Scanlines or NO scanlines?

[john4p]

Originally Posted by Jgames

It could be the emulator, that renders the screen differently.

Agreed - that has to be it.

So actually on a TV (with bad composite-connection) some of those ancient games look pretty good. Is there an emulator who can adequately simulate the "idiosyncrasies" of old TVs?

[Marcuz]

for Amiga, Winuae does (partly) with the scanlines and other tweakings in the Filters panel;


Other emulators use them, most notably Mame. But i don't know about Atari emulators using them.

One (imho) feature that miss in Winuae and other games is the possibility to tweak resolution, hue, brightness and contrast in emulation independently by the Windows' display.
That would be useful to play around with this kind of tweaking.

[john4p]

Scanlines don't deliver those results. They don't blur the image and colors.

Btw., in Amiga games I don't need blurriness at all. I prefer them crisp and clear - and beautifully scaled up with hq2x (and without scanlines).

But those old Atari-games seem to really benefit from blurriness. Like with bilinear filtering - only even blurrier.

[Jgames]

Originally Posted by john4p

Scanlines don't deliver those results. They don't blur the image and colors.

Btw., in Amiga games I don't need blurriness at all. I prefer them crisp and clear - and beautifully scaled up with hq2x (and without scanlines).

But those old Atari-games seem to really benefit from blurriness. Like with bilinear filtering - only even blurrier.

Stella emulator for the VCS 2600 does it; it has a CRT emulation.


Between, for Speed Run, i saw a youtube video supposedly running on original hardware, on a LCD monitor i think (is it possible to play the Atari 800 on an LCD?)... On the video The position of the mirror is like what it is on the emulator screenshot...so i don't know, maybe the LCD resolution does change how the screen renders
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&sou...BNJjbsSd7sN-Iw

[john4p]

Ah, "Color Bleed" and "Image Noise". That's what I was looking for - thanks.

[Retro-Nerd]

WinUAE has a PAL TV filter (Antenna), which looks awfully pretty.

Btw., in Amiga games I don't need blurriness at all. I prefer them crisp and clear - and beautifully scaled up with hq2x (and without scanlines).

Ermh.

[john4p]

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

I know about this option. Terrible.

That's why I prefer my Amiga games crisp and clear and "beautifully upscaled with h2qx", like this:

[Retro-Nerd]

Of course the PAL Filter is terrible, but your prefered h2qx filter too.

[john4p]

Really? Because it's not all blocky?

[Retro-Nerd]

Blocky is probably better than horribly deformed. I assume you don't like pixel art, eh?

[john4p]

Well, it didn't look blocky on a 14" Amiga monitor.

But on a modern LCD it does.

Which one of the following do you really think looks best:

[Retro-Nerd]

Of course the scanlines shot, not 100% but pretty close to my RGB CRT TV output. The blocky shot is 2nd, the ugly hq2x 3rd.

[john4p]

Interesting. Great that we have WinUAE. Satisfies so many tastes...

[Marcuz]

first one is the best imho, the second is cool sometimes and the third is too lifeless to me.
the thing with scanlines is that you have to adjust brightess i think

[Jgames]

I also think the HQ filters lifeless...and not suitable for retro machines that were using TV monitors for output;
The second one is the best, but needs some tweaking...it has 100% scanlines and doesn't use bilinear filtering.
I personally find the combination of Bilinear filtering and 25 to 50% scanlines as the best rendering for all retro machines on TV monitors.
(Scanlines without bilinear filtering results in blocky pictures if you look at the edges of forms and models, when adding bilinear to scanlines, the blocky patterns are smoothed and results is faithfully great in my IMHO (The rendering is then similar to screen shots we found on amiga magazines in the 90's))
For Dosbox, i don't use scanlines, since PC machines had the VGA monitor, i use super2sai filter, which i found the least deforming filter and the one giving the best upgraded image of old Dos games.

[Retro-Nerd]

25-50% Scanlines is very close to a real TV. But i don't agree that the image needs a bilinear filter. My RGB TV image is very sharp, looks much sharper than a WinUAE scanlines+bilinear filtering.

[Dan Locke]

Originally Posted by john4p

Which one of the following do you really think looks best:

Easily the first one. The "scanlines" on the second give me a headache; the ugly scaling algorithm on the third make it look like it's melting.

[pce_gamer]

25% scanlines + light x/y interpolation+high res output. The higher res you go, the sharper the filtering is. I like a slight analog filtering and most emulators do this as standard filter, just upscale to a higher res. 25% looks best, and is close to what "scanlines" look like to the human eye - even if the method is incorrect. Real scanlines (not the missing ones, but how tall the beam is) are larger than the display res. Because on interlaced displays, which amiga originally used (and other consoles too), rely on overlapping scanlines to reduce the flicker of interlacing field artifacts for great than the time it takes to fields to make a highres frame. When in progressive mode on those old type of 15khz displays (TV or old monitor, composite or RGB), the skipped scanline space isn't exactly the width of the displayable scanline around it. So therefore, isn't not 1:1 like in the original pic by the original poster. But.. if you got one of those highres multisync monitors BITD, you *would* see close to 1:1 gap between scanlines - because those multisync monitors used very thin beams. I personally don't like the look. 100% scanlines, I'll pass. Hq2x filter - f*ck no. I *hate* that look. I'll take "full" pixels with a bit of filtering if I can't have the setup I first mentioned. But full pixels and super edge-y no filtering for such low res sources? WTF people? Maybe on a 14" monitor or something ;>_>

[john4p]

Well, I always admired 2xSaI on ZNES about 10 years ago. Then, when hq2x (and hq3x and hq4x) arrived I was amazed by the quality of its bright and crisp output. Of course it doesn't look like the original, but I found many games looked even better than originally thanks to having clear-cut, non-blocky diagonals without blur.

But I've just tried 50% and 25% scanlines and I'm beginning to see where the scanline-faction is coming from. With those quasi-scanlines (transparent scanlines) it looks really quite "genuine". Almost like back in the day with my Amiga 500 connected via RGB-cable to my RGB-capable TV...


Now here are eight more examples. Tell me which one do you like best:


1) Kreed's 2xSaI (Double Pixels, then "Scale and Interpolate"):




2) Super2xSaI:




3) SuperEagle:




4) Scale2x:




5) 50% Scanlines without filtering ("Direct3D 16bit point filtering" in WinUAE to be exact)




6) 50% Scanlines with bilinear filtering:




7) 25% Scanlines without filtering:




8) 25% Scanlines with bilinear filtering:




While with 100% scanlines the pic was far too dark, 50% and 25% scanlines do indeed look close to the real thing.

[AmigaFriend]

I too am not very fond of filtering on Amiga emulation. I only use Direct 3D upscaling to 1280x1024 and making the proper proportions for 5:4 ratio.

@John4p, for me the best one of the samples is indeed number 8, although i don't use scanlines it is the best one for a true retro feeling. The filtering ones are too distorted for me, although if i had to choose one would be number 1.