The computers used to do 3D animation for Final Fantasy VII in 1996

Re:The computers used to do 3D animation for Final Fantasy V... by dylan604 on Thursday April 07, 2022 @02:43PM (#30948692)

There's a semi-easy way to spot a Trinitron if you knew where/how to look for the tell. There were 2 horizontal lines that were shadows from some bit of wiring that could be seen when viewing the screen when certain images/patterns like solid colors were displayed.

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Re:The computers used to do 3D animation for Final Fantasy V... by syncsynchalt on Thursday April 07, 2022 @03:01PM (#30948922)

I had a Sun workstation with a beast of a 19" Trinitron CRT in the late '90s in my apartment (working remotely for a California startup) and remember it fondly. The lines you're referring to are called "damping wires" in this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aperture_grille

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Re:The computers used to do 3D animation for Final Fantasy V... by JohnBooty on Thursday April 07, 2022 @03:58PM (#30949642)

There's an even easier way on older Trinitrons - the bulge of the glass is different.

Notice how the left and right sides of the glass are straight vertical lines, and only the top and bottom edges are curved: https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-consumer-electronics-hall-of-f...

Versus a standard CRT, where all four sides are curved: https://fineartamerica.com/featured/vintage-tv-scott-chimber...

Of course, the final-gen Trinitons (circa 2000 onward) had truly flat glass, so there was no tell-tale curvature to look for.

And once Sony's patents started expiring, there were competitors like Mitsubishi's Diamondtron displays with glass shaped like Trinitrons. I'm not sure if they had the two horizontal lines like Trinitrons.

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Re:The computers used to do 3D animation for Final Fantasy V... by valley_guy_12 on Thursday April 07, 2022 @03:35PM (#30949363)

I remember that shadow! FWIW it was just one line in smaller Trinitrons, and it was located 1/3rd of the way from the top or bottom edge rather than in the middle.

Apple mounted the Trinitron tube upside down compared to other vendors, so that the faint horizontal line would be in the bottom third of the screen rather than the top third.

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Re:The computers used to do 3D animation for Final Fantasy V... by rasz on Sunday April 10, 2022 @06:24AM (#30975848)

Worked for national PC parts distributor in ~1999. We were regularly having shops trying to return CTX monitors because of the "bad lines" :)

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