So, I downloaded 1.8.5, and when I selected a shader, it said “Failed to load _____.” I tried switching my driver to d3d9, and it loaded the shader, but the screen turned black. What should I do?
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It works for me using gl driver and Windows 7 + Nvidia card. On my Radeon equipped old Notebook, some shaders fail as well.
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I check this thread once every year to see if anything’s changed. This was one of the highlights of RA for me. I still run an old version because of it. +1 to having it updated.
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You can still use the Analog Shader Pack with this special build:
Alternatively, you can move on like I have and try shader presets like these that I’ve made here:
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This is so helpful, thanks a lot! It’s gonna be good to update for once, I’ve been using 1.7.5 for ages. I’ll take a look at your work, too, thank you so much.
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You’re most welcome. Be sure to spread the word. My Anolog Shader Pack only stopped working from v1.9.1 I think so it’s only a little over a month now I’ve switched. Post some screenshots of my presets in action if you like them!
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Pixels should never bleed over the gaps between scanlines, that’s what I see in a lot of your screenshots. Basically, the scanlines are not aligned properly with the pixel rows. It looks very jarring and of course CRTs never did that. Can you upload your screenshots to Dropbox or something so they don’t get compressed?
Scanlines are not just lines drawn on top of the image. In 240p mode, the electron gun sweeps over a single row of pixels twice and then skips the next row in the raster pattern, repeating this process until all lines are drawn, at which point it resets and starts scanning from the top again.
In your shots I can see that there are bits of pixels spilling over the gaps between scanlines, which makes the scanlines look “drawn on” and not a natural part of the image.
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Greetings Nesguy. With all due respect, while I don’t have a problem with learning about the fundamentals of accurate CRT rendering as its an interesting topic, I’ve said it before that my aim has never been to necessarily replicate a technically accurate CRT Experience. Sometimes it’s good to stop and take a deep breath and look around you and you might see that there are many different ways and perspectives of appreciating and experiencing things. What might be trash to you, might be gold to another. What might make you frown, cringe or be angry and unhappy might make others smile, relax and be filled with joy and delight.
Stop trolling people’s idea of what they want their shader presets to look like. That’s how it comes across. Who made you the authority on these things and is that really what the spirit of Libretto is about? Libre means free, right? So it might help you to be a lot more gentle, open minded and understanding to those who might like something different to what your ideal standard is.
So I totally and categorically dismiss your statement about what pixels shouldn’t do and I’m not going to argue about it. In my humble opinion pixels “should” do whatever the user wants them to do, with the tools that are at their disposal. That statement you made requires qualification and context to be valid. I’m not a CRT scientist and even if I was I’m still entitled to like what I like.
If you were trying to help me to improve on what I do then you really need to get some training in effective communication because it doesn’t really come across as helping, it comes across quite blunt, dry and critical. You are you but investing in emotional intelligence can benefit anyone.
These things are supposed to be fun man. If you don’t like it just move on unless someone specifically asks you for your opinion. Should I regret tagging you in my post about my Composite - Pure preset? As a side go and take a read from the first post of the Please Show Off What CRT Shaders Can Do Thread and see how different, open and fun the thread was with people posting their “wrong” presets using the old shaders. Even the person who created the thread seemed to like the “wrong” style shaders. I think the reason they created a like button was so that if you liked something you can click on it but if you didn’t like it, you could just leave it alone. They didn’t create a dislike button.
So don’t take this the wrong way, I’m not against you as a person but it might help if you try to allow others to enjoy themselves in their own way while guiding them and suggesting that they try things if you can see a vision of them and their experience improving. This things is mostly subjective, especially what images evoke the type of nostalgia that some users might have in their minds and hearts. If you want to focus on the technical aspects then that’s your choice. Others just want to have fun with the stuff and that includes myself.
You didn’t need to tell me this because, I’ve known this for most of my life.
The compression is not the issue. It’s because of the use of added noise and rolling scanlines anytime the emulator or frame is paused it breaks the effect resulting in a loss of detail. The paused frame looks lossy and slightly lower resolution than when in motion. I realize that the best way to solve this is by using video clips.
Haven’t you yourself said before that you can’t judge a shader preset properly from screenshots, so why even try? Take a look on a 4K screen somewhere at the live preset then judge.
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Can you show me where I’ve done or said anything wrong in my post?
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It might help to know that @Cyber is using rolling scanlines which make use of “fake” scanlines.
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oh gotcha. Never used it, myself.
I wish they would 
My days of writing novel-length posts are mostly over, that’s a young man’s game. I’ll just move on.
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There are exactly four members of the forum I would, I think wisely, never take that tone with. @Nesguy is one.
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Oh I don’t actually have any real power or authority around here. Sometimes when I ask nicely people do things for me, lol.
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For what it’s worth, I’ve already began making video clips to more accurately represet the way my presets look in real life. So sometimes in the (hopefully near) future I’ll start to use those instead.
The issue is one of a temporal nature both with the rolling scanlines and the noise. You can play around with them yourself to see what I’m talking about. You can turn them up slightly then pause the emulator. You will see a marked difference in the quality, particularly on areas with lots of solid colour, much less so on black backgrounds. When you resume the emulator everything gets clearer and sharper again.
These 2 effects, rolling scanlines and deconvergence add noise look very different at lower resolutions. The lower you go, the more noisy and grainy the noise looks and the rolling scanlines might even be almost useless at lower than 4K resolutions because it might be too noticeable. Neither are supposed to be obvious and distracting unless staring at the screen looking for things or sitting close to the screen.
I normally sit about 9 to 10ft away from my screen by the way.
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It’s not just the rolling scanlines but the “deconvergence add noise” that contributes to that look in screenshots.
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My four choices are based on my level of respect (Well deserved I believe.) not fear.
The other three are @HyperspaceMadness, @guest.r, and @hunterk.
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Thanks, but I’m not on the same level as those guys. It’s nice to be appreciated though.
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Yeah I’m sure the deconvergence is having an effect, but Duimon is correct that the newpixie-clone preset uses the fake scanlines, so what this does is you get a higher res image generated by ScaleFX, then the “scanlines” are added on top, really an alternating darkening pattern.
Especially with the rolling scanlines they slide up the screen and you really see the high resolution smoothed image through that. So you definitely do get an effect of “bleeding” of the image over the scanlines. The rolling scanlines are a purely artistic treatment and not really related to what a real CRT does at all.
One thing which is interesting which can be done with ScaleFX and the Mega Bezel chain, is you can get an increased resolution on the horizontal without changing the vertical sampling, so you can get the actual scanline dynamics, a couple presets you can try are:
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Smoothed-ScaleFX_Horz_Only__
- This increases the sampling horizontally but leaves vertical the same, so the same number of vertical scanlines
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Smoothed-ScaleFX_Antialias__
- This adds a very slight blur sideways but keeps the sampling the same as normal
- Because the slight blur was done after the scalefx but the resolution sampling is kept at core res so the effect is of a slight anti-aliasing on edges
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@solid12345 Please make a version 4 with .slangp format. I couldn’t make your .cgp shaders work on my laptop (I tried gl and d3d10 drivers since d3d9 didn’t work).
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