Main > Main Forum
How do you make an LCD image into a CRT image?
DickTurpin:
The FAQs has it all:
I only use a conventional PC monitor. What is the benefit of this card? My ordinary card seems to work fine with MAME.
When you run most MAME games, a process called Hardware Stretch is used. This is needed because most arcade games do not use PC resolutions suchas 640 X 480, 1024 X 768 etc. They use resolutions such as 256 X 264. These arcade resolutions could not, until now, be displayed in Windows on a PC monitor. To get around that problem, MAME tells the VGA card to stretch the image to fit the PC resolution. This means that the pixel-to-pixel mapping of the original game onto the monitor screen is lost as there is no longer a one-to-one relationship between the pixels which the game designer created and the displayed pixels. As arcade game resolutions are generally low, this creates a loss of quality. It is important to note that using a PC monitor will NOT produce an arcade monitor-like picture as PC monitors have a much higher dot pitch and finer scan width than arcade monitors. But using the ArcadeVGA will give a crisper picture than an ordinary VGA card, at the lower resolutions. There are some comparison pictures on the product page. Another benefitis that the vertical refresh rates of the ArcadeVGA modes are tailored to Mame games which means a smoother motion on horizontally moving graphics.
So although it doesn't as you say do the biz about res because your right the lowest res my monitor can do is 800x600 - It does improve the quality of the picture and the crisper output is well worth the £60 - I'm looking at this for a full upright mind you and I wouldn't recommend it for a Bartop. I do like the look the card produces. Some of the animation looks less blurry as well.
Either way unless you had an arcade monitor it won't look 'totally' authentic. But then why use a bartop design if you want authenticity ??
Dawgz Rule:
The authentic look is purely because of the scanlines, not the ArcadeVGA. The benefit of the ArcadeVGA is purely for someone who has an arcade monitor that will accept the lower resolutions.
DickTurpin:
--- Quote from: nitz on July 13, 2013, 03:04:24 pm ---Outputting the games in their original resolutions isn't going to give you a CRT look on an LCD. LCDs can only display one resolution - their native resolution. Sure, you can send other resolutions to it, but the LCD just scales it to its native res, and generally does a bad job of it at that.
Mame's HLSL is the best way to go, you can tweak it to look pretty much however you want. If your video card isn't up to the task and you feel that just having scanlines is enough, get the scanline generator.
--- End quote ---
Nitz, This does produce a decent crisp picture on LCD. But I take your point. I keep hearing HLSL what is that ?
Dawgz Rule:
Also, the whole point of the ArcadeVGA is to turn the hardware stretching off.
Sjaak:
--- Quote from: DickTurpin on July 14, 2013, 05:51:08 am --- I keep hearing HLSL what is that ?
--- End quote ---
HLSL (high level shader language) is a addition to mame to simulate a crt screen. It does scanlines, curvature, color bleed, after glow, etc. It tries to emulate the characteristics of a phosphor based screen. And it does that pretty well.