CyberLab Death To Pixels Shader Preset Packs

[PodunkPedant]

Alright, I reset everything back to defaults in Mega Bezel, found the largest bezel available, removed the reflections that were still overloading my GPU (commented out the default base shader in LITE_Bezel1.slangp to use MBZ__4__STD-NO-REFLECT__GDV-MINI-NTSC.slangp instead), and added back what I believe are the relevant parameters. HDR is still turned on in Retroarch with my peak and paper white luminance values from earlier, contrast is still untouched.

#reference "Mega_Bezel_Packs/Duimon-Mega-Bezel/Presets/Lite/Nintendo_SNES/SNES-[STD]-[Guest-Mini]-[Custom-Bezel_001].slangp"
HSM_GLOBAL_GRAPHICS_BRIGHTNESS = "40.000000"
HSM_STATIC_LAYERS_GAMMA = "0.620000"
HSM_CURVATURE_MODE = "0.000000"

post_br = "1.000000"

g_sat = "0.000000"
gamma_c = "1.300000"
mask_layout = "0.000000"

PR = "0.000000"
PG = "0.000000"
PB = "0.000000"
AS = "0.000000"
sat = "0.000000"

1. Bezel brightness and coloring looks fine now
2. Curvature effect was too dramatic for my taste so I turned it off (not sure if there’s a way to easily keep the curvature but tone it down)
3. Colors of the game are still too bright and saturated, not sure which controls to adjust for that but I haven’t spent any time trying to adjust anything yet.
4. Flickering effect is still present. I tried again to capture it on camera but it’s still hard to see. As Mario walks around, most of the environment scrolls by smoothly except the rough edges where the dirt path meets the grass. It’s subtle and looks to be very situational, but the flickering/shimmering is hard to ignore once you see it.

https://imgur.com/a/qAFtCKf

Again, only took me a few minutes to get this far and I can see how copying the final version of the code above into the user params files would apply them across all of the Duimon presets at once. But honestly the flickering is distracting enough to me to eliminate Mega Bezel as an option if it can’t be diagnosed and fixed. The higher overhead of these presets is still a bit much for my hardware as well, even with reflections disabled. There’s a significant delay when trying to save/load any of these presets and it made Retroarch freeze entirely on me twice today.

[Cyber]

Great! I’m glad you’re making progress!

@PodunkPedant

Curvature effect was too dramatic for my taste so I turned it off (not sure if there’s a way to easily keep the curvature but tone it down)

Yes, you can adjust the curvature amount and even leave the game screen (viewport) flat with the bezel curved. Curvature is pretty performance intensive though and so is noise.

Cropping and stretching as well based on my observations.

@PodunkPedant

Colors of the game are still too bright and saturated, not sure which controls to adjust for that but I haven’t spent any time trying to adjust anything yet.

I did say that my tips only applied to my preset pack so it’s possible that you might need to tweak your Paper White Luminance and Contrast.

Besides that you can adjust Gamma and Saturation but GDV-Mini is a completely different beast from GDV so parameters behave differently.

I do have a couple presets based on that in my MBZ__5__POTATO_NO_REFLECTIONS folder but do remember that my settings have only been validated for Mega Bezel v1.14.0.

@PodunkPedant

Flickering effect is still present. I tried again to capture it on camera but it’s still hard to see. As Mario walks around, most of the environment scrolls by smoothly except the rough edges where the dirt path meets the grass. It’s subtle and looks to be very situational, but the flickering/shimmering is hard to ignore once you see it.

I have no idea. Do you have any composite video filters enabled? In order to capture you might have to use Manual/Pro mode on your camera and select 1/60 shutter speed. Or record at 60fps. If your camera has a slow motion option it might capture at 60fps or 120fps which might work.

Other than that you can use capture software and capture at 60fps with HDR disabled.

@PodunkPedant

found the largest bezel available,

Or you could have adjusted the size of the Viewport and bezel by increasing the Non-Integer Scale % or Integer Scale offset if you’re using Integer Scale, Integer Scale Offset.

@PodunkPedant

removed the reflections that were still overloading my GPU (commented out the default base shader in LITE_Bezel1.slangp to use MBZ__4__STD-NO-REFLECT__GDV-MINI-NTSC.slangp instead),

Or you could have just used a No_Reflections or No_Reflect base preset.

I suggest you try again using a Mega Bezel Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor base preset. You might get better performance with that as well as better quality, the darkness is something that can be easily worked around by just adjusting the Gamma to suite.

I’ll provide the link to my SNES preset I made which you can use as a starting point.

With that preset you won’t have to use my SDR to HDR conversion tips since the extra brightness due to HDR has already been accounted for in that base preset.

Mega Bezel Reflection Shader! - Feedback and Updates

Yes, they do look different and there are several reasons why this might be so. These include the Preprocessing that the shaders which have been integrated in Mega Bezel might apply, other Mega Bezel customizations as well as the changes made between Megatron V5.6 and 5.7. Do also remember that the Mega Bezel Megatron Base and Root Presets are all using Megatron in SDR mode so you’ll have to switch the SDR/HDR parameter to HDR in order to set things up correctly and for changes to Peak Lumina…

Depending on the performance you’re getting you might want to switch to a lower performance tier Mega Bezel Sony Megatron Base Preset.

You just have to replace the first line in my preset with the filename of the new base preset.

As you can see, not many settings have been changed from the base preset so it should be pretty easy to get to something that works and looks good.

@Mega Bezel Reflection Shader! - Feedback and Updates Shaders

hcrt_max_nits = "660.000000"
hcrt_paper_white_nits = "660.000000"

@Mega Bezel Reflection Shader! - Feedback and Updates Shaders

hcrt_lcd_subpixel = "1.000000"

Just remember that these settings are for my display so you would have to adjust them to suite your setup.

In case you didn’t realize already, they correspond to the Peak Luminance, Paper White Luminance and Display’s Subpixel layout shader parameters.

Those are settings for 2 presets by the way. The suggested filenames are above the parameters in bold.

By the way this is another shader which includes a reflective bezel but is extremely lightweight even with reflections enabled and you can load your own backgrounds as well…and guess what? Duimon even has an overlay pack for those as well!

Koko-aio shader discussions and updates

>> Starting from the code from 2024-June-13, Koko-aio needs at least Retroarch 1.16 to work << Version NG-1.9.30 is up on github and should be available via online updater in Retroarch. Hi guys, first post here. In the past I made a shader for FS-UAE (Amiga emulation), but since i found that retroarch has a pretty good support for whdload games, I ported it to slangp so that it can be used with other emulators too. I’m not that expert with technical terms, but i’m fortunate enough to own a…

[PodunkPedant]

@Cyber

I suggest you try again using a Mega Bezel Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor base preset. You might get better performance with that as well as better quality, the darkness is something that can be easily worked around by just adjusting the Gamma to suite.

I’ll provide the link to my SNES preset I made which you can use as a starting point.

With that preset you won’t have to use my SDR to HDR conversion tips since the extra brightness due to HDR has already been accounted for in that base preset.

So now I’ve got MBZ__4__STD-NO-REFLECT__MEGATRON-NTSC.slangp injected into Mega Bezel again, but using these parameters you linked above.

// Darkens bezel to better match brightness of the game
HSM_GLOBAL_GRAPHICS_BRIGHTNESS = "62.000000"
HSM_STATIC_LAYERS_GAMMA = "0.560000"

// Larger game/frame while preserving integer scaling
HSM_INT_SCALE_MULTIPLE_OFFSET = "1.000000"

// Couldn't find these within Retroarch and not sure what they do exactly, copy/pasted from example
HSM_CORE_RES_SAMPLING_MULT_SCANLINE_DIR = "100.000000"
HSM_SCALEFX_ON = "0.000000"

// Turn on HDR, settings customized for my display
hcrt_hdr = "1.000000"
hcrt_colour_accurate = "0.000000"
hcrt_max_nits = "840.000000"
hcrt_paper_white_nits = "500.000000"
hcrt_lcd_subpixel = "2.000000"

// CRT's display settings
hcrt_crt_resolution = "0.000000"
hcrt_saturation = "0.260000"

Like I mentioned in my comments, I couldn’t find whatever parameters HSM_CORE_RES_SAMPLING_MULT_SCANLINE_DIR and HSM_SCALEFX_ON refer to in Retroarch or what they’re supposed to do exactly, so I just copy-pasted them into the new preset I have saved.

This gives me a pretty good looking baseline, very similar to what the standalone Cyberlab Megatron preset looked like. The brightness could be boosted a bit, but I’m sure that’s an easy fix. I discovered a while ago that changing the CRT’s resolution goes a long way towards brightening the image. The colors, CRT texture, and performance are all really good, no complaints there.

That just leaves the weird flickering.

@Cyber

I have no idea. Do you have any composite video filters enabled? In order to capture you might have to use Manual/Pro mode on your camera and select 1/60 shutter speed. Or record at 60fps. If your camera has a slow motion option it might capture at 60fps or 120fps which might work.

Other than that you can use capture software and capture at 60fps with HDR disabled.

My phone’s camera still can’t capture it, even in slow-mo or 60fps. I installed OBS to do screen capture instead and I can definitely see it in the recording on my end. Imgur compresses it to the point of being invisible again, so I uploaded it to OneDrive instead.

https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=!ADwKCrjXX8Q26mU&id=CDF895E44B80A11F!16350&cid=CDF895E44B80A11F&parId=root&parQt=sharedby&o=OneUp

It’s only visible where the brown dirt path meets the green grass as the environment scrolls across the screen. I also noticed while trying a few of the other presets recently that the files labelled ADV Smooth seems to fix it, but the performance hit from those presets are still too much for my PC.

Also I realize the framerate’s crawling in this video, but that’s just because OBS is running at the same time.

@Cyber

By the way this is another shader which includes a reflective bezel but is extremely lightweight even with reflections enabled and you can load your own backgrounds as well…and guess what? Duimon even has an overlay pack for those as well!

Thanks, I hadn’t heard of these before. I tried Duimon’s bezels for these briefly just now and while it’s a lot more performant than the Mega Bezel reflections, I still wasn’t too happy with it unfortunately. The simpler reflection effect here looks too artificial for my taste. Other than that it looks pretty much the same to me as the non-Megatron shaders in Mega Bezel, so I don’t see what advantage switching to Koko-aio would give me.

[Cyber]

@PodunkPedant

The brightness could be boosted a bit, but I’m sure that’s an easy fix.

Increase Paper White Luminance and/or decrease Gamma.

@PodunkPedant

The colors, CRT texture, and performance are all really good, no complaints there.

This is good to hear!

@PodunkPedant

That just leaves the weird flickering.

Hmmm…this is unfortunate. Maybe you can report this to @HyperspaceMadness and he might better be able to understand what might be causing that.

@PodunkPedant

so I uploaded it to OneDrive instead.

When capturing subpixel accurate CRT shader presets it’s imperative to not allow any chroma compression. So you have to capture in RGB 4:4:4 Full or it’s HDR equivalent. Nvidia’s ShadowPlay does this well. You can even use Handbrake to shrink the resultant videos down considerably. I suppose that AMD would have an equivalent. Their capture software is called ReLive.

You can also use OBS but you have to use the correct colour format for this special use case.

Also, it might be better or just easier for capturing and sharing purposes to switch the shader to SDR mode before capturing because it doesn’t seem to have been captured using the proper colour format or specs for HDR to be triggered automatically by the playback software.

I was able to barely make out what you were describing though.

[Cyber]

At last some proper CRT photos using appropriate ISO, so as not to overexpose the phosphors on the bright colours.

https://www.reddit.com/r/crtgaming/s/8ApTuc8QXZ