480
Visually indistinguishable
(lemmy.ml)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2025
480 points (100.0% liked)
Funny
12566 readers
408 users here now
General rules:
- Be kind.
- All posts must make an attempt to be funny.
- Obey the general sh.itjust.works instance rules.
- No politics or political figures. There are plenty of other politics communities to choose from.
- Don't post anything grotesque or potentially illegal. Examples include pornography, gore, animal cruelty, inappropriate jokes involving kids, etc.
Exceptions may be made at the discretion of the mods.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Not sure if you played on a CRT in the past, but nonetheless it’s interesting how different things looked. Here is my favorite example.
How tf does one red pixel get blurred into like 20 wide, but only like 4 tall? That seems sus
The scan lines are horizontal
I'm with you. This doesn't seem right. I know CRTs have an anti-aliasing effect, but this seems to have increased detail. Look at his ascot, for example. It seems to have more detail than the image on the left.
I don’t see any detail I can’t find in the sharp image. Except for the off screen stuff at the very top and bottom, since CRT pixels aren’t perfectly square and who ever made this image decided to fit by width. Nonetheless there are countless more example online and videos dedicated to this on youtube. Highly recommend :)
Yeah, I think you're right. The one on the left is stretched and has fewer pixels vertically than the right one, so it isn't showing quite the same thing.
If you look closely you can see it really does only bleed to the 2 pixels right next to it (horizontally, because that’s how the scan line travels). The dots you see don’t represent a single pixel. For example the hair, on the right in the sharp image you can see a single lone bright pixel for the hair, but on the CRT it’s 4 dots. I’m assuming 3 are probably the original pixel and the 4th is a bleed, but that’s just me guessing :P
There are countless more examples online and youtube videos about it, highly recommend ^^
That makes me wonder if there's a kind of upscaling for old games that simulates how an old CRT image on large modern screens.
Edit* Here's a high end solution. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ku9QNyWAL_Y https://www.retrotink.com/category/all-products
you only got this if it wasn't calibrated correctly tho
I don't think it does, look lower in the thread, I posted a pic I took myself of my CRT. There is a similar "how do so few pixels have this much definition" effect on the trees and grass.
Yup! Not many people know the impact of those filters tho. When I was emulating as a kid I hated CRT filters because I just saw them as noise (which many arguably are, it’s not trivial making a good CRT filter). Also if you used one of those pixel edge smoothing filters (like I used to) it would be even further from the intended look.
Of course I’m not the fun police, I believe everyone should be free to run their games as they please. I just find it fascinating that there even is such a big difference!
Some more info on color CRTs for the curious
you would also see subpixels on LCD at this level of zoom. this is misleading.
No such claim was made. I highly doubt anybody casually has a LCD TV with a low enough resolution, and even if we play under a magnifying glass, LCD sub pixels will result in a drastically different image. It’s only “misleading” if you ignore the context, which is playing old games stretched over a fundamentally different (90% of the time FullHD) screen without any adjustments taking place.