CRT Switchres on PC Monitor

Where can I find this “Calamity”? lol

AFAIK, you need to put the 60hz frequency in the .ini file, then VMM will try to make the exact double, the closest it can (for converting 15khz to 31khz). Make sure the CRT Emudriver is actually loaded as a driver in the windows “device manager” (you have to disable windows driver check or enable test mode or something simillar to install the moded driver) in my experience, retro arch dont automaticly change the resolution the first times, you have to do it manually with ArcadeOSD, even some resolutions may need adjust (in my case 240x224, i needed to edit the modeline in ArcadeOSD from 120hz to 120.256hz for it to be in the range of my monitor).

Open retro arch, load the game, put the fullscreen native resolution in the video options of RA, unmark the “windowed resolution”, then open ArcadeOSD, change to proper resolution. and it should work. take into consideration that if you use multi-monitor set up, then you need to drag ArcadeOSD to the monitor you want to list the resolutions and select the main menu “Attach OSD to current monitor” option for it to work properly. Also in VMM you need to select in the first tab, your tipe of crt (PC CRT 70/120 in my case) and in the second tab, in device, select you crt monitor. In the third tab, put x y minimun resolutions in 0, “mode table method” to static and “y -res round to” “1 line” the fourth tab leave everything unmarked.

If you cant make it work, try asking Calamity like Alphanu sugested, to help you troubleshoot. here is the forum http://geedorah.com/eiusdemmodi/forum/ and here are some threads talking about RetroArch compatibility and configs: http://geedorah.com/eiusdemmodi/forum/search.php?search_id=385778299. Good luck!

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@Alphanu there seem to be a problem in windows kernel for some card about interlaced resolutions. Have you seen this? http://geedorah.com/eiusdemmodi/forum/viewtopic.php?id=344

It tgere an option for 31khz in VMM? If that’s the case then yeah you just install 320x240@60 with the 31khz option selected.

I’m running this all on Linux ATM so I have not tested on windows. But as long as the resolution are tgere it will work

Thanks for all that info, I’ll have to give that a try with CRTEmudriver and see what happens.

I actually managed to get the thing to work though, but not with CRTEmudriver, with CRU instead. I set the monitor to run 1920 x (224, 240, 448, 480) and a 1280x960 for my Desktop resolution.

It seems to be running great on everything I threw at it now, except for the Master System. I think I would need a 1920x192 resolution for that, but CRU only let’s you add so many custom resolutions and I’m out of slots. :frowning:

The other thing I need to figure out now, is that whenever the resolution on my monitor changes, it takes RA about 8-10 seconds to beginn working, like it freezes for a moment after the size changes. This has been something that RA has been doing for the last several versions though, so I’m unsure if it’s related to the CRTSwitchRes at all.

I got it to work with CRT Emudriver, thanks for all your help guys.

I set it to the 31Khz preset in VMMaker, and then did the resolutions I found in another topic on the subject:

If you are running Windows, before enabling the CRT SwitchRes options please make sure you have installed CRTEmudriver and installed some modelines. The minimum modelines for all games to switch correctly are:

    2560 x 192 @ 60.000000
    2560 x 200 @ 60.000000
    2560 x 240 @ 60.000000
    2560 x 224 @ 60.000000
    2560 x 237 @ 60.000000
    2560 x 256 @ 50.000000
    2560 x 254 @ 55.000000
    2560 x 448 @ 60.000000
    2560 x 480 @ 60.000000

Install these modelines replacing 2560 with your desired super resolution. The above resolutions are NTSC only so if you would be playing any PAL content please add PAL modelines:

    2560 x 192 @ 50.000000
    2560 x 200 @ 50.000000
    2560 x 240 @ 50.000000
    2560 x 224 @ 50.000000
    2560 x 288 @ 50.000000
    2560 x 237 @ 50.000000
    2560 x 254 @ 55.000000
    2560 x 448 @ 50.000000
    2560 x 480 @ 50.000000

Some games will require higher PAL resolutions which should also be installed:

    2560 x 512 @ 50.000000
    2560 x 576 @ 50.000000

Ideally install all these modelines and everything will work great.

After that, I made sure it was in ‘static’ and not ‘dynamic’ mode. They installed just fine after that.

The only thing I’m dealing with now is that plugging the system into another screen (like an lcd) means that having the CRT auto-switch on means everything pulls up wrong. I put 2 different presets in my folder so I can swap them out for it, but I’m hoping that there’s an easier way to deal with that obstacle.

Either way - Alphanu holy shit this feature is amazing. Thank you so much for all the work you put into it. I didn’t think I would be this excited about it, but it makes my CRT screen feel ‘real’ somehow. I’m going to figure out how to hook my retro consoles and my vcr to it and just have it replace all my CRT’s.

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actually you can use native resolutions that have smother scrolling instead of super resolutions. Also make sure you disable any filter/shader and enable “black frame insertion”. For the screens messing up the crt swich, look in video options of RA there it let you choose the number of the monitor for full screen. So if your crt monitor is 2, when you plug in another screen, the new monitor should be 3. So in that option put monitor 2, and it should work better.

You don’t need blankframe insertion. This makes the image darker.

BFI is to counter the ghosting effect. See a shooter like Lightening Force on Genesis for example, the first stage, look at the mountains scrolling in the lower part of the screen. With BFI on or a 60hz frequency, you can follow them with your eyes while they scroll and see then as clear as if they were static images, perfect smooth animation. but with it off on 120hz, the scrolling kind of stutters. that feature was put in RA for that reason I believe. Another counter effect of BFI, appart from darkening the screen, is that you have to use it with v-sync on or the screen turns into pure black stripes with some parts of the game. I wonder if that can be fixed? and with the new crt switch option, maybe is just me, but i have to enable it for using BFI or the stripes apperar on the genesis core, that didnt happen before i wonder if its a bug?

Try disable VSNC and enabling 1x max run speed in throttling!

It scrolls better and I can disable audio sync, but i get tearing (most notisable in Lightening Force intro scrolling title), and the ghosting is still there.

BFI still needs v-sync.

1x max run speed works simillar to “sync to exact content framerate” which is what I usually use.

Whe I enable “2x max run speed” I dont get ghosting of rendering 60hz content on 120hz frequency, but obviously it runs at 2x speed xD

BFI isn’t required on a CRT as they don’t have motion blur/ghosting.

Anyone with a CRT can confirm the motion blur/ghosting ocurring when showing 60hz content on 120hz on RA, and the effect that BFI has on this. Here is a what GroovyMame (an emulator mostly focused on CRT) says about it:

" - Black frame insertion (new option -black_frame_insertion): enables black frame insertion, to eliminate eye-tracking motion blur for both CRT and LCD monitors (more information: http://www.blurbusters.com/). It requires a 120 Hz capable display. You need to define either a 120 Hz monitor preset in mame.ini or use a 120 Hz desktop resolution. Then set “black_frame_insertion 1” in mame.ini, this will allow GroovyMAME to enable black frame insertion when required."

But you really need to see these behavors in action in a CRT to fully understand it.

PD: You can follow the Lightening Force example I gave before to test it if you have a PC CRT.

Hello, noob question here; I am using retroarch as included in a very recent (few days ago) Lakka nightly for x64 w/ an Intel NUC connected via HDMI -> VGA adapter -> PC monitor (CRT).

As I understand Lakka uses Libreelec (not Ubuntu, etc.) and there is X running, and Retroarch uses video_display_server_switch_resolution call on the fly, but looking here there’s only https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/blob/master/gfx/display_servers/ Windows and X11 display servers available and Lakka only has KMS, am I headed in the right direction?

Lakka doesn’t use X AFAIK and res-switching doesn’t currently work with KMS, so you need a non-Lakka installation to use switchres.

Hey i have a question about switchres and since i am a new member i am not able to make my own thread yet. But i am using a nividia card and i am not able to use crt emu driver since i don’t have any money atm to get and get an amd card albeit an old one. So my issue at the moment is that ps1 games have a weird aspect ratio even though being playable. Super nintendo games run fine. Everything up to nintendo 64 runs fine. And another thing i noticed is that retroarch works at 2560x240p at 60hz but only when retroarch switches it to 60hz but setting it in nividia custom resolution utility it works on 120hz only. And 320x240 only works on 160hz and it looks really weird on my tv. so is there anything i can do without shelling out too much cash? 240p looks fine but 480 looks over stretched going upwards so vertically

With an Nvidia card it is best to use super resolutions. Have you tried to use 3840 or 1920? Different card play better dependant o the super resolutions used.

Hi, I have a question, I’m trying to use this new integration (btw works great on Linux, excellent job Alphanu) but I am having a problem trying to use it in Windows 10 with an AMD HD5450 card, I installed CRT emudriver 2.0 and install the modelines from 31khz monitor, CRT Switchres works fine with the native resolution, except that the modelines CRT emudriver created for the super resolutions only the 2560, 1920, 3840 x 240 is in 120hz, I wanted to at least have from 240 to 480 resolutions in super resolution using 128hz, that is the only frequency that works fine from 240 to 480, 120hz works on 240 but not in 480, I also don’t know how to add interlaced resolutions, I tried adding a interlaced resolution for PSX on the AMD control panel with the “Interlaced” option but my monitor fails to display it, if someone has any idea on how I can do this in Windows It would be really appreciated.

Now, I added the super resolutions in the AMD control panel, since they are not in 120hz I activated the “use custom refresh rate” option in the CRT Switchres menu, and changed the option “crt_video_refresh_rate” to “128.000000”, but when I go to Retroarch it still tries to set the refresh rate to 120hz, how is the custom refresh rate added, Thank you very much y’all.

So far everything else works just excellent, this is an excellent integration.

120 hz is only for sub-480 resolutions. 480 and above will be ~60 hz.

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