CyberLab Death To Pixels Shader Preset Packs

[Cyber]

@Tathan

Hi everyone! First of all, after months using your shaders, I wanted to thank you for your beautiful work.

Hi, I’m glad you’ve been enjoying my presets.

@Tathan

But if I’m commenting today is because obviously, there’s a little issue.

I’m not home today and will not be able to make screenshots

Screenshots would definitely be useful in this case because these things are quite subjective and a picture paints a thousand words. One person’s perfect look might leave something to be desired for another.

@Tathan

It’s really weird. When I add scanlines, I only see vertical scanlines

Scanlines are prominently visible when the display in question only “draws” content on every other line of the display. The gaps in between the content are what we commonly call scanlines.

On older consoles and computers they use approximately between 200 to 256 lines. That leaves quite a bit of a gap between the scanlines that we are able to see.

Dreamcast on the other hand uses a native resolution of 640 x 480 so there’s no skipping of any lines on the screen, thus scanlines are not visible at native resolution.

If you lower the resolution to below native as @hgoda90 mentioned then you might see some scanlines but that is not my recommended solution.

I’ve tested Dreamcast games with several of my presets and they look great in my opinion! Have you tried reading and following my recommendations?

CyberLab Mega Bezel Death To Pixels Shader Preset Pack

With new presets come new recommendations. I’ve used friendly, abbreviated names and not the preset filenames in the list below. If you can’t figure out which friendly names correspond to which presets, feel free to ask. NES - CyberLab NES for Blargg + Core Blargg S-Video Filter SNES - CyberLab Slot Mask, CyberLab SNES, CyberLab SNES Sharp Arcade/Neo Geo - CyberLab Slot Mask, CyberLab Arcade Sharp Atari - CyberLab Arcade Sharp, CyberLab Old TV, CyberLab Atari, CyberLab Atari Sharp C64 …

[hgoda90]

Yeah I didn’t think about the Native Resolution. The other way I found was to use Fake Scanlines at 640x480 but that would be a last resort.

[Cyber]

In my not so humble opinion, none of that is necessary if you use my recommended presets. Go and try them for yourself and even some of my other presets with any high res Dreamcast game.

Come back and post some screenshots with your results.

Instead of using fake scanlines at 640 x 480 resolution you could just set Opposite Dir Multiplier (Y Downsample for H Scanline) to 50 but that will still leave you with misaligned scanlines and assets as the assets were not designed with scanlines in mind.

[hgoda90]

I have used the recommended presets and the Monitor one was little too red but the others were fine. I was also trying to get it to work fine with Mega Bezel default settings as well.

[Cyber]

@hgoda90

I have used the recommended presets and the Monitor one was little too red

That’s probably just due to differences in display calibration and can be easily adjusted to taste. The thing is over time you can get used to certain colour settings whether right or wrong and it may not be as much of a bother.

@hgoda90

I was also trying to get it to work fine with Mega Bezel default settings as well.

Do you know that in the HSM Mega Bezel Reflection Examples/Variations folder, there’s a specific preset just for Dreamcast - SegaDC-MVC2__STD__DREZ-480p.slangp ?

Maybe you can also try that as a starting point.

[hgoda90]

@Cyber

Do you know that in the HSM Mega Bezel Reflection Examples/Variations folder, there’s a specific preset just for Dreamcast - SegaDC-MVC2__STD__DREZ-480p.slangp ?

Thanks @Cyber, I haven’t really gone through the Variations folder I guess I should now. I think the Ultimate Virtual Slot Mask was the best out of all of your presets.

[Cyber]

@hgoda90

Thanks @Cyber, I haven’t really gone through the Variations folder I guess I should now.

You’re welcome @hgoda90.

@hgoda90

I think the Ultimate Virtual Slot Mask was the best out of all of your presets.

Thanks, it does a great job of Anti-Aliasing just with the Mask pattern alone.

I find it a bit too soft for NES though, that’s why I made CyberLab Slot Mask II.

@hgoda90

the Monitor one was little too red

After some testing at both 4K and 1080p, I’ve noticed this same red looking issue at 1080p. At 4K everything seems fine. I’ll look into it when I get a chance.

Edit: I think I see what happened here. It’s probably a side effect from when I was trying to go more neutral with my colours. I’ll probably just revert those Computer Monitor presets for now.

Thanks for the spot!

I now remember, around the time when I was doing over my colours I reset most of my presets to CRT Phosphor Gamut - 0, Hue (Composite Only) - 0, Whitepoint - 6500K, Saturation - 0 e.t.c. but I was supposed to go back and complete the adjustments for my Computer Monitor Presets but I never went back and did it and completely forgot about it.

Will be working on that next.

@hgoda90 it should be usable now. Feel free to give it a go now and see if you like it better now.

[hgoda90]

@Cyber

@hgoda90 it should be usable now. Feel free to give it a go now and see if you like it better now.

Yeah Computer-Monitor-Smooth is looking good now.

[Cyber]

@hgoda90

Yeah Computer-Monitor-Smooth is looking good now.

Excellent! For educational purposes you can try increasing the Mask Size to 2 or even try the 4K Optimized version @ 1080p.

Although the preset is usable now, it’s still not quite finished as I still have to fine tune the brightness and gamma settings and do some more testing. I didn’t bother to revert because I changed those settings (which broke the presets) for good reason.

Before I was doing a lot of manual “hacking” in order to get the colours to look right and that led to many inconsistencies and possible clipping of the colours.

My computer monitor presets are my original Dreamcast presets that looked good so I was surprised when you said you had a problem with the colours and that my Ultimate Virtual Slot Mask was the best, because while it could be better or even the best, that’s the new kid on the block and Dreamcast had been “solved” a long time ago by my older presets.

[Tathan]

Do you know that in the HSM Mega Bezel Reflection Examples/Variations folder, there’s a specific preset just for Dreamcast - SegaDC-MVC2__STD__DREZ-480p.slangp ?

Oh my. I never saw that folder in your settings! They seem to look just wonderful, thank you very much for everything Cyber! I presume I’ll have to make at least 2 different settings, one for 2D games like HnK, and another for 3D games. Can’t wait to test them!

And thank you Hgoda for helping too!

By the way, if you are a Virtua Tennis 2 fan (like me) I’d have another question.

Yeah Computer-Monitor-Smooth is looking good now.

First of all, what’s your internal resolution then? Have you able to upscale it a bit? And second, have you found a workaround to avoid lag during replays? Since an update in january, I haven’t been able to make Virtua Tennis 2 run smooths during replay with RTT activated, only RTT off seems to solve the issue (on Vulkan at least, using an RTX3080).

[hgoda90]

I use the native resolution of 640x480. I have tried to go higher but it gets kind of laggy. The only workaround I found was to turn RTT off.

[Cyber]

@Tathan

Oh my. I never saw that folder in your settings!

This one isn’t in my preset pack it comes with the HSM Mega Bezel Reflection Shader and was made by @HyperspaceMadness.

The recommendations I were referring to were in a post that I shared in a reply to you and also in the first post in this thread.

@Tathan

They seem to look just wonderful, thank you very much for everything Cyber!

I’m not sure if you’re referring to my Computer Monitor and Ultimate Virtual Slot Mask presets here but those are what I tested and recommend for Dreamcast.

@Tathan

I presume I’ll have to make at least 2 different settings, one for 2D games like HnK, and another for 3D games.

I would just use either one at 1x Internal Resolution for both 2D and 3D games but that’s just me. Have you seen what the mask pattern does to those polygons?

@Tathan

First of all, what’s your internal resolution then?

Long ago before I discovered HSM Mega Bezel Reflection Shader and also when using standalone emulators, I used to upscale IR as high as possible. Well up to 4K or thereabouts when possible.

Since I started making presets I’m a 1x kinda guy.

@Tathan

Have you able to upscale it a bit? And second, have you found a workaround to avoid lag during replays? Since an update in january, I haven’t been able to make Virtua Tennis 2 run smooths during replay with RTT activated, only RTT off seems to solve the issue (on Vulkan at least, using an RTX3080).

I don’t know what RTT is. I’ve been able to set IR pretty high in my testing of MVSC2 on Dreamcast however but not without some soft crashes if I try to change the IR then resume the game sometimes. However, when I exit the emulator and start it back the game starts in whatever new IR I had set before it soft crashed.

I’m on dual GeForce GTX 1070s with 8GB VRAM. RetroArch only uses 1 GPU though.

By the way in my retesting of my Computer Monitor presets, so far they seem to go well with any system I threw at them even NES, where I prefer things to be relatively sharp and they work beautifully with Blargg NTSC Filters!

[hgoda90]

@Cyber

I don’t know what RTT is.

That is a setting in Flycast’s Options.

[hgoda90]

@Cyber how do I turn Blarrg RGB On?

[Cyber]

That depends on if you want to use the Blargg Filter that comes with many cores or the Blargg Filter Presets which are in the RetroArch/Filters/Video folder.

If you want to use the core provided Blargg NTSC Filters you’ll access those from the Quick Menu> Options>Video

If you want to use the RetroArch Filter Presets (including my custom presets) you have to go to Settings> Video> Video Filter.

I have detailed step by step instructions in my first post as well as inside my Console Specific Presets for Blargg as comments.

I doubt I’ll be including any custom RGB filters in my preset pack anytime soon though but you can still use the generic Blargg SNES RGB Filter included in RetroArch or the Core Provided Blargg RGB Filter.

After you load a filter you can save a Core Override.

You don’t have to manually save anything for the Core Provided filters to be saved though.

Exhibit A:

@Cyber

Update 20/04/22:

Note: To use the following new Console Specific Presets , please follow the steps below to load the corresponding Blargg Video Filters .

The other Console (or Game) Specific Presets will look fine (and as intended) without any additional video filters.

CyberLab_NES_for_Core_Blargg_S-Video_Filter.slangp

Quick Menu-->Options-->Video-->Blargg NTSC Filter - S-Video

CyberLab_Genesis_for_CyberLab_or_Core_Blargg_Composite_Filter.slangp

(Blending and Transparency, No Rainbow Effect, No Shimmering Artifacts)

Quick Menu-->Options-->Video-->Blargg NTSC Filter - OFF

Settings-->Video-->Video Filter-->Blargg_NTSC_Genesis_Composite_CyberLab_Special_Edition.filt

Quick Menu-->Overrides-->Save Core Override

Or

(Blending and Transparency, Rainbow Effect, Shimmering Artifacts)

Quick Menu-->Options-->Video-->Blargg NTSC Filter - Composite

CyberLab_Turbo_Duo_for_CyberLab_Blargg_Composite_or_S-Video_Filter.slangp

Settings-->Video-->Video Filter-->Blargg_NTSC_Turbo_Duo_SNES_PSX_Composite_CyberLab_Special_Edition.filt

Quick Menu-->Overrides-->Save Core Override

Or

Settings-->Video-->Video Filter-->Blargg_NTSC_Turbo_Duo_SNES_PSX_S-Video_CyberLab_Special_Edition.filt

Quick Menu-->Overrides-->Save Core Override

Exhibit B:

@Cyber

Leave your GPU to do the heavy Mega Bezel work, while offloading some stuff and applying some finesse to the final output using the oft untapped power of your CPU!

There are now two custom Blargg NTSC video filters included in my preset pack!

These need to be copied to the “ RetroArch/Filters/Video ” folder.

To load them you need to go to:

Settings ----->

Video ----->

Filters ---->

After loading your video filter, you can save your settings as a Core Override in the Quick Menu so it will automatically load that video filter everytime you use that core.

[Cyber]

Some more inspiration. Without CRT TVs there’d be no CyberLab Mega Bezel Death To Pixels Shader Preset Pack.

Gaming on Old Retro TVs

[lfan]

Sony Wega Trinitron 21"

CRT & RGB | Central Extended | Análise imagem CRT Sony Wega 21"

Atualizando o Setup | Substituição da TV CRT Sony 21" Wega Trinitron

[hgoda90]

I had a 32" Sony Trinitron, kv-32fs120 myself. That thing was to heavy and bulky for me so I just sold it, 200lbs.

[c9f5fdda06]

I can’t believe I left mine on the curb when I bought a Panasonic Plasma in 2007. Those large Wegas were awesome

[hgoda90]

@c9f5fdda06

Those large Wegas were awesome

They were and super heavy at that.