For a long time I’ve been asked if my new shader presets could be combined with reflective bezels and overlays and I’ve also heard that my CyberLab Mega Bezel Death To Pixels Shader Preset Pack needed beefy hardware in order to run.
While Koko-aio definitely answers some of those questions I unfortunately never got the opportunity to really get into it or use it much.
Today we have another alternative.
CyberLab Uborder miniLED Death To Pixels 4K HDR Ready Shader Preset Pack
To install these presets copy the “Shaders” folder into your “…\Retroarch” folder (or whatever your Retroarch Root Folder is called).
You have to follow the Uborder shaders setup instructions properly for these presets to look as intended.
See here for further info:
Usage:
Quick Menu–>Shaders–>Load–>.slangp
Recommended:
HDR is not required for these presets to work however they were configured and calibrated with HDR enabled on a bright miniLED Display with BFI On. Windows was calibrated for HDR using the Windows 11 HDR Calibration tool.
Peak Luminance and Paper White Luminance were set to 630 and 270 respectively, While Contrast was set to 5.00x and Expand Gamut was turned On.
Settings–>Video–>HDR
HDR Enable - On
Settings–>Video–>Scaling
Integer Scale - Off
Aspect Ratio - Full
Crop Overscan (Restart Required) - On
Optional but recommended:
Quick Menu–>Shaders–>Save–>Save Core Preset
Optional:
Quick Menu–>Overrides–>Save Core Override
Special thanks to @Hyllian, @Guest.r and all the other shader creators who made this all possible.
Don’t quote me on this but the risk would be high for burn-in with displaying any static content for long periods.
I never noticed any burn-in when I used to use Mega Bezel in SDR though.
I used to vary my usage quite a bit as well. However, when I switched to HDR, I was a bit concerned but I just chose to “use” my TV.
I found myself getting even more into retro gaming and mixed my usage even less. I left stuff on for long periods like sound modes and stuff like that but I hadn’t noticed any burn-in.
However, when I started sitting to closer to the screen, I noticed YouTube videos with what looked like scanlines in them!
I observed and investigated over a period of time and I realized that there were scanlines burnt into my display and only in the 4:3 area in the center of the screen.
I didn’t like knowing it was there and it didn’t really affect normal viewing that much but the main reason it went unnoticed was because of my previous viewing distance.
I tried multiple pixel refreshes but nothing seemed to help fix it.
I think the only thing that might have helped is a special shader that @hunterk made which alternated the viewport up and down by one Scanline.
That would have had the effect of wearing out the less used half of the viewport which was probably the actual root issue at hand.
The shader can also automatically shift the image up and down by one pixel.
If this is implemented early enough, it might be able to prevent similar ueven wear of the OLED pixels due to scanlines.
This has been my experience with a 2016 OLED TV. I’ve read that newer ones are even less prone to burn-in.
Even after setting my peak nits/white settings according to rtings suggestions, my HDR shaders are very dark. I’ve taken some screenshots in JXR format. I feel like when I use SDR shaders, like CRT Royale or others, they are much brighter in comparison. I really don’t understand what I’m doing wrong.
HDR is on in Windows 11. Peak luminance 1300, it’s an LG G4. I’ve tried setting it higher, too. Paper white even on 1300 to match, the image still looks dark. TV brightness is cranked max (100). Everything else in Windows comparatively is very bright. Using Vulkan in Retroarch, latest Retroarch stable build. Verified HDR enabled in RA. TV input is set to “PC”, game mode enabled.
Attached are screenshots of CRT Royale and Megatron HDR SNES, respectively;
I would prefer to see actual photos of the screen than screenshots taken at the GPU level the screenshots wouldn’t really be any different from what is in the preset and these settings are not necessarily transferable from display to display. The camera (with the right settings) would be the closest thing to being in the room next to you, once you can get shots which are close to what you’re seeing.
Did you disable Tonemapping? Ensure your HDMI input is labelled PC, you are in RGB 4:4:4 Full colour mode, and HDMI Deep Colour is enabled on your TV?
You shouldn’t have to turn TV’s brightness all the way up if using HDR mode as the Shader is supposed to take care of that and many of those settings are disabled when in HDR mode.
If using the shader in SDR Mode, you would have to manually crank up the brightness.
If using the Shader in SDR mode, you would need to also switch the Shader Preset to SDR Mode.
What presets are you attempting to use?
You can try the Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor Default Presets located in the Shaders/Shaders_Slang/HDR folder and see if they work any better for you.
If you’re cranking the Peak and Paper White Luminance values up then the brightness is supposed to correspondingly increase.
Feel free to try my newest miniLED presets as well.
Are you actually seeing the image getting brighter when you turn up the Peak and Paper White Luminance?
Remember for Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor these values are set in the Shader Parameters and not in the Settings–»Video–»HDR menu.
I also made some HDR Ready Mega Bezel presets and some newer ones for Uborder. If using those you can use the Peak Luminance and Paper White Luminance Values in the RetroArch Settings–»Video–»HDR menu.
All of the .jxr images you sent me look very bright in HDR Mode on my current miniLED display.
I accidentally loaded them in SDR mode initially and they all looked over-brightened and clipped.
I took these photos at extremely low ISO (50) to demonstrate how bright they look.
Some were taken with shutter speed at 1/30 while the others were at 1/60.
Feel free to share some photos or video clips of your TVs settings. Maybe I can try to get a little more familiar with it.
You seem to be having some success using mine or other CRT-Royale Presets in HDR Mode,
Here are some of my recommendations when using my SDR CRT-Royale and Mega Bezel Presets in HDR Mode.
I eventually went as far as creating an HDR Ready Folder with a subset of my Mega Bezel presets which already have my SDR to HDR tweaks applied.
I was supposed to use 4K presets with my Samsung Q70A (4K TV). But I was curious to try some 1440p presets and the results are incredible, especially for SNES games. Maybe it’s related to the internal resolution of the core, and obviously the size of the mask, but it shouldn’t be just that. Maybe @Cyber can discover the pattern and intentionally create presets that achieve this visual quality for all systems.
See these pics in full screen
This has been done already and is what is contained in the Le’Sarsh_4K_Optimized_Presets folder.
It’s basically just the same presets as in the 1440p folder.
Whether or not they look good or better depends on different factors, for example personal taste, screen size and viewing distance.
They are just higher TVL (Resolution) Masks. Be sure to select the correct Mask Layout.
Those are not my only presets which have that type of treatment though. Be sure to check out the Console Specific, Neo-GX and 4K HDR folder. If you see a preset which has “Fine” or “Near Field” in the name that means it’s of a higher TVL or just a little softer.
lg g4, peak luminance 1600, paperwhite 1030. using cyberlab megatron nx 4k hdr game genesis slot mask for cyberlab blargg genesis s-video II filter.slangp
HDR on in windows and in RA. to me it seems like retroarch vulkan on my lg g4 from my 3070 simply isn’t rendering in HDR mode on the television, hence the washed out colors. i had this same issue with an older lg c2 on this same computer. other pc games like hunt showdown seem to work fine with their native hdr implementation.
Have you loaded the corresponding Blargg_NTSC_Genesis_S-Video_CyberLab_Special_Edition_II.filt video filter preset?
This is available in my CyberLab_Custom_Blargg_NTSC_Video_Filter_Presets_03-09-23.zip in the first post of this thread.
The reason for this is because when I designed the preset, I hadn’t realized that I had the video filter still enabled so that contributed significantly to it’s final appearance.
It looks pretty awesome in my opinion so it was a good mistake, which is why I kept it.
I suspect that you could be experiencing an issue with the tonemapping. I’m not going to “blame” the TV because there are always a number of different factors at play especially with HDR shader implementations which need to be adjusted in order for things to “fit”.
In my experience with this shader, once it is confirmed that HDR is enabled things can look a bit off if the Paper White Luminance values are too low. For example reds looking brownish or orange as opposed to just being s bit pale or lighter in shade.
However, as you increase the Paperwhite Luminance the saturation decreases.
You can try increasing the Paper White Brightness and see if the colours start to look more " HDRish" and less sepia toned. If details start to disappear in the whites or the whites start to look unnatural that means you’re going too far.
You should decrease the Menu Opacity to 0 in order to view these settings changes in real-time.
The next thing you can try is to go down to the Saturation parameter - the one above the Gamma near the bottom of the Parameters list and try increasing it.
You can let me know if that improves things.
.
You can also try different presets, like my Near Field presets or my other Preset Packs.
For example, my Mega Bezel Preset Pack has a 4K HDR Ready folder, I’m sure you’ll like the presets as well.
From the looks of your Photos though, they just look slightly unsaturated to me.
You can also try my miniLED and W420M preset packs.
See if they look any better to you.
I don’t want to confuse you but if you’re up to it, you can try setting any White Point or Colour Temperature parameters by pressing Start on the controller.
You can also reset any Phosphor settings.
Make sure the Phosphor setting near the bottom of the screen is set to 0 - none and try the different phosphor settings near the top of the list.
They can vary immensely in terms of Saturation.
The colourspace setting right below it can also have a profound effect.
You can set that to sRGB which is the default.
Before you do any of this, try to find your TV’s Dynamic Tonemapping setting and play around with it first.
Let me know how it goes.
By the way, I just loaded the preset and filter on my miniLED TV and it looks very good, even with the default Peak and Paper White Luminance values. So that’s an indication that the preset shouldn’t be that off at least colour wise.
I’d check that Dynamic Tonemapping in the TV’s settings.
The Peak and Paper White Luminance value adjustments in the Shader Parameters override any adjustments in the Settings–»Video–»HDR menu.
The only shader that I know of which has these parameters included is Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor. You don’t need to adjust those settings in the Settings–»Video–»HDR menu if you’re using Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor.
However, if you’re using another shader and you wanted to do so in HDR mode, for example Mega Bezel Reflection Shader (besides the Sony Megatron base presets), CRT-Royale, CRT-Guest Advance, Uborder or any other shader, then you can use those settings in the Settings–»Video–»HDR menu in order to calibrate the Shader and shader preset to suit your display in HDR mode.
Those shaders don’t have any options in the Shader Parameters to do that.
Hope that’s clear enough.
In addition to that, there are other ways outside of RetroArch to enhance the brightness of Shaders/Presets using HDR.
You can use ReShade along with the AutoHDR and different tonemapping plugins as well as Windows’ Auto HDR.
I’ve been trying out some of my older Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor Presets which were designed on an OLED TV, on a miniLED LCD TV and these are some of the settings which I’ve noticed seem to bring things back in line, especially when it comes to colour.
Mask Accurate/Colour Accurate - 1
Display’s Subpixel Layout: RGB | RWBG (OLED) | BGR - 2
(My display is a BGR display, you should set this to match your particular display)
HDR: Display’s Paper White Luminance - 200 or 210.
(Or whatever looks best to you)
The moral is, depending on your display, you might need to tweak things a bit for Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor presets to look good on it. Presets designed for one particular display or display type might look very different initially on another display.
Don’t give up and you will be certainly in for a treat.
First of all, thank you so much for your prompt and complete response.
Just another simple question, and maybe it’s a dumb one
I have a 4K OLED LG C3 TV and love specially two groups of your presets: the “Megatron NX Death To Pixels 4K HDR” and the “Neo GX” presets (SDR). (By the way: I’ve configured the NX HDR - peak brightness, white paper etc. It’s all set).
I noticed, and maybe it’s just my impression, that the Neo GX shows images with more “fidelity” to a CRT, with less edges and better scanlines (like the images are more “well rounded”). Please note that I don’t even know how to describe the feeling, so please forgive me if I’m not making myself exactly clear.
For instance, I played Samurai Shodown 2 (FB Neo) and it’s really clear to me that the image, considering the effects applied by the shaders, has “less edges” than the NX 4K HDR (that looks fantastic but with a more “pixelated” image in some elements - as the fighter in that case).
It’s that right? It’s really expected that maybe due to the “darkened” effects on the Neo GX that the imagem appears “clearer” (not the brightness, I mean the pixels rendered in the screen).
This is very good. Maybe you can share your Peak and Paper White Luminance values as well as some of your TV settings because based on the feedback, it seems as though some users with newer LG OLED TVs seem to be struggling to get things bright or saturated enough.
It’s definitely not going to look the same. I don’t really go around deliberately trying to copy my previous work when making new preset packs. It’s more like a new or another journey that I set out on.
Things are also a lot different for me from when I started out making my Mega Bezel Presets Pack. I have much less time to devote to these things.
Another factor is if you load my Mega Bezel Presets, you’ll see around 50 Shader Passes, while if you load one of my Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor Presets you’ll see maybe around 20 at most.
That’s more than double the number of tools available at my disposal. Then it uses different shaders. The extremely versatile and flexible CRT-Guest-Advanced-NTSC vs the extremely efficient, accurate but much simpler Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor.
It’s a completely different process to achieve similar looks with both shaders. Each new mask type that I was able to get to a state which I found acceptable and usable on my display felt like an accomplishment.
If you look carefully, you’ll notice that each of my Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor Preset packs features a different CRT Mask Type.
I will try to summarize by saying that viewing distance plays a huge part in the final look and design process of the presets. So if things are looking a bit harsher, perhaps you might be viewing from closer distances.
You can try my “Near Field” presets as well as my W420M presets with custom scale factors.
With the W420M Advanced presets you would have to switch the presets to HDR manually in the Shader parameters.
You can also try my miniLED Advanced presets. You would just have to adjust the Display’s Subpixel Layout to RWBG (WOLED) and readjust your Peak and Paper White Luminance values.
Lastly, you can try tweaking the NTSC Resolution Scale by lowering it by maybe 1 or 2 notches at a time.
You can also play around with the Adaptive Sharpness, increasing the value slightly (if it’s on the Negative side).
You can reset the Horizontal Filter Range and Subtractive Sharpness to default.
If you’re sitting closer, especially with that particular preset pack you’re referring to, things can be a little oversaturated leading to s harsh, burnt, posterized look.
You can lower the Saturation and regain some fine detail and shading.
You can also try lower Paper White Luminance values and you might see things looking more natural with smoother gradations. It’s all a great balancing act.
Have you tried my Mega Bezel 4K HDR Ready Presets? They’re mostly based on my Neo-GX presets.
You can also smooth things out by paring some of the Shader presets with a CyberLab Custom Blargg NTSC Video Filter preset.
One of the Composite, Bad Composite or RF presets might be a good place to start.
They say a picture paints a thousand words so perhaps some jxr, png or jpg screenshots shared via imgbb.com might be a little helpful in conveying exactly what you’re trying to describe.
Very good, what a great shader!
Can someone tell me how I can double the number of scanlines without increasing the resolution?
I manage to make the scanlines finer but the effect of the scalefx softens the final result too much.
I am using Smooth Advance GDV.
Thanks again! Man, that’s a lot of information, and you put some new perspectives and variables on the table…
This is certanly a fascinating matter, and a rabit hole as well As my main focus is on playing the games, I will try to summarize all the topics here and clear all the points, and maybe contribute in some way
First things first - my TV settings (LG C3 OLED 42"):
Game Optimizer Mode (PC input)
120 Hz refresh rate
Color temperature: Warm 50
Gamma BT.1886
All “image-treatment” features set to OFF
Regarding the lack of saturation, I really don’t have that problem. Both PC games and Retroarch are shown on full color-popping bright glory. Maybe is just the contrary - I have TOO much saturation. But that’s a subject for another time - the point is - saturation and brightness are not issues.
As for my presets parameters, I use:
HDR: Display’s Peak Brightness: 730 (to match my 729 on the C3)
HDR: Display’s Paper White Luminance: 250 (or even 150) - looks right to me, nothing scientific at all, just my eyes
HDR: Original/Vivid: Vivid (default)
Display’s Resolution: 8K (Default)
Display’s Subpixel Layout: RWGB (OLED) (I don’t really know my display layout, but as most of the OLEDs are RWGB, I stick to this one)
Mask Accurate/Colour Accurate: Colour Accurate (nothing scientific here, I just liked it more)
Screen type: SLOT MASK (default)
And Default for all the other settings (I try not to became Alice on this rabbit hole)
Following your tips, trying some of the the “Near Field” and “MiniLED” presets really did the trick. I’ve been trying to stick to the “default” options like the “CyberLab Megatron 4K HDR Game Arcade.slangp” and “CyberLab Megatron NX 4K HDR Game Arcade Slot Mask.slangp”, but, for instance, the “CyberLab Megatron NX 4K HDR Game Arcade Slot Mask Ultra Smooth Near Field” preset and one of the MiniLED options were very close to the results I had with the “Neo GX” presets - with the advantage of the brighter and colorful images of the HDR presets.
However, in that case, I have a few questions if you could kindly help.
What’s exactly the, shall we say, “alternative options” like “Ultra”, “Nier Field”, “Smooth”, “Mega” etc. really does?
What’s the features and/or modifications they try to emulate?
Is there a glossary about them?
As I said before, I tried to stick to the more regular ones, but with your suggestions now I have my doubts on what I want to use.
By the way:
Yes I did, but the results were similar to the Neo-GX (which is good, of course)
Besides that, I would like to question some things (I swear I tried to search over your main post on Libreto, but didn’t find the answers):
Is there any difference on using a 4K or 8K setting on the NX presets on a 4k display? I noticed the default is 8K.
What’s the main difference or goal of the Megatron Death To Pixels 4K HDR, Megatron NX Death To Pixels 4K HDR, NX W420M, MiniLed preset packs?
What’s the difference between the MBZ_0_Smooth and MBZ_1_Advance presets?
What’s the PRACTICAL difference between the Mask Accurate and Colour Accurate options? Well, its clear what it IS, but what it DOES?
I’m trully sorry if my questions are stupid or too newbie. I’m just interested in having the most impressive and fun experience I can - making the most of your material and hard work.
And man, thanks again for your hard work. You have changed the way I (and many others) play retro games, and I believe there’s no better compliment than that. I’m sure words won’t do justice.
This should be set to Mask Accurate for WOLED TVs like yours or you’ll have additional subpixels being turned on besides the RGB that we’re trying to simulate like on a real CRT.
This setting solved a big problem back in the day when we were trying to get Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor looking accurate on WOLED TVs.
All LG 4K OLED TVs use this layout. As a matter of fact, this was added specifically to this shader in order to be able to support WOLED displays down to the subpixel level.
Previously, it was believed that WOLED TVs were not really that well suited for accurate CRT emulation. It’s interesting how the tables have turned. I was one of the chief advocates for further development on CRT Masks for WOLED TVs, now the internet thinks that they need to get a WOLED TV to get the best CRT Emulation and I’m telling people that that is not necessarily the case.
What’s more important is that you have a bright TV.
Compared to the Subpixel Layouts available on regular IPS and VA TVs, WOLED TVs are very limited in terms of what CRT Shader subpixel masks they can emulate properly.
No one seems to have broken down exactly why certain subpixel layouts work and others don’t. It all seems to have happened a bit by accident. If folks delved a bit deeper, then possibly more WOLED subpixel masks could be developed to cover more CRT Phosphor Mask layouts.
For example, right now no solutions seem to work well for folks with 1440p WOLED displays.
One thing to note though is that these subpixel and phosphor level stuff are only visible if you put your nose up to the screen. From distance, any mask layout might look good on a WOLED TV but that’s not what we’re here for, at least not me. I like to awaken the nostalgia down to the subpixel and RGB phosphors.
If you see “Ultra” or “Mega” it’s because I probably had a preset that I liked then I went and changed stuff in it and I liked the result but I didn’t want to call it version II or 2 or B so I chose more fun and exciting nomenclature to differentiate between the various variations.
They’re intentionally supposed to be a bit “over the top” sounding.
On the other hand “Near Field” and “Smooth” actually mean something. Previously the vast majority of my presets were designed for far viewing distances of a large screen TV. This has its own implications as in order to “see” the CRT effects, it has to be “exaggerated” a bit. Then from a distance, things start to get a little blurry so the sharpening helps to keep things in focus, also, believe it or not brightness and saturation also tends to be attenuated a bit the further away you go. This as well is compensated for in most of my presets.
However, what’s good for distant viewing on a large screen, may not be ideal for close viewing on a smaller screen, thus presets like me “Le’Sarsh_4K_Optimized” presets for my Mega Bezel presets pack then “Fine” presets for my subsequent preset packs were explored.
After changing my seating and viewing arrangements, I had to adjust the presets I used once more and that is how my “Near Field” presets came about.
There aren’t any “more regular” ones. They’re just all a collection of presets. You can think of them as virtual CRTs each with its own character.
You can use whichever ones you like. If you like too many to choose, then that’s a good problem to have. Then it becomes kind of a game to choose which preset you want to use and settle down with.
Trust me, it even happens to me sometimes.
The first post of this thread is mostly full so that’s why you won’t really see much new chit chat in that post.
Also, you might find some of the answers you’re looking for in the respective threads and readme files of the shaders themselves.
I wouldn’t have changed it to 8K if there wasn’t a difference. All of this can be researched in the Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor thread.
The technical difference is better spacing and alignment between the Scanlines and Phosphor Mask, leading to less moiré, uneven scanlines and other artifacts and different slot mask dimensions.
They might be from different eras, target different CRT Phosphor Mask Types after finally figuring out how to make them look decent in Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor. They might be designed on a different Display and therefore the default calibration might work and look better on similar displays to what they were designed on.
If you take a browse through this thread, you’ll see many more tidbits of information about these things, especially when I just release a new preset pack.
The technical answer to this lies in the Mega Bezel Reflection Shader GitHub and readme.md.
They MBZ__0 is the most feature rich and performance intensive shader tier and as a consequence has the highest system performance requirements.
The MBZ__1 uses a different shader pipeline and is supposed to have lower performance requirements.
I’ve previous mentioned it. When I get s chance I might share a link to the discussion where it becomes introduced so that you can see why.
It’s okay, I don’t mind that you’re interested in understanding and getting to know how to get the most of these things. This is what I would like all users to do.
You’re welcome.
Well, I’ve changed the way I play retro games as well.
Only one point was not clear to me. The presets that only have the “Smooth” on the name (without “Nier Field”) are also aimed for close distances and smaller displays?
Or only the ones with “Nier Field” are dedicated to that?
Ah, I knew I was forgetting something. I explained “Near Field” but I forgot to explain what “Smooth” was about.
“Smooth” generally means that there is some sort of anti-aliasing/edge smoothing shader employed.
I don’t think my Neo-GX or CRT-Royale Presets have the word “Smooth” in their filenames though because it’s sort of the default and baseline with “Sharp”, (which means no smoothing shader) being the exception.
I don’t like how NES and line-art SNES games like Super Mario World, Super Mario All Stars, Mario Kart e.t c. look with edge smoothing so presets designed for those would have “Sharp” in the title (or just “NES”) or “NES_N64”.
None of my presets are geared toward users with smaller displays but all might look better on smaller displays.
The “Near Field” differentiator/indicator only debuted because of the vast discrepancy between how things looked with my mainly HDR presets (which were designed from afar) when I started sitting a little closer.
I’m not sure if I’m going to be making anymore specific “Near Field” presets because now that I sit closer and because I’m aware of the phenomenon of how viewing distance affects preset quality my presets would no longer be optimized for the far viewing distances which I previously used.
These days most if not all of my presets look even better when you go closer to the screen. It’s not only about the presets, it’s about the Saturation and “pop”. Some of that is lost when you go further and further away.
So don’t get too caught up in the semantics of things as they’re just my personal notes and guides to help know a little about the presets before I load them.
Ultimately, you should try all of them and see which you like best and you can adjust a few settings yourself if you wish to tweak the Saturation and sharpness/harshness of edges.
If using the miniLED presets, remember to adjust the “Display’s Subpixel Layout” to RWBG (OLED) - 1 and try setting the “Mask Accurate/Colour Accurate” setting to “Mask Accurate” (unless it looks like crap because I haven’t tested those particular ones with an OLED TV).
