Yep, just make sure you look at the screen or some close-up photos to ensure that that’s what you want.
Once you’re done with that, Shadow Mask is just a couple steps away.
You would just have to play around with the Mask Shift/Stagger and Mask Size settings. I used Mask 6 for my recent Shadow Mask Presets. I also had some Shadow Mask Presets from a very long time ago which used Lottes Mask (Masks 1-4).
I encourage you to try all the Mask Shift/Stagger settings until you get the best one. It’s really not that hard.
Here are some examples:
Introducing CyberLab Neo GX Mega Bezel CRT Shader presets!
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While I appreciate the attempt at humour, please remember that this thread is for CyberLab Mega Bezel Death To Pixels Shader Preset Pack Support and Feedback only.
This is not the place to promote yours or any other shader or preset pack.
I can tell you that based on this snarky remark and the attitude that you have shown in your own thread it has killed any interest I might have had in your shader. I see nothing special about it. A persons conduct in real life or online is important to me and because of this shameless attempt to promote your own shader in Cyber’s thread I hope that others will follow in ignoring your work.
Dropping “a bunch of stuff” on screen requires good knowledge of how glsl works, math knowledge, C knowledge, research about how a crt works etc, all in all certainly really good skills that you should prove you have first before making these statements
Thanks, I appreciate the appreciation @Winter47th.
This is just some early nomenclature I used to differentiate between my presets.
Raw/Pure - No Scale FX, no MDAPT, No Smoothing/Anti-Aliasing of the graphics using special shaders.
Sharp - Slight Smoothing effect applied using Scale FX while keeping the original pixel art as intact as possible.
Smooth - Full Smoothing effect and Death To Pixels (pixelation aka jaggies). This looses some of the resemblance to the original artwork as viewed on a CRT and might have some distortion in text and some other elements due to the Anti-Aliasing algorithms.
You can get a summary of most of the relevant information in the thread by reading the first post.
I’m glad you’re having a good time. I wish I had more time to enjoy my work but I guess you all can enjoy it for me which will bring me another kind of joy.
Thanks, this means I’ve come full circle because I started off making Trinitron (Aperture Grill) style presets then just continued to build upon them, eventually experimenting with other types.
The patent has long since expired so why not call it CyberTron? Lol
Tap on image then zoom in for best viewing. Desktop users, right click then Open in New Tab, then press F11 for FullScreen. Non 4K users, zoom in until it looks correct.
Tap on image then zoom in for best viewing. Desktop users, right click then Open in New Tab, then press F11 for FullScreen. Non 4K users, zoom in until it looks correct.
Absolutely amazing work, I’m quite impressed how good everything looks!
Thank you for constantly putting out gold Cyber!
I’m enjoying playing around with the settings, changing random stuff and learning what each setting does what.
I’ve noticed that the picture looks a bit dark in the CyberTron presets, and I’m doubting it could be because of the way the scanlines might be working to produce such a good picture. But I thought to ask if this is still the way it’s meant to look compared to the other 4k regular presets.
Also, since I’m on the topic of experimenting; I really like the way the scanlines look, and I want it to appear as full as possible on my TV. The way I enlarge the picture is via the 16:9/Full…etc Aspect Ratio setting, I choose full, would this be the best setting to enlarge the picture while keeping scanlines integrity?
If you look at my post above and possibly all the other recent posts I made previewing my Dot, Slot and CyberTron presets, you’ll notice that there are differences in brightness between the three types of presets.
You can easily spot the differences by looking at the reflections. This is something that I’m aware of and it’s not intentional.
If you did or didn’t notice, I put out at least 4 or 5 updates in quick succession since I released my new CyberLab Neo GX presets. Some of these were stealth updates. If you look at the most recent update, you’ll notice that one of the changes involves Adjusted Brightness in NES Neo GX presets.
The reason for this is that the Slot Mask and CyberTron presets were really after thoughts and by products of my Shadow Mask Neo GX presets and they arrived by me changing the Mask Settings but nothing else.
When I do an “overhaul” it usually involves experimenting with different approaches, techniques and settings which I’ve seen some value in pursuing.
It may be possible that a group of presets might look different from an older set. That’s okay by me because it adds variety to the preset pack and once things are within a certain acceptable range my eyes and brain tend to adjust and ignore the relative differences between presets.
In general I might take a while between new sets of presets as well as doing overhauls but once I get the initial stuff out, I tend to start playing my favorite games using them as well as sharing screenshots.
It is during this phase that the real testing begins as I start to notice things in some games that I may not have noticed in others and this is the time when I begin to get user feedback as well.
So, with new techniques, approaches and experimentation with new settings come new knowledge, learning and realizations.
What I’ve learned is that my Shadow Mask presets (and others depending on how they’re implemented) can have greater brightness potential than Slot Mask and Aperture Grill presets. This is because the only separation between the phosphors is the scanlines. This is because the black wires between the dots in the Mask which exist in a real Shadow Mask display are not drawn. While there is the most black in the Slot Mask structure and a little black in the seperator between triads in the Aperture Grill mask.
So all else being equal, Shadow Mask (Dot) will be brighter than Aperture Grill (CyberTron) which will be brighter than Slot Mask.
You can try out my latest NES Neo GX presets and observe for yourself. Compared to presets in the past my Neo GX presets might generally look different in the gamma and saturation department because I’m looking for a different and new look. If I did everything the same or calibrated everything the same then I might end up making the same preset I’ve made before.
I won’t look at the example at the moment because I’m still in tweaking mode and I wouldn’t want to be influenced by it.
There are a few things you can do, you can use another preset that has the brightness you desire because if you tweak the brightness manually you may end up just recreating something that’s already in the pack.
You can hold on a bit and see where my brightness tweaks and adjustments take my new Neo GX presets. The Arcade Shadow Mask Neo GX presets are staying right there because that’s exactly the way I want them to look, unless I encounter a particular situation where they look off and may require some additional tweaking.
Due to all of the above that I’ve indicated to you, my Slot Mask and CyberTron Neo GX presets might undergo further tweaking to reduce the inconsistency in the brightness between them and the Shadow Mask Neo GX presets.
Hmmm…there are probably at least 10 different settings which affect brightness in some way.
Right now, I’m sticking to Gamma_C and BrightBoost. In the past I’ve adjusted Gamma In, Gamma Out and Post CRT-Brightness and have never touched BrightBoost.
You really have to be careful when adjusting brightness to avoid clipping, revealing flaws in the darker areas that might have been masked and making things look washed out. When you interfere with one setting, you might eventually have to interfere with another to compensate.
I’d increase the Integer Scale Offset, which is what my Neo GX MK MAXX preset does. That is actually essential for the scanlines to be rendered properly in some games using my Shadow Mask presets.
That was quite informative, thank you so much. Appreciate you sharing your directions and your methodologies as well. Yes, I just checked out the Shadow Mask presets and they indeed look brighter, I also understood the reasoning why it looks different, this is quite interesting to be honest.
Your constant tips and helpful contributions in helping people is always inspiring in this and other threads as well. Thank you so much and keep up the amazing work!
I’ll always look forward to every update you produce cause your work introduced me to RetroArk : P
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Based on my observations, when all else was equal except Mask settings, my new CyberLab Shadow Mask Neo GX presets were brighter than my CyberLab CyberTron Neo GX presets and my CyberLab CyberTron Neo GX presets were brighter than my CyberLab Slot Mask Neo GX presets.
I immediately sought to rectify this and initially revisited my NES Neo GX presets individually.
For my next attempt at brightness normalization, I took a couple different approaches. I was satisfied with my CyberLab Arcade Shadow Mask Neo GX preset so using that as my control/reference point, I set out to normalize my CyberLab Arcade CyberTron and Slot Mask Neo GX presets.
The results are as follows:
You might want to take a look at this @Winter47th.
