Very good! I hope you made extensive use of the Search function and read the readme.txt files as well and at least read the entire 1st post and downloaded and watched all the videos there too.
These are the setting I probably last used on my 2016 LG OLED TV which did eventually get burn-in related to making and using all of these HDR CRT-Shader Presets so do take that into consideration and be do this at your own risk. There are folks who say, newer LG OLED TVs won’t suffer burn-in e.t.c. well you never know until it’s too late.
Newer TVs and different model TVs are going to have different features and characteristics. Without me testing a particular model, there’s no way I can say what works best on that model.
On my modern miniLED TV, I experimented with different tonemapping and HDR Brightness settings before settling with the ones I currently use.
For 4K LG OLED TVs before the G5, and other tandem OLED sets, you should set the Display’s Subpixel Layout to RWBG/WOLED in Sony Megatron and Mask Layout 1 (BGR) in CRT-Guest-Advanced based Presets, including my Mega Bezel Presets.
Other than that, you can browse here or the Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor theread for some more tips on setting up things like Peak Luminance and Paper White Luminance and what others use in their OLED TVs.
If you allow this to be a two way thing by taking and sharing photos of the screen using different settings and presets, that would help immensely.
There are many presets which I like, so there is no best for me, just what I’m in the mood for at the time.
Posts in the various threads which show preset or preset pack names might be a good place to start to see what’s best for you.
Don’t stop reading/browsing this thread though. There’s a lot of useful information contained in here.
Some good preset families to start with are my “Near Field” presets, “Wx”, “Epic”, “4K HDR Ready” and “Neo-GX_Ultra” presets, “IV_OLED 1P2RTA” and “2P2RTA”, “CyberLab Special Edition” presets.
Am i wrong or in all 4k HDR preset there is BFI? The presence of BFI request to have 100hz 120hz and more right?
Since i use freesync with emulation arcade but in general also for console switching between pal and ntsc game, i think that BFI is not the right choice.
There isn’t BFI in any of my presets so far. The terms “4K HDR Game BFI” that you might see are notes about the TV modes and settings in use while the preset was being made, which can be very helpful since display settings can significantly affect the way the preset looks, even on the same display it was originally designed on.
BFI indicates that BFI might have been in use when the preset was developed which would indicate that that there could be some sort of effort made to compensate for the reduction in brightness at least in the foundational stages of the presets development. This BFI in my case would mostly have been hardware BFI provided by the display itself.
My most recent PVM Edition presets are focused on brightness and are probably be some of the brightest presets I have made for Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor.
I got a Samsung Odyssey G7 70F IPS monitor with 4K and HDR10 and gave the Megatron NX Death to Pixel HDR a try. Also downgraded Guest shader as per instructions.
I have the monitor connected via HDMI 2.1 cable as it is better suited for 10bit than DP 1.4.
HDR is enabled on Windows and calibrated via Windows HDR Calibration utility.
One important question:
Retroarch HDR option should be untouched and left to default off?
Picture looks like this.
Used ProShot photo application on mobile (ISO 50 and Shutter 1/8) for photo to look closer to actual monitor output.
Presets used are Genesis Composite, NES N64 Fine Ultra and default Arcade.
On NES I had to change the core from Mesen to Nestopia as it was way too dark.
I guess I can dabble with the countless parameters to yield results closer to my liking
The only CyberLab Megatron preset pack that requires downgrading is the first one I made since the presets look for the Guest shader in its default location.
Subsequent CyberLab Megatron preset packs use specific versions of CRT-Guest-Advanced but they’re placed in non-default folders to avoid anything being overwritten and to avoid having to overwrite (downgrade) the default Guest-Advanced version from the Online Updater.
From my W420M preset pack onwards all required Guest-Advanced versions are included so there’s no need to manually fetch and install the correct version in the correct folder.
It will be installed with the preset pack.
Not too shabby but you generally want to lock your Shutter speed to 1/60 or 1/30 for these things. You can then adjust your ISO and distance from the screen depending on how much detail you want to capture without blowing things out with overexposure.
Or you can just use newer preset packs like my latest Epic MiniLED preset pack. So instead of going through countless parameters, you can go through countless presets instead.
Actually the Epic preset pack is an attempt at streamlining some of my best Sony Megatron work into a smaller more manageable pack with a superior and very useful Shader Stack. In some cases you will find some gems in the previous packs as well but I suggest you start with the latest pack and work your way backwards instead.
miniLED doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t use the preset pack on a non miniLED display.
This shouldn’t be a complaint with these preset packs as part of the setup instructions require you to adjust the Peak and Paper White Luminance according to your display and as a result, brightness can be as high as your display can deliver.
There’s no reason why Mesen’s output should be darker than Nestopia’s unless you’re using different Palettes.
I’ve used the Sony CXA2025AS palette exclusively when tweaking my presets.
In my experience Nestopia adds 1 extra frame of lag vs Mesen, which is why I switched to Mesen.
So use the Peak and Paper White Luminance until you get things bright enough without overblowng brights. These settings are not absolute and even if RTINGS or your specs say that your Peak Luminance is a particular number, always judge with your eyes. If too dark increase Peak and Paper White Luminance. If overblown or clipped, decrease.
The only other setting you should have to adjust is the “Display’s Subpixel Layout” which should be set to RGB for your IPS display with an RGB subpixel layout.
And yes, you have to do these adjustments for every preset you use.
A quick Google search reveals that this display has a Peak Brightness (Luminance of about 400 to 600 Nits) in HDR mode with actual test results showing it closer to 500 Nits in practical use.
Key Brightness & Display Features (G70F/IPS):
Typical Brightness (SDR): ~350-400 nits.
Peak Brightness (HDR): ~400-600 nits (advertised up to 600, actual testing on some units shows closer to 400-500 in practical use).
The Samsung Odyssey G7 70F (27-inch IPS, LS27FG706ENXZA) features a typical SDR brightness of 350 cd/m² (minimum 280 cd/m²). For HDR content, it is designed to meet DisplayHDR 600 standards, capable of reaching peak brightness levels around 600–640 nits, though some users have reported lower, varying peak results in real-world testing.
This is what the creator of the Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor had to say about display brightness requirements:
That was a long time ago. In more recent times he has said this:
This is another great read concerning brightness requirements for accurate CRT emulation:
Mr Tandem RGB WOLED, you never followed up on this:
Don’t you want proper tandem OLED Support to arrive in CRT Shaders?
All we wouldd need is your attention for about a day or two and your willingness to do a few back and forth tests and report back with photos. Nothing too difficult.
You didn’t give me any feedback on what I posted other than more instructions.
So RGB Interpolated Mask, I’ve since moved on to Mask 0 at 1.0 strength, Size 2, Layout BGR; on RGB I was seeing that some colors would lack TVLs.
Is Guest going to incorporate any of this work?
I keep wanting to request some 480p SDR non BFI Dreamcast shaders from you via Guest Advanced NTSC, but it seems you only want to work in Megatron land, and, to each their own.
Your attention to detail surpasses mine and what I am capable of despite dumping 1000ish hours into.
That question would be best answered by @Guest.r. I did ask him about this already though and he advised me that the existing layouts should be tested with the new displays first. So here we are.
I do have presets that can be used on DreamCast games using CRT-Guest-Advanced. They’re in my Mega Bezel preset pack.
I also have many other presets which I made for DreamCast using other Shaders, including Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor.
They go by the Turbo Duo_DC moniker. Haven’t you seen Turbo Duo_DC in the filenames of any of my presets? DC stands for DreamCast.
In the past, I’ve even made suggestions for other console specific presets which should work well with DreamCast games.
The shaders stack I use consists of many different shaders, including Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor, CRT-Guest-Advanced-NTSC, IMG-Mod, XBR-LEVEL-2 and Grade so I really don’t understand what you mean by “Megatron Land”.
I’ve made almost identical presets using CRT-Guest-Advanced-NTSC (without Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor) so the particular shader is almost agnostic from that perspective but there are many reasons why I chose to work with the stack I currently use but that’s another topic for another day. I don’t package and release every shader preset I create.
Anyway, back to the matter at hand:
These tests require the SNES 240p Test Suite available here:
and CyberLab Megatron miniLED Death To Pixels 4K HDR Shader Prest Pack available here:
Instructions:
Load the 240p Test Suite, load one of the CyberLab Subpixel Layout Test presets, then take a few close/macro photos of some grey or white areas of the screen showing the individual red, green and blue subpixels (or whatever colour they appear to you) in the CRT Shader Mask clearly. Do not take a photo of the full screen or large sections of the screen.
Do not adjust the presets. Use as is.
Do this for all test presets, labelling screenshots accordingly.
Tips:
You can use Pro/Manual Mode on your camera/camera app. Stabilize camera/phone. Shutter Speed 1/60 or 1/30, ISO 50 to 250, Manual or Auto Focus, WB - Auto, 5,000K or whatever matches the screen output best.
This is what the photos of the screen should look like:
This below here is fine:
What Azurfel did here was excellent but we’re taking it one step at a time so just focusing on what’s in the test presets. Let’s see how the tandem OLED renders them, then I’ll try sending some alternative Subpixel Test presets with different Mask Layouts for you to test if necessary.
I figured you don’t yeah. And your MegaBezel pack is definitely what I started with…the bezel stuff definitely adds a lot of weight and I think the stack CRT-Guest-Advanced-NTSC, IMG-Mod, XBR-LEVEL-2 and Grade is much more digestible.
I realized what I typed could potentially be snarky and I want to make sure I speak to that, I respect your work and all the effort and especially knowledge and time that it entails.
I appreciate the finer details of these test instructions and will get to them soon.
Thanks, I appreciate that. No offense taken. I do understand how your perspective could be very different from how I view these things since its a lot to just wrap our heads around as lay persons especially with different levels of experience hanging around the development community.
I still try with my limited knowledge and understanding of things and have gotten a lot of assistance where needed along the way.
This aspect of things, I think is something you would only really appreciate after you experience it on your TV.
You had plasma before, which is another technology which can’t replicate the subpixel level stuff accurately.
Just today I learned that even the regular non-Tandem WOLED TVs from 2026 and beyond are going to have the same new RGWB subpixel layout so what that means going forward is if this isn’t figured out sooner or later, proper subpixel shader support will be lost on all modern OLED displays, going forward.
Can you imagine that?
I mean most of the world doesn’t even know what they’re missing out on but who knows, maybe sometime in the future, the retro gaming historians might remember us who cared about these things enough to try to make the entire experience better for everyone?
followed the instructions and end results are noticeably better. Set hdr luminance around 600 on Retroarch.
Besides, 27" are a little small for all the details to shine at 4k when compared to regular TV, especially in pixel shaders. I mainly bought it for the vertical rotate feature, useful for vertical shmups.
Still, compared to the 1440 ips monitor next to it, picture quality is noticeably better in 8-16bit games.
I disagree, especially if you’re viewing from up close to the screen. The increased pixel density really makes things shine. These photos were taken off of a 28" IPS barely HDR400 display:
Zoom in and look at the details in the Full Resolution shots.
As a matter of fact, I tend to enjoy downscaling my viewport to about 36" at the cost of pixel density to get at least some of the benefits of what I described.
It’s decreased pixel density for the CRT effects and scanlines but increased pixel density for the raw sprites.
I even made my Old skool 36" Arcade Monitor preset based on that.
You can do a lot at 1440p, especially with a bright display. You know you have to adjust presets to maintain consistent TVL between displays of different resolutions. So you can’t compare the same unmodified preset on a 1440p and 4k display and expect them to look similar. If you choose appropriate Mask settings for both, you could get a pretty comparable image though.
Some new and updated presets from my latest Epic miniLED Preset Pack:
By the way, those NES shots look much warmer in person and when viewing the original .jxr file. Something seems to be getting lost when converting to .jpg.
Since we know that regular screenshots of CRT shader presets which rely on screen brightness don’t convey the true, in-person brightness and beauty of some of these presets, we can practice photographing and filming these presets as if we were photographing or filming a CRT.
The same techniques and principles for attaining high quality CRT photos and videos can be applied here.
Slipped my mind previously regarding HDR settings. Do Retroarch HDR scanlines have to be enabled too, because they are disabled by default and also include two subpixel layout options (RGB and BGR)?
Also does colour boost option has to be enabled or disabled? Though with the HDR shaders active, I do not see any difference.
The only setting that has to be enabled in the Settings–»Video–»HDR menu for my Sony Megatron based Preset packs is HDR On.
If your version of RetroArch no longer has an HDR On setting, I think the new default is HDR10.
Those new settings in there don’t apply to Sony Megatron V1 Presets, only newer Sony Megatron V2 Presets and any other existing shaders that users would like to apply HDR to.
You don’t have to enable RetroArch HDR Scanlines.
For Sony Megatron v2 @MajorPainTheCactus wanted all HDR Shader Settings to be uniform regardless of whether you were using Sony Megatron or another Shader, unlike in v1 where Sony Megatron v1 settings are in the Shader Parameters and all other shaders needed to use the settings in the Settings–»Video–»HDR menu.
There was some push back so he kept his vision but added a simple mechanism whereby users could use the old tried and true method with Sony Megatron v2.
Hello, I’m very new to all of this.
I noticed you have many shader packs to choose from and I was hoping to get some advice on which you think is best for me.
I use a 4k non-oled 50" HDR tv for emulation, connected to my pc so performance is no issue. I don’t really understand all the advanced termiology, so which preset pack would you recommend for a beginner/needs little configuration?
There are videos as well so you can see what might pique your interest or not.
There is a learning curve and you have to be ready to go down the rabbit hole. If not, just use the included Shaders/Presets in RetroArch and call it a day.
If after you read, watch the videos, try out something and there is still something you don’t understand or have an issue with, feel free to ask for assistance.
