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Comment by archerx | Hacker News Reader

What's the point of these? I grew up using CRT monitors and TVs and they look nothing like the shaders.

Yet still the 'raw' pixel data of old games rendered on modern displays without any filtering also doesn't look anything like they looked on CRT monitors (and even on CRT monitors there's a huge range between "game console connected to a dirt cheap tv via coax cable" and "desktop publishing workstation connected to professional monitor via VGA cable").

All the CRT shaders are just compromises on the 'correctness' vs 'aesthetics' vs 'performance' triangle (and everybody has a different sweet spot in this triangle, that's why there are so many CRT shaders to choose from).

Most of these CRT shaders seem to emulate the lowest possible quality CRTs you could find back in the day. I have a nice Trinitron monitor on my desk and it looks nothing like these shaders.

The only pleasant shader I have found is the one included in Dosbox Staging (https://www.dosbox-staging.org/), that one actually looks quite similar to my monitor!

Based on the repo dosbox staging seems to be mostly using crt-hyllian as their shader: https://github.com/dosbox-staging/dosbox-staging/tree/main/r...

That same shader is also available for RetroArch

A Trinitron shader would be two very thin horizontal lines trisecting the screen.

In theory, good CRT shader emulates temporal and "subpixel" tricks that game developers used to overcome color and resolution limitations.

Mostly, it's retro aesthetic for people who actually did not grow with CRT displays.

You say this, but the author was born in 1976. It not being perfect doesn't mean that the person involved doesn't know what they're talking about.

Indeed. I made this because I grew up with CRTs and miss that vibe. As I say on the page: it's not scientifically accurate, but it looks good, and gives the same sort of feeling. And more than that uses minimal shader code so it works well on older devices. I'm currently making a 3D game that uses this shader and it runs at 60fps an iPhone XS (2018).

Torture.

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