Nostalgia changes our impression of old devices. Back then, CRT monitors were heavy, noisy, and flickered, taking up half a desk. Twenty years later, some say they are the best setup for gaming. Interestingly, there's some truth to that.
What reminded me of this was a photo on Reddit. Someone was playing The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind on an old CRT monitor with curved glass. The scene showed Balmora, the first major city players reach after landing in Seyda Neen. Judging by the size of the game interface, the screen resolution was likely 800×600 or 1024×768. These were common resolutions on PCs when the game was released in 2002.
Many people recognized the monitors they used as children in the photo. One person even said, "I know this sounds strange, but I feel like I can smell this picture."
People like this photo not just because of nostalgia. CRTs display images by scanning electron beams line by line across a phosphor layer. They don't have a fixed pixel grid, so the image always looks like it fits the screen regardless of resolution. Adjacent light points also slightly blur and blend together. Artists in the early 2000s actually accounted for this effect: the sharp edges of models and low-resolution textures would appear softer. On 2K or 4K displays, every pixel is clearly visible.
This look can be simulated nowadays. There are CRT filters for the open-source engine OpenMW available on Nexus Mods, and the pixel density of 4K displays is sufficient to closely mimic scanlines and phosphor glow. However, some retro console enthusiasts believe shaders can only approximate the feeling, not truly reproduce the display effect of CRTs, since the two form images differently. Some have even decided to buy old monitors with VGA ports and switchers just to play this one game. One person is playing Morrowind for the first time using an original Xbox and a CRT TV. He said that after playing it, his perception of Skyrim changed.
Others didn't get it at all. One player joked that to truly recreate the experience back then, all that was missing was a GeForce 2 MX incapable of running the game. Another said they now needed thick-lensed glasses because of screens like these. A third person put it more bluntly: "You're all crazy. I grew up in the '80s and '90s, and I couldn't wait for CRTs to be phased out."
CRT monitors have long been obsolete. But in my opinion, Vvardenfell still looks best on such screens.