The Battlezone looks great. I had thought about doing the ports with opacity as if you were looking through it, but decided it wouldn’t work very well. This one looks really cool.
2 Likes
Hey @K-rnivoro,
I think you have missed this Scramble overlay from Briball… seem the best of all for me but just my opinion 
1 Like
Thanks @oneshout. I just checked and it’s like the dark version of the one already published, with some variation in the CPO and a strip at the bottom of the tube. I’m not at home to try but I think you can just replace the png. I guess that bottom strip just covers partially the bezel, in the same way than the artwork around it. However, I’ve uploaded it as scamble_dark.params version, so we have the three of them. I post only the jpg overlays for you to see.
Although I prefer that front CPO view than the top view, I’m more inclined to “light” versions of artwork.
Actually, where are the overlays made by @Briball? Is there any particular repository? Maybe I missed it entirely.
2 Likes
Love it. Zooming over the pic, I can clearly see how different the “CRT” looks in 4K instead of HD… 
1 Like
After looking around it seems he just posted his work as images in topics or did some group releases on his gdrive. I would recommend, if you haven’t, to go to the top, select on his profile image in the frequent posters list and click the button below messages to show only his posts. There are few on this specific topic that think I haven’t seen yet.
Thanks @hgoda90. Yes, I’ve downloaded some of his work. I just didn’t took note it was his. I’ll track down his overlays.
Yeah and HDR makes a huge difference too. On a 4k OLED with HDR enabled, I can set the image right next to a CRT and it’s hard to tell the difference. And if anything the OLED would win in overall picture quality in terms of color saturation and purity, etc. For these overlays I don’t use an OLED usually though, because I worry about screen burn-in. I often leave a game running in attract mode for an entire day just to have running as a kind of art on my wall. A high quality mini-LED is pretty close to OLED, but doesn’t have the perfect motion smoothness since they are usually VA panels.
2 Likes
I’m confused mini-LED is a LCD VA Panel? Have you a VRR monitor? I wanted to know how those sub-60 Hz games works like Mortal Kombat
1 Like
Yeah, the mini-LED I have is a Samsung QN90B and has a VA panel. It’s incredibly bright with great blacks and has VRR which does help with motion. But VA panels tend to have a ghosting effect, it’s not super pronounced on this TV but it’s definitely blurrier in motion than my OLED (I also have an LG C3 48" that I use with a pedestal cabinet in my arcade room, but it’s horizontally mounted).
I think OLED motion, with the almost instant pixel refresh times and a VRR are about as close as we’ll get to an actual CRT in terms of motion clarity. The HDR is necessary to make up for the brightness lost once you add in scan lines and masks. Another plus for OLED is the blacks are actually deeper than an actual CRT, which did have grey tubes. It’s too bad that the other trait OLED shares with CRT’s is risk of burn-in, though I’ve heard different things in terms of how prevalent that really is. It’s clear that the monitor manufacturers don’t feel it’s an issue or they wouldn’t be shifting so much capacity into the technology and offering 3 year warranties.
2 Likes
Yeah, I guess OLED is the way to go for “CRT fidelity”. That technology is still improving and I guess burn-in is not a risk unless you wanted to play Pac Man (with it’s overlay) for 20 hours straight… 
On the other hand it’s an expensive technology if you plan to “slave” a TV or monitor for arcade emulation, let alone vertical only setup…
Regarding VRR, I’m not sure if those comercial TVs (OLED or not) do support Low Frame Rate Compensation (LFC), which is a must for faithful emulation of sub-60Hz games like Mortal Kombat. Have you tried that to check if it’s really running at 54 Hz?
Yeah, the LG OLED’s have supported LFC since the C1’s and the Samsung QN90B series also has support for that. The motion on the LG really is very smooth.
As for the cost I guess it’s partly a matter of priorities, who needs a retirement fund anyway?
Here is the setup I’ve been working on this week:
Govee Hexa Ultra with dreamview:
I’m planning to add another 32" OLED to the left of the 57" Ultrawide for work/editing/gaming too. I’m a little crazy 
The 1000R curve on the ultrawide has taken some getting used to, but I am now and it’s fantastic for doing things like editing a marquee in Photoshop:
8 Likes
Wow!!! I love your setup even more!!! My brothers is a sim racer, he would kill for that monitor…
You’re right, what do you do if not playing games when you get retired anyway?
Is that a sound bar below your ultra wide monitor?
I guess I’ll be buying a nice TV for the verticals overlays this year.
What size is yours?
1 Like
Yeah there’s a Samsung Q800B sound bar under the monitor with subwoofer, and the TV is 55". The TV is mounted to a motorized wall mount so I can move it between vertical and horizontal by pressing a button on the remote.
3 Likes
Nice!! You’ll need some speakers for that TV too I guess, at least for vertical. I guess that TV does not sound right in that position, right?
Speaking of marquees, I’m gathering marquees from different sources, in order to get a nice collection for the “generic” overlay project. Maybe you can take a look and find something interesting for your projects: https://drive.google.com/open?id=18a3d-p57MoTzNfDSuQNyFJtOVfgsNcdX&usp=drive_fs
What I have noticed, and I’m sure you have too, several marquees are more “squared” than the typical ones. Maybe we (you ) can make a generic overlay with a different aspect ratio for the marquee. Of course it won’t fit all marquees, but at least it will look better when stretched.
I’m still working on that. Cleaning the folder and adding some more I’ve found on the net which are not in that folder yet.
Hope you find it useful.
1 Like
Honestly a lot of old arcade games just had mono sound anyway so it doesn’t matter, and the ones that were stereo wouldn’t have had a lot of separation in cabinet anyway since the speakers were so close together. It’s actually not bad. I had the sound bar connected to the TV before I moved it to the computer and might still get another sound bar for the game TV, but it’s really not that bad.
I think the best bet would be to come up with a marquee aspect ratio that covers most cases and the marquees would just have to be cropped to fit.
Btw, I think the D&D marquee you posted would have been the the marquee used in Big Blue cabinets for that game. Those cabinets had a huge (and awesome) marquee format.
2 Likes
Yeah, you´re right about sound, however some games have a nice stereo sound, those like later “Street Fighters” series with Q Sound for instance. Regarding marquees, you´re right, Big Blue cabinets have big marquees. If you have one made, we can use it as default for games with “weird” marquess maybe.
1 Like
