07-11-2018, 01:44 AM
Congratulations for your new NES Mini! Time to enjoy it :-)
I know the CRT filter I implemented is somewhat crude, and not faithful to actual CRT/composite video systems. Its mission is to give some retro aesthetic, because in actual systems individual pixels were indistinguishable. It doesn't use shaders, just a bit of blending and blurring so it works on low-end systems like the Raspberry Pi or ancient graphic chips like the intel GMA 950 without shaders at all.
There are impressive shader-based filters out there, like the insane CRT Royale in RetroArch https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph...8&start=30 but they require a badass video card. Some others like the one you mention in the NES mini, also emulate the composite video artifacts like the dot crawl you talk about (the animated checkered pattern), color fringing, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot_crawl
I don't have plans to enhance the shader effects on Tilengine, because it wouldn't add value but also would limit the platforms where it can run. You can for example -and I do- disable the built-in CRT effect and use Reshade3 https://reshade.me/, a gneric post-processing injector that also include CRT effects. Tilengine can't compete with this.
However it's good news to know that modern retro developers are finally understanding that low-res graphics were intended to be watched through a flawed signal and display device that added character to the graphics, that crisp-clear pixels are unnatural, and that character must be restored for optimal exprience instead of keeping on using ugly filters that try to give HD treatment (scale4x, advancemame4x, hq4x and the like)
I know the CRT filter I implemented is somewhat crude, and not faithful to actual CRT/composite video systems. Its mission is to give some retro aesthetic, because in actual systems individual pixels were indistinguishable. It doesn't use shaders, just a bit of blending and blurring so it works on low-end systems like the Raspberry Pi or ancient graphic chips like the intel GMA 950 without shaders at all.
There are impressive shader-based filters out there, like the insane CRT Royale in RetroArch https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph...8&start=30 but they require a badass video card. Some others like the one you mention in the NES mini, also emulate the composite video artifacts like the dot crawl you talk about (the animated checkered pattern), color fringing, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot_crawl
I don't have plans to enhance the shader effects on Tilengine, because it wouldn't add value but also would limit the platforms where it can run. You can for example -and I do- disable the built-in CRT effect and use Reshade3 https://reshade.me/, a gneric post-processing injector that also include CRT effects. Tilengine can't compete with this.
However it's good news to know that modern retro developers are finally understanding that low-res graphics were intended to be watched through a flawed signal and display device that added character to the graphics, that crisp-clear pixels are unnatural, and that character must be restored for optimal exprience instead of keeping on using ugly filters that try to give HD treatment (scale4x, advancemame4x, hq4x and the like)