Analog Shader Pack version 3 is HERE!

RetroArch Additions Shaders
#94

[QUOTE=HDG;50899]Hello. I have an AMD GPU and I’m on PC. I just tested all the shaders in the test_settings archive you put on a bit higher in this thread. Here is the result on Castlevania : Symphony of the Night :

Curved : Blurry TV : Does not load, Blur12x12shared.cg returns an error while compiling Boob Tube : Seems to be working. Completely destroys my HD 7950 in term of framerate. Classic Scanlines : Works. Flea Market : Same as Blurry TV, blur12x12shared returns an error while compiling Fuzzy TV : Works. Gritty and contrasty : Same as Flea Market and Blurry TV. Halation Soft : Same problem HQ Curved : Same HQ Semiflat : Works ! HQ Semiflat variants : Same problems as the other non-working shaders, except it’s blur10x10shared.cg Jittery Semi-sharp : Works. Sandpaper : blur12x12shared problems. Slotmask Sharp : blur10x10 problem Slotmask Soft : blur12x12 Soft and Grainy : blur10x10

Flat Screen : EDTV : Working HDTV : Working Pencil Sharp TV : Working Projection TV : Blur12x12shared error Sharp Flat Screen : Working Standard Flat Screen : Working Trinitron : Working Ultrasharp Flat Screen : Working Wega : Working

Vintage : Electric Blue : Working Old & Muddy : Working Technicolor : Working The Atari : Blur12x12shared problems The Zenith : Working. Ultra Saturated : Working Vintage LCD TV : Working Vintage Sharp : Blur10x10shared problems Vintage LE37 edition : Works.

If you need a guinea pig to test other things, don’t hesitate to ask.[/QUOTE]

All that’s kind of odd, because the test setting zip I got only contains the Jittery Semi-Sharp. I think you might’ve mixed up archives…

Or maybe not, because I tried the Jittery Semi-Sharp in the original pack and it broke at the blur shaders, as it always has for my AMD card. Very strange. In any case, Solid, I think your ancient blur shaders work on AMD cards, so a conversion to those shaders and some 240p Suite-driven color correction should work just fine for, say, a 3.5 release?

The next full version should probably wait for Vulkan/GLSL shader support to be mature, though. And sorry for the delay - medical circumstances make it hard for me to keep up at times.

#95

[QUOTE=Queen Fiona;50908]All that’s kind of odd, because the test setting zip I got only contains the Jittery Semi-Sharp. I think you might’ve mixed up archives… [/QUOTE]

Stange, I used this one : https://mega.nz/#!NF0nXC5a!XNF4q-sfr14O9bxu8oyP6A7WWmXZ4h0zqwwTXxLv390 that is on the last page :slight_smile:

#96

I too, just have “Jittery semi-sharp” in Televisions.

#97

Yes, I just rechecked and it seems I had a brain fart, I probably had the official and the test version archives opened at the same time in 7-Zip, sorry.

#98

hello !!! what are the minimum requirements of the video card to use these shaders?

thank you!

#99

I also have an AMD card (R9 390x) and the jittery sharp thing worked beautifully. Would love to get this functionality with the rest of the beautiful shaders in the pack.

#100

Is there any plan to porting these shaders to Vulkan ?

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#101

I think pretty much all of the actual shaders have been ported (perhaps missing a few here and there) but solid made some changes to them that are not reflected in these ports. He would have to go in and reproduce all of those changes and the accompanying presets himself.

#102

So, in the interest of science, and because I really shouldn’t wait around when I have a simple technical solution, I decided to use Notepad++ to recursively find and replace the shader presets in this pack based on the changes made in the test preset solid provided us. I’m supplying it here. The technical notes of my testing are below, but AMD end users (or curious Nvidia/Intel users) can just download that pack and find most of it working fine.

While some of them didn’t look right, usually being far too blurry than I expected, that could just be solid’s intentional artistic vision. Most of those were arcade monitors. The vast majority of shaders look just fine and seem to work perfectly. A proper review would be needed across the pack to determine if everything looks just right, but that’d be a task better left to the creator, or at least someone with more dedication and skill than I…it’d be something to go alongside the color variants, I imagine.

I didn’t test everything, but I tested a good chunk of them, focusing on each shader type overall rather than every specific variant. Virtually all of them loaded for me. Some of them still failed to load, and there were two reasons I could find for this in the log I made of my testing session.

First was just some files failing to load due to not existing at the given path. I had to place blur and blur-light into the 480P subfolder due to the way some of the shader paths were set up. I don’t know if this will look right (maybe the 480P folder’s versions are different?), but it should work; I haven’t tested it due to sleep deprivation, so if it blows your computer up or something horrible, please let us know!

The second is that there remained a scant few presets that used an AMD-incompatible shader. Specifically, blur10x10shared.cg threw up an error in HQ Semiflat variant, Slotmask Sharp, Soft & Grainy, and Vintage Sharp. I don’t know which shader solid would’ve wanted to replace it with, so these are still broken…though included for curiosity’s sake if someone wants to test the PS3 shaders solid used - there seem to be a couple more in the test preset solid uploaded. Specifically, ‘blur-lighter.cg’ and ‘blur-lightest.cg’ seem to be part of the same family.

I can’t guarantee any of this will look right, but I can guarantee that it will work, barring the four shaders still using an AMD-incompatible shader in the chain. Hopefully this will expose the pack to more users, and help spur development and testing of these presets!

(Oh, and as a note, both CGA monitor folders appear to have only the green monochrome, not the color one. That’s just a straight up error in all versions of the pack, so hopefully you can fix it quickly!)

Also: hunterk, if you peek in this thread again sometime…is there any chance that we can improve the shader feedback and interface? The only way to tell if a shader fails to load is through the console output, and sorting through all these presets manually is simply a pain. Maybe we could have some kind of recursive folder option, or maybe a ‘favorites’ and/or ‘playlist’ system for shaders? It’d make comparing them all much, much easier, and probably simplify workflow for anyone working on presets. Shaders are easily the best feature of RetroArch, but they’re also easily the most technically daunting to get working. Some quality of life improvements here would be great.

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#103

It would be nice to see stdout in a console window to catch various warnings/errors (shaders included). It’s come up a lot lately, so maybe it’s time to look into something like that.

Try replacing blur10x10shared.cg with blur9x9fast.cg.

#108

You really nailed the type of image every display generates, but colours are really off.

They are either oversatureted or gamma is wrong.

What i think you should do is keep your awesome crt look, but leave colours at default for all high quality modes and displays.

Let people change them if they want and give us your awesome work with pure, untacked colours like in every emulator at default.

I guess thats not too much work for you?

Thanx again

#109

You nailed the type of picture of every crt mode, but the colours are off in all high quality professional monitor modes on rgb.

What I think you should do is give us pure, untacked colour and gamma values as a default, while keeping the type of crt picture you’ve done so good.

And then everyone will be able to choose what to change.

I think the looks of crt screen (scanlines, shadow mask or whatever) is the key here and colours are a preference, so you should have good default mode.

You should do like every good emulator does, don’t change the colours.

Long story short, your “physical appearance” of crt screen + natural and unchanged colours will give us the best crt shader ever.

And I think it won’t take much of your time, I guess you can just reset all the colours to starting positions.

Thanx for your work again.

#110

You nailed the type of picture of every crt mode, but the colours are off in all high quality professional monitor modes on rgb.

It’s either oversaturated colours or wrong gamma that makes everything too dark. Or both.

Modes that aim to reproduce some flaws, like an old screen are not the problem, but those high quality, professional modes like bvm/pvm.

What I think you should do is give us pure, untacked colour and gamma values as a default, while keeping the type of crt picture you’ve done so good.

And then everyone will be able to choose what to change.

I think the looks of crt screen (scanlines, shadow mask or whatever) is the key here and colours are a preference, so you should have good default mode.

You should do what every good emulator does, don’t change the colours.

Long story short, your “physical appearance” of crt screen + natural and unchanged colours will give us the best crt shader ever.

And I think it won’t take much of your time, I guess you can just reset all the colours to starting positions.

Thanx for your work again.

#111

Agree with Ivan, had a similar thought myself playing yesterday. CRT scanlines and blur are perfection but colors and contrast are slightly off, curved Boob Tube also have a bit too much flicker which I cant disable no matter what, crt geom scanline weight disables this flickering but makes everything too bright so, it appears there are too many interconnected values for me to tweak on my own without knowing what does what.

I made some tests and displayed screencaps from retroarch on my CRT and then compared them with my monitor, the color was pretty much the same as standard retroarch. Not sure whether scanlines and shadowmask without color correction would looked good though, after all they change image by itself so it is possible image would be too dark or washed out.

#112

Some shaders doesn’t load. With d3d driver, the shaders load, but the game stays with black screen.

The problem is AMD video card? My video card is Sapphire Radeon HD 6870. Driver updated. Retroarch last stable.

Excelent pack! Congratulations!

Thanks!

#113

Will this be included by default in future releases of RetroArch?

#114

It should be

#115

So, I’m a bit confused. Is the AMD compatibility fixed for this pack? Or just fixed for some of the shaders?

If so, what ones still won’t work?

This has been very hard to follow.

#116

@Solid12345 I really like what you’ve done, here… really terrific work, thank you! I have a quick question: When using the “Boob Tube” filter preset, is there any way to dial back or remove the flickering of the scanlines? Everything looks just like it did on my TV as a kid, except for that.

Thanks in advance if you are able to provide any info.

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FLAT CRT Fullscreen 16:9 Overlay (with day and night support)
Classic CRT Fullscreen 16:9 Overlay (with Day and Night support)
#117

Thank you! Your packs have always been awesome and this one is no exception!

I found one wee bug in it, though–the CGA shader (color version) was a copy of the hercules green–I was able to fix it, though, by removing the green component from the shader header or whatever it was called, then renumbered the rest, and now it works fine (tweaked the monitor brightness in it a bit as by default was quite bright).

But, I got it all set up and now I can use your shaders with dosbox and bezels and it is awesome!

I love your crappy Atari television shader–it is awesome, let me make this:

Thank you again!

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