Re: Apple II Graphics

[Mitchell Spector <mitch2gs@hotmail.com>]

Andy McFadden <fadden@fadden.com> wrote:

>heuser.marcus@freenet.de wrote:
>> > Double Hires sure is beautiful. Is there any places where I can find
>> > good screenshot of Apple II Lores, Hires or Double Hires images?
>> 
>> Picture quality of emulation often looks too sterile, IMHO.

    I wholeheartedly agree. A large part of the problem are modern displays.
With old NTSC-based displays their higher dot pitch, scanlines, lack of
sharpness, etc gave the illusion of rounded pixels and colors seamlessly
blending into each other. Not to mention a form anti-aliasing, so images 
looked less jagged and higher resolution than they really were. Modern
displays show images as blocky, terribly dithered and ugly looking.

    When I emulate a game console or arcade machine, I prefer to output
it to my TV set (27" Sony CRT from 1989). And if I turn off interlacing, it's
virtually impossible to tell it apart from the real hardware.

>I struggled with this a bit in CiderPress, which is why there are three
>color conversion modes for DHR (plus black & white).  Nothing quite matches
>the //e DHR output, and the IIgs RGB monitor output is just plain bizarre

    I remember a 1986 issue of A+ (or was it inCider?) that did a side by
side photo comparison of Hi-Res and Double-Hi-Res graphics output from a 
IIe and IIgs both connected to the *same* color composite display. The GS
did odd dithering and color pattern separation that actually differed from
the IIe! (we're not even talking about an RGB display here, just composite).

>(e.g. the color of a pixel is affected by the colors of the pixels to
>its left and right, but it still has the hard edges of an RGB image).

    Is that the odd artificating you see in standard 6 color Hi-Res on
the IIgs? I've seen Double-Hi-Res colors appears as fringing on a
standard Hi-Res image--at least on my ROM 3, been such a long
while since I looked at my ROM 01's (e.g. a pixel to the left or right
might be yellow, red, brown, etc--colors that have no business being
in Hi-Res).

Mitchell Spector