Sub-struggle:
CRT vs LCD? Those waterfalls used to look really different, and took advantage of the color bleed of old CRT monitors to mimic transparency
I don't believe that any hardware edition of the mega drive/Genesis has native s-video out. The only way to get that would be to emulate it on a Wii or OG Xbox.
I had to check and sure enough, the thing can output s-video but there was no cable or w/e originally. The console can do RGB natively though and used SCART in pal territories soooo...
The point of my smartass question is that the Mega Drive, and also the Saturn for Sonic Jam ofc, can display video that doesn't have the awful composite video artifacts that cause the dithering transparency things. The Mega Drive was SCART originally, right?
I guess I'm just not convinced about the whole, dither-composite-transparency thing, and I actually have an old CRT plus a real Genesis. It's such a weird thing people fixate on, like why make the video output look awful for one goofy visual effect? Plus I'm not convinced that the devs did these things assuming NOBODY would ever see their games in better quality than combined chroma/luma... (composite)
I love CRT displays, but I think an LCD is still fine, and it's definitely the more reasonable option. CRTs are inefficient space-wise, use far more power than an LCD, and are slowly becoming a collector's item. Plus, if you are using a CRT TV, you need to either own the actual consoles plus either the games themselves or a flash cart, or go through a lot of effort and potentially need special equipment to output a 15kHz analog signal from a computer/modern emulation device. I think a good shader to mimic scanlines and an analog signal like in your screenshot is the ideal compromise, but ultimately it's fine to just leave it to personal preference.
That being said, if you do have the ability to play these old games on a CRT, for sure go for it! No shaders can mimic the look of a CRT in motion, and games like Sonic where the screen scrolls very quickly especially benefit from it a lot imo.
Sub-struggle: CRT vs LCD? Those waterfalls used to look really different, and took advantage of the color bleed of old CRT monitors to mimic transparency
I won't struggle over this but I am deeply fond of the CRT bleed being leveraged to add a nice softness to some pixel art backgrounds.
But on the other hand I like crispy character sprites.
Ah fuck I'm gonna self criiiit.
Many older games were designed with CRTs in mind, and the colors and shapes don't look so great on modern monitors without some shaders applied.
Right so like, if you played Sonic 1 on a mega drive/genesis using its native s-video out on a consumer shadow mask set, what happens?
I don't believe that any hardware edition of the mega drive/Genesis has native s-video out. The only way to get that would be to emulate it on a Wii or OG Xbox.
I had to check and sure enough, the thing can output s-video but there was no cable or w/e originally. The console can do RGB natively though and used SCART in pal territories soooo...
If that's the case, there's a good chance some hobbyists have made a hob for the hardware that can do it.
As for your first question, I don't know A/V stuff that well so I have no idea. What's a shadow mask?
A shadow mask is a type of CRT television :)
The point of my smartass question is that the Mega Drive, and also the Saturn for Sonic Jam ofc, can display video that doesn't have the awful composite video artifacts that cause the dithering transparency things. The Mega Drive was SCART originally, right?
I guess I'm just not convinced about the whole, dither-composite-transparency thing, and I actually have an old CRT plus a real Genesis. It's such a weird thing people fixate on, like why make the video output look awful for one goofy visual effect? Plus I'm not convinced that the devs did these things assuming NOBODY would ever see their games in better quality than combined chroma/luma... (composite)
I love CRT displays, but I think an LCD is still fine, and it's definitely the more reasonable option. CRTs are inefficient space-wise, use far more power than an LCD, and are slowly becoming a collector's item. Plus, if you are using a CRT TV, you need to either own the actual consoles plus either the games themselves or a flash cart, or go through a lot of effort and potentially need special equipment to output a 15kHz analog signal from a computer/modern emulation device. I think a good shader to mimic scanlines and an analog signal like in your screenshot is the ideal compromise, but ultimately it's fine to just leave it to personal preference.
That being said, if you do have the ability to play these old games on a CRT, for sure go for it! No shaders can mimic the look of a CRT in motion, and games like Sonic where the screen scrolls very quickly especially benefit from it a lot imo.
There are some pretty good CRT shaders out there. The ones used in Sonic Mania get pretty close!