• ShortFuse@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    The transmission is still the same with the exception of things like VRR and DSC. We still send a VBLANK signal which is the electronic signal to tell a CRT to move up to the top of the screen. We don’t change the way things are sent. It’s still top down, left to right. VSync and HSync are still used but make less obvious sense on LCDs. Digital displays translate this.

    Because LCDs convert these signals, we call the time it takes to do the conversion “draw time” but this isn’t as important today. What matters now is the time it takes for a pixel to change one color to another (response time). Because a CRT would fire electrons, the next frame would essentially vanish pretty quickly. LCDs don’t do this.

    Conversely OLEDs are plenty fast, but can’t reproduce the same pixel response without inserting a blank frame with Black Frame Insertion which sacrifices brightness and is being slowly removed.

    Still, most “lag” comes from transmission time. It takes 1/60s of a second to transmit a full frame at 60hz. Divide that 2 to get the “average” lag and CRTs would measure at 8.3333ms. LCDs were happy to get to 10ms.

    Now we can do 120hz which is way more important since even if CRTs are faster, you can get the whole image out in half the time, which “averages” at 4.1666ms, making even a “4ms” slow LCD on PC better than the console running at 60hz on CRT.

    And while CRTs could reach high resolution, these were limited by their HSync speed which usually means lower resolution, because a CRT could only move ever so quickly horizontally.

    Today that translates to an OLED is best for emulating any console that ran at 60hz and better or as good pixel response time if you are willing to do BFI. The main reason why the competitive Melee community still uses CRT is mostly pricing, second to FUD.