There was no room(black areas) for cropping but since you gave me those cropping values, I just did what you told me to. The black areas are generally present in Mame games from what I’ve seen, but then the color bands happen. As I mentioned before and also shared screenshots, SF3 3rd strike for Dreamcast has black areas too for some odd reason which I cropped but I got the color bands issue. So I had to do both cropping and Int scaling thing on it.
Right now the only workaround seems to be setting Integer scaling the preset settings to 1. But it still remains to be seen if it will work on all games.
I will continue working on this. At 4K the same issue that was causing the pink horizontal lines at 1080p was showing up as bands of darker, uneven scanlines. I was able to eliminate this by adjusting the scanline parameters. Basically the more defined and separated the horizontal scanlines are the less likely to have those issues. That’s why lowering the resolution, changing the int. scale mode to 1, cropping the black bars at the top and bottom of the screen and lastly adjusting the scanlines parameters all had the effect of reducing or eliminating those anomalies.
It’s also easy to get less pixelation by lowering the Opp Dir Scanline Pre-Scale setting to 75% or 50%. 75% results in uneven scanline alignment which affects text quite a bit. 50% results in even scanline alignment but the text looks much lower resolution. At least it’s readable and not garbled like when you set internal resolution to 320 x 240. All of this is at 640 x 480 native internal resolution. At this resolution the Scale FX doesn’t really do much to the sprites so most of the smoothing is as a result of the scanlines and mask.
Once you use any resolution other than native the smoothing seems to look better. 1280 x 960 seems to be a good option however, the big issue that remains is once you leave native resolution Ryu’s Super Hadoken has vertical gaps in it.
So as it stands, it is possible to improve the look of things on the Flycast in high resolution games with pixel graphics and even in low res. games. I didn’t want to mention it until I got a fix because once you see something you can’t unsee it but I could see the pink lines in @Tromzy 's last set of screenshots. I think I even saw vertical pink lines. It shouldn’t be like that. I just didn’t want to mention it until I came up with a fix.
If I can’t find a better solution I’ll have to start with the solution that looks both sharp and smooth but leaves Ryu’s Super Hadoken messed up. I don’t think you should have to give up the nice high resolution elements just to get those sprites straightened out though.
Too bad scale FX wasn’t designed to work on hi res elements. I guess the best option might be some sort of SSAA effect.
By the way, I updated to RetroArch 1.9.13 and it seems to be slightly slower than 1.9.12. I also updated my installed cores and guess what? My Flycast core options still show the Cable Type. I think I might revert to 1.9.12 due to the performance regression though.
It soft crashes for me sometimes when doing this. Especially if I use the Guide button on my controller to go back to the game. Try increasing the resolution one step at a time and maybe go back to the game using the menu instead of F1 or the Guide button.
Oh my bad I didn’t fully explain it. Actually increasing the internal resolution is fine but when I apply the shader, it hard crashes RA. I tried both F1 and Resume through the menu but it still crashes.
I can’t say why that’s happening. Perhaps you can try to retrace your steps to when it started happening.
If you list what happens in step by step fashion before the crash maybe I can assist. Or perhaps, @HyperspaceMadness or @Duimon might be able to assist with the help of a log.
There is info in the shader thread about this. It has to do with the ScaleFX pass that results in passing too much to the GPU for the buffer to handle.
If you make a copy of the base shader and change it’s reference shader to “MBZ__2__STD__HD-CORE__GDV.slangp” then change Cyber’s reference shader to your copy, it should stop crashing.
The next Mega Bezel version will eliminate the ScaleFX pass from the STD base preset.
I’ve never tested my presets in Mame. They look excellent in FinalBurn Neo to me though. Perhaps those are things I can look at in the future.
By the way in celebration of 1000+ views of this thread, I added 5 new presets to my shader pack! I’ve dubbed them my PVM Edition in reference to the sharpness and clarity of the image and “signal” Feel free to download and take them for a spin. I’ll try to post some screenshots when I get a chance!
Hello there.
I tried to use this pack, but retroarch was showing a WARN that it can’t load the shader because it cant find the path
I don’t know why it was saying that the path is /usr/local/bin/shaders… Then I realized that, this is my actual retroarch bin patch.
So, I put the retroarch bin into my custom path /home/user/libretro/
now this pack can be loaded.
All of my Arcade game screenshots were created using FinalBurn Neo. My Arcade Sharp preset was also tested using FinalBurn Neo. I don’t know why they would look blurry in Mame. Perhaps the output resolution is set too high. My presets seem to work best on cores that output 224 - 240p resolution possibly up to 256 will look great as well.
I was turned off a very long time ago by some of the older versions of the RetroArch Mame Core. I prefer things that “just work” to some extent and I pick and choose carefully what I’m willing to spend my time and mental energy researching and understanding.
I also traditionally liked keeping things up to date and with Mame and their ever changing ROMs it got kind of confusing and tedious trying to keep up.
I’m sure there are lots of resources available both in the Libretto forums and the wider Interwebs with information on how to setup these emulators and their requirements for getting proper roms and all of that working properly.
It might work with some Merged Roms. You can try but different emulators have their particular instructions and recommendations whwn it comes to those things.
Thanks very much! Seems like people are spreading the word.
You’re most welcome! I haven’t made a big fuss over these yet but the image quality improvement over the previous ones is huge!!! I just haven’t had much time to do more as I do this in little pockets of free time.
These new PVM Edition presets are almost interchangeable. There’s very little difference between the RGB Sharp PVM Edition and the Composite Sharp PVM Edition presets at first glance for example. Both look spectacular but I will continue to add some specific tweaks to suit the various platforms as I see fit.
Stay tuned for the updates and spread the word! Maybe you can try them out and share some of the first screenshots if you like the way they make your games look! Do remember that they were made and tested with 8 and 16-bit era games and systems in mind. Anything after that is uncharted territory for me and my presets but I do enjoy a challenge.
I’ve also seen some great looking PS1 shots! In the future I might include some early 32-bit era systems in my testing but the Dreamcast/Naomi/Atomiswave, 480p/480i “hi-res” 128bit (I think I heard that term used to describe Dreamcast at least once) era stuff has proven to have some unique shader preset requirements which may require a different set of tools to get the same type of effect that my presets have on the older content.
Do you emulate older generation systems? 8 and 16-bit era as well?
Yeah it seems that anything above 640x480 internal resolution on Mame would cause blur.
Thanks for taking the time to link all these posts. That Launchbox post pretty much describes my situation and what I want to achieve, which is interchangeability of roms b/w the two cores. Doesn’t seem like it’s possible but I’ll take a look at the other posts too.
I have emulated 8 and16 bit era games but not on RA as I’m new to it. I have used Nestopia, Kega Fusion and Snes9x.
I tried the new Arcade Sharp PVM Edition and now, I cannot decide if I prefer it or the old 1440p preset, both look great even if they look different. I like the small amount of blurryness of the 1440p preset, and I also like the sharpness of the PVM preset.
Those are nice problems to have! Did you notice the Arcade Sharp 1440p PVM Edition as well in there?
For me, I can’t go back…lol
When I put on a game like The Simpsons and compare the outlines, the new preset really does a much better job. If you go back and forth you’ll see. For games that use a lot more shading and darker colours or more realistic graphics, I can understand your dilemma. Lol
It also depends on how close you sit to and the size of your screen. At a distance the older preset can hold its own but at point blank you can now notice the softness (some might say blurriness) compared to the new one.
I always wanted to have my text look sharp and legible especially in title screens like the Samurai Showdown III title screen, the area signs in Bonk’s Revenge and also the impressive white text on that deep green background in the title screen of Nekketsu Kōkō Dodgeball Bu: Soccer Hen and these new presets achieve that!
The good thing is the “Old” Arcade Sharp preset isn’t going anywhere any time soon so the option is always there to mix and match. The real reason these new presets actually came about was because for some reason I preferred the look of Super Mario World and Super Mario Kart with sharp, detailed outlines and text. Any visible smoothing looked strange to me and thus the RGB Sharp and RGB Raw presets were born and well the rest is history!
I’m really glad you’re enjoying them! Now I just have to find some time to play some games! Maybe I should take a break from preset development for a while. Lol
You know you can also try out my Composite - Sharp PVM Edition preset as an alternative to my Arcade - Sharp PVM Edition and my “old” Arcade - Sharp presets. It sits right in the middle. Not quite as sharp as the Arcade - Sharp PVM Edition preset but only slightly, yet sharper than my “old” Arcade - Sharp preset!
Hi, just wanted to share some additional information concerning controlling the pixelation on the graphics in some Dreamcast games which wasn’t being removed by the ScaleFX algorithm in my presets.
Take a read of this post here and the responses. I’m glad I took a break and didn’t waste even more time and energy trying to get things to be smoothed beyond what I had already achieved. Now that I have some more information I know where I have to focus my attention on and what level to set my expectations on going forward when it comes to that.
