scanlines

[shfifty]

Heres the deal: I'm trying to get an authentic scanline look for my games.

- 21" crt vga (hitachi cm828) monitor
- Advmame(dos) with games in native resolutions
- nvidia 5200fx

Since i dont own a real arcade monitor, i'm looking to compare, and get advice to get a better scanline effect and get the best authenticity. So heres my current pics, let me know how it compares with a real monitor and post some pics if possible.

Thanks in advance

[Jack Burton]

Looks pretty good to me.  

There are two factors you should be aware of.

#1 is that the dot pitch of your monitor is finer than that of most arcade monitors.  It is .21 mm, where most arcade monitors are somewhere between .6 and .8mm  

The result of this mean that although you are able to resolve finer detail on your monitor, and the display will be very sharp, it will also have very well defined scanlines at low resolutions.  

On a monitor with a coarse dot pitch the black scanlines will be smaller, and the overall image will be softer.

Neither is particularly more "correct", they simply represent differing aesthetics.  

#2 is that when you say native resolution, be sure you mean exactly that, and not "equivalent 1 to 1 pixel ratio resolution."

For example, if you install Soft 15khz and try to run Street Fighter III Third Strike you can select the resolution of 392x240 from the resolutions that are installed by default with Soft 15khz.  This resolution is very close to the actual native resolution of the game, which is 384x224.  By using your monitors horizontal and vertical controls you can stretch and center this image to get a "native image".

However, in my experience, this makes the scanlines just a bit more noticeable.  It's because the monitor is actually drawing the extra 6 lines of resolution and adding them to the image.  You want to get rid of that, and make the lines of color just a little more thicker and vibrant.  To do this you need to run in the exact number of lines the game runs in, which is 224.  

To do that you can use the ADVV utility that comes with advancemame to set up a custom resolution, and then either use it in that emulator or copy it over into Soft 15khz.

This results in slightly more accurate, brighter, more "arcadey" image.  

One thing you can do that I believe also helps the arcade feel is set your monitor to a warm color temperature.  The 9300k or thereabouts temp that most pc monitors run at is very blue, and cold and computery.  Older arcade monitors ran at warmer temperatures closer to that of a television.  By setting to near 6500k it gives the greens and reds a very retro feel imo.  

And of course make sure your monitor is correctly calibrated for brightness and contrast.  It's amazing what 30 minutes of reading can do to help the quality of the images you can get out of your monitor.  Make sure you let it warm up for a couple of hours before doing any adjustments.  

The monitor in this topic is not an arcade monitor, but it has a dot pitch very close to one:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=100790.0 and lots of good in close photos of the graphics .

[shfifty]

thanks for the reply jack burton. It was very informative.

most of the games are indeed running in correct resolutions (384x224 for cps, 304x224 for neo geo etc). 
I changed the colour temp to 6500K, the monitor had a preset for this. The colours do look much nicer now and not so white.

One more question:

The scanlines are prehaps slightly too defined and thick, is there any way to tweak this or cant it be changed due of the dot pitch of the monitor?

[Jack Burton]

The only true way to tweak it is to decrease the horizontal and vertical size of the screen using the monitors controls.

As you  decrease the size of the screen you are making the graphics smaller in relation to the size of the dot pitch.  This will result in smaller, less noticeable scanlines at the cost of the image size.  

Anything else you do will be gimmicky and degrade the image quality IMO.  Are you planning on putting this monitor in a cab?

[I/O]

That is the best it can look on that monitor. I think it looks great.

[shfifty]

yeah the monitors for an upright cabinet i'm currently working on. Ill probably start a build thread in a couple of weeks

[shfifty]

another thing, with games like 19xx and raiden that have resolutions like 384x224(v), does this mean that running native resolutions would require the monitor to be spun 90 degrees like this?


|....................|
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|                    |   384
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        224   

[Jack Burton]

yes indeed.

[SailorSat]

Doesn't look too bad. But your scanlines in pacman are wrong, they need to be vertical

Some references for your scanlines
(showing R-Type Leo)

<- old 25" Hantarex 9110
<- newer 29" m2c

*EDIT*
Just for reference...
<- 21" Sony VGA

[Jack Burton]

I finally got around to taking some pictures of my monitor.  It's not really an arcade monitor, but it is a very nice monitor for arcade games.

It's a Mitsubishi AM-3501R.  

I took a picture of the R in R-type Leo just to compare to SailorSat's image, and one of SFIII to compare to the OP's images.

This monitor uses a technology called Chromaclear, which gives it a slightly darker, softer image compared to the image from a monitor like a Sony Trinitron, which uses an aperature grill.  

Most of the TV's manufactured today use Chromaclear, and I would say most arcade monitors do too.

I'm not sure what that Hantarex monitor used.  It may have used the older dot trio design.  But imo it looks best of the group.  

You can right click any of these images and use "view image" to see it at a higher resolution.  I encourage you to do so!

[shfifty]

I think i have mine looking as good as i will get it for a vga monitor. Heres some more zoomed in pics of.............. you guessed it. rtype.

pic1 rtype 2
pic 2 rtype leo (which runs slightly less res than rtype 2).
pic 3 ssf2t

Everything is looking good now except vertical games which will have to bite the bullet, the monitor is gonna stay horizontal permanently - you cant have everything. Colour temp is set to 6500k. I'm happy with the results, ill stick with the vga for now, ill think about getting a presentation or arcade monitor when this one dies or if i start a new project (when i eventually finish this one, sigh)