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.
Hi Cyber, thank you for your legendary preset work.
I have read the first post in its entirety, and I have read many posts of this thread plus your readme files. I have been exploring and tinkering in my spare time across multiple computers and TVs for over a year, and I have never succeeded at getting a result that isn’t either extremely dark or burning your eyes out with hot spots.
I am now trying to shoot for what I think is the bare minimum of keeping HDR off on Windows and RetroArch, and using the simplest pack: CyberLab CRT-Royale Death To Pixels Shader Preset Pack
I am happy with all HDR off and these shaders at their default settings except for one issue which is that the contrast is crazy and I cannot figure out how to fix it. The contrast makes colors look far too intense, and it causes eye strain strongly enough that I cannot just deal with it.
I am attaching a screenshot of what colors are supposed to look like on the left, and of what colors look like with the shader on the right. The difference is very clear in the color of the character’s skin and the background gradient.
Hmmm…let me see how I can address your concerns. Firstly, a “raw” screenshot of an emulator output is not what I would call “correct” or use as any source of reference in this context. My reference point is how the image would look on a 15kHz CRT TV because that’s what I played these old games on when I was growing up.
It can’t possibly look the same after it passes through the video encoding, filtering and processing circuitry of a console’s video output and it certainly won’t look the same as your “raw” image after that signal is processed and decoded in the CRT TV or monitor then converted to electrons and blasted onto the phosphors of individual red, green and blue colours, separated by some sort of mask which are all quite a lot larger than the pixels which make up that upscaled screenshot you’re comparing things to.
How could that be “correct” when the ears and text look so extremely jagged and in contrast, the image from the CRT shader appears a lot smoother in the outlines?
It would help quite a bit if you listed the model and/or specs of the displays you’re having trouble getting an acceptable image out of as that’s the most important part of the equation and it’s a part that a GPU screenshot cannot convey.
So you’re basically sharing the viewfinder film or slide without the light projecting or shining through it.
If things are too “hot” perhaps your HDR Brightness or Gamma are set too high for your display and you’re seeing clipping in the whites/highlights.
If you’re experiencing the same in the colours then perhaps things are oversaturated. You can lower the Saturation if that is the case.
For the vast majority of my presets, a bright display capable of at least 600nits Peak Brightness is the absolute minimum recommended.
I do have some 4K HDR Ready Presets that I did for an HDR400 display in my Mega Bezel Preset Pack though.
See the following posts for some additional guidelines/advice.
By the way, have you updated your RetroArch and tried my latest CyberLab Guest Preset Pack?
You can also take a look at the following shaders which might be more suited to users with dimmer displays:
I recently made some presets essentially without the Mask and Phosphors for brightness challenged displays in my miniLED Epic Preset Pack. They’re called PVM/Pro Monitor Edition:
This is a photo of one of my presets in action:
Another, thing I forgot to add. If you have an issue with a Preset, it helps a great deal if you post the exact Filename of the Preset and Preset Pack it belongs to.
These are some more presets which can work for brightness challenged displays:
To really appreciate these screenshots, you either need to zoom in or view at native resolution
These are photos of the HDR400 display I was referring to earlier:
From the CyberLab CRT-Royale preset pack’s Readme.txt:
1440p users can probably try the Fine presets. They might work. Otherwise just play around with the “Mask - Triad Size Desired” Shader Parameter.
1080p users can probably set the “Mask - Triad Size Desired” Shader Parameter to 3.00. Otherwise just play around with it until it looks good to you.
You can play around with this value until it looks good to you.
Another one you can adjust is the “Mask Sample Mode” - Set it to 0 for a sharper, less filtered look and 1 for a slightly softer, less harsh look to the phosphors.
Thank you for your thoughtful and thorough reply! It was very encouraging, and I appreciate your patient effort to bridge my knowledge & experience gap. I do not have a nostalgic memory of CRT displays, so my reference point or “goal” is vague and based off your provided photos and stuff I see on YouTube. I generally shoot for what I think a Sony Trinitron would look like. As a result of this post, I have started searching for a CRT locally so that I can experience a valid point of reference for myself.
You were spot on in guessing that my issues were clipping in whites/highlights and oversaturation. Your explanation of how you choose a reference point helped me understand that I was overlooking pieces of my pipeline as well.
I have since spent a few days recalibrating the settings of my main TV to eliminate any clipping and oversaturation in its settings, then recalibrating & fine tooth combing the Windows display settings to eliminate clipping/oversaturation (turning off AutoHDR in THREE places! grr!), and finally recalibrating RetroArch’s HDR settings to eliminate clipping/oversaturation. I now have a perfectly satisfactory image with Windows HDR and RetroArch HDR both turned ON, so I am no longer shooting for that HDR-less bare minimum.
When I apply any of your CRT-Royale or Megatron NX W420M presets, it always initially introduces clipping, oversaturation, and/or washout. I actually believe that I will eventually be able to get to a satisfactory image by adjusting saturation, gamma, contrast, peak luminance, and paper white, despite the fact that at this point I am still running around a maze in the dark with how to balance those settings between one another.
I noticed that not all of the presets’ settings are at their defaults when I first load the presets. Setting them all back to defaults gets me much closer to an “accurate” image than what they are set to initially. Are your shaders meant to be packaged at not-default values?
I have not tried your latest CyberLab Guest Preset Pack. I just downloaded it, and read the readme which has some helpful notes on settings to use. I’ll try it next time I have a chance! Do you think that this pack would serve me better than CRT-Royale or Megatron NX W420M, or is it just a preference thing?
You said it would be helpful if I listed my display and specs. Here are the details!
TV:
Model Code: QN77S90DDFXZA
Samsung S90D Series (2024)
77 inch
QD-OLED
4k Ultra HD (3840x2160 Native Resolution)
1,200 nits peak (this is a guess based on Google search results)
PC:
Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 9700X 8-Core Processor, 3.80 GHz
GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070
RAM: 32 GB
Windows 11 Home, 64-bit
HDMI Cord:
Maxonar
Certified HDMI 2.1
48 GBPS "Ultra High Speed"
RetroArch:
Version 1.22.2
Build Date: Nov 20 2025
RetroArch HDR:
Enable HDR > ON
Peak Luminance > 2430.0x
Paper White Luminance > 240.0x
Contrast > 6.00x
Expand Gamut > ON
Windows Settings:
Settings > System > Display > Color Profile > Profile 4 S90D Game Mode (I made this with Windows HDR Calibration app)
Settings > System > Display > HDR > HDR > ON
Settings > System > Display > HDR > Auto HDR > OFF
Settings > System > Display > HDR > SDR Content Brightness > 20
Settings > System > Display > Scale > 150%
Settings > System > Display > Display Resolution > 3840 x 2160
Settings > System > Display > Advanced Display > Choose a refresh rate > 120 Hz
Settings > System > Display > Graphics > Auto HDR > OFF
Settings > System > Display > Graphics > Optimizations for windowed games > OFF
Settings > System > Display > Graphics > Advanced graphics settings > Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling > ON
Settings > System > Display > Graphics > Custom settings for applications > RetroArch > AutoHDR > OFF
Settings > System > Display > Graphics > Custom settings for applications > RetroArch > Optimizations for windowed games > OFF
Settings > Personalization > Fonts > Related settings > Adjust ClearType text > Turn on ClearType > ON
TV Settings (stop all smart/auto adjustments, goal of accuracy and no clipping):
Settings > Picture > Expert Settings > Brightness > 50
Settings > Picture > Expert Settings > Contrast > 45
Settings > Picture > Expert Settings > Sharpness > 10
Settings > Picture > Expert Settings > Color > 30
Settings > Picture > Expert Settings > Tint (G/R) > 0
Settings > Picture > Expert Settings > Contrast Enhancer > Off
Settings > Picture > Expert Settings > HDR Tone Mapping > Static
Settings > Picture > Expert Settings > Color Tone > Warm2
Settings > Picture > Expert Settings > White Balance > 2 point
Settings > Picture > Expert Settings > Gamma > ST.2084
Settings > Picture > Expert Settings > ST.2084 > 0
Settings > Picture > Expert Settings > Shadow Detail > 0
Settings > Picture > Expert Settings > Color Space Setting > Normal
Settings > Picture > Expert Settings > Color Booster > Off
Settings > Picture > Expert Settings > Peak Brightness > High
Settings > Connection > External Device Manager > Input Signal Plus > ON for all inputs
Settings > Connection > External Device Manager > HDMI Black Level > Normal
Settings > Connection > Game Mode Settings > Game Mode > ON
Settings > Connection > Game Mode Settings > Virtual Aim Point > Off
Settings > Connection > Game Mode Settings > Surround Sound > Off
Settings > Connection > Game Mode Settings > Dynamic Black Equalizer > 0
Settings > Connection > Game Mode Settings > Game Motion Plus (grayed out, unavailable)
Settings > Connection > Game Mode Settings > Game Picture Expert > HDR10+ Gaming > Basic
Settings > Connection > Game Mode Settings > Game Picture Expert > Game HDR > Off
Settings > Connection > Game Mode Settings > Minimap Auto Detection > Off
Settings > General & Privacy > Intelligent Mode Settings > Off
Settings > General & Privacy > Power and Energy Saving > Brightness Optimization > Off
Settings > General & Privacy > Power and Energy Saving > Energy Saving Solution > Off
Settings > General & Privacy > Power and Energy Saving > Motion Lighting > Off
Settings > General & Privacy > Power and Energy Saving > Auto Power Saving > Off
Settings > General & Privacy > Power and Energy Saving > Auto Power Off > Off
Settings > General & Privacy > Start Screen Option > Start with Smart Hub Home > Off
Thank you again for your time and patience. For someone like me, who is chasing a realistic CRT look with no experience, it literally takes reading over your post (particularly the second paragraph) 3 or more times to digest it. Then I start googling words you used and reading whole wikipedia pages and reddit posts just to try to understand the concepts so that I can come back and read your post again, hopefully with actual comprehension.
Thanks for the detailed response. It would also be nice if you could include some photos of the screen showing the issues you’re experiencing.
Try the latest preset packs, you might have better luck in the accuracy department those were designed using older displays with certain colour limitations and the presets were designed to work around them.
You might have to update your RetroArch to one of the newer nightly builds to take advantage of the changes and improvements to the HDR implementation in RetroArch.
Although this setting is actually relative and not absolute, I suspect this is way too high for your display. It’s probably more than double the actual Peak Brightness of your display.
You don’t even have to run the Peak Brightness at the maximum that your display can handle to have a great experience with these things. It all has to be balanced.
So it’s better to start off conservatively and have things look good but be too dark, then increase the Peak and Paper White Luminance values gradually.
This also seems very high. 5.00x to 5.30x should be more than sufficient.
Start off with the Megatron miniLED Epic and Guest Legendary Preset Packs. They’re called Legendary and Epic for a reason.
Once you stick to the newer more refined presets you shouldn’t have to do much adjusting of Saturation, Contrast, Gamma and stuff like that unless your TV has some sort of calibration issue.
Paper White Luminance plays a more significant role in the overall brightness than the Peak Luminance by the way and this is supposed to be adjusted in the Shader Parameters of my Megatron presets.
The settings in the Settings–»Video–>HDR menu are for non-Sony Megatron presets. However with the new updates to RetroArch and Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor the default behavior is for all brightness adjustments/calibration to be done in this menu for all shaders in HDR mode. The old methods are still included as a fall back option though.
The new method simplifies things as well and does away with separate Peak and Paper White Luminance settings in favour of a single HDR brightness setting.
You no longer have to rely on RTINGS to find your display’s Peak Luminance setting. Just increase HDR Brightness until the image is bright enough.
That’s the point. They are custom settings. My custom settings.
If that is the case use what looks best to you. As I mentioned before some presets especially in my W420M Preset pack were designed to work on displays which cannot do 4K 60Hz at RGB 4:4:4 so the colours would be boosted in order to compensate for the limitations of that particular display.
On some older presets, I used to sit far away from an older OLED TV, so Saturation and brightness might have been boosted a bit as things look differently when far from the screen.
That is the reason for my Near Field presets.
Auto HDR is nice. It shouldn’t affect RetroArch once HDR is On in RetroArch.
Also W420M presets are all in SDR mode by default. So if you want to run them in HDR mode you have to turn on HDR Mode in the Shader Parameters.
You can also leave that on SDR mode and use the setting in the Settings–»Video–>HDR menu or let Windows AutoHDR or Special K handle things though but those are presets designed in SDR mode and to run on an SDR display.
You might have to calibrate all of these using a good point of reference. I know certain things I can rely on for that, including my presets but for you it might be something else but you have to choose one because you don’t want to be adjusting the presets and the TV back and forth to fix each other.
As mentioned before it should serve you much better than those 2 you mentioned specifically because of their age and the equipment they were designed on and targeted.
I recently tried some of my CRT-Royale presets on an older TV that I have that I brought back into service and at first some of the presets weren’t even working properly, this is because of colourspace settings that weren’t compatible with that particular set. I started doing some tweaks and everything was excellent once again. Those updated CRT-Royale presets are due for release sometime in the future.
I feel insulted. Lol.
What more of a reference do you need than this?
By the way, the creator of the Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor shader as well as the authour of RetroArch’s HDR implementation uses a Samsung S95B QD-OLED as one of his test displays. He’s hardly around these days but he might have some insight as to what settings work better on Samsung QD-OLED TVs.
After you update your RetroArch to the latest nightly, then update your Slang Shaders using the Online Updater, you can try some of his newest presets in the Shaders/Shaders_Slang/HDR folder.
Also, if you’re obsessed with accuracy, you have the wrong display technology as QD-OLEDs triangular subpixel layout doesn’t match what is required for subpixel accurate CRT Shaders to approximate the layout and structure of a CRT’s Mask and phosphors, unfortunately.
RWBG W-OLEDs come close enough, while RGB striped LCD panels offer the best compatibility with all currently emulated CRT mask types and TVLs - whch in CRT emulation is how fine or coarse the phosphor/mask is.
This is another method you could try:
You can take a look at this regarding the Game HDR setting on your TV:
Don’t just read the AI generated summary, I suggest you read all of the source articles, posts and watch the videos.
A note on W420M presets:
In general note concerning most if not all of my Megatron presets which use an additional Grade Pass near the top of the Shader Parameters list which has a White Point setting plus another White Point setting near the bottom of the Shader Parameters list. It’s safe to leave the bottom (second) one at 6504 instead of 5504 and the set the top (first) one to 6104 instead of 7104 as the net effect would be the same.
If you want to go further and neutralize the White Point, you can set the top one to 6504 instead of 6104 but 6104 is fine and what the rest of the settings of the preset would have been designed around, including Brightness, Gamma and Saturation and according to the creator of Grade typical CRT displsays weren’t all used at exactly 6504 anyway.
This might help with respect to getting your Peak and Paper White Luminance settings and Contrast settings to a better starting point if you still want to fiddle around a bit with the old HDR implementation before you update your RetroArch:
I had a question about the CyberLab Megatron NX Death To Pixels 4K HDR Shader Preset Pack
Well two questions actually:
In the readme for this pack it says in Retroarch to use an Aspect Ration of Config @ 1.24. When I do this it makes everything look skinnier than it should so I’m not sure if I’m missing something somewhere else?
Also, the Retroarch HDR settings seem like they have updated/simplified recently. There is just one Brightness option, vs the previous two of Display’s Peak Luminance and Display’s Paper White Luminance. How do these line up with the Retroarch and the actual Shader Parameters? Does one area override the other?
At that the time of writing that I noticed some anomolies with certain power bars/guages in SNES games and setting the aspect ratio to 1.24 cleared that up. Besides the installation instructions those other things are just records of my settings which users are free to use as a starting point and also to experiment or use different settings if they think they will work better for them.
Turning on Integer Scaling and setting the Aspect Ratio to Config works fine as well but I prefer doing things manually. I don’t even use the settings in that readme.txt anymore. It’s from 2024 and I’ve done quite a bit of eperimentation since then. If you read some more of the thread you’ll see stuff about Custom Aspect Ratios and stuff like that. I like making the screen smaller while maintaining an Integer Scale on both the X and Y axes. Also some presets look better at certain scale factors, particular those which use Shadow Mask and Slot Mask. Again I’ve made my personal notes available in the thread as well as in the updated readme.txt of subsequent preset packs.
That’s getting a bit long in the tooth. Don’t hesitate to try my newer preset packs. Remember, miniLED is not for miniLED only, it was just designed on miniLED.
The new HDR settings have no bearing on my Sony Megatron based preset packs as the setting in the Shader Parameters have always overriden anything in the Settings–>Video–>HDR Menu.
Those settings have always applied to non Sony Megatron shaders so shaders which don’t have Peak and Paper White Brightness adjustments could be setup using the controls in the HDR Menu.
With these updates comes a new version of Sony Megatron Computer Monitor as well. You can read all about the new changes in the Sony Megatron Computer Monitor thread.
My latest CyberLab Guest Legendary Preset Pack takes full advantage of the new HDR updates. The single HDR Brightness setting means no more looking up Peak Luminance settings on RTINGs and stuff like that. Instead, if things are too dark, just turn up the HDR Brightness and/or backlight/contrast/brightness of your display.
My new pack also comes with an extensive readme.txt overhaul which you might find interesting because it contains new scaling suggestions among other things.
The updates to Sony Megaton Colour Video Monitor also have no effect on my previous Sony Megatron based Shader Preset Packs. The updates have been done in a way that users who prefer the old way of doing things can keep doing them that way and even apply the old methods to other shaders as well. The new way treats Sony Megatron the same as other shaders so all HDR settings take place in the Settings–>Video–>HDR menu.
Feel free to ask more questions if you need more answers.
And then I actually had one thing I was wondering about the brand new CyberLab Guest Legendary Death To Pixels 4K HDR Shader Preset Pack
I don’t have the brightest 4K QD-OLED Monitor (DELL S3225QC) but it does have a very good HDR picture according to rtings, and it has both DisplayHDR True Black 400 and HDR Peak 1000 options. I currently have it using the Peak 1000 option. I’ve found some options in the NX 4K HDR pack for SNES that I think look amazing with both the color and the brightness.
With this Legendary 4K HDR pack though I feel like I’m missing something. I’ve followed all the instructions and prerequisites in the readme. Your post a few posts above here from a week ago or so about the introduction to this new Legendary pack has a bunch of screen shots. They all look good but they also VERY dark to me.
And then trying out all the shader presets look much darker on my monitor than the NX using the exact same Retroarch HDR options (Brightness = 1030 - same as HDR calibration tool, Colour Boost = Expanded, Scanlines = ON, Subpixel Layout = RGB - to match this monitor). Am I missing something in setup or are these presets just a alot darker in general? Like I said the screen shots above just look really dark to me, some almost black.
