Why PlayStation Graphics Wobble, Flicker And Twitch
Although often tossed together into a singular ‘retro game’ aesthetic, the first game consoles that focused on 3D graphics like the Nintendo 64 and Sony PlayStation featured very distinct visuals that make these different systems easy to distinguish. Yet whereas the N64 mostly suffered from a small texture buffer, the PS’s weak graphics hardware necessitated compromises that led to the highly defining jittery and wobbly PlayStation graphics. ...
https://hackaday.com/2026/02/06/why-playstation-graphics-wobble-flicker-and-twitch/Open linkView original on lemmy.world160
Comments24
3D graphics were incredibly primitive back then. There really weren't "3D processors" as we know them today.
On top of that, CRTs masked many of the weirdest graphical artifacts - the shimmering we see on modern screens was much more of a blur on screens at the time.
It's fun to look back at the PlayStation and the N64, and to see how each of them handled limitations in a different way.
This Noodle video on how old games were developed with CRT in mind was absolutely mind-blowing to me.
Yeah, for example when emulating GB/GBC/GBA games, simulating the slow LCD response time makes all the difference. Jittery shaking animations become soft blurs, and everything feels much closer to the authentic hardware
Resident evil for N64 is mind boggling how they were able to shrink it down enough to fit on that tiny rom chip.
Pixels on a CRT aren‘t quadratic. Light bleeds between them, and persisted between frames. That was definitely some kind of post processing you could call masking and the games of that era leaned heavily into it. Hardware and games were designed to be displayed on a CRT.
CRTs don’t „have“ pixels, but they display a signal that originated from a pixelised source. Popping colors and different gamma curves is not a contradiction to what I said.
You must be real fun at parties.
You’re welcome
This reads like someone who was born after the CRT era trying to describe them. No, you're just wrong about that. CRT monitors had a huge effect on the output of the visuals in contrast with modern screens.
Were you hoping for a forum where people didn't call you out on your nonsense?
Hey now, I'm enjoying his nonsense. It's fun to see what holes people dig themselves into.
I'm not sure how to reply to this.
Mainly because my own math skill is unrelated to processor technology of the late 1990s.
Gimme that wobble and the glow of a CRT and y'all can keep your fancy HD
It wasn't the CRT giving the PS1 its unique look. It was a lack of floating point integers.
Floating point numbers. Floating point integer is an oxymoron 🤓
Whole numbers don't float? 🤷♂️
Depends on who you ask I guess.
You could play Belatro and set CRT settings on the graphics. That at least one option somewhere in the void.
Which emulator fixes the wobbling and upscales the textures again? The games I've seen in that emulator look great, nearly as good as PS2 games.
Any emulator that supports PGXP, which is most of them. Duckstation is the one most people recommend, but that one has weird licensing issues and a dev who loves to start drama.
https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/PlayStation_emulators
Excellent; thanks for the heads up. I'll avoid the drama and pirate any component that requires a licensing fee.
Here is a GPL licensed one that was forked before the license change. Not as feature rich, but definitely still a quality emulator: https://github.com/Trixarian/duckstation-gpl
I know Duckstation has some wobble-fixing ability.
Not a problem for me. How about an article on how devs release shittier, messier, harder to use GUIs every goddamn release. I swear its like four buttons to power it off.