marurun wrote:I think a lot of the emulation challenge has to do with the screen. Computer screens, CRT or LCD, have much higher display resolution. Lower-res graphics just don't look right on them no matter how you adjust the filters. Low-res graphics are pretty much meant for TV screens, as TVs just naturally adjust the image just so. Although Genesis games do often look better on the computer due to their really poor quality video output to TV.
yeh CRT tv's (well most of them) were a lot blurrier than monitors - to the extent that when Carmack was asked about the textures on the DC version of Quake3 he said that 'it will look pretty much the same' due to the overall blurry filter look on CRT TV's
so emulating on a monitor at full screen can never truly look the same, as its much sharper than it was 'back in the day'
although tbh I think this is far less of a problem than the crapness of playing something on an LCD not at native res - with the bad edges etc. - although I did play Street Fighter Alpha Anthology on a PS2 going into my friends 46" X Bravia (1080p), and it seems that at that high a dot amount/resolution, that the matrix of the screens dots is finally big enough to not look like an anti aliased mess when playing low res 2D.
I have to say that unlike a few people on this forum I dont hate emulation, but I do recognise its weaknesses (and strengths)
I like emulation for:
* Playing games that I would never get to play on their actual console or in the arcade, short of selling my kidney to buy them on eBay
(im looking at you NeoGeo, Radiant Silvergun et al.
) - and sometimes emulating machines which never even came out in this part
of the world (FM Towns)
* Nostalgia - I still have an Amiga 500 somewhere, but Im too lazy to actually set it up again after all these years so WinUAE suits me
fine. The same goes for my beloved C128
* Taking lovely screenshots and making wallpapers
* The occasional mod/retexturing project (OK the only one I know is the Ocarina one, but i quite liked it)
* In the case of GBA games, I actually dont really like playing on handhelds, so I actually prefer emulating these games - (and I love
Minish Cap running in OpenGL on VBAdvance - it runs full screen in pure unfiltered square pixels
)
* Running 3D games at extremely hi resolutions (I remember my jaw dropping when I first saw Gran TUrismo running on Bleem using
filtered textures etc.). Also running with weird filters on - ePSXe has plenty of these - pseudo paintbrush and cel shaded ones for
example
* I also just kinda find it interesting seeing how well something can be emulated
What I don't like about emulation:
* Choppy sound - almost no emulator that I know of has ever been entirely 'glitch free' in this department. Although WinKawaks
and Zsnes come pretty close IMO. Having said that in the case of arcade games maybe the higher quality of home speakers make
you hear glitches you never knew before.
* I cant always get my DC stick working properly with them, and in general having to mess about setting up options for emulators,
whereas with the real thing, you KNOW the game will just work (well unless the cartidge or CD is dirty etc. lol)
* It doesnt feel the same as sitting on a couch with a controller and lying back, the keyboard and the upright chair lend a certain
formality to PC gaming IMO. Although yes I know people will talk about emulation on consoles themselves, but apart from
DreamSNES, I rarely play emus on consoles (apart from just recently the VC stuff on Wii, which I thoroughly enjou)