What's the proper way of playing old, low resolution games on modern monitors?

[Maggot]

Buying a 15 inch CRT to play retro gaymes was the best purchase i've made in quite a while thanks gumby. It's just not the same on a flat screen.

 

[J_C]

Buying a 15 inch CRT to play retro gaymes was the best purchase i've made in quite a while thanks gumby. It's just not the same on a flat screen.

I would totally agree, but I still need my eyes in the next 40 years.

 

[Lond]

Well, for most games that old - I'd use DosBox with a decent filter - and some middleground resolution. If you want fullscreen, then make sure it's not stretched on a widescreen monitor, as in - you want to retain the original aspect ratio.

I switch between filters, but I generally prefer something that's not too far from the original visuals. But there's no reason to subject yourself to ultra-large pixels without filtering.

 

[Max Stats]

Buying a 15 inch CRT to play retro gaymes was the best purchase i've made in quite a while thanks gumby. It's just not the same on a flat screen.

I would totally agree, but I still need my eyes in the next 40 years.

then up it to 17-19"

 

[agris]

muh childhood

 

[Alienman]

Now I want a CRT monitor. That screen looks fabulous.

 

[Maggot]

I would totally agree, but I still need my eyes in the next 40 years.

Your eyes will be fine unless you glue your face to the screen without any breaks.

Spoiler

 

[Severian Silk]

Maybe one day manufacturers will invent flat panel monitors that don't have a native resolution? Wait to play these games until then.

 

[MRY]

Make sure to use some kind of shader/filter that adds thick black outlines to the sprites. It's how the games are meant to be played.

 

[Excidium II]

That one's the best. BG1 looks so FUCKING BAD on modern screens, but there it looks nice.

 

[Maggot]

That one's the best. BG1 looks so FUCKING BAD on modern screens, but there it looks nice.

It looks a lot sharper and more vivid IRL I took all these pics with a shitty phone camera. This CRT from '96 has better colors than my flat screen

 

[Alienman]

Blood looks fantastic on CRT.

 

[shihonage]

Since there are many intelligent, knowledgeable and polite people on the Codex, I'd like to get your opinion about the best way of playing the game's of old on modern monitors. When you play a game which has a resolution of 640x480 on a monitor with a native resolution of 1080p, things can get a bit messy.

Do you know any tricks to get the most out of this situation? Maybe there is a way to only scale up to a certain resolution, or there is a preferred way to scale up the image? I dunno, I'm sure you have a trick for this.

Just pretend it's a modern indie game and you're all set

 

[Maggot]

Bonus Round:

Spoiler

 

[dunno lah]

CHange thread title to CRT appreciation thread

 

[J_C]

As much as I appreciate of the beautiful views on a CRT monitor, I won't go back to them because:
a) I barely have enough space in my desk and in the room as it is.
b) even if you take breaks, the way CRTs vibrate are straining your eyes and I already have a shit enough eyesight.

Have you any of you tried these small 800x600 resolution LCDs for older games? Like this:
https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/hdmi-8-inch-lcd-screen-kit-800-600
or this:

 

[Maggot]

You'll be fine as long as your CRT is set to a high refresh rate. I have a tiny desk which is why my CRT is only 15 inches and I have to rotate it a bit to fit properly.
older pic of my current setup:

Spoiler

 

[Alienman]

But the interlacing man...

 

[J_C]

1. Games in Dosbox
Rather than use any scaler in Dosbox (HQ5x etc), I use the Lanczos.fx pixel shader which takes a slight bit of the harshness off of 320x200 blasting your eyeballs at 1600x1000.

Could you help me with this Lanczos.fx shader? I tried to google it but nothing helpful turned up. How do I add this to dosbox?

 

[agris]

1. Games in Dosbox
Rather than use any scaler in Dosbox (HQ5x etc), I use the Lanczos.fx pixel shader which takes a slight bit of the harshness off of 320x200 blasting your eyeballs at 1600x1000.

Could you help me with this Lanczos.fx shader? I tried to google it but nothing helpful turned up. How do I add this to dosbox?

Its included with dosbox daum build, just enable it in your config file for the game. browse the dosbox daum folder and you'll find the folder of pixelshaders, one of which is the Lanczos.fx. You can change your dosbox config to use any of the shaders in that pixel shader folder.

that's my last one though, next one you gotta actually go to www.google.com ok?

 

[J_C]

Thanks.

 

[Delbaeth]

IIRC, the Daum build is now outdated, not updated for 2 years, and many people on vogons discourage others to try it as it has bugs uncorrected.
The SVN build which is currently the most updated, is Dosbox-X but this one hasn't filters...

Be cautious with the Daum build, and if it bugs, maybe you should try a previous version of it.

 

[agris]

IIRC, the Daum build is now outdated, not updated for 2 years, and many people on vogons discourage others to try it as it has bugs uncorrected.
The SVN build which is currently the most updated, is Dosbox-X but this one hasn't filters...

Be cautious with the Daum build, and if it bugs, maybe you should try a previous version of it.

What bugs? I've used it for literally all my dosbox games and haven't had one yet. 4th hand information is frequently useless.

 

[Max Stats]

Your eyes will be fine unless you glue your face to the screen without any breaks.

But teh VR!

 

[schru]

dgVoodoo has a reasonably decent CRT filter that works with some 3dfx and early DirectX games. I took these pictures taken with a camera because I couldn't capture screenshots when using the wrapper; they were rendered at 1400x1050:

Spoiler