Regardless of texture packs and such: you’ll need at least 4k to emulate the look of a CRT screen on a modern flat panel. More than 60Hz as well if you’re going for accuracy. Sure, the old pictures may only have been 576 lines, but the textures and visual effects were designed to take into account the light bleeding, phosphor face, and unintentional colour mixing that CRT TVs would add. A mere 1080p display can’t accurately display the more delicate effects of the image without also making the image blurrier than it would’ve been in real life.
With the right filters/upscalers, you can get pretty close to the practical visual designs that games were designed for, though more pixels may be even better. Some filters just add a few black bars over the screen and call them scanlines (which suck, obviously) but others do a pretty good job at emulating various TV models of the late 90s to early 00s. In many games, weird, pixelated graphics suddenly become smooth and shockingly sharp.
It’s also quite interesting to watch old shows and videos through those filters, especially the ones transferred from tape.
If you’re going for a more digital take, you can always use the 4k screen as a digital pixel grid and apply 4k rendering and all kinds of texture patches to emulators. When I play PS2 games, I bump the internal render resolution, which makes some games look much better than they ever did on real hardware.
Regardless of texture packs and such: you’ll need at least 4k to emulate the look of a CRT screen on a modern flat panel. More than 60Hz as well if you’re going for accuracy. Sure, the old pictures may only have been 576 lines, but the textures and visual effects were designed to take into account the light bleeding, phosphor face, and unintentional colour mixing that CRT TVs would add. A mere 1080p display can’t accurately display the more delicate effects of the image without also making the image blurrier than it would’ve been in real life.
With the right filters/upscalers, you can get pretty close to the practical visual designs that games were designed for, though more pixels may be even better. Some filters just add a few black bars over the screen and call them scanlines (which suck, obviously) but others do a pretty good job at emulating various TV models of the late 90s to early 00s. In many games, weird, pixelated graphics suddenly become smooth and shockingly sharp.
It’s also quite interesting to watch old shows and videos through those filters, especially the ones transferred from tape.
If you’re going for a more digital take, you can always use the 4k screen as a digital pixel grid and apply 4k rendering and all kinds of texture patches to emulators. When I play PS2 games, I bump the internal render resolution, which makes some games look much better than they ever did on real hardware.
All 100% true, this is with HD textures so the game looks like a next gen game.