/vr/ - Retro Games

Did somebody say burn-in?

It really only happens heinously with early gen arcade monitors and monitors used in industrial settings e.g. if it's been showing the same high-contrast surveillance angle for ten years, or some spreadsheet with consistent boxes. Rear-projection is another matter entirely and can suffer from it within weeks.

I've successfully minimized mild burn-in by displaying snowy static on the screen for a few weeks straight, it softens the edges. If you could display a precise inverse of the burned in image for a long time it would fix it, although of course only by bringing the quality of the rest of the phosphors down to the same level.

Not in this bad a case of course, but most video game designers took measures to counter this type of stuff in most games by the mid-80s and monitors used in broadcast, editing and medical situations are unlikely to suffer this type of true burn-in.