Is DOSBox Staging better than real Retro PC? Part 1 Graphics

[@johnnovak1979]

Yo, DOSBox Staging dev here. That was a very nice and informative video, Phil, congrats! 🎉 As the author of many of the recent audio related improvements in Staging, I'm really looking forward to the next installment! I agree with you, the usability needs to be improved. You might be delighted to hear that we're currently working on (vastly) improved documentation, plus a few more usability improvements that I'm not ready to reveal just yet... 😁 Keep up the great work! 😎

[@Reziac]

Sometimes you just can't do without DOS. :) Tho I was sad to see no version for XP....

[@Jaroartx]

Thanks for all your hard work for preserving and important part of history of the Pc

[@jbinary82]

Thank you so much for your work

[@User0ne2]

@@Reziac wait... WHAT? No Windows XP version?? Wow... that's a bummer. EDIT: they even put a Windows Vista version, but no XP. Like, c'mon...

[@Reziac]

​@@User0ne2 Yeah, disappointing, and it can't be that hard to retrobuild for XP -- there's a guy who routinely builds XP versions for a bunch of modern browsers, and that's a much bigger can of programming worms. (Yep, XP/XP64 is still my everyday.)

[@carltonleboss]

Using an 8K monitor to play DOS games, that is the life.

[@TrueThanny]

That's literally the only valid use for one. No software that's not written specifically to be output on a CRT display gains anything beyond 3840x2160.

[@boumerguy7042]

I heard some people use a RTX4090 to play quake 2 with raytracing

[@Aionolemauve]

If it's GDM FW 900, that's working good at 2304x1440 80hz, crt and native treatment, never tearing, not indispensable for dos games (low resolution) but it can still turn out to be superior to LEDs in many cases. Or 8k projection with old TRI-RGB projector (3 small cathodic screens for projectors)then Barco brand & others. @Thanny: Where are you getting this information from?, CRT screens don't have a native resolution, you can give it more resolution than it has pixels, but it has no limit actually, other than the number of pixels. The highest resolution is the Sony FW900 2304x1440 (pixels, but can take 4k resolution signal).

[@Aionolemauve]

@@TrueThanny Projector tri lamp can up 16k...

[@ricsip]

@@Aionolemauve crt monitors later had a mask that had holes to let the electron beam get through, and blocked where it shouldnt have pass through. That mask would limit the achievable max resolution, am I wrong?

[@GabrielZ666]

WHAT! Phil using a CRT? What a time to be alive!!!! 😆

[@serpentza]

Excellent video mate, very well explained!

[@philscomputerlab]

Thanks 😊

[@FR4M3Sharma]

Yo Wince, wasn't expecting you here. :D

[@domportera]

yeah wtf i was just watching laowhy... i'll never forget y'alls trip to The Great Abandoned City

[@DanielLopez-up6os]

Fancy seeing you here winston.

[@retropcscotland4645]

Let's face it. As older hardware get's more and more harder and expensive to find this is the way of the future. I have high hope for dosbox let's hope they get it right. Good video Phil.

[@lordwiadro83]

People who remember old PCs are also getting older. Newer generations have no understanding of our hobby. I only hope that my hardware lasts another 40 years. What happens after does not matter.

[@brostenen]

Happy to have original old hardware my self. And that is not only 286/486 stuff. I also have Amiga's and C64's....

[@retropcscotland4645]

@@lordwiadro83 Some of us have been around since the 70's.

[@TheTurnipKing]

Actually we're just about at the stage now where actually building retro hardware is properly feasible and a hobby into unto itself

[@Agent-ie3uv]

Yeah "Let's face it" this is also a face reveal episode 👻

[@alextirrellRI]

This has become a really big thing with retro console scalers and emulation, so it's nice to see it coming to PC emulation as well. One thing that's really cool with the RetroTink5x and MiSTer is that they're now starting to allow HDR displays to be able to 'bloom' a bit like a CRT would. You're totally right that higher resolution displays will be able to get much closer to a CRT look!

[@Chordonblue]

I LOVE the shaders in the Atari 2600 emulator, Stella. Besides scanlines, they even emulate RF distortion and color drift - VERY common issues when playing on a TV, back in the day. Without these effects, there is no 'softening' like there would be on an NTSC TV. Everything looks blockier - if that makes sense. The only issue I have here is that it comes down to: Whose RGB monitor? I assure you, there was a VAST difference between a top of the line NEC model and a cheap Packard Bell or Tandy 1000 PC monitor.

[@brkbtjunkie]

@@Chordonblue my uncle worked for NEC and always had killer pro grade CRTs we played Nintendo on at his house in the late 80s. Good times

[@mayw6571]

I have a CRT with two 90s retro PCs that I love, but its' clear they're aging, and finding replacement gear is not so easy. DOSbox or something like it is the future, so I'm glad it's progressing! Thanks for the roundup!

[@raven4k998]

so when you can no longer find a replacement you atleast will have dosbox when that time comes yay😃

[@RMPANDA964]

Awesome! I get to see what Phil looks like! When I saw the thumbnail in the video, I was like who is that dude LOL.

[@philscomputerlab]

😅

[@ChrisR3tro]

Very interesting comparison and good to know that support for variable refresh rate finally made it into a DOSBox fork. VRR is very applicable in emulation in general, imo! Thanks for the video!

[@Machinationstudio]

Alley Cat in EGA with scan lines is what is in my memory. Thanks for that shot of nostalgia.

[@brostenen]

I dont remember any scanlines on my Unisys PW/2 Series 300. That is an 286 with EGA and EGA monitor. There are none on my system.

[@CosmicEffect]

Phil, this is a great informative video (as usual). Didn't realize there was this "double scanning" going on on my VGAs back in the day, now I get it. And yes, I'm one of these guys that is waiting for 8 or even better 16k monitors to finally get REAL close to the CRT monitors. Once again, that was an awesome video. Can't wait for the next part about the sound cards (I'm a Soundblaster "collector" myself, still uses the SBLive resources to make music on a real Soundblaster). Now, going to install this new flavor of DOSBox, which I wasn't aware! See you soon, Phil. (I'm a long, longtime viewer but rarely comment).

[@johnnovak1979]

Best to think of VGA cards is that they can do 350, 400 and 480 line modes in the standard video modes, and that's it. They simply emulate 200 line modes. This was a cost cutting measure, plus single scanline 15kHz modes would look a bit silly on high dot-pitch VGA monitors; there wouldn't be enough bloom between the scanlines as the beam is "too sharply focused".

[@HamidKarzai]

OMG thank you!! I didn't understand why most CRT shaders were adding these giant super obvious scanlines to the image when I never even remembered seeing any scanlines on my VGA monitor. the console people nearly gaslit me into thinking they must have been there and my brain just ignored them. I'm excited to try this shader, there's a lot of detail in these old game's graphics that is lost in the output of LCD monitors. The Indiana Jones comparison at 3:12 you made illustrates this perfectly: on regular LCD the chair looks like it has its pixels mangled giving a sensation that it's blurry, and the skull has some weird flat brown nonsense around it. on CRT it becomes evident that these are shading elements that give depth to the image: the chair looks clearer, sharper, you see it standing in front of the window light reflected off of the floors (in the LCD version you can hardly even tell that the floor is being unevenly lit by the windows), and the brown nonsense has disappeared from around the skull, instead making it look like it has more depth, that there's a part of it deeper in the bookcase that's more dimly lit. Artists in those days drew their art taking into account how CRTs would affect the final image, and the tricks they used to get more quality don't look right when output raw on a modern display

[@philscomputerlab]

Haha yes CRT discussions are dominated by console people and anything but a Sony Trinitron is unacceptable it seems 😊

[@retropuffer2986]

I still use vintage equipment but for a variety of reasons I may have to move to emulation in the future. Good to know how far emulation has gotten!

[@roguenova6766]

Yeah, the large & sharp pixels suck for 320x200 games, glad to see you've joined us CRT-look fans :D

[@jasonrichardson9049]

I started getting into CRT filters within the last couple years and I much prefer them to the chunky pixel look that I used to like. I lot of modern retro games like Steel Assault for example have very good built in filters that I really like.

[@elmalloc]

AGREED

[@robbhays8077]

This is fantastic. I've been using shaders on console emulators in RetroArch for awhile now and I can't go back. Can't wait to try the same tech on PC games now.

[@Clemppu]

"I need an 8K monitor" "Sweet! What are you gonna play?" "DOS games."

[@piratelechuck1911]

The man himself! I wish I had found your channel sooner. Your website has saved my bacon more than a handful of times, it's a fantastic resource. Better late than never, I suppose!

[@philscomputerlab]

Great to hear!

[@nwalsh3]

I didn't actually know that dosbox had been continued. As an old DOS gamer, those games still stir something deep in me. :)

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

The "original" DOSBox is stuck at v0.74 for ages now, but there are a couple forks out there.

[@MrDarchangelomni]

Crazy, I have watched you for a couple years, and never having seen you, my mind gave you a mental image of someone who was about 19-24 of Hindi heritage and raised in New Zealand... Lol I was always overly impressed with your knowledge of early computers and operating systems, always thinking it great that someone born about y2k had such an appreciation for The Golden Age of Owning Computers. It is so nice to finally meet you Phil, and have all of my very incorrect (Human) pre-conceptions/assumptions destroyed by reality. Now I really want to know your backstory, where you were growing up, and what is your history with the hardware you show us?

[@philscomputerlab]

Hey, one personal aspect sharing at a time 😅 Not much has changed, just stepped in front of the camera for some reason 🙂

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

I always had that image of a younger person who looks a bit more "nerdy". But now I can say, yeah that guy is interested in retro hardware!

[@endreherczeg]

I'm totally with you on this Phil. Been using (tweaked) shaders for quite some time now with Dosbox ECE on my 775 setup and love every minute of it... It's not just convenient but looks better than my actual retro machines with LCD (sharp pixels).

[@derrickjackson3133]

I had setup a DOSBox at 4k, and it was clear & sharp! Alot of Retro games are looking alot better than back in the day.!

[@Forcecaster]

Crazy to think we had to wait 30 years to finally be able to catch up with the quality of the original DOS!

[@MikkoRantalainen]

The details discussed in this video have actually nothing to do with DOS and everything to do with the differences between CRT monitors and LCD/OLED displays. Correctly emulating CRT monitor details up to shadow mask details indeed requires insanely high resolutions. That's because there were up to 8 shadow mask holes per pixel and each hole is one of R, G or B. If you want to render that correctly, you need high enough resolution to render that many images of R, G or B holes. And if you want to render the shape of the hole, that would require even high resolution. (Older CRT monitors used round holes but triniton displays used rectangular slots.)

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

@@MikkoRantalainen Add the fact that to make a bright dot the beam was brighter, giving some bleedover. So brighter pixels were bigger than dimmer pixels. Getting variable size, round pixels on a TFT requires a ton of "sub pixels" to simulate.

[@MikkoRantalainen]

@@HappyBeezerStudios True that. In addition, if you're rendering any kind of animation, you would also need to be able to simulate the scanning line for exact reproduction of the original CRT visuals. That is, you'd need something like 15625 Hz display just to render SD PAL correctly on LCD or OLED panel with sample and hold technology. In fact, if you have video with rolling shutter artefacts and you display it with a matching CRT display, the rolling shutter artefacts will vanish. This is because the CRT scan rate will match the original recording rate of the very same scan lines and as a result, the scan lines will be rendered with the original timing in correct positions.

[@redheadsg1]

I didn't know that DOSBox is continue being developed and that is awesome. I need to check DOSBox Staging asap.

[@RetroGamingNook]

I really like the CRT filters in Boxer on the Mac. But I saw that DOSBox Staging is available on Mac so I’ll be trying it this weekend. Great video!

[@directionlessstudios7210]

Thanks for the heads up on DOSBox Staging.

[@ro8inmorgan]

VGA colors always have this sort of look, can't explain but they look so good. PC games of this area had a really seperate look from consoles.

[@zeriel9148]

It's probably the physical effect of the CRT monitors. Chemical stuff, there's no way to fake physical reality using a different format.

[@Roxor128]

Might be the fact that VGA was only 6 bits per channel when it got fed to the DAC and the VGA link to the monitor was a much higher-quality connection that what got used with TVs.

[@MikkoRantalainen]

4:30 As I have understood it, a CRT monitor had similar width scanline every time. The width of the scanline depends only on focusing of the electron beam and if the CRT monitor is of high quality, say able to render pixel perfect 1280x1024 resolution, that requires having scanline that's only 1/1024 of the height of the screen. Now, when that same monitor is used to render e.g. 320x200 resolution, the width of the scanline is still 1/1024 of the height of the screen but you only draw 200 of those. Even with double scanlines, you go up to 400 at max which still results in total height of 400/1024 of the height of the whole screen. That's 60% still black! For optimal results, you would need to defocus the electron beam to match the actual resolution that's currently rendered on a CRT monitor. It's very rare that CRT monitors would do that and emulating the correct effect even with modern GPUs is hard. That said, I think that even 1080p should have more than enough pixels to correctly render the screen if software emulation of CRT rendering were high quality enough. Yes, the end result wouldn't look as sharp as modern displays but it would very accurately match the sharpness of the CRT monitors. Howerer, if you want to emulate the shadow mask, too, you would definitely need 8K display as you later explain. I personally think that shadow mask was a rendering artefact of CRT monitors only and it doesn't need to be recreated for optimal image quality. You would need to emulate the fact that edges of the scanline are not tack sharp but more like bokeh in photography instead.

[@T3hBeowulf]

Different phases of life had me keeping and pitching different hardware but pitching all of my CRTs before a move still holds a tinge of regret. I grew up around 14" and 17" VGA CRTs. I owned a matched set of Trinitron 19" CRTs for years, swearing off early LCDs as slow and pixelated. These days, I only have LCDs but I've been fortunate enough that most of the games I play on the 486 look okay to me on a 1080p LCD without any tweaks. My main focus for games is the sound, particularly MIDI and gameplay. Visually, I find myself missing the CRT look but not overly bothered by not having one. Naturally, this video shows what I've been missing so I guess I'll keep an eye/ear out for an old CRT. 😅

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

For my main system I switched to TFTs in 2012 or so, downgrading my resolution along the way. I still have my CRTs, but they've been in the basement for most of the time.

[@AndrewTJackson]

My dude!! I also use D-Fend Reloaded!! Thanks for the video. I love your Indy game look!

[@philscomputerlab]

Glad you enjoyed!

[@MrBonesawzall]

I use a display port to vga adapter to connect a 3090 to a CRT. Hits the mark for Amiga emulation and older GOG games.

[@brostenen]

I am using upscalers and scandoublers for my vintage hardware. That is mostly C64 and Amiga. As my 286/486 stuff have VGA cards in them.

[@kosmosyche]

Which adapter do you use? Does it add any perceivable latency to the signal? I'm using an old GPU (GTX 680) as a second GPU to output analog video signal natively to my CRT display, but I'd like to try a displayport to vga adapater, since having a second GPU in the system, which is that old is frankly becoming more and more annoying over the years.

[@MrBonesawzall]

@@kosmosyche StarTech Display Port to VGA model# DP2VGA2

[@MrBonesawzall]

@kosmosyche Sorry for the second reply but I realized that I didn't answer your question in its entirety. I haven't noticed any input lag at all but please take that for what its worth, we all perceive lag differently.

[@Pidalin]

How about resolution and Hz possibilitios with that adapter? Does it work properly? Can you set things like 800x600 with 144 Hz or something?

[@SprocketWalker]

I really enjoyed your retro video. Thanks for all the great info!

[@StefanDieWaldfee]

Very good video on that topic. I've come to the same conclusion regarding those too-perfect pixels. I've preferred them to other options, but the games never looked exactly how i've remembered them. Also i love too see Gods (1991) getting some love ♥

[@DieWeltIstSchlecht]

I felt the urge today to play the CD version of Monkey Island. And I remembered your video. The difference between standard graphics and VGA only/shader is amazing! Thank you, please keep us updated if you discover something even better!!

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

Every time I think of Money Island I remember that I prefer the Amiga chiptunes over the CD Audio music. There is just something about that special sound.

[@michaelmcconnell7302]

This guy wants 8k to play DOS games. Amazing.

[@astorMorisson]

Well explained and visualised. What I like to do sometimes is to use integer scaling (with the correct aspect ratio) to some high resolution and then use bilinear filtering. This gives pixels but with somewhat softer edges. One big advantage is that it almost fully eliminates shimmering in games with scrolling. Most shaders also achieve this.

[@johnnovak1979]

The default "interpolation/shader" achieves the exact same end result at any scaling factor; it is the default shader when using OpenGL output (also the default).

[@Uhfgood]

Some people don't talk about this, but I don't remember noticing the scan lines when I was a child. Part of it is because it was partly masked by some bloom and bleed, which also gave it a sort of fake anti-aliasing, which is why we think the old games on the old crt tv's and monitors look better than they do on current hardware. I realize that scanlines were always there and noticeable to various degrees, but you didn't notice them. So once they start emulating that (as well as the color range, dosbox vs actual crt monitor, the contrast and tint is a bit different), I think it will look closer

[@philscomputerlab]

It depends what monitor you had! If you had a VGA monitor, then no, no fat scanlines.

[@WR3ND]

Always great to see another video of yours. Part of the appeal of "retro" computers for me is definitely getting them setup and working. Maybe I'm just an eccentric nerd. 😏 Cheers.

[@harleyn3089]

Very interesting and educational video. I've always been in the "no shaders" camp, but this video may have changed my mind a little. I have a 4K Freesync monitor connected to a Radeon VII card that also does Freesync, but I've never tried Dosbox on that particular machine. I might try it. I skipped EGA completely. I actually didn't know that's where the thick scanlines people seem to think are desirable came from. (My bias is revealed by how I worded that.) I skipped from CGA to Tandy 16 Color and then VGA followed by SVGA etc. By the time I had the option of EGA, VGA was available so I went with that instead. IMO most VGA games look terrible on modern monitors. The blending of pixels and shadow map was essential for making it look like a somewhat realistic image. Generally when I play old adventure games nowadays I'll just play them in a small window. On a 28 inch monitor, you really don't need to play a VGA game fullscreen. Back in the old days most of us had 14 inch or smaller monitors anyway. Anyhow, great video and looking forward to the rest of the series.

[@philscomputerlab]

Awesome 👍

[@johnnovak1979]

You've touched on something vital here, which is making the emulated image appear the same size as it would appear on a period-correct 14 or 15 inch monitor. You might want to check out the `viewport_resolution` config setting of DOSBox Staging to restrict the emulated image to smaller-than-fullscreen. I personally use `viewport_resolution = 960x720` on my 1080p monitor. As for myself, I really disliked how looked 320x200 content looked like on my 21" CRT back in 2000... My view is 17" is about the highest you can go with 320x200 content.

[@kevinl1505]

As always, fascinating for those of us with cga/ega/vga nostalgia.

[@SomeCanine]

There's a lot more than just scanlines going into the picture on the old crt images. There's brightness, saturation, hue, etc. Sometimes the imperfections of the old monitors are what people feel nostalgic for and that can be hard to replicate.

[@jonchapman6821]

I’ve not used DosBox for years, it’s clearly come a long way since then, might be time to have another go.

[@Thunderwolf666]

"I'm really looking forward to 8K monitors so that I can play these games at 320x200 resolution"

[@retroftw]

CRT in thumbnail....instant upvote! 😂😎

[@MrSheduur]

Biggest advantage of not using a CRT is definately that you are not damaging your eyes and less chance for headaches from the light radiation of these screens. I still remember vividly how I would really get headaches from spending longer amounts of time infront of them, while that was completely gone when I switched to an LCD more than 20 years ago.

[@Domarius64]

Woah... today I learned EGA monitors had single scan line per pixel. Seeing those screenshots of a true EGA display triggered nostalgia I had only experienced in screenshots in magazines and on the back of big box games. I grew up with a VGA monitor and only ever saw double scanline per pixel. Also Doxbox Game Launcher does what you asked for, comes with profiles ready to go for a huge amount of games.

[@amberselectronics]

Been a while since I’ve been on KZbin but I always drop in to get caught up on your videos :) thanks as always

[@philscomputerlab]

Awesome 😀

[@joncarter3761]

I'd recommend having a look at the Dosbox Pure core for Retroarch. It supports 3DFX out the box (up to Voodoo 2 I think) and the default CPU is faster (at least according to synthetics) than a Pentium 200MHz with MMX. It's a great little Windows 9x machine but it does struggle with the later 98 games.

[@liquidt3ch]

I've been playing around with this core myself. it seems to run all my favorite win98 games perfectly so far. now we just need an XP emulator lol

[@kristophertadlock779]

Hey Phil I have a 1440p monitor with VRR and I love it for DOS games! Talking about "better" than the real thing, there are a few DOS games that run at like 15 fps or weird divisions of 70 fps that are choppy on a real machine or even have screen tearing, and they are noticeably less so in emulation! Prehistorik 2 is one such example. My preferred way to play DOS games though is with emulation but with a CRT monitor. Mainline DOSBox can output exactly 320x400 or scan doubled to 640x400, and if you configure your VGA display timings correctly you can get exactly what you would see on DOS with a VGA monitor - only it is emulation and modern windows! Not a solution for everyone but if you already have a CRT monitor it is pretty great.

[@martinenglish6641]

I have a true MS DOS 6.3 machine and the newest SOS BOX is just as good and even in some aspects better. It runs well on all my Linux machines. I still use a SONY CRT 19 " monitor that triple scanned and I challenge any person to see the scan linea. :) It was designed for high-end graphic/video editing. It has 2 switchable VGA ports and can also produce box-in-box video to show both inputs. It still works great, what can I say, it is a SONY made in Japan. :) The darn monitor must weigh 1000 lbs. LOL.

[@christerjohanzzon]

I use these shader and crt lines on my terminal windows at work...just for fun, and that nostalgic feeling. My co-workers always "rage" about how poor my monitor is. A super computer with retro looks.

[@philscomputerlab]

They are missing out AND you sound fun 😊

[@jangelelcangry]

Imagine an 8K MicroLED TV with the scanlines shaders. It would look like a gigantic CRT with extra brightness and no dark scenes ghosting.

[@technov1king]

thats just ridiculous

[@jangelelcangry]

@@technov1king Why?

[@idkanymore3382]

>microled Garbage. Literal garbage tech.

[@Odorox84]

Highly informative review as always 👍 What a legend you are Phil👏

[@GetOffMyyLawn]

Mame HLSL has some really great options for recreating scan lines, pincushion, phosphor glow, ghosting and focus errors on an lcd. It would be great if dosbox could implement some of those features. Some arcade games run at some strange refresh rates, so variable refresh, hi-res monitor for shaders and scaling also applies there.

[@johnnovak1979]

Adding full RetroArch shader support to DOSBox Staging is on the roadmap. Thanks to the recently unvealed librashader library, this might be easier than we initially thought.

[@texmanro]

Nice to see you face Phil! I love your work btw.

[@johnnovak1979]

Also, you might want to explore creating a custom resolution on your monitor that can go up to 70Hz. By using custom "CVT reduced blank" timings, I'm able to go up to 70Hz on my Dell U2414H, but not with the standard timings (you might want to read up on that one a bit, but I can tell you it's "safe"; it either works or it doesn't 😎) Also note that 70Hz in low-res modes is a VGA only thing. If you're using proper EGA/CGA/Tandy emulation (e.g. `machine = ega`), then the screen refresh rate will become 60Hz just like on real pre-VGA hardware, and that can be handled by your monitor. I can confirm that smooth-scrolling is 100% smooth in games that support it, either at 60Hz (EGA/CGA/Tandy) or 70Hz (VGA). Although not too many games support smooth-scrolling on pre-VGA cards 😄 Another thing: when playing games hardcoded to 70Hz refresh rates, our default VFR frame presentation mode achieves much smoother output on a 60Hz host rates by dropping frames intelligently. Try Quake on Staging vs other DOSBox ports! PS: I'm glad you like the new website, it was my doing 😎

[@Pidalin]

Sometimes you can actually set 70 or 75 Hz, but it's sometimes fake and it's just in windows or in drivers and there is still 60 Hz on screen.

[@johnnovak1979]

@@Pidalin Yeah always check with some smooth-scrolling arcade game. Mine in not faking it, and even the spec of the panel itself states 70Hz support.

[@yakacm]

I just got a 4090 last week and have a 32" 4k 144Hz monitor which would all work well with the setup you talk about, that if I didn't have a machine with original hardware, which I do. DOS games isn't really what I'm in to, it's more early 2000's WinXP stuff, whenever I've tried DOSBox it's always been a PIA, that's 1 of the reasons why I build a machine with original hardware. My XP machine has been thru many iterations, all following Phil's advice, so it's right where I want it, many thanks to Phil for that.

[@ZenecadE]

I have never been a fan of the sharp pixellated look that came with retro emulation on a crt. For years I always preferred the shader option over the sharper look. With MAME, HLSL was a godsend, with dosbox, reshade. It took a ton of tweaking but I eventually achieved a look I am happy with. For my dosbox setup on a 4k monitor, I use reshade with crt-royale plugin. Give it a try. It may take a while to set up but the results are worth it.

[@philscomputerlab]

Awesome, will check it out.

[@naam4769]

@Mr Guru isn't pc emulation capable to bring them up to life in current modern systems ? unless you would expect the only way to play them back again, may just be through 90s computers.

[@nickfooz]

By the way guys, you can add all of these features to every single emulator if you run them through Retroarch, as long as there’s an equivalent core available. Fortunately most retro emulators have one. I’m enjoying all of these features on NES, Genesis, SNES, PlayStation, DOS, Amiga and even Windows 98! I cannot overestimate how much of a difference a monitor or tv with variable refresh rate, 120hz and OLED/QLED, combined with good CRT shaders makes when it comes to emulation. I can’t believe I’m saying this but my games actually run smoother than ever before. Not just that, but the audio cracks and pops are gone! If you keep v-sync on to avoid tearing, some games might suffer from audio glitches, I presume because of the missed audio synchronisation caused by waiting for v-sync. When I enabled vrr, all of that was gone, and everything moved silky smooth. Shaders like CRT Royale in 4K take things up to the next level as well. I especially love the S-video signal distortion. I’m not sure how well it compares to the ones show here, but I have more parameters to tune than I can handle, and I spent hours making everything look as “degraded” as possible. Games look completely different.

[@philscomputerlab]

Though a lot you say refers to home computers and consoles. I really feel PC Retro Gaming is an afterthrought and a small nieche...

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

If you don't care about the whole behind the scenes things and just want to play, sure, use retroarch

[@nickfooz]

@@HappyBeezerStudios what do you mean caring about behind the scenes? Whether you use a Retroarch core or a standalone emulator, you always “just want to play”. Caring about what’s happening under the hood is something entirely separate. You can watch a video of how things work, you can read about it or you can work on an emulator directly to fix things, as I have (86Box). Of course, as a user you need to fidget with the settings and understand just enough to know what you need to adjust, and if you’re referring to that then Retroarch is likely a hell of a lot more complicated than using a standalone emulator. Not only do you have settings for each core, you have settings for Retroarch itself. The shader configuration alone is more involved than anything on any emulator I’ve ever seen. Then you have different levels of saving settings, as you can save them per core, per content directory and per game. Then you have two different front ends to switch between, without mentioning all the other third party tools that build on top of libretro. So in summary, you have the settings for the core for the system you want to emulate, unless the core is something like MAME, in which case it’s a core for multiple systems, and you have even more settings on top for Retroarch and all of its subsystems.

[@GameplayandTalk]

I need to try this. I am also curious how well it runs on older systems. I do have compatibility issues on certain retro builds I have and one solution I have found useful without sacrificing the experience much, is using DOSBOX on a slightly older modern PC into one of my CRT monitors. The results are pretty nice and it has been a good middleground for dummies like me that can't get a wide array of games running correctly on actual period-correct hardware.

[@johnnovak1979]

Supporting legacy OSes is not among the goals of the DOSBox Staging project, our goals are preserving the DOS experience for the future generations. Windows 7+ is a hard requirement, and we do most our testing on Windows 10 when it comes to Windows, actually. So no, you won't be able to run this on retro PCs like other DOSBoxes, sorry.

[@lasskinn474]

@@johnnovak1979 sure, but just using any dosbox into a vga monitor from a computer that has vga works to get the vga output. ofc one needs a vga output computer and a vga monitor for that.

[@GameplayandTalk]

​@@johnnovak1979 That's good to know. By "working on older systems", I did specifically have Windows 7 in mind. I really don't expect any new software in this day and age to function on anything prior (though it would be nice), and Windows 7 in and of itself is close to "ancient" at this point anyway so that's even a stretch in my mind. I have an older AMD Phenom II rig with Windows 7 on it and it's plenty beefy for stuff like normal DOSbox. It's also from an era where VGA or DVI was common on GPUs, so I will occasionally route it into my VGA CRT monitor and run certain games in DOSbox that I'd otherwise normally have trouble getting to run on my actual '90s era retro PC builds. The image quality is basically indistinguishable to my eyes and so it's a great middle ground for some.

[@maliggno4198]

Great video Phil! For me no matter how good an emulator is… I'll always prefer real hardware. But emulators are costless and doesn't need extra space at home, a good choice for people who can't afford having old hardware at home or just don't want to have it. Awaiting next video!

[@another3997]

When it comes to collecting old hardware, there are practical limits for the vast majority of people. Space, money and time are limited. There are just so many variations in CPU, graphics and sound etc, getting the ideal setup for every OS and every game isn't realistic. And look at the prices of old hardware... anything remotely well known for gaming back in the day, is usually ridiculously expensive. Assuming you can find parts that actually work.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

@@another3997 I'm basically setting up broad range machines. A Pentium III that can do mid 90s-early 00s, a Core 2 that can do mid-00s-mid 2010s, etc. I'm not super into the really early stuff, that was just before my time, so there simply isn't any nostalgia.

[@CaptainKenway]

It's obviously the sensible option, especially given how ridiculous prices are these days on retro hardware. It's great that it exists. Still, half the experience for me personally is the hardware itself and getting to use things I always wanted as a kid, but could never afford. I'm just glad that I have the retro hardware that I want now and don't need to engage with the Ebay scalpers. Well, everything except a Voodoo. Can't bring myself to pay the prices people want for them now.

[@davidinark]

While the supply of CRT monitors may be dwindling, you can still find plenty for sale on various Facebook groups and marketplaces outside of certain online auction sites. It’s ridiculous that we have to have 8K monitors in order to reproduce the low end quality of old hardware ha ha!

[@cackoocacho1629]

Great video covering the differences and what to look out for. Nicely done as always. Haven't used DosBox in the last few years, myself. Moved over to PCem and 86Box. The ability to construct any system in the era with the click of a few buttons, is simply unmatched. I'll give up genuine CRT monitors, for the ability to have a 286, 386, 486, Pentium, and Pentium II of various clock speeds and configurations, a mouse apart from each other. I can't imagine having a bulky old system around to constitute just "one" of those configurations. The awfully inefficient power supplies, high voltage pitch in the CRT, etc. etc. Not bashing on purists, as I am also a purist when it comes to retro consoles, but, for PC? I ditched real hardware about 3 years ago, and will never return to it. Any concessions I need to make in the meantime, will be rectified as the emulation improves over time. As of right now, I haven't found a game that I like at least, that I can't run at least near-perfectly or better, through PCem or 86Box.

[@philscomputerlab]

Sounds great! I haven't checked out 86Box yet. Doies it work well with Windows 98 and 3D games?

[@amitsandler2262]

PCem Worked on Genuine CRT Monitors last time I checked. Tested on VGA and it will switch to the right resolution as long as you have it set.

[@johnnovak1979]

@@philscomputerlab It works ok but you need a very beefy CPU with very good single core performance, and even then you're lucky to be able to emulate a 200 MHz MMX without constant audio glitches. At least that's my experience on my i7 4790k 4.4 GHz machine. When I tried 86box, it was about 30% slower than PCem, making it unusable for me, plus the mouse pointer was horribly laggy and choppy and had all sorts of other issues. As an adventure game fan, this was a deal-breaker. Ironically, playing with PCem set me on my real retro PC journey, as I quickly realised Win98 era gaming can't be properly emulated yet. Not sure if it will ever become a possibility with single core CPU performance reaching its physical limits with current consumer technology. Maybe some FPGA based stuff will be the answer, but building a late Athlon 64 / Pentium 4 or even early C2D system is so easy and does the job perfectly.

[@scherge]

Interesting video, thank you. DOSBox is really awesome. I've only had very good experiences with it so far. Everything looks great on my 65" C9 OLED, and games like Lands of Lore 2, Terminator Future Shock, Dungeon Keeper, or Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis play like a dream when using DB. A batch file tweaking a few of the settings can make a huge difference, though. Having a graphical interface for the batch file creation, in which all available settings could be adjusted while also providing some explanation about what each setting does, would be a huge benefit, imo. Especially for people who didn't grow up with DOS, and therefore usually don't really know what adjustments are available or what they do exactly.

[@chrll]

Well, you can use a CRT with dosbox, which is something that I have done on my retro Windows XP PC.

[@coreyoliver3182]

It works. You have to use an older video card to allow for accurate scanlines on a CRT. I had disappointing results with a GTX 680 on a windows xp machine, but dead on perfect with an ATi HD4000 series card. Even scales text based things properly with correct scanlines like Qbasic. It would be letterbox on newer cards and drivers. That ATi card also let me enable 4x FSAA in the old game The Longest Journey. Looks wonderful on a 21" trinitron. I could never get that game to have FSAA with anything other than a voodoo 5 card..and that has framerate problems in that game AA or not.

[@chrll]

@@coreyoliver3182 Oh I'm using an HD 3850 agp and it works fine there. I didn't try on something newer.

[@coreyoliver3182]

@@chrll a 3850 is an awesome XP card. All those older cards handle Dosbox really well on an XP machine or even a 98 machine. I have a Windows ME machine with a Geforce 4 4600ti and it also does proper scaling and scanlines. Even have tested the GTX 280 in XP and same result. Just that 680 and newer it messes things up.

[@christopherbaar4498]

This is something I definitely need to try out. I used to like the chunky pixels, too, but lately I’ve been wanting to see the games as the developers intended. Scan lines always bothered be as the implementation always darkened the image. But CRTs are dying, and as much as I would love to have one or more, in addition to finding one that would fit my needs with the Japanese computers I have, I really don’t have the space. I do have a 4k 120Hz VRR Monitor, so I can definitely take advantage of the correct refresh for VGA games. A while ago, I did the math to figure out how to have correct pixel aspect ratio for a given resolution on a 4x3 aspect picture. 8k is definitely going to help with that. Some of the resolutions don’t divide equally, but with more pixels, the closer we can get! Like you, I’m excited for the future. There is nothing that can compare to original hardware, with all the sounds and feeling, but we’re getting closer!

[@johnnovak1979]

You don't need pixel perfect mapping to get the correct aspect ratio. Our default "sharp" shader does aspect ratio correct scaling with very very very minimal artifacts. The interpolation band is 1 physical pixel wide max around any emulated pixel. I struggle to notice it from normal viewing distances at 1080p, and I'd say starting from 1440p it's a complete non-issue.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

To get the "proper" stretch from 320x200 to 4:3 ratio, you could go with 1600x1200, which gives 5x6 pixels and is big enough to be visible on modern displays.

[@gabrielmoreno9455]

DOSBox is the inevitable future of DOS gaming. It will preserve DOS gaming for generations.

[@Pidalin]

someone should really start making some "modern" CRT monitors, that technology was abandoned too soon

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

@@Pidalin Taking something like the GDM-FW900 and advancing from there. Especially widescreen CRTs were an underutilised thing.

[@OkieOrganix]

Phil’s computer lab. Awesome as always. 👍

[@r.d.7698]

While I appreciate the amount of effort put into dosbox nothing beats real hardware in nostalgia

[@another3997]

But there are limits. If I think back to all the computer and console hardware I've had since the my parents bought an Atari VCS in the late 1970s, it's a big list. A Sinclair ZX81, 2 Atari 8 bits, CBM Amigas, dozens of PCs including 486DX2, Pentuim 1/2/3/4, Cyrix 686, Athlon XP, C2D, plus all the different CPU and GPU upgrades... I'd need a warehouse to store my nostalgic kit. Not to mention a HUGE bank balance to buy and maintain it all. 😁

[@VintageTechNerd]

I have personally been waiting for variable refresh rate support for a long long time. Also the double scan tech confused me as a teen. I had a friend who had the same size monitor as I did. But when I saw my games and even text at the command prompt on his, it was so clean and sharp and mine had massive scan lines. I didn’t figure out why until many years later. But it drove me nuts trying to get my pc to play maniac mansion in glorious double scanned mode lol

[@damienasmr922]

Yeah, VRR is the reason I use DOSBox Pure. Most DOS games are 70Hz and it's nice to play them without stutter/tearing.

[@janusu]

It's kinda funny to think that the emulators need a higher res monitor in order to replicate the vintage low-res look.

[@zeriel9148]

The issue is that resolution really doesn't mean the same thing on CRTs vs. LCDs. CRT native res switching is totally different from how LCDs work, so it makes sense. LCDs don't properly have different resolutions. Just scaling of their only permanent resolution using tricks.

[@Brendanasdfdsf]

I love your videos even more after seeing that you are a hunky good looking guy :)

[@TheGrunt76]

I am using real things nowadays, but some years back I used Launchbox as my main emulation launcher. It is really good for DosBox (I used ECE) and creating game specific configurations, CD image mounts etc. is a breeze. It also looks good and you can scrape box art, add manuals and so on.

[@kosztaz87]

I will check that out. I remember I used to use DBGL Dosbox frontend, but before I setup some dos gaming again on my laptop I will see the other options too, One thing is for sure, i will need a frontend, the barebones setup procedure in DosBox is just way too cumbersome and complicated.

[@ScottOmatic]

Launchbox is an awesome frontend for DosBox and a great way to display and launch your Dos game library. I setup all my DosBox games standalone and then just link the shortcuts in LaunchBox, although I hear their game importer is pretty good for DosBox now.. I just prefer to do everything custom with each games config file settings. I have the HP version of the Sony FW900 CRT that has been sitting for a few years, I plan to hook it up again at some point and use that CRT for dosbox, so hopefully I will get the best of both worlds and won't even have to run non-native resolution.

[@thedave1602]

I went from a CGA to a SVGA. I was in heaven.

[@TwinOpinion]

Years ago I argued that the rise of HDR, OLED, and 4k-8k resolutions would eventually lead to scanline and monitor filters that are indistinguishable from real CRTs. Almost no one would entertain the idea, and I was told me nothing would ever come close to a real CRT. I currently do most of my retro gaming in RETROARCH with custom filters. Everyone has been blown away by how authentic it all looks.

[@stevetb7777]

We I have a 4K OLED and an 8K QLED. They can achieve a very close appearance to actual CRT however... one thing modern displays cannot compete with to date - motion blur. CRTs didn't have that, modern displays have it. Especially noticeable for side scrolling games.

[@TwinOpinion]

@@stevetb7777 Yeah, motion clarity is very important!

[@directionlessstudios7210]

In the next video, Phil’s famous sound analysis 🤩 11:14

[@playstation1freak26]

There is a shader that other emulators use called sharp bilinear that integer scales above the resolution of the monitor then downsamples using bilinear which gets rid of the uneven pixels and shimmering in motion. You can get a similar effect with dynamic super resolution on nvidia running at higher than monitor res then downsample while integer scaling using nearest neightbor. That crt is weird because the game has a 2x2 pixel grid it should be 1x1 for pixel blending. Also nothing can beat the motion clarity of a crt. Modern displays have alot of motion blur with scrolling that requires black frame insertion to even compete with crts.

[@KainXVIII]

Dosbox staging use sharp bilinear by default (afaik)

[@johnnovak1979]

@@KainXVIII Correct, it's the default `interpolation/sharp` shader. However, as Phil explained in the video, CRT shaders are superior to that if you're into that slightly textured, authentic CRT look.

[@philscomputerlab]

@@KainXVIII You're right, shader=default or shader=sharp does this.

[@GodOfGamingBG]

Phil asking the question, is DosBox on LCD better than real retro PC with CRT? Well, my answer is, what about, DosBox on a CRT :) That's the way :) Connect CRT to your modern PC, run DosBox, and output it to the CRT. Best of both worlds :)

[@CableWrestler]

Wow, who is this handsome young man? It's nice to put a face to a voice after all this time!

[@lamikal2515]

GODS... damn man, all my childhood... a game for pure masochists... and the music... 30 years aferwards, it's still ingraved in my memory.

[@awdx4g63]

Thanks, Phil.!

[@retro-computing-gaming]

Nice monitor. Mine is made by Philips and has the exact same on-screen-display menus as yours. Has been my daily driver on my main PC for over 10 years and still has a pristine image. And I've come to prefer the "thin" scanlines a CRT VGA produces over the thicker ones on an even older monitor.

[@philscomputerlab]

I also grew up playing games with the double scanned VGA look. So pretty!

[@Reziac]

Back in the day there were only a few actual CRT manufacturers, but a whole lot of rebadged brands. So a lot of 'em were different only by the brand name and some of the plastic on the case.

[@eightbit1975]

I find it so crazy that it is taking an 8K modern TV in order to perhaps replicate a genuine CRT display. I also find it amazing. My dream is for a modern display to somehow perfectly replicate the CRT experience. The way technology and those devs working on this is going it appears we may get there sooner than we think!

[@terbog]

I don't know what it is what the CRT does different, but i have a feeling that the colors are much more vibrant. I'd rather connect a modern PC to a CRT and use DosBox there.

[@deinemutter6237]

Shader Scanlines always look wrongto me with higher resolutions they will propably get better but I think they lack that afterglow/blur and bloom/diffuse-dot of a real CRT. My LG Flatron T910B can run from 2048x1536, 1600x1200@75 native, down to 320x200 (but only at 160Hz otherwise it's signal out of bounds) which gives you beautiful fat scanlines. Also you can adjust the moire setting to max to get a bit blurrier image. Of course the apperture grille is much finer than an older monitors' but it's still a great alrounder for me.

[@danielberrett2179]

Thanks Phil, Waiting for part 2

[@GB_Rusty]

I have never looked at shaders etc before. That screen from Indy really showed what I'm missing. The clear, sharp look is horrid (not something I thought I'd ever say), the CRT one is just so warm and full of vibes.

[@TheSulross]

hah! this is starting to sound like the transiter amp vs tube amp CRT - warm display graphics tube amps - warm sound which means the ultimate retro gear will be a CRT display and a tube amp for the sound card

[@KarmaMan82]

I've installed DOSBox and Siedler II Gold Edition / Settlers II Gold Edition, sound works perfect and the addiction was the same like 25 years ago! I just want to make a test but one week later ...

[@philscomputerlab]

Great to hear!

[@guitardosongs]

*DOSBOX actually is cheaper to keep than the original thing*

[@ben-and-maffy]

I enjoy DosBOX on my laptop. Feels like old hardware, but maxed out with all the best hardware emulation that I can use for a cross-hardware experience in programming.

[@DimitrisChr]

It blows my mind that 30 years later we still cant beat the old CRTs. We seem to have sacrifised too much for thinner & lighter screens.

[@MrDvneil]

crt are just different, not better, i won't use a flickering display again in my life,

[@another3997]

CRTs have a number of downsides, but a lot of people look through rose tinted glasses and ignore them. This idea that they are "better" is largely unfounded. Quite the opposite, it's their deficiencies that give games a certain look. Old, low res DOS games were designed to be shown on contemporary monitors, not much bigger, modern displays.

[@pauls4522]

Switched back to crt for my retro consoles. I have 2 oled tvs and gaming lcd and no emulated scanlines beat crt. Of course for newer content I prefer oled. But older titles were a product of their time.

[@mudi2000a]

I switched from CRT to LCD more than 20 years ago and never looked back. I can understand the nostalgia for old games but not for using old hardware. But I find it cool that there people who keep it alive. Not for me though. But then, if a Commodore 64 or 128 in a good state came my way I might become weak. Not for a PC probably.

[@ynyslochtyn]

DOSBOX is great. Old dos game are often much easier to get going on modern PC than old windows games.

[@Microang]

You should do an overview of PCem and compare it to dosbox... 😁

[@philscomputerlab]

Never used it (yet) 😅

[@RonMizman]

I had a 386-SX16 with VGA (I think it was a Trident, maybe Hercules). State of the art 😅

[@BladeTrain3r]

I just play 1280x960 or 1280x800 in a window depending on the game resolution. Little bit iffier doing 800x600 or 1024x768 since I only have a 1080p display, but for older games directly scaling 2X into a window is perfectly legible and big enough to play comfortably, while keeping the pixels uniform. I have fiddled around with Pixel Perfect modes in DOSbox before with some bespoke forks, but I'm using the ECE version now because of it's nice S3 support. As for the CRT effect... well I'd rather have crispy LCD/LED pixels than some jank post processing effect that doesn't really look like either CRT or LCD...

[@johnnovak1979]

If it's the same S3 patch I think you are referring to (s3freak's 4/8 MB VRAM support), we already have that in Staging. Check out the feature highlights on the front page of our website!

[@BladeTrain3r]

@@johnnovak1979 Thanks, yea I've been trying it out for the last week or so and it's been great so far, even started playing around with the CRT shaders (so much for what I said earlier, but then they're definitely a massive improvement over the old scanline filters). The improved console output is nifty too.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

Remember that the common 320:200 resolution isn't 4:3, but was stretched on CRTs. The equivalent 320:240 4:3 resolution is 20% higher. To get that stretch right, you'd need your pixels to be 20% higher than wide, or 6:5. To get that stretch right, but also don't end up with partial pixels, look at 1600x1200, which is pretty much the minimum for the right ratio, so a 1920x1200 or 2560x1440 display should be big enough for that.

[@SidebandSamurai]

Gone are the days of a XT mother board and setting the dip switches correctly to make sure it works with your graphics card and monitor.

[@robsmall6466]

Wish we could just have a display with adaptable resolution, no motion blur and good contrast and black levels. It's 2023 - Why is that so hard ?

[@GTXDash]

I watched this video on a CRT. Not intentionally, I was just playing Quake 3 and I usually prefer switching over to my CRT when I do. I'm glad you managed to get your CRT to display 400p for Dos gaming. I had to add 640x400 as a custom resolution in the Nvidia Control Panel.

[@philscomputerlab]

Watches video of a CRT on a CRT!

[@gamerk316]

Can't wait for the sound video; gotta give the edge to DOSBox one would think, given the now built in MT32 emulation and ease of using MIDI Soundfonts (or heck, a real MIDI device, emulated or otherwise). Also consider there are some easier to use DOSBox forks out there; DOSBox Pure especially (though it is a bit wonky when it comes to emulating CD drive paths) due to QoL upgrades like Save States (allowing me to "finally" beat Wing Commander after all these years).