

[Photon]

Originally Posted by DemonHellraiser

In this day and age scanlines are a no go, but I can see why people would like to add that authenticity to their own displays when using WinUAE. It doesn't bother me one bit, as I like my GFX to look as sharp and as detailed as possible for you, the people to enjoy

It's the way I am, I think

EDIT: Take a look at my lovely AMP Logo which is half perfect and half scanlined

You make very nice logos, but that's not "WinUAE output". The point is that WinUAE doubles pixels vertically. Same for scandoublers, or the usual 320x240 PC DOS graphics in the lowest VGA can go - 640x480.

If you want, you can resize it to 320x256, use any number of colors, and load it in DPaint in WinUAE. Then try to make it look as good as possible and give us your config.

THAT'S the point about scanlines here.

I really don't know what you're on about mate ... I mean ... compare 32-color game/demo graphics with a truecolor logo on PC that fills <10% of the screen?

[DH]

Sorry Photon, I'm just being a usual pain in the butt and thanks for the compliment

I've done 32 colour logo's for PMC's demo he's creating, resolution max 320x256 and I must agree, it's bloody hard work trying to make something look as good as the original (This I've already seen in WinUEA). That's why I wont knock anybody regarding scanlines, lets just say, they're not for me especially in WinUAE, but then again, I've never been able to tweak WinUAE to give an output that works for me