It’s really an effect of CRT technology and the signals, some effects work even with RGB. Hardware bilinear filtering came later. I think the N64 may have been the first that used some sort of hardware filtering.
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I like the cyberlab megatron shaders but is it possible to get bezels with refelections for those ones, I looked under MBZ__0__Smooth-Advance_Full_Reflections but I can’t see any megatron ones.
Also could you explain what near field means.
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Iirc the near field presets are meant for closer viewing, aka like a computer monitor at a desk vs your TV from across the room.
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What I share is what I use so I started off using Mega Bezel, then I tried CRT-Royale then finally understood what I needed to in order to use Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor and once you go HDR you can’t go back.
The thing is, Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor isn’t required for HDR so you can achieve some really good looks by using my older presets, including ones with the bezels and enabling HDR in RetroArch itself.
Things are going to look a bit overblown though since those presets were never designed with HDR in mind but you can tweak a few settings to make things more palatable.
I’ve listed a few tips not too long ago in this thread.
So we can have the best of both worlds without Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor.
You’ll probably never be able to get the exact look as my Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor presets using Mega Bezel, even with the Mega Bezel Megatron Base presets due to differences in the shader chains between the Mega Bezel and my Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor Presets.
In addition to that, the Bezel robs the shader of precious vertical resolution so again they won’t look the same because of that.
At this time, I have no intention of making an entire line of Mega Bezel presets using the integrated Megatron Base Preset.
So it might be best to focus on trying to use the built-in RetroArch HDR or Windows’ AutoHDR in order to exploit and apply additional HDR brightness to existing SDR designed presets.
With that said, I did make a quick and dirty Mega Bezel Preset using the Megatron Base Preset which I posted in the Mega Bezel thread some months ago.
I also have some internal customized presets based on my Mega Bezel Presets which I modified for use with the built-in HDR setting in RetroArch.
Not sure if they’ll ever see the light of day in a release however but I’ll definitely try to post what I’ve learned from the process. So I’ll direct you to that link.
There have been other users who have been doing the AutoHDR or built-in HDR combination with my presets for quite some time now.
What you can also do is try to take some of the parameters from my Megatron presets and plug them into the Mega Bezel Megatron Base Preset and see what happens.
Updated Method:
Old Method:
Mega Bezel Megatron Preset:
@Syh’s response is correct.
People have mixed experiences when using my presets. Part of the reason for this is that I used to sit at optimal viewing distance from a 55" TV when designing my presets. This would have affected my perspective of the image significantly.
Not too long ago, I changed my viewing setup and am now a bit closer to the screen. I find my regular presets needed some adjustments in a few areas in order to look the way I wanted at this nearer viewing distance.
Hence, my “Near Field” presets were born.
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Just a lil sneak peak at what I’ve been working on since I’m now using a non-HDR TV that can only do YCbCr 4:2:0. You really don’t need a fancy TV or display to enjoy Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor (+passes from CRT-Guest-Advanced-NTSC+SuperXBR+Grade).
I call this one:
CyberLab Megatron NX W420M 4K SDR Game Turbo Duo Composite Shadow Mask Smooth Ultra Balanced.slangp
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@hunterk I would like to use some of the features of your magnanimous img-mod.slang shader, however I seem to be having trouble identifying which parts of code go along with which of the include lines I’ve commented out.
Can you assist me in getting it to do what I would like?
that looks pretty right to me. Is it giving you an error?
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Could it be potentially failing as sections are completely commented out now? (Like the black level, curvature and contrast for example)
A log would be great, tho they’re not always helpful (I got an unknown semantics error the other day when doing some shader work and just went yep that’s broke 
)
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It gave an error because I hadn’t updated my path to point to my modded version in the “…/misc/shaders…” subfolder and for some reason my modded img_mod_mod.slang was in the “…/misc” subfolder instead of the “…/misc/shaders…” subfolder.
I haven’t actually tested it since updating the paths and copying the file to the correct folder.
I still feel like I was trying hard to guess which sections of code correspond to the various include sections though. Perhaps some labels, numbering or other referencing can be applied to better identify which section begins where and ends where and which matches which?
If anything it could be an evolution to the current shaders.
Also, how is this intended to be used or shared? Am I supposed to supply my modded version with my preset pack?
I wasn’t too sure about this section:
void main()
{
// declare texture coordinates
vec2 coord = vTexCoord.xy;
The sections actually seem a little clearer viewing them on Pastebin vs Windows Notepad with word wrap enabled. So that was another part of my problem.
Thanks for the great work though! This is a really great all encompassing shader that is hiding behind the scenes. It probably needs a @RetroCrisis video!
Might just help to format the shader some more via tabs/indentions.
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Something that I’d be highly interested in but would definitely have some limitations, would be a CRT shader made in the same vein as img_mod.
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Sure, or you could strip it down to just the few things you need and/or change the include paths to look in one of the directories you distribute. The img_mod shader itself was intended to be a sort of manual/template for how to use the various included files.
As for using it to make a CRT shader, yeah, that’s doable. I already put the mask code in there, so you just need to replace the basic sampling step with a function that draws some nice scanlines.
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What’s the difference between these two shaders, the Ultra Smooth just seems to be swapped.
CyberLab Megatron NX 4K HDR Game SNES Composite Slot Mask Smooth Ultra
&
CyberLab Megatron NX 4K HDR Game SNES Composite Slot Mask Ultra Smooth
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The difference is visual. I prefer to use words rather than just say I, II, III, 3, 4, 5, a., b., c,…e.t.c.
It’s just a variation and also an evolution of an existing preset. It’s mostly arbitrary but “Ultra Smooth” presets might tend to be softer/smoother at the edges while “Smooth Ultra” might just be an evolution or revisit of a Smooth preset, many times being a little sharper/clearer/less blurry, but it’s just a variation not a hard and fast rule.
It’s a good idea to sort the presets in reverse chronological order based on the date modified. That way you can easily see which is the latest but these things are supposed to be WYSIWYG so just load them up and use what you like.
Let your eyes be your guide.
Smooth doesn’t literally mean a preset has to be smooth though. That just means an upscaling/smoothing shader was used for example ScaleFX or Super-XBR.
I haven’t always used “Smooth” in all presets with smoothing though as “Smooth” is sort of the default with no smoothing or “Sharp” as the exception. You might have seen that nomenclature in past preset packs.
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Finally setting this up in retroarch, after getting things working in reshade. One nice thing i could do in reshade but cant figure out how to do with the RA preset is, how do i turn up the core internal resolution, but keep the scan lines the same as of it were native resolution of the device.
So for instance in pcsx2, i just turned up to 4x scale, then put megatron over the top.
In retroarch when i set my ppsspp core to 4x, the shader cant apply scanlines it seems like. Any way to keep the internal resolution high and use the preset pack?
With Re-Shade (at least with the CRT-Guest-Advanced port), you have to tell the shader what is the native resolution of the game so that it will know how many scanlines to draw.
I have never used the Megatron Re-Shade port though.
In some emulators and Core Options there’s an option to downscale the output to native resolution after upscaling.
What you’re trying to do isn’t a standard feature of CRT Shaders or even CRTs though. The only reason scanline gaps are so obvious on 240p content is because the CRT is actually skipping every other line when drawing the frame.
For high res content, no lines are skipped therefore the gaps between the scanlines are a lot smaller.
Normally, in RetroArch, a shader would workout and display the correct number of scanlines based on the resolution output by the core.
What you would like to do is really an enhancement.
Firstly PSP didn’t use scanlines natively at all, unless you were fortunate to use the video output cable on a CRT TV.
It might be a good idea to try out one of the Handheld Border shaders for that system.
Also, the answer to your final question depends on which Preset Pack you’re referring to.
If you’re using my Mega Bezel Shader Preset Pack, you can use one of the DREZ presets if the Core doesn’t support downsampling to a low resolution natively.
PSP’s native vertical resolution is 272p so you should get some good looking scanlines. I think there might be a DREZ preset specifically for PSP in the Mega Bezel variations folder. You might want to try that or you can use the one I included for PSX in my CyberLab Mega Bezel Death To Pixels Shader Preset Pack.
You can use my Mega Bezel or CRT-Royale presets in conjunction with RetroArch’s built-in HDR implementation.
If using my Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor presets, you’ll have to prepend some sort of downsampling shader if you wish to do what you’ve described with a core that doesn’t downsample natively.
How do PCSX2 and PPSSPP look when you run them natively or at 2X internal resolution?
Do remember that my presets, especially the Near Field presets already contain a lot of post processing, filtering and smoothing which work best with low res content so if you upscale, you might actually be missing out on stuff like that.
Most people suggest using standalone PCSX2 as opposed to the RetroArch Cores though. I think it’s called LRPS2 now as well.
Also a picture paints a thousand words so do share a photo or a screenshot so that I can see what you’re describing and more easily assist.
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I ended up finding it easier to just use the Sony Megatron Reshade preset with Retroarch. I didn’t expect it to work so well or look so good. It’s the same config as my PCSX2. I’m not sure how the line count is adjusting, but it’s extremely crisp, and breaking the “pixels” up naturally, so I’m happy with it.
For PPSSPP in retroarch, it’s great because I can do higher internal resolution, which really helps with image fidelity, but then the lower rez sprites naturally sharper look due to the gaps between scanlines, which for the games pictured, make a lot of use of 3d & 2d assets.
I’m far less worried about the “right” way to play psp, and more just about getting a really bright picture w/ scanlines & “phosphor glow” that I’ve had on my Sony Trinitrons I’ve been using lately. As you’ve said, just kind of letting my eyes and personal taste shape the “right” experience for them.
And, I think this pretty much replaces them except maybe for old PC games that were 4:3 ( the glass & native resolution for ~800x600 era games just fits really well on my Sony HMD-A440).
I’m sure this is doing some things “wrong” though, as you mentioned, I’m not explicitly reporting the resolution to the reshade preset. It’s somehow inferring it. I’m sure if I used a addon/preset to handle that I could get the scanlines to look even more accurate(?). But honestly, it’s at a really convenient point where the preset just works for all content, which is kind of the dream (for me at least). So I’ll probably just try actually playing through a few games with this setup for now .
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Nice!
Very good. You can try my latest Sony Megatron NX Near Field Presets if you have the time as I’ve barely even gotten to use them since my OLED TV was damaged right after I made them. I’m just curious as to how they look. You can try the PSX or Turbo Duo_DC ones for PS2 and PSP.
I was just trying to explain that the shader wasn’t doing anything “wrong” when it was being fed an upscaled image and not displaying the same number of scanlines as a low res image.
Well there are shaders for this as well.
So don’t get me wrong, I was not saying you were doing anything wrong or that there was a right way to do these things.
When I mentioned Handheld Border Shaders it was just to get a better PSP experience but those don’t actually contain any PSP overlays. For that you can try Koko-aio or Duimon’s offerings.
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Oh yeah absolutely - I wasn’t under the impression you were saying anything was “wrong” - more that some people might say this is an “inaccurate retro experience”, which while it may be true, isn’t too concerning to me. I appreciate the help getting these things set up.
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