Sonic behind waterfall - RetroArch shader comparison
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN cites it as the example showing why CRT emulation is needed to render effects the original artists intended.
What it is
A one-minute demo comparing RetroArch shaders on the Sonic the Hedgehog waterfall, where Sega Genesis dithering creates a transparency effect. It shows how different shaders emulate the CRT look.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2020 to 2024.
What Hacker News said
Recommends mikepurvis · 2020-12 · on “Designing 2D graphics in the Japanese industry”
For interested parties, here's a video that shows the Sonic waterfall in motion with various CRT-simulating shaders applied on top: [this video]
Cites wtallis · 2020-02 · on “On Emulation”
CRT emulation of some kind is sometimes necessary to accurately render effects that were intended by the original artists. For example, this waterfall transparency: [this video] Then there's the fact that a lot of early console artwork was designed to be output on a composite video cable instead of as separate RGB channels, so the crosstalk may need to be emulated to get the right color blending: [LINK] (The reduced effective spatial resolution is often more of a detriment, so plenty of games do look much better in pure crisp RGB from an emulator.)
Cites lloeki · 2023-10 · on “CRT Shaders”
> I think there's an argument that pixel art was designed for CRT displays and thus optimized for it In many cases there is no argument to be had. [LINK] These sprites are terrible without CRT-ness (skeleton has pixels unbalanced, clearly placed for an antialiasing effect; beast is unshaded). Also, look at that waterfall, for which filters have a hard time, either inefficient or making the rest of the scene excessively blurry. [this video] For some games I think the flat pixely look is OK, e.g Zelda III, although I personally prefer the darker, smoother, less saturated look of CRT which in my mind betters conveys the grim ambience than the unfiltered cel-shaded-y one. For others, either specific
Cites gjsman-1000 · 2024-07 · on “$60 chip fixes a longstanding Super Nintendo flaw”
Another example of this, is the waterfalls in Sonic the Hedgehog. No, it’s not meant to look like alternating blue lines on the remasters (even though that looks decent enough). In a CRT TV, that alternating pattern would have created a translucency effect after the smearing. Here’s a shader comparison which tries to properly recreate this: [this video]