The Null Device
Posts matching tags 'xscreensaver'
2003/10/27
In 2003, we have 2GHz Pentium boxes, which we use to surf the web and check our email. This means that we have all that left-over CPU power to emulate vintage machinery, like arcade machines and old computers and analogue synths, and analogue televisions
Yes, analogue televisions. The latest release of jwz's big boffo compedium of doovy display hacks, aka xscreensaver, has code that emulates the circuitry of a NTSC television; originally, this was intended for an Apple II emulator, including the blue/orange fringes of letters. Gradually this evolved into a general-purpose TV emulator, one which can add authentic ghosting, snow, colour distortion and other television artefacts to the JPEGs on your desktop. Which is pretty nifty, in a somewhat perverted kind of way.
As computers get faster, emulators get more and more fine-grained, and evolve from emulating the high-level behaviours of the machines to emulating their implementation, down to the electrical characteristics of the circuits. How long until we see, for example, TB-303 emulators which simulate the cheap, loose-tolerance components used in the original 303s, or analogue synth emulators that come realistically untuned as they "warm up", neatly getting rid of that unsexy digital precision?