I get the modern display will have more physical pixels, but since the pixels on the old CRT are just bigger, it too should look blurry shouldn’t it?
In: Technology
So old CRT monitors had horizontal lines on the screen called “interlacing” which was caused by the way frames were painted on the screen. The image frame would have all the odd lines painted, and then all the even ones painted next. This improved the perceived frame rate and motion perception.
Think of painting a long wooden fence. Painting all the odd slats first means that, from a distance, you have an idea of what the final product looks like long before you do when you paint ever slat in order.
Well the interlacing left certain characteristics on the screen that would act similar to modern technologies that smooth the pixels. This allowed lower resolutions to “look better” as a result. The interlacing resulted in smoother transitions of one color pixel to the next one.
Here’s a video showing side-by-side comparisons of pixel art from old games on a modern monitor with sharp pixels vs. the same image with a CRT filter applied to it. In every case, the second image looks smoother and with less sharp edges as a result.
It’s pretty staggering the amount of extra detail that was able to be added by using the interlacing to your advantage.
Latest Answers