VT340 Emulation

[Paul Koning]

> On Jun 22, 2021, at 12:57 PM, Zane Healy <healyzh at avanthar.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>> On Jun 22, 2021, at 6:19 AM, Paul Koning via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
>> 
>>>> Imagine a Tekronox Emulation on a 4K display ;-)
>> 
>> Like a Tek 4019?  I remember seeing those in Typeset-11, amazing.
> 
> That brings up an interesting question, how good is a 4K display for emulating vector graphics?

Assuming you can feed such a display a video signal that actually represents 4k worth of pixels, without compression, it should be quite decent for vector graphics up to 11 bit x/y resolution or so.  I have a CDC console (DD60) emulation, that's a 512x512 display with vector characters, which looks good on the 1k resolution laptop screen.  Not so good before I started using the "Retina" mode and was only getting 512 pixel resolution; with that the pixel artefacts were quite visible and somewhat annoying.

Depending on the API of the vector system, the hard part may be to create an adequate emulation of display persistence and fade. If the vector machine has a well defined refresh cycle that's probably straightforward (just display what the current display list says).  If the graphics primitives simply amount to "send a stream of vectors to the tube" as is the case for the DD60, then you have to track elapsed time and fade the older pixels -- possibly with the help of an inferred display refresh cycle that isn't expressed in the data stream.  

	paul