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GaryMcT's Mame CRT simulation project
MaximRecoil:
--- Quote from: DJ_Izumi on September 10, 2009, 07:07:14 pm ---Well, any low resolution content tends to get distorted by using upscaling unless it's in exact multiples. For example, a 320x240 game would look GREAT on a 640x480 screen.
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In that example, only the distortion issue is eliminated, but that doesn't automatically make it look great. Low resolution graphics on a high resolution screen with a fine dot pitch look bad. It is like the "screenshots" they used to put on the boxes for some of the older console games; which weren't screenshots at all, but artist renditions, done with razor sharp square pixels:
Fortunately when you got it home and played it, it looked nothing like that on the TV screen. However, fire up SMB in an emulator on a high resolution PC monitor, and it looks exactly like that.
--- Quote ---I surmise that if higher resolution LCDs were available in the 70's and 80's there would be a lot of custome variations. Keep in mind there'd also be the entire PC industry to cater to as well. I think there'd be plenty of 'low resolution' LCD monitors on the consumer market and far more specific monitors available to industry, including the computer and arcade industries. They could likely easily order monitors custom to their resolution needs.
Though this isn't so much my point. My point is, if arcade devs could use higher quality displays at the time, they would have and they would have been like 'HELL YEAH! Look how sharp and clear that is! It doesn't even flicker! This is awesome.' I find a lot of older arcade or console games refreshingly clean looking on a PC monitor. :)
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I'm not convinced that they would have been impressed with their graphics looking like Lego blocks. Also, what do you mean by "higher quality" displays? The popular arcade monitors of the day were not lacking in quality.
DJ_Izumi:
Higher quality as in image quality. :)
MaximRecoil:
--- Quote from: DJ_Izumi on September 10, 2009, 07:38:45 pm ---Higher quality as in image quality. :)
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If you mean "image quality" in the technical sense; which would be the level of trueness to the source, then only an LCD with a native resolution that exactly matches the resolution of the game being displayed could be said to have better image quality than a standard resolution arcade monitor; and even then, that would only be in one respect (how accurate the shapes are). What happens when I change my viewing angle while viewing an LCD display? I see different colors. Whoops! How true is that to the source? The source has a hard coded color for each pixel; not variable depending on one's viewing angle.
But the more important issue is this; what if the source is ugly, and through the inherent effects of a standard resolution CRT, that ugliness can be improved? I submit, for example, that a round Pac-Man sprite is more aesthetically pleasing than a Lego block Pac-Man sprite. If a cartoonist or comic book artist were to draw Pac-Man, it would be with smooth curves; because that looks better than jagged edges. When Iwatani envisioned the character, he no doubt envisioned a circle. The Pac-Man hardware forced Lego blockesque data, but it didn't matter; because when viewed on an arcade monitor, Pac-Man looked like a circle nonetheless.
A similar situation comes up when discussing sound quality (trueness to source). What if the recording sounds bad due to an incompetent sound guy in the studio? If you fix it via e.g. an equalizer so that it sounds better, technically you have worse sound quality (less true to the source), but it sounds better. Which would you choose?
GaryMcT:
Maybe the debate about whether or not this a worthwhile project could be taken somewhere else? I'm doing the project, so it isn't really helpful to debate whether it is useful to anyone or not. :)
MaximRecoil:
--- Quote from: GaryMcT on September 10, 2009, 08:10:38 pm ---Maybe the debate about whether or not this a worthwhile project could be taken somewhere else?
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Who's debating about whether or not this a worthwhile project? I've already stated this:
--- Quote from: MaximRecoil on September 10, 2009, 08:34:45 am ---So if you are able to accomplish such a simulation, I'd be interested
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