This week I revisited 1991’s Civilization, a childhood game I only managed to beat now that I’m old and wize enough in all that concerns videogames. And finally read that 200 pages manual… That game who taught me all I know about history, and so I’m glad to relive the accurate rise of the Aztec civilization who reached for the stars in 1931 and left us on earth since then. I managed to take a screenshot of their glorious capitol city, Tenochtitlan, and its renowned suspended gardens, its great wall, Hoover dam and J.S. Bach Cathedral. Those guys truly were ahead of their times.
And here it is in movement showcasing the very “Star Trek” like intro of the game, running with the awesome munt emulating a Roland MT32 sound module in DOSBoxPure. And the Alpha Centauri ending, because that’s the game’s sequel I’m gonna play next (and one of my favourite games in the 4X genre, with Age of Wonders and Endless Legend).
Congratulations. It’s really nice when games have some creativity and present new scenarios. I imagine you must have had a hell of a good time beating it.
Had a “side copy” on an Amiga 500, unable to save, so i was leaving the machine on during sleep and continue the next morning lol. Civilization is the game i have spend the most time playing, probably many thousands of hours, nowadays playing the DOS version of course. Brilliant game. A whole world in a couple of disks
Best viewed in fullscreen or zoomed in, in HDR mode or on a screen with bright settings for the full effect. You can download the .jxr files as well for proper HDR viewing.
CyberLab Megatron miniLED 4K HDR Game BFI Turbo Duo_DC 3D Comb Filter Shadow Mask Epic CAR9x8x.slangp
You did very well here! Did you know that the original CRT Royale PNGs have some specs of “imperfections” possibly dust and dirt and the phosphor shape is as realistic as it can get?
I think these factors contribute significantly to why CRT-Royale not only looks but feels the way it does!
These look delicious though. Hope the strong mask/cork sniffing ones are labelled for easy locating.
Looking forward to seeing some as accurate as possible HDR ready ones as well!
Just a little screenshot/photo comparison- one of my 100% mask presets (RRGGBBX, Composite Notch Filter) and how it looks on an HDR1000 display. Looks much better in person, of course:
This looks great, love the diagonals. It also highlights one of the reasons that the preset we were testing yesterday was so dark. Just compare the scanline dynamics. This one has thicker scanlines in the dark areas compared to that one.
So does CRT-Guest-Advanced-NTSC now include an emulated notch filter?
Thanks! Yeah lately I’ve been making the bright beams super wide for additional brightness in highlights, I like the way it looks. IMO it’s basically required in order to get the best dynamic range based on how the internal clamping works in guest-advanced, it’s possible I’ve missed something, though.
Not an emulated notch filter, but maybe as close as it gets with guest-ntsc, there’s a bit of wiggle room too for various quality notch filters. I think I’ve identified all of the parameters that would be influenced by notch/comb filtering. A truly emulated notch filter would require a whole new approach than what ntsc-adaptive is doing- the kind of thing PlainOldPants, DariusG and beans are doing.
Visually, one of the key characteristics is that notch filters are quite a bit blurrier than comb filters, you won’t have razor sharp black lines, etc. Another thing worth noting is you don’t get perfectly blended dithering even with notch filters, it’s probably like 80-90% blended (with comb filters even less of a blend).
I have a few reference shots collected on my phone for notch filter, I’ll do a comparison later.
Ok, finding photos of CRTs that are definitely using notch filters is a bit more difficult than I hoped - I collected a few that “look notch,” but couldn’t confirm 100% if that’s the case.
One thing that we’re not emulating is the vertical fringing you get with comb filters - I don’t know why you would ever want that, though. Basically, I’m just trying to eyeball this in some photos I’ve collected - not very scientific.
Probably worth distinguishing between a 3d adaptive comb filter (best case composite, e.g., Sony Wega Trinitron) and a 2D comb filter. From my studies, for retro gaming it’s:
3d adaptive comb filter > 3d comb filter > notch filter > 2d comb filter > nothing
Early computer monitors seem to be good candidates, e.g. Commodore 1701 and the Apple II composite displays, although it’s probably troublesome to find something like NES games running on the latter. The Apple II’s output itself seems to be a bit particular. But apparently, it can make differences with filters pretty obvious. (I may have linked that before…but anyway, when scrolling down to “Filtering and Artifact color” there are some pictures, a 3d adaptive filter is supposed to be devastating in this context…and not because it’s turns the picture upside down, that’s addressed in the comments ).
Came up with this after talking to @PlainOldPants for a bit.
NTSC Colors + GTUv50 + guest-advanced-ntsc
-GTUv50 for more accurate YIQ-based Chroma bleed effect
-NTSC color for NTSC color correction (I think that’s what it does?)
-adjusted color temp to -100 (I guess this is 9300k?)
-lowered contrast for aged phosphor “vintage” look
I’m sure there’s some improvement to be made to the settings, particularly fringing/artifacting, but looking at the videos posted here, I think it’s pretty close!
edit: made a few changes so the photos are no longer an exact match, but still close enough. Improved sharpness, artifacting and fringing. A more chroma smeared image will naturally reduce the appearance of dot crawl and fringing, etc - something to keep in mind when adding chroma smear/bleed. Notch filters had the more pronounced chroma smear, while comb filters reduced the chroma smear and made other artifacts like dot crawl and fringing more apparent. This is probably closer to a notch filter.
-NTSC color for NTSC color correction (I think that’s what it does?)
That’s a good opportunity then to clarify what it does vs. what other options do like Blargg filters and the shaders by @Guest and others (how does the NTSC LUT compare?)
Also, does it make a difference for content (hardware) that uses non-RGB palettes (NES, Atari 8-bit consoles and computers, C64 etc…) versus RGB generated? I wonder if there are scenarios where you are correcting essentially twice.
Still trying to prepend various stuff like NTSC-adaptative and scaleFX for NewPixie. I use 1080p, seems the rolling scanlines are set to fit that resolution. Is there a way to adapt the shader to QHD or 4K in the parameters? There’s no Y-resolution parameter, so when trying on those resolutions, the scanlines are a bit too thin for my taste.
Having a blast from the past right now with Isolated Warrior, my favourite game on the NES… Look at this guy, old friend of mine…
Good point, yes, I think you’re double correcting with those consoles when you select an NTSC palette- the palette should already be “corrected,” right? Any palette based on the final displayed image on a CRT doesn’t need to be corrected again…
Turbografx 16 is interesting, it did its own internal correction with a LUT to convert RGB to composite video colors before sending the signal to the TV, so the colors stay fairly consistent when switching from RGB and composite.
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