Hi @Cyber!
Thanks again for your time and understanding.
I’m truly sorry for any inconvenience I’ve caused. It’s really a fascinating subject and maybe I lost some control of the number of questions. You’ve been truly helpful and kind, and it was a honor to talk about this matter with the creator of this impressive work.
I’m going to make my tests, and will share as you recommended - it’s the least I can do.
Thanks again and sorry for any annoyance.
My best wishes.
It’s no inconvenience or annoyance but it might be worth your while to refer to some of the resources I pointed you towards as well as viewing the several video links in the first post and throughout various posts in the thread. That should keep your appetite for mental stimulation fairly occupied for a while.
By doing this you’ll be introduced to specific presets I might have highlighted as well as combinations which work with certain Custom Blargg Video Filter Presets.
I take it you’ve seen those as well?
Hi, sorry for the inaccurate question but as a newb, I’m a bit lost.
I own a Android handheld with a decent yet not the best SoC (same Snapdragon as in a Galaxy S20), with a 1080p AMOLED display. I’ve tried Sonkun’s presets but they don’t work as well as on my LCD. I’d like to give Death To Pixels a try but what should I use amond the different options here ? I want to emulate retro Arcade and from NES to Dreamcast, with Megadrive (dithering) in between. And I’m perfectly fine with no Mega Bezel so as to save on processing power.
Try this one,
You might have to tweak some settings for example Display’s Resolution, Display’s Subpixel layout, Resolution and Saturation, Gamma and you might have to switch the SDR/HDR toggle to SDR.
I’ll see if I can provide another mobile preset or maybe a pack sometime in the near future.
Thanks a lot for your answer. I’ll get this pack as a starting point.
And it would be very nice to have a pack with OLED 1080p handlheld devices. The processing power lags far behind a desktop but Snapdragon chips don’t totally suck and may handle quite a heavy load. And as far as handleds are concerned, 1080p OLED + SD is no more a high end stuff since Retroid did release their Pocket 5. This setup is now defenitely mid-range and would deserve attention IMO.
You can try this on your mobile. It uses Super-XBR but I’ll see if I can add one which doesn’t include it for even better performance. At smaller display sizes, it isn’t even needed as much.
https://mega.nz/file/9MomHLAL#CWj_QoKxku2XcDgJd_LxbCtYgTW4SioAzrRtvr_4YmQ
Here it just gives an error and doesn’t load
You need to copy the .slangp file into your RetroArch/Shaders folder. Or /Shaders.
Also, try updating your Slang Shaders using Online Updater.
RetroArch on Android might put the default Shader folder in a non-user accessible folder. If that is the case you can just specify another Shaders folder in a location that you can access and browse, then update your Slang Shaders using the Online Updater so that all of the default shaders are downloaded into the new folder, then copy my above preset into that folder.
I don’t see anything in the paths in the preset that would prevent it from loading and it definitely works on my device.
If you still can’t get it to load, you can try posting a log using pastebin.
Gonna dive into the HDR shaders! Sorry if it’s been asked already, being a noob on those packs and shaders overall I’d like to understand with an LG Oled CX (and a beefy PC) which HDR pack should I use between those below? What’s the difference between them? Are they recommended for Oled displays?
Is it accurate that this one is now more legacy than the above?
Are the steps in Retrocrisis’ tutorial still accurate for newer HDR packs?
Excellent! Welcome to our world!
There’s nothing wrong with a refresher for everyone.
I can’t say which you should use as everyone has their preference but due to the fact that RetroArch has HDR integrated into its main UI and engine, I use HDR with virtually all shaders now. Even with my CyberLab Mega Bezel Death To Pixels Shader Preset Pack and my CyberLab CRT-Royale Death To Pixels Shader Preset Pack as well as my CyberLab Uborder Death To Pixels Shader Preset Pack.
However there are some distinctions to be made in how HDR is activated and setup when using Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor and any other Shader.
Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor is the only Shader so far that was built from the ground up with HDR in mind. To my knowledge it is the only Shader which includes an SDR/HDR toggle in its Shader Parameters and it is the only Shader which includes Peak Luminance and Paper White Luminance Parameters and it overrides any HDR Parameters used in the Settings–»Video–»HDR Menu.
You can use HDR with almost any other Shader in RetroArch but for those you need to configure and calibrate your setup using the Parameters in this Settings–»Video–»HDR menu.
This is the most difficult and important aspect of trying to get HDR Shaders and presets looking their best on your particular display.
So you can use whichever one or ones you like the most once you setup everything correctly and try them out. As for me, I tend to use whatever is the latest I’m working on but that doesn’t mean that you should or that the latest is always the greatest and supersedes all that came before. You’d be missing out on some awesome looks if you take that approach. So you can approach my preset packs as a playground with many different pieces of equipment for you to play with. The more you try the more fun you’ll have and eventually you’ll find your favourite or favourites.
The main difference between my Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor Preset packs are the types of CRT Masks featured in the CRT emulation. Secondary differences might be the type of display which they were created on which makes a huge difference in how things look when setup due to variance in calibration and display capabilities or limitations and lastly the distance from the screen when the presets were designed also varies between preset packs as well as individual presets within the pack.
Due to this last factor a preset designed to be sharp and in focus yet still look like a CRT on a big screen TV from viewed from a far distance might look a bit oversaturated, sharper, coarser, clipped when viewed from up close.
This is because things like brightness, sharpness and colour saturation tend to roll off the further away we get from the source of light or the image.
This was designed primarily on an older LG OLED display. It features mainly Aperture Grille (CyberTron) style presets and most of the presets were designed with distant viewing in mind.
I wouldn’t say that it’s more legacy, it’s just different as described above. Of course there are new things that you can learn as you grow and evolve as well as when the tools evolve but sometimes we might already be at a peak or crossroad and through experimentation we might give up or compromise something that was there before in favour of another goal, focus or direction.
Plus these are the best candidates for mobile and lower power device use as things have gotten a bit “heavier” in subsequent preset packs.
This one features mainly Slot Mask Presets. If you didn’t know already most Arcade machines featured Slot Mask monitors so if you wanted a truly authentic look from your arcade games, Slot Mask might be the way to go.
This preset pack also reintroduces the concept of “Near Field” presets. Those were the last presets I made on my older LG OLED display. I was extremely satisfied with what I was able to achieve with those but I hardly got a chance to play with them before my display was damaged.
They say necessity is the mother of invention. Well I invented the out of what could be done with an old LG IPS TV that I had which beside being edge lit and having only 2 local dimming zones, was more like a hybrid 1080p/4K display than a true 4K display.
This is because it couldn’t do RGB 4:4:4 Full colour format while in 4K 60Hz resolution.
At the time when I purchased it I couldn’t give a cahoots about any of that stuff, all I knew or cared about was that it was 4K and it was passive 3D.
For years it remained in the shadow of my much superior OLED upgrade TV but now it was all I had so I had to make the most of it. Through clever calibration, I was actually able to fine tune it so that HDR videos looked beautiful on it. Yes folks, you don’t need an HDR capable display to watch and enjoy HDR video.
It was always brighter than the LG OLED in SDR mode however and that made my older presets from my CyberLab Mega Bezel Death To Pixels Shader Preset Pack look lovely on it as well! Many of them didn’t care about RGB 4:4:4 Full because I didn’t know much about that or subpixel masks yet until @Nesguy started to beat it into me.
"Oh! How your presets look like ", he must have thought. Or, “Why are your presets gaining so much popularity among the common folk? You’ll singlehandedly ruin CRT preservation for all of us!”
I have to thank him though because he helped inspire me to reach where I am today in this field.
Yeah, so, this preset pack features presets that use Shadow (Dot) Mask and should work on some of the crappiest TVs. They were designed in SDR mode so you’ll need a very bright display if you wish to replicate my experience. Luckily Shadow (Dot) Mask CRT Mask emulation preserves the most amount of light on any display so that should help.
If using them on an HDR display then remember to turn HDR On in Settings–»Video–»HDR and also switch the SDR/HDR toggle in Shader Parameters to HDR.
It is also recommended to follow the Custom Aspect Ratio and Scaling suggestions in the filenames for the best shadow mask and scanline representation with the least moiré.
Integer Scaling On is almost always recommended for my presets because I don’t like seeing uneven scanlines.
If using a border shader like Mega Bezel or Uborder integer scaling needs to be off in the Settings–»Video–»Scaling Menu but turned on via the Shader Parameters.
I’ve included my Near Field presets from my previous NX preset pack in this one and going forward all presets should look good or even better from nearer to the screen.
From this preset pack the appropriate CRT-Guest-Advanced-NTSC is included and does not need to be downloaded separately. This helps with consistency but of course it doesn’t apply to any other shaders used by the presets.
Well this is the latest. I wouldn’t say latest and greatest because older stuff is great too but stuff is still being learned and dialed in so the next wave of presets in this pack might be a bit different in terms of default Peak and Paper White Luminance values and possibly Saturation, Gamma and Phosphor emulation.
The latest High Brightness MiniLED displays might be the best yet for CRT Shaders but that extreme brightness coupled with modern integrated features like HDR Tonemapping and BFI/STROBING makes it a bit of a difficult beast to tame and contain.
As a matter of fact, I was lamenting to myself that this ~1,600+ nits display that I’m currently using may not actually be bright enough to enjoy properly with BFI enabled but this was before I started playing around with HDR Tonemapping again which unlocked extra brightness without clipping all the highlights/brights.
This is also because I would like to have a good calibration that I can also use when not retrogaming.
Generally I setup and calibrate my display for general PC use then Shader Presets get configured using the Shader Parameters but I find myself still back and forth trying to get the most out of my display while retaining those OLED like blacks and dark detail.
The thing is I know I’ll probably have to dial everything back in again whenever the next firmware revision comes out. This doesn’t fully affect end users because everyone still has to adjust Peak and Paper White Luminance values (as well as Display’s Subpixel Layout and Colour/Mask Accurate) to best suit their own particular display.
I feel good knowing that the display definitely has enough brightness to do great looking CRT emulation with BFI on as suggested in the Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor system recommendations.
Disclaimer: I am not going to recommend anyone to use anything I made on any OLED display or TV.
I can state what I did or I used or that this preset has the Display Subpixel Layout or Mask Layout already set for OLED so it should be more plug and play or OLED users can start here for proper subpixel alignment and Phosphor emulation.
With that out of the way you can use any preset pack with any type of display once you configure the Display’s Subpixel layout, Mask Layout Peak Luminance and Paper White Luminance values, Maximum Triad Size Desired, Display’s Resolution and CRT-Mask/Mask Size, SDR/HDR, Colour Accurate/Mask Accurate parameters to suit the particular display.
Hmmm…RetroCrisis did 2 videos about my CyberLab Megatron Death To Pixels 4K HDR Shader Preset Pack.
When I looked at the 1st one I was happy to be featured but confused and felt like users might also be left confused.
There was so much emphasis on setting Windows up for HDR and this wasn’t really necessary for HDR to work in RetroArch especially if one is using Vulkan.
In hindsight those calibration steps are very important if you’re running your PC 24/7 in HDR mode, which is what I’m doing now.
Windows HDR only needs to be enabled first if using the D3DXX video drivers in RetroArch.
In the 2nd video he does things which is more in line with the recommended setup options and even goes as far as explaining to users how to change the Display’s Subpixel layout to match their particular display.
I felt very satisfied with that.
To answer your question, no those videos are only partially relevant to my subsequent preset packs since my first Megatron Preset pack references CRT-Guest-Advanced-NTSC in its default folder but my subsequent ones look for it in a separate, dedicated folder.
The proper installation instructions are always included after the preset pack download link and in the readme.txt though.
What this means is that if you updated your Shaders via the Online Updater, you would replace the recommended versions of CRT-Guest-Advanced-NTSC and Mega Bezel Reflection Shader with newer, unsupported ones and the presets wouldn’t look as intended anymore. At best they might look okay or normal but at worst, they could look really horrible or horribly wrong.
So thanks for asking these questions and showing a genuine interest in these preset packs.
I will close by reminding you to take a look at my latest Mega Bezel HDR presets and always remember to download the accompanying CyberLab Custom Blargg NTSC Video Filter Presets pack.
For other SDR designed presets besides Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor Presets you can follow some guidelines if you wish to enhance them with HDR.
Thanks for the highly detailed information!!!
Grande Mestre Cyber. Trabalho incrível.
These are all from my latest CyberLab Megatron miniLED Death To Pixels 4K HDR Shader Preset Pack!
HDR Screenshot viewing tips:
Windows PC users, calibrate your display for HDR using the tools provided by Windows.
Mobile and other users, brighten your screen and zoom in until it looks good.
These screenshots are a tribute to @guest.r, @MajorPainTheCactus, @Hyllian, @Dogway and all other shader developers who made this possible!
Hey @Cyber I am very impressed by your CRT-Royale presets, they will be my only shaders from now on for all my platforms! Thank you!
Just to clarify a couple of things, I see in your Github that you recommend 4b/3 (except for NES where you recommend 8b/7).
Is this because otherwise it would cause issues or not look good? One of the reason I love these shaders is that they work perfectly also when games are upscaled to 4k and for some platforms like PSX, Dreamcast there’s a lot of games with perfectly working widescreen cheats/hacks and I like to enjoy old games in 16/9 when possible.
Apart from 16/9, I also like to play some SNES games in 8/7 or some Mega Drive games in 10/7.
I tested the 4k presets yesterday, and couldn’t see any issues when pixel peeping, it seemed to remain perfect and not stretching the CRT shader even when going from 1/1 to 16/9.
But I am not an expert at all.
Another quick question what makes a preset SNES & PSX, different from let’s say an N64 preset? Which one would you recommend for platforms that don’t have a dedicated preset?
A last one, is it possible to add bezels to the shader when saving a preset?
Thanks very much. I’m glad you’re enjoying them.
Can you show me where exactly you saw this, because I can’t recall. This is from a quick browse of the CRT-Royale Preset Pack GitHub.
If you see a recommendation for a particular aspect ratio to be used, it’s most likely because I noticed some rendering issues on my setup with certain specific things like power bars most of the time.
The settings I suggested might have been what I used to eliminate or mitigate the problem.
However do note that I’m constantly learning, experimenting and evolving my setup and sometimes the conditions which made suggestions like that necessary might have been self inflicted due to a lack of knowledge of all the inner workings of core settings or other interactions.
For example in some cores, there are cropping or Auto cropping settings, then their are overscan cropping settings in the Settings–»Video–»Scaling. Both groups of settings can interact and interfere with one another and sometimes skew things like aspect ratios.
So you can take those suggestions with a pinch of salt and just allow what you feel is best for you be your guide.
In other instances for example with my W420M presets, I often didn’t like the final look of the Shadow Mask presets unless X and Y scaling was set to certain specific values or there were uneven scanlines if the vertical scale (resolution) was below a certain threshold.
I almost always prefer integer scaling as I easily notice the uneven or unevenly sized scanlines which are inserted as part and parcel when non-Integer scaling is used.
I was also doing some experiments with shrinking the screen because I found the images to be a little more pleasant when downloaded slighty.
In my latest preset pack, I noticed some limitations with Custom Aspect Ratios with games which use multiple resolutions and sometimes eyeballing circles fixes some games but breaks the aspect ratio of others within a particular core.
So now I’m back to the drawing board where aspect ratios and Scaling settings are concerned.
I think most of your questions can be answered if you read through the first post of this thread and others if you browse through and look for my “Pro tips” and “Updates”.
Let me see if I can summarize.
There are differences in Gamma and video output circuitry among different consoles so how can you use one setting or preset to emulate these differences?
Shaders even have fixes for palettes for specific systems and more. To me a CRT shader’s purpose is not just to emulate a type of screen. I use them try to account for the differences in screen types, mask type, video input and output signals as well as video output and encoding circuit and these can vary from TV to TV and console/system to console/system.
You can probably start with my Turbo Duo presets or just experiment or use one from another platform of the same era or generation.
Not sure if this is possible using CRT-Royale. Maybe you might have to use RetroArch’s built-in overlay system or use a shader that supports bezels/overlays like Uborder, Mega Bezel Reflection Shader or Kokoaio.
Hope covered most of what you were looking for. Do enjoy the presets!
Thank you so much for taking the time to reply with so many details, you can ignore the nes aspect ratio bit, I got confused I think.
Although SNES’s 256/224 native resolution would give you an aspect ratio of 8/7 if left 1:1, when output on a CRT it is stretched horizontally to 4:3. You can think of it as a sort of anamorphic implementation.
If you’re playing SNES games at 8:7 aspect ratio, you’re doing it wrong…err…well at least…inaccurately.
Really? Don’t some things look better in 8:7 than 4:3? I only play in 4:3
Yeah Zelda link to the past is a good example, link is a bit less fat in 8/7.
