I am in no way affiliated with the project but I have a ton of experience as a user. If anyone has any questions (from a user perspective) I would be happy to answer them.
MiSTer (and MiST before it) is an amazing preservation project. So many systems have been cycle accurately emulated (though that doesn't mean they're 100% accurate), and even for the one's that aren't, it's really cool to have a usable PS1 or N64 with HDMI without having to go to a bunch of extra effort.
The real secret weapon of MiSTer is having the analog video timings recreated for dozens of hardware platforms without needing dozens of pieces of hardware. It's pretty difficult to convince yourself that an SNES is being displayed as-intended with emulation.
If you're considering a MiSTer then you likely have enough disposable income to find and home a CRT, which is where I think draws the majority of the value of the MiSTer out.
I've got a mister, but I have no room in my house for a crt. Instead my TV can do variable refresh rate so seems to be able to handle most of the weird refresh rates. Is this roughly the same thing?
Not exactly. Vertical refresh rates are very often 50 or 60 Hz (except for arcade games which are typically weird values). VRR on flat panels will help support that part of video timing. Where things get difficult to properly track is what happens with horizontal scanning. Most game consoles before 2000 displayed 240p60 to displays expecting 480i30. This is where the scanline effect comes from. Also, the pixels were often not square. The display was expected to be stretched to 4:3 but the rendered pixel counts might be something other 4:3 (5:4 in the case of the SNES). By playing on a 4:3 CRT with the console's original video timing you can be relatively confident the pixel aspect ratio is as the artist intended.
Granted the last time I looked at retroarch there were options to handle this and the CRT simulation shaders are in a great state.
At the end of the day the pixel aspect ratio will not affect the gameplay. Hell, there are counter strike players today that still play with incorrect aspect ratio pixels (4:3 render resolution stretched onto a 16:9 display) for no reason other than "some players did it at tournaments ten years ago".
I love my MiSTer, but reader beware, you can find yourself deep in a money pit very quickly. Signed - owner of a MiSTer, and now a candy cab with the JVS expander.. and low latency controller adapters…
Big big fan of MiSTer. I have two builds both using the ironclad plus board which turns it into a MiniITX compatible format that you can drop into any miniITX case. https://www.d3fmod.com/product/mini-itx_ironclad_plus/
If you're considering a MiSTer then you likely have enough disposable income to find and home a CRT, which is where I think draws the majority of the value of the MiSTer out.
Granted the last time I looked at retroarch there were options to handle this and the CRT simulation shaders are in a great state.
At the end of the day the pixel aspect ratio will not affect the gameplay. Hell, there are counter strike players today that still play with incorrect aspect ratio pixels (4:3 render resolution stretched onto a 16:9 display) for no reason other than "some players did it at tournaments ten years ago".
I bought the version from “Ultimate MiSTER” because daemonbite has been out of stock for a long time.