Pulling my hair out.
I’m trying to get black thick scanlines, and everything is giving me a headache.
CRT-Geom looks amazing, but without integer scaling it breaks the moment the screen size changes, and I plug my system into tons of different screens so that’s not a solution.
I was told easy-mode was great, but no setting I use will give me BOTH black and thick, it’s one or the other…
Trying to keep a light loaded shader as well since I use so many computers with this…
What can I do here?
Integer scaling is going to be a necessity for good-looking scanlines, no way around it. CRT-Geom and crt-easymode are the best at looking decent at non-integer. CRT-Caligari is another good one to consider. Just turn down the spot height to make the gaps darker.
So with Integer scaling… (I just tried caligari, but geom is definitely better)
Do the scanlines on these not show up until a certain number of vertical lines are present?
For instance, I’m in NES, and scanlines show at 3x height (672) but not 2x height (448)
480, 720, and 1080 are the heights I’m trying to get closest to… the first one is most important though 'cause I’m trying to get my crappy 13" TV I connect to via RF signal to have scanlines lol. As it stands you can’t see any 'cause it’s just a dinky JVC, but the resolution it takes from my HDMI to RF adapter is 720x480.
Yeah, a lot of CRT shaders need at least 3x scale.
You’re not going to be able to get good lines with the RF adapter because it’s outputting 480i, which means half of every line is getting shown each frame. The best you’ll be able to get out of it is misc/interlacing at 2x integer scale. That draws completely black lines over half of the normal lines, but you’ll see that as the interlaced signal jitters between field-sets, it’s going to look like crap.
Hahaha I was just about to respond 'cause I was playing with it, the lines start kicking in at exactly 449 on that NES… lol because of course they do XD
I also figured out a big part of my problem is that one of my screens had the windows native zoom feature in display settings enabled… pfft… totally threw off all the work I was doing when I switched.
I’ve got almost everything setup now using geom, no integer scale, but at 1080p it’s so close that I have to put my face into the screen to see the few scanlines that aren’t showing perfect. I’ll have to get a higher quality CRT with REAL scanlines, for that low-def avenue, but the high-def stuff is great now! Thanks for your help on that.
The only hangover is the Dreamcast because it’s native resolution is that 640x480 - so I’m guessing no one has a solution for that since 3 x 480 = 1440… unless they are like all into 4K already haha. I guess I can try to replicate a VGA signal or something for that one.
p.s. You were right about the jitter on that interlace too… insta-headache lol
Is there any workaround for this 480i jittering issue? I have a gorgeous 29" Philips SDTV in my room and I was considering buying a cheap HDMI to AV converter to play my emulators on it, but this converter only outputs to 480i and the tv doesn’t have progressive scan anyway.
I was thinking about using simple scanlines to manage this, but it seems like it wouldn’t be pretty in this setup, right?
Is it even worth the hassle getting this adaptor to play old-school systems in 480i or I’m better with my current lcd+shaders alternative?
No, I don’t think adapters are worth the trouble due to the interlacing issue. Instead, get an RPi3 and use the composite-out with the new 240p-capable firmware. It’s the best cheap option currently.
You can use CRTEmudriver to get a 240p output. You’ll need a transcoder to physically connect your pc to your SDTV.
What is a CRTEmudriver, and what is a transcoder? lol
What kind of transcoder? Can you link me to one so I know what you’re talking about?
CRTEmuDriver is a hacked up ATI gfx driver that supports lots of weird 15khz resolutions.
A VGA-to-YPbPr transcoder is something like this: https://www.audioauthority.com/product_details/9A60A
Transcoding is just changing the colorspace from RGB to YPbPr (aka component) without modifying the signal, which adds latency and may not cooperate with a 240p signal.