exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Having built my v2 Analog board for VGA out on the Apple IIe, it occurred to me that whilst the v2 Analog was a clear winner when in text mode, the lines were a little blurred for games.

So I thought I'd ask the group to see what your responses were.

This is a shot of composite:


And this is VGA:


I used Elite specifically because it has elements of both graphics and text.

Specifically, I prefer the rotating space ship via composite as it has better aliasing and doesn't show colour fringing, but the lower instrument section via VGA as the colours are more vivid and the text sharper.

Wondering what opinion other folks have:

That's a difficult one Jon as on Composite blacks can look brown and you get the other odd colour generation. I'd go with VGA myself as I use a VGA monitor for pretty much everything.

PhilC wrote: 23 Jan 2024 10:54 That's a difficult one Jon as on Composite blacks can look brown and you get the other odd colour generation. I'd go with VGA myself as I use a VGA monitor for pretty much everything.

Agreed, I think that overall VGA is better, but perhaps I should add something else for comparison, that is more graphics oriented.

OK some more for comparison.

Composite:


VGA:


Composite:


VGA:


Side by side, VGA LHS, Composite RHS:


For me here it's VGA, despite the colour fringing on the text being so obvious.

VGA for me.

HigashiJun wrote: 23 Jan 2024 11:54 VGA for me.

I'd like to see a few more votes before calling it, but it certainly looks like so far VGA is preferred.

That VGA adapter is trying to replicate artefact colour isn't it?

Is that valid for a PAL machine? I thought only the NTSC system could use that trick as the pixels were the correct spacing to give the NTSC colour decoder in the TV/monitor pseudo-colour information, which doesn't work with PAL as that uses a different colour encoding.

stephen_usher wrote: 23 Jan 2024 12:08 That VGA adapter is trying to replicate artefact colour isn't it?

Is that valid for a PAL machine? I thought only the NTSC system could use that trick as the pixels were the correct spacing to give the NTSC colour decoder in the TV/monitor pseudo-colour information, which doesn't work with PAL as that uses a different colour encoding.

Yes, NTSC is usually where artifact colour is found, but if you look closely at the composite, the colours are there, just very blurry.

From what I understand, the v2 Analog isn't trying to replicate artifacting, just rendering what composite sees in RAM and mirroring out to VGA. So whilst it looks like it is trying to replicate artifacting, I don't believe it is.

The Atari A8's also use artifacting in the US, but those games appear in B&W in the UK.

Are you sure? The colours are surely set in memory and then interpreted by the video sub-system and then encoded, unless it's all just rendered in memory as vertical pixel lines and the PAL encoder does the artefact colour interpretation using some sort of magic. :-)

stephen_usher wrote: 23 Jan 2024 13:47 Are you sure? The colours are surely set in memory and then interpreted by the video sub-system and then encoded, unless it's all just rendered in memory as vertical pixel lines and the PAL encoder does the artefact colour interpretation using some sort of magic. :-)

Well given that Woz was fond of magic, it wouldn't surprise me...

AFAIK the v2 Analog is just reading the same data as the composite side.

I totally understand why you'd think it is trying to artifact though, as it damn well looks like that's exactly what it's doing. Might reach out to David Kuder, the dev and ask.