/vr/ - Retro Games

When you really get down to it what are scanlines anyway? They're the space between lines of pixels drawn on the screen. To be specific most people use the term the wrong way. The lines of pixels are the scanlines, not the black space.

Basically: more TV lines in a monitor/finer pitch + lower resolution = thicker black lines.

There's nothing special about that black space. It's just space skipped over by the raster as it is being drawn. When one uses software scanlines they are simply programming the scanning electron guns to pass over that space. Just as it would be in hardware scanlines. The trick is getting the ratio of black space to drawn lines right, and in the case of using software scanlines on a CRT monitor that will have hardware scanlines you have to make sure they don't interfere with one another. You want them to not overlap in an unsightly manner, and you don't want them to add up to the wrong amount of black space.

I think with software scanlines you want to push the resolution of the monitor as far to the limit of the pitch as possible. This will ensure as much of the screen as possible is being covered by pixels (and thus less black space) before you apply your software scanlines. At 1600x1200 the distance between hardware pixel lines is very, very small. Small enough you can put your eyeball right up to the screen and have a hard time discerning any scanlines. Even in camera zoom-ins it is difficult. So they stop being an issue.

From there adding in the appropriate amount of black is up to you. I add less black than when my monitor is in true 240p120hz mode because I prefer to emulate the look of a coarser pitch CRT.

Of course, there's more to it all than just black lines. The lines of pixels are emulated as well. They are not just plain straight lines. The beam width is variable. But that's another post.
>I know this NES palette is wrong but I like the feel of it.