I've seen arcade machines "upgrade" to LCD by just installing a large LCD into the machine.

Funny you mention the plexiglass bending bit. That's something I've toyed with as well. Actually a cool Idea I always thought of was possibly making reproduction LCD panel-based monitors that are very high res that could recreate the look of a CRT - then use the extra space in back - for the aesthetic, for things like media storage.

The CRT shader filters of DOSBox-X do that, too.
The one I tried roughly needed 1600x1200 and up to simulate a VGA monitor's CRT mask "properly" (looks like my 19" VGA tube monitor).

I tried the game Gateway in both 640x480 and 800x600 on my Pi 4 with such a filter.

It worked, but the CRT monitors I used in the past didn't look the same.
The 14" IBM PS/2 monitor I remember had a smeared, unsharp picture..
Which I do miss, sadly. It made low-res games in 320x200 MCGA/VGA mode more enjoyable.

Unfortunately, those smaller low-end VGA monitors with their imperfect screen masks are not emulated anywhere.
Which is really sad. There's Trinitron, but no love for modest late 80s/early 90s era monitors.
You know, those that predate on screen displays.
Those that had knobs and wheels and were all analog..

Jo22 wrote on 2022-08-14, 06:18:

The CRT shader filters of DOSBox-X do that, too. The one I tried roughly needed 1600x1200 and up to simulate a VGA monitor's CRT […]
Show full quote

The CRT shader filters of DOSBox-X do that, too.
The one I tried roughly needed 1600x1200 and up to simulate a VGA monitor's CRT mask "properly" (looks like my 19" VGA tube monitor).

I tried the game Gateway in both 640x480 and 800x600 on my Pi 4 with such a filter.

It worked, but the CRT monitors I used in the past didn't look the same.
The 14" IBM PS/2 monitor I remember had a smeared, unsharp picture..
Which I do miss, sadly. It made low-res games in 320x200 MCGA/VGA mode more enjoyable.

Unfortunately, those smaller low-end VGA monitors with their imperfect screen masks are not emulated anywhere.
Which is really sad. There's Trinitron, but no love for modest late 80s/early 90s era monitors.
You know, those that predate on screen displays.
Those that had knobs and wheels and were all analog..

The shader for this is not hard to recreate, you just apply the Gaugasian filter to each pixel. The lack of sharpness is due to the lack of the shadow grid of these old and low cost monitors, that grid served to better separate the pixels, and prevent the brightness of light from leaking to the neighboring pixel. I had created many features for recalbox/retroarch in the past, including realistic bezels of various models of monitors, tvs, and shaders that mimicked them, long before it was popular as it is today.

The big issue is that the flat LCD doesn't fit properly in the case of a curved crt.

Rikintosh wrote on 2022-08-14, 15:19:

The big issue is that the flat LCD doesn't fit properly in the case of a curved crt.

It can be solved by installing some sort of curved magnifier lense, maybe.
Some dudes who made a faux A1000 for a museum used that trick a while ago.

https://hackaday.com/2021/02/17/building-repl … igital-artwork/

However, the outcome wasn't exactly like that of a real tube monitor.
The pixels were still too.. pixelated.
Though I doubt the average museum visitor would even care.
It's just show, accuracy doesn't really matter to them.
The focus was on the pictures themselves, also, not the computer.

I may wonder how people in the future think about how it was watching cartoons like Road Runner or Amazing 3 in the 1960s on a humble monochrome CRT TV.
Will they do realize that monochrome CRT screens used to have had a soft, clean picture (if there was no heavy RF noise) and no screenmask?
Or will they think they had a fuzzy, wobbly image, like early NTSC TVs, but in monochrome only?

Maybe they will apply lots of filters to degrade the picture quality to a blurry mess.
Just like those silly scan line filters in lower end emulators do today (Blarg's NTSC filter or the VICE64 PAL emulation are kind of okay, don't get me wrong).

That being said, I'm secretly an optimist still.
If there will be people like you still around, I believe the popular opinion won't be that bad.
I'm just a bit worried that photos of actual CRT monitors 'in action' won't be around anymore.

Revisionism in magazines happened in the late 90s, early 2000s already.
At the time, magazines looked down on classic games with pixel art.

Instead of using real screen shots taken with a film camera in front of a CRT monitor,
they used digital screen grabbers.
Which in turn gave a total false impression on old games like Super Mario, Sonic or Monkey Island.

Not only was the aspect ratio wrong, but also part of the filtering process was lost.
The Composite and RF connections acted like filtering stages. They blurred pixels, similar to what bilinear interpolation provides today.

Even today, games like Sonic 1/2 do look most natural or realistic ("organic") via RF only.
Yeah RF.. Never liked it, unless a quality tuner was involved (a VCR had them!).
Even composite does start to slowly destroy the illusion of a clean (but sonewhat blurry) picture.
But it's a compromise, at least.

Edit: Typos fixed.

You may be interested in the upcoming Checkmate Monitors. Progress videos here.

There was also a Commodore 1690S widescreen monitor announced but it's still in the concept phase.

Jo22 wrote on 2022-08-14, 19:20:

It can be solved by installing some sort of curved magnifier lense, maybe. Some dudes who made a faux A1000 for a museum used th […]
Show full quote

Rikintosh wrote on 2022-08-14, 15:19:

The big issue is that the flat LCD doesn't fit properly in the case of a curved crt.

It can be solved by installing some sort of curved magnifier lense, maybe.
Some dudes who made a faux A1000 for a museum used that trick a while ago.

https://hackaday.com/2021/02/17/building-repl … igital-artwork/

However, the outcome wasn't exactly like that of a real tube monitor.
The pixels were still too.. pixelated.
Though I doubt the average museum visitor would even care.
It's just show, accuracy doesn't really matter to them.
The focus was on the pictures themselves, also, not the computer.

I may wonder how people in the future think about how it was watching cartoons like Road Runner or Amazing 3 in the 1960s on a humble monochrome CRT TV.
Will they do realize that monochrome CRT screens used to have had a soft, clean picture (if there was no heavy RF noise) and no screenmask?
Or will they think they had a fuzzy, wobbly image, like early NTSC TVs, but in monochrome only?

Maybe they will apply lots of filters to degrade the picture quality to a blurry mess.
Just like those silly scan line filters in lower end emulators do today (Blarg's NTSC filter or the VICE64 PAL emulation are kind of okay, don't get me wrong).

That being said, I'm secretly an optimist still.
If there will be people like you still around, I believe the popular opinion won't be that bad.
I'm just a bit worried that photos of actual CRT monitors 'in action' won't be around anymore.

Revisionism in magazines happened in the late 90s, early 2000s already.
At the time, magazines looked down on classic games with pixel art.

Instead of using real screen shots taken with a film camera in front of a CRT monitor,
they used digital screen grabbers.
Which in turn gave a total false impression on old games like Super Mario, Sonic or Monkey Island.

Not only was the aspect ratio wrong, but also part of the filtering process was lost.
The Composite and RF connections acted like filtering stages. They blurred pixels, similar to what bilinear interpolation provides today.

Even today, games like Sonic 1/2 do look most natural or realistic ("organic") via RF only.
Yeah RF.. Never liked it, unless a quality tuner was involved (a VCR had them!).
Even composite does start to slowly destroy the illusion of a clean (but sonewhat blurry) picture.
But it's a compromise, at least.

Edit: Typos fixed.

I had a friend who was VERY GOOD at recreating things, but he's now deceased. He worked for a TV studio and made objects to perfection. I don't know if this term exists in English or if it was inherited from English, he called it MOCAP, which was something like recreating an object identical to the original. I'll give you an example: In a movie, someone needs to throw a 60's TV out of the building's window, but of course nobody wants to destroy a rare and expensive 60's TV, and the actor could have problems with the weight of a TV like that, so the studio would hire this friend of mine, and he would create an identical "copy" of that tv, using the most diverse materials, the result would be an identical, non-functional TV, just for the scene of being thrown out the window. There were other interesting things, like paper bags for use in the scene, but they were made of rubber so they didn't make noise (so as not to disturb the filming). He would be the perfect guy to solve the LCD problem in the CRT case.

Projects with commodore screens are cool, but that means they're building a retro-looking monitor from scratch, while my idea was to save the crt monitors (or at least their cases) for nostalgia's sake. For example, I know that many people may have had a Samsung syncmaster 3 at some point in their lives, and if they were going to have an old computer today, they would want to have that monitor next to their 486 or pentium 1.

It wouldn't be difficult to build a raspberry pi with vga input and output to act as a filter to produce the geometry and image damage, it would fit comfortably inside the hollow case of the CRT.

I even wondered if it would be possible to cut a crt tube, to take advantage of the concave part in front of an LCD. The tube is painted with phosphor, but I know that phosphor can be removed from the glass with some chemicals. I just don't know if it's financially viable to cut a crt tube (maybe waterjet cutting is necessary?). This solution would be perfect, because when using the original tube, you would maintain the perfect curvature with the plastic of the frame, and you could screw it back in where it was, just putting the LCD panel behind.

Jo22 wrote on 2022-08-14, 19:20:

I may wonder how people in the future think about how it was watching cartoons like Road Runner or Amazing 3 in the 1960s on a h […]
Show full quote

Rikintosh wrote on 2022-08-14, 15:19:

The big issue is that the flat LCD doesn't fit properly in the case of a curved crt.

I may wonder how people in the future think about how it was watching cartoons like Road Runner or Amazing 3 in the 1960s on a humble monochrome CRT TV.
Will they do realize that monochrome CRT screens used to have had a soft, clean picture (if there was no heavy RF noise) and no screenmask?
Or will they think they had a fuzzy, wobbly image, like early NTSC TVs, but in monochrome only?

I believe they would have both opinions, and would fight to maintain both opinions, because both are true. Depending on the TV model, antenna reception, and where you were, it may produce different results.

Here in Brazil, Pal-M was used, which in my opinion is one of the best standards developed for broadcasting (number of lines/definition, colors, refresh rate), I had many TV models in my childhood, including monochrome models from the 50's and 60's (which used vacuum tubes) and low quality mini tvs from the 80's also monochrome. The image quality varied a lot from one model to another, as it depended on factors such as the quality of the internal capacitors, and the state of conservation.

I remember having a Sega Genesis, turned on via RF, and for me the distorted synth sound is nostalgic (some people call it overdrive I think, it was a problem with the sound filtering on early Genesis models), some people love, others hate.

Rikintosh wrote on 2022-08-14, 20:32:

I had a friend who was VERY GOOD at recreating things, but he's now deceased. He worked for a TV studio and made objects to perf […]
Show full quote

Jo22 wrote on 2022-08-14, 19:20:

It can be solved by installing some sort of curved magnifier lense, maybe. Some dudes who made a faux A1000 for a museum used th […]
Show full quote

Rikintosh wrote on 2022-08-14, 15:19:

The big issue is that the flat LCD doesn't fit properly in the case of a curved crt.

It can be solved by installing some sort of curved magnifier lense, maybe.
Some dudes who made a faux A1000 for a museum used that trick a while ago.

https://hackaday.com/2021/02/17/building-repl … igital-artwork/

However, the outcome wasn't exactly like that of a real tube monitor.
The pixels were still too.. pixelated.
Though I doubt the average museum visitor would even care.
It's just show, accuracy doesn't really matter to them.
The focus was on the pictures themselves, also, not the computer.

I may wonder how people in the future think about how it was watching cartoons like Road Runner or Amazing 3 in the 1960s on a humble monochrome CRT TV.
Will they do realize that monochrome CRT screens used to have had a soft, clean picture (if there was no heavy RF noise) and no screenmask?
Or will they think they had a fuzzy, wobbly image, like early NTSC TVs, but in monochrome only?

Maybe they will apply lots of filters to degrade the picture quality to a blurry mess.
Just like those silly scan line filters in lower end emulators do today (Blarg's NTSC filter or the VICE64 PAL emulation are kind of okay, don't get me wrong).

That being said, I'm secretly an optimist still.
If there will be people like you still around, I believe the popular opinion won't be that bad.
I'm just a bit worried that photos of actual CRT monitors 'in action' won't be around anymore.

Revisionism in magazines happened in the late 90s, early 2000s already.
At the time, magazines looked down on classic games with pixel art.

Instead of using real screen shots taken with a film camera in front of a CRT monitor,
they used digital screen grabbers.
Which in turn gave a total false impression on old games like Super Mario, Sonic or Monkey Island.

Not only was the aspect ratio wrong, but also part of the filtering process was lost.
The Composite and RF connections acted like filtering stages. They blurred pixels, similar to what bilinear interpolation provides today.

Even today, games like Sonic 1/2 do look most natural or realistic ("organic") via RF only.
Yeah RF.. Never liked it, unless a quality tuner was involved (a VCR had them!).
Even composite does start to slowly destroy the illusion of a clean (but sonewhat blurry) picture.
But it's a compromise, at least.

Edit: Typos fixed.

I had a friend who was VERY GOOD at recreating things, but he's now deceased. He worked for a TV studio and made objects to perfection. I don't know if this term exists in English or if it was inherited from English, he called it MOCAP, which was something like recreating an object identical to the original. I'll give you an example: In a movie, someone needs to throw a 60's TV out of the building's window, but of course nobody wants to destroy a rare and expensive 60's TV, and the actor could have problems with the weight of a TV like that, so the studio would hire this friend of mine, and he would create an identical "copy" of that tv, using the most diverse materials, the result would be an identical, non-functional TV, just for the scene of being thrown out the window. There were other interesting things, like paper bags for use in the scene, but they were made of rubber so they didn't make noise (so as not to disturb the filming). He would be the perfect guy to solve the LCD problem in the CRT case.

Projects with commodore screens are cool, but that means they're building a retro-looking monitor from scratch, while my idea was to save the crt monitors (or at least their cases) for nostalgia's sake. For example, I know that many people may have had a Samsung syncmaster 3 at some point in their lives, and if they were going to have an old computer today, they would want to have that monitor next to their 486 or pentium 1.

It wouldn't be difficult to build a raspberry pi with vga input and output to act as a filter to produce the geometry and image damage, it would fit comfortably inside the hollow case of the CRT.

I even wondered if it would be possible to cut a crt tube, to take advantage of the concave part in front of an LCD. The tube is painted with phosphor, but I know that phosphor can be removed from the glass with some chemicals. I just don't know if it's financially viable to cut a crt tube (maybe waterjet cutting is necessary?). This solution would be perfect, because when using the original tube, you would maintain the perfect curvature with the plastic of the frame, and you could screw it back in where it was, just putting the LCD panel behind.

Well props are a lot easier to make than something that needs to be functional.

Even if you solve the curvature problem (or use a "pure flat" CRT monitor), you are still unlikely to find an LCD panel that fits the space exactly. So it's going to look like an LCD stuffed into a CRT case. Which is why I decided against trying this in the past.