If you mean the version of the Mega Bezel shader pack itself, it’s the latest one from GitHub. My resolution is set to 1920x1080 and I’m quite sure I followed the instructions correctly: Vulkan driver, aspect ratio set to full in the RetroArch settings, integer scale off in the RetroArch settings and the rotation part too. I also should probably have clarified that I removed the bezels and reflection via the parameters in the image examples I provided.
I messed around with the parameters because I found that the screen sizes available in the integer scaling mode are either too small or big to the point where it overflows. I wanted it to occupy the full space, but then those oddities appeared.
It hasn’t become clear to me whether that default look in my examples, such as in the first Zelda screenshot, is looking as intended. I brought this here because I found it quite odd and I thought it was unintended, but I couldn’t confirm that by myself. You obviously know what the presets are supposed to look like, as you made them. If I got confirmation that it’s correct, I wouldn’t bother messing around with the Opposite Dir Multiplier. I just did because I genuinely thought it looked better after doing so. But again, if it’s looking right then I know it’s just me not liking the author’s intended result, and not a bug of sorts.
Integer Scaling is a necessary evil sometimes when fiddling with multiple fine interacting patterns like these as you’ve seen when you tried to disable integer scale and run into all sorts of anomalies. We always work within some sort of limitations. With 4K and 1440p vertical pixels there are things you can do that you can’t do with 1080p vertical pixels for example.
You really think so eh? This is not necessarily how it works.
In the first N64 screenshot I saw the game image and a Trinitron Mask pattern applied to it. No visible scanlines is expected because that screen is probably running in 640 x 480 mode if you want visible scanlines then run the game at 320 x 240.
What else is not correct about the screenshot?
The second screenshot has bands of uneven scanlines which is what you’ll get when you change the Opposite Direction Multiplier.
So everything you see is working within certain limitations. As you can see there are many presets in the preset pack so I suggest you experiment with different ones until you find something that you like.
You can try the Computer Monitor with N64 for example or my Ultimate Slot Mask series. Play around with them.
Do match the Mask Layout with your screen.
Another thing you can try is enable DSR or VSR in your graphics card settings and set your desktop to 4K and try my 4K_Optimized presets. You’re graphics cards would need to be powerful enough to handle the higher resolution though. Anything around an AMD RX 6600 or nVIDIA Geforce GTX 1070 or better should be fine.
Most of these presets are designed to be relatively plug and play so if one doesn’t behave as you like try another one. They span years of experimentation and learning so there would be distinct differences between presets that I made a year or two ago and presets made last week.
Have fun!
Eventually you’ll be able to post screenshots so that should help with your communication. It doesn’t take long to build trust levels in this forum. Just use it more often.
You can use irfanView to compress your images to within the 4096KB limit or imgbb to host them.
Well then I assume I’ll just have to go with it, it’s just that in some systems the screen gets so small that it’s hard to read anything, like in Windows 98.
That’s enough confirmation to me that it’s just me not liking that preset, as if it was an issue you would obviously point it out as such. It’s just that I had found this pattern in that screenshot kinda odd:
That’s what led me to prefer the Opposite Dir Multiplier change, because I thought the following looked better than that:
But you clearly said the Opposite Dir Multiplier is not supposed to be messed with and so the second screenshot doesn’t look right. I’ll just leave it alone and search for a preset that better suits my liking and check out the recommendations you gave me.
It’s not something that I mess with but you’re free to experiment if you wish.
I agree the second one looks better than the first and it’s the second one I was describing when I asked what was wrong with the first screenshot. The images were probably downloaded in a reverse order in my phone.
So there appears to be uneven scanlines. You said you changed Opposite dir multiplier but what that did was probably increase the number of scanlines to the point where they were no longer visible.
In some presets there is an option to disable scanlines called No-Scanline Mode which is something you could try. You could also increase the Integer Scale Offset but that would probably cut too much of the image off for your liking.
You can try setting your emulator to 320 x 240 resolution and see if you like that. Another option is to increase the Mask size but if what you showed me with those uneven scanlines is how it looks out of the box then I’ll definitely take a look the preset itself and see if I can resolve it.
For this, try one of my more modern Shadow Mask Presets like Arcade MK Max in the Neo GX Folder and reduce the Mask Size to the lowest. You might have to play around with the Mask Shift/Stagger though.
I guess at some point I might make some of my own presets suitable for DOS and VGA CRT Monitor emulation.
Thanks for taking the time to bring these to my attention.
I now see the Opposite Dir Multiplier problem. It straight up removes the scanlines in some cases and washes out the colors. In the N64 case I set the resolution to 320 x 240 and it looked right with actual scanlines unlike with the Opposite Dir Multiplier change. So then I guess that specific preset was not made to work with 640 x 480. I revisited other systems and tried similar tweaks, some messing around with the parameters but never with the Opposite Dir Multiplier and I got them to look nice too, actual scanlines and all that. I’ll just need to find a good Windows 98 preset now going from all you said here.
Just for comparison in Zelda OOT:
Res is set to 640 x 480 and Opposite Dir Multiplier is changed
Res is set to 320 x 480 and that param is unchanged
Thanks again for your help and for these amazing presets. I would say their extensive customization options and specialization in each system and resolution is what makes them quite different from any of the standard RetroArch shaders. None of those looked quite nice on my system.
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.
It’s not so much that the preset was not made to work with 640 x 480 it’s just that when rendering 640 x 480 you need a certain amount of vertical pixels to render the scanlines and the Mask detail properly and the bezel and gap around it uses up some of these pixels.
So at 1080p and at that Integer Scale level there’s just not enough pixels to render everything correctly so the easiest and best solution might be to increase the Integer Scale Offset by 1. Even if some of the Bezel is cut off that can be adjusted and even if some of the game is cutoff thats actually how a real CRT deals with OverScan.
I’ve been playing around a bit with CRT-Guest-Advanced and other shaders.
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.
Looks fantastic!!! Thanks for posting this. I realize that some games look darker than others, and not necessarily has to be bright. This gives me an Idea how they really look in reality, Final Fantasy VII looks quite darker than Megaman. So I don’t have to be scared if using the same gamma, games look darker than others. It’s one of the things that made me go back and forth. Now, if this happens, I will realize it’s a normal thing.
I would like to take a moment to thank Cyber for his great work, it has been one of the most important reasons why I just registered in this great community!
I’ve been using these fantastic presets for a few days now and I can only say that they look fantastic on my 32 inch LG 4K monitor (which admittedly is not the best panel, it’s a VA, but I use it with sRGB picture mode and I can’t complain about the colors).
However, the truth is that for someone with limited knowledge of CRT panels like me (who enjoyed in childhood playing games on a Sony Trinitron and LG Cinemaster), I find the amount of presets available a bit overwhelming and would love a curated list of “expert recommendations” based on platform, even though I ultimately choose what I find most visually pleasing (I’ve only played NES games so far and really liked CyberLab_NES_for_Core_Blargg_S-Video_Filter, CyberLab__NES__ADV, CyberLab__Blending-And-Transparency__PVM-Edition__ADV), mostly so I know what’s closest to the original experience.
I would also like to know if there are any recommended settings for Steam Deck (which uses 1280x800 resolution), as the presets at 1080p make the bezel look very small, like this:
And when zooming the viewport, I don’t know if the original preset arrangement is preserved (sorry for the link, I can’t post more than one image as I’m new here):
You might want to swap the Mask Layout setting depending on which one allows you to see RGB phosphors when you go right up to the screen.
What’s wrong with VA? I have a 1080p Toshiba Regza which absolutely blows the doors off of a 4K LG IPS that can’t do 4:4:4 at 4K 60Hz. VAs have better black levels and contrast ratios too.
I recently switched the colour space to DCI-P3 so you can also try that mode if your display supports it.
I can understand why but don’t be. Don’t overthink, just play with them like a sandbox. I’m always working on new things, trying stuff out. That doesn’t mean that the old stuff is obsolete, it’s just different. That’s why they remain in the pack.
If you want to know which presets I use, just read this thread in reverse chronological order and you’ll see that I post images as well as the presets used so you can just follow my lead and you’ll be fine.
If you take the time to read the first post, you’ll see that I have made recommendations for presets and systems which I tend to use together.
If you look in the Console Specific Presets Folder and try to Load a shader, you’ll see that the presets are grouped according to which system you’re currently using. So that narrows things down a bit.
If you want a bit more of a curated section, then you can try my CyberLab Neo GX Folder. Even that has grown but it contains my latest work, which I have attempted to highlight for the very same reason you have pointed out.
You see it’s easy for the presets to grow quickly because for each variation of a preset I make for any system, I tend to make presets for different types of CRT Masks. So that automatically amplifies the available presets.
I could further subdivide these into folders but I didn’t want navigation to be so cumbersome and I really want things to be as front and center as possible. So take a look for yourself, if you’re playing any system, the presets are usually automatically grouped already in alphabetical order so you can just focus on the ones for the system you’re currently playing and ignore the rest.
Also be sure to save Core Specific Presets and/Game Specific Presets so you don’t have to worry about loading up your favourite presets every time.
Another sort of “Curated List” of presets exists in the CyberLab Special Edition Folder. You’ll find a much smaller selection but what they’re really there to do is serve as templates or examples of how to combine presets with my TV Graphics overlays (and by extension other preset packs graphics).
Then there’s the Soqueroeu-TV-Backgrounds Special Edition presets folder. Again you’ll find a much smaller subset.
So feel free to have a conversation because I’m here to share knowledge about my presets pack especially knowledge about how I use it.
I hope you’re enabling the Blargg-S-Video Filter in your NES core like the name of the preset tells you to do.
This is really what you should be doing.
I guess you mean the presets in the 1080p Optimized Presets Folder as the presets themselves don’t conform to any resolution.
Hey, if it works it works, but what I would probably try in that position is to increase the Integer Scale Offset.
That works for presets which have the Int. Scale Mode turned on, which means it’s set to 1 or 2.
So that’s how you increase the viewport size for Integer Scale presets.
For the Non-Integer Scaled presets (the ones with Int. Scale Mode set to 0), just increase the Non-Integer Scale % and the viewpoint will increase.
It definitely looks okay though.
Another thing you might want to play around with if you’re trying to get things to look good on an “unsupported” resolution, is the CRT Mask Size.
By the way, I think there might be a few 900p presets or maybe just 1 in the Soqueroeu-TV-Backgrounds Special Edition Folder. Of course if you read my first post, you will know that you have to have Soqueroeu-TV-Backgrounds installed in the correct folder to use them.
No problem, I like to see nice pictures like these of my presets in action and it’s good to hear back from the community to know and remind me that people are actually using and enjoying what I have shared.
Please let me know how things go with the Steam Deck customizations and what kind of performance and experience you’re getting out of it.
Pro Tip: For users who are just below the 60fps threshold when using my shader preset pack, disabling Noise in the Shader Parameters might provide just enough of a speed bump for a fully playable experience.
