You know you can also enter these values manually by opening the Shader Preset file in a text editor. That’s my way of working around situations where the UI doesn’t allow me to enter the exact values that I want. You can even go over some of the maximum values for some parameters by doing this.
Excellent! Clever idea to get more fine grained control.
So it seems as though your issue has been resolved!
I did however, find the differences in Core Output resolution discrepancy among your screenshots to be a bit strange. For example, where did 768 x 717 come from in the first screenshot and why do the others show 1920 x 1200?
i would like to know, should i use swanstation scaled dithering in combination with drez preset? or should i completely disabled dithering and enable or not true color rendering?
I have no idea as I’ve never used Swanstation. DREZ really has to do with limiting the Core resolution which flows through the shader pipeline so you’re free to render at higher internal resolution then downscale.
True color as far as I know refers to 24 bit colour, while 15 or 16 bit were referred to as high colour. Perhaps the PSX natively supported 15 or 16 bit colour so rendering at 24 bit True colour might reduce banding or the need for dithering.
So I guess you might be able to disable dithering if true colour allows smooth colour blending and gradation without requiring dithering but I’m not sure it works like that as I’m only speculating.
You could also probably allow dithering and use NTSC Filtering of some sort to blend the dithering. For example Blargg (not sure if it works with PSX but it might depending on the colour depth/format) or GTU, MDAPT or SGENPT-MIX in the Smooth-ADV presets or you can use the GDV-NTSC presets.
It all depends on if you’re going for a more authentic look or an enhanced look.
hello after trying a lot of things i had determined that apparently gdadapt and gtu on doesn’t solve much of the blockyness on fmvs, there it seems quite a lot on drez psx presets, and i don’t see more dithering options neither, apparently this only happens on drez presets
Perhaps. If you look through CyberLab Mega Bezel Death To Pixels Shader Preset Pack you’ll see that over time it has grown to contain over 150 different presets. What this suggests is that this is not a one size fits all kinda thing.
I have attempted to cover a number of scenarios by focusing on different aspects of the output that I may have wanted to see rendered in a particular way. One area that has never really bothered me is FMV. You seem to be interested in a customization that solves a particular problem you are having. While I do assist users who are experiencing bugs or would like to make minor customizations, what you might be looking for is a new shader, preset or settings that cover your specific issue or preference. This is a bit beyond the scope of what CyberLab Mega Bezel Death To Pixels Shader Preset Pack is about and also it’s feedback thread.
I’ve tried to point you in other directions, suggesting different presets to use but it might have been missed. I only introduced DREZ presets for those who might be experiencing crashes while running high internal resolutions. If you are not one of those then you probably don’t need to be running the DREZ preset.
Even though you have been submitting screenshots and attempting to describe the various problems you are experiencing, unfortunately the message isn’t always being received that clearly as I’m really not seeing what you are describing as “blockiness” in the FMVs as one example.
Perhaps this topic warrants a new thread as I really doubt it’s an issue with CyberLab Mega Bezel Death To Pixels Shader Preset Pack itself.
Remember CyberLab Mega Bezel Death To Pixels Shader Preset Pack is a collection of Shader Presets not Shaders. So some of what you might want to achieve might possibly be gleaned from trying to research and learn how to use some of the shaders themselves from the different threads available already and possibly by posing questions to the Shader developers or the general community about how to go about achieving this look or that look for example.
All of the PSX screenshots that I have posted were taken using Beetle PSX (Not HW) at native resolution by the way.
Okay so these Shadow Mask presets are actually my first to be developed mainly using the latest HSM Mega Bezel Reflection Shader v1.10.0 and are going to be released in my next preset pack update.
I’m still not 100% satisfied with the way that the NTSC Filtering Section is no longer working for me (and probably only me) since I haven’t seen anyone else complain but it is what it is. I’m just going to have to find a way to work around some of the changes like I usually do. I’ll have to implement a solution so that my existing presets will look the way they should but the show (or game rather) must go on.
Thanks @Neofuuma, I really like it myself! It’s amazing how some of these presets actually come to be.
After commenting on @zerowing’s post about an old GE Shadow Mask Vacuum Tube TV, I never thought I’d end up making one of my new favourite shader presets and so it begins because a great SNES preset won’t work well for NES so a new family of presets is bound to follow.
I’ve kinda always wanted to do a Shadow Mask preset but just like my first attempts at Slot Mask, I didn’t like the initial results at all.
What’s interesting about this preset is that it’s not as straight foward as some might think to get these things right, at least using the Mask Stagger option. If the stagger values are off even slightly there are some strange artifacts being produced, something like the NTSC artifacts we see in CRT-Guest-Advance-NTSC when changing the NTSC Scale value.
Depending on the value, these artifacts could be facing the wrong direction and also affect the alignment of certain elements on screen and it’s not really scalable.
So in my first few example pics something is off with the value and I spent quite some time trying to get an inbetween value that would work. I gave up on that because I needed to increase my integer scale offset anyway because it’s SNES.
The value that I had the Mask Stagger on before wouldn’t work for this screen size but I quickly found a value that rendered everything perfectly!
I’m even getting some NTSC artifacts and transparency effects using this preset just as a by product without even using any additional special NTSC filters.
This preset is also one of the cleanest I’ve seen in terms of text and edges. It’s a bit unfortunate that I can’t guarantee that all of my past presets will look the same with the new Mega Bezel going forward though but at least I have something new and shiny to focus on in the meantime.
At some point I plan to use these presets as a foundation for future NTSC versions. I hope by then I’ll be able to figure out those NTSC Filtering Section controls.
thanks for the advice, i’ll look into that but also i had noticed that aside of drez for me just being to have running the core resolution at higher resolutions, i had seen too apparently it provides more image quality than normal preset in my opinion, i’ve indeed started using drez as a solution for crashing, but as i dug deeper onto this preset, i’ve noticed it looks different compared to normal one, overall i think it has something to do with my screen calibration other than anything, as i had noticed that by darkering my brightness or in configs of the preset the thing dissapears, and that could also be the reason why i do see it and you don’t
Ok, let’s forget about drez for some very long time, i have this weird bug ith show screen resolution info where it is inverted, and i don’t see much of a thing
This looks like one for the HSM Mega Bezel Reflection Shader Thread. Remember CyberLab Mega Bezel Death To Pixels Shader Preset Pack is not a shader. The shader/shaders is/are what powers all of this. The presets are just settings for the various shaders.
I’m pretty sure I didn’t turn on any setting in any of my Shader Presets that would cause the info screen text to be flipped upside down.
Nevertheless, I think that might have to do with the way some hardware rendered cores output the video. It’s something that’s been mentioned several times in these forums.
Hello i had decided to use at the end native res and normal preset, also i do apologize for deleting messages so constantly, i cam here because i have a question about normal looking preset, is this how it should look like? i had noticed that by changing non scale and offset in the normal preset it doesn’t really change much of how it looks the image, also i’d like to inform that apparently i had checked between both drez and normal preset and apparently drez forces always a resolution will in normal preset it changes when it needs to change
I think I’ll let you be the judge of that. I’ve posted several pictures of my presets in action and some videos as well so you can easily get an idea of how things can look.
The screenshot looks good to me but I hardly test and play at 1080p these days and I hardly play and test PSX games in general.
Does it look good to you?
I’m not sure if I’m understanding what you’re saying here when you say non-scale and offset. Are you talking about Non-integer scale and Non-Integer Scale Offset? If so, is there a need to change those settings?
Another thing to remember is that screenshots only tell part of the story if you’re trying to convey what you’re actually seeing to someone else. The same screen shot can look very different on two different displays depending on their subpixel alignment for example. The screenshot may not convey this. Sometimes what is needed is a stabilized close up photo of the screen showing what’s happening at the phosphor level.
But as I mentioned above, the screenshot looks as intended to me.
Just a sneak peak at what I’ve been up to lately. I really like the way these new Shadow Mask presets are shaping up!
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.
If you tap to zoom in (no larger than fullscreen) on the following images you might notice strange artifacts if you observe the scanlines carefully enough.
In the first and third screenshots there are some scanlines which look different from the others. I’ll call them “runt scanlines” for now. They look narrower and not fully formed compared to the others. It’s easier to spot if the screen isn’t zoomed in to extreme, macro like levels.
My solution/workaround was to increase Integer Scale Offset.
Unfortunately, at these high integer scale levels a lot of the screen is cropped, leaving little to no area for the reflective bezel experience.
So I’m bringing this to your attention @guest.r and @HyperspaceMadness in case you might have not already been aware of it.
Any ideas about what might be causing this and how it might be solved or improved short of having 4K screens with an additional 120 to 240 vertical pixels?
I’m guessing that a 16:10, 4K display might be ideal for this although I’ve never heard of such a thing.
You can debug the scanlines by using the -1.0 mask. But usually it’s a product of the mask/scanline interaction on narrow scanlines and using non-integer scaling.
The “wrong” pattern might also emmerge in a different sequence if you use a game with some other vertical resolution. It might also happen with integer scaling and non-aperture masks. There is not much one can do about it, perhaps changing between odd/even integer scaling (crop or enlarge).
Just doing some experimentation with low gamma as well as trying to match the intensity and accuracy of the artifacting compared to reference image just for fun. I did the gamma adjustment from memory and in hindsight it ended up much darker than the reference image below.
This seems like a very interesting and informative picture to study if one were tweaking something like the “new” magic glow to try to nail the way colours sometimes appear to bleed or blend with surrounding pixels depending on the contrast or delta between neighbouring colours.
I always take these photos with a huge helping of salt when it comes to using them as an accurate point of reference though but they can still be useful at least for my approach to CRT shader preset development, which is based around whether something looks good to me or not.
