It is not any issue, but i was posting as something curious, this is the 4k shadow mask downscaled to 1080p, i did it because i’d remember that you once wondered how the mask would scale in this resolution
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Oh, I don’t think I was wondering about that, just suspected that it wouldn’t look the same especially based on my experiences working at 4K resolution.
Also there were some anomalies that I encountered with certain games using the settings I used which may have required even more vertical resolution to eliminate. Having less resolution at 1080p may not really help.
If you’re instrested in 1080p_Optimized Shadow Mask presets from my preset pack, you can try my Computer Monitor presets.
You previously asked about combining NTSC with PVM before you deleted the post. Well for many cores, that’s easy. You can use one of my Shader Presets in combination with one of my Custom Blargg NTSC Video Filter presets.
In terms of the preset that you posted. The most important thing is that you like it. You can play around with the Mask Stagger and CRT Mask Size options to further tweak it for 1080p. Mask 6 is already a mask that’s pretty usable at 1080p and you can probably lower the size to 2 or 1 but it looks like you already did something like that.
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thanks for the useful info i just think before that maybe the blargg wouldn’t work with other presets as they were made for specific ones, i’ll try it out, also i’ll see if refining mask stagger could change something on the shadow mask
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Just finished Metal Gear Solid with the new PSX shader, been an absolute pleasure and the nostalgia was so nice being realized with such great precision. The game art direction just pops! Even the compression artifacts in FMVs are taken care of. Thanks Cyber!
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Wow! This is some great feedback here. I’m glad you’re enjoying this probably in the way that it was intended for all.
I wish I could have the time to actually play some more in depth games. I mostly just play quick, short, casual stuff these days due to time constraints. I probably spend more time making presets that others get to enjoy more than me.
The strange thing about this is that the “work” never seems to be completed. (I hate that about MMOs for example).
These CRT Shaders and presets are supposed to be like virtual TVs, right? Back in the day, we bought a TV and we used it for years. It didn’t change or need updating or much maintenance.
I know that although software representations of our favorite hardware have come a very long way, there’s still a lot of room for improvement. So we keep improving and adapting to new tools, ideas, techniques and technology as they come along.
Anyway, these screenshots look beautiful and I appreciate you decorating the thread with them.
You’re most welcome! Play on!
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All of these examples use my Blargg_NTSC_Genesis_S-Video_CyberLab_Special_Edition_II video filter preset.
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.
Non-NTSC (CRT-Guest-Advanced via Mega Bezel)
This is using an unreleased preset.
NTSC (CRT-Guest-Advanced-NTSC via Mega Bezel)
I embraced Blend Mode 1 here as I have done in all of my new presets. I just tweaked the bleeding using the NTSC Resolution Scale parameter.
The tweaking of the NTSC Resolution Scale parameter breaks the dedithering/blending and transparency but my Blargg filter preset adds them back.
I hope the new CRT Guest-Advanced-NTSC adds more control only but leaves the default Blend Mode behaviour intact because I always tend to work around or within the limitations of a tool while seeking the results I desire.
CyberLab_Genesis_Shadow_Mask_Neo-GX_for_CyberLab_Blargg_Video_Filter.slangp
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Thank you for taking the time to take these screenshots for me, but this is not the look I’m looking for.
I use the Adaptive NTSC sharpness feature from Guest Advanced and the picture I get is sharper than the screenshots you’ve showed me above. But yours has less color bleeding, which looks great though.
I was checking your Blargg filter files that you were talking about and it looks like they’re settings applied to the compiled Blargg filters available on RetroArch. Is that so?
If so, I was completely unaware those filters were even configurable. Now I have a new toy to play with. 
Great news!
At first I was looking for the files on your GitHub repo, but I wonder why I can’t find the files here.
But I’m curious. Why are you applying 2 layers of NTSC encoding in your presets? Why are you using Guest-Advanced-NTSC on top of the already NTSC encoded Blargg filter? Maybe that’s the reason why your pictures look so blurry to me.
EDIT: Sorry, I can’t show you how my preset looks because I’m not on my TV right now.
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No problem, they were just to better illustrate what I was talking about and what’s possible using my NTSC Filter preset compared to the built-in Genesis Plus GX preset you said you used.
Okay, I also use Adaptive Sharpness in many of my presets.
Yep.
They have been available for quite some time now. The original set is actually included in RetroArch but I recently made some updated ones that are exclusive to my filter preset pack for now.
You just have to click on “Releases” in that link or you can check the first post of this thread and use the link that’s there.
This is because they’re serving different purposes. Firstly, remember I’m using, Mega Bezel Reflection Shader so that’s already a combo pack of shaders that has additional features and parameters compared to standalone CRT-Guest-Advanced-NTSC.
I do a lot of experimentation and I’ve been experimenting with the HSM Mega Bezel Reflection base preset that combines XBR with CRT-Guest-Advanced-NTSC.
So far it’s proving to be quite versatile and I love the look that it provides. Other base shader presets I’ve used combine GTU and ScaleFX.
More specifically this allows me to keep what I like about CRT-Guest-Advanced-NTSC which I’m using in a general purpose manner while using my Blargg NTSC Filter preset to do the dedithering, blending and transparency, similar to what you’re currently using the built-in Genesis Plus GX Blargg NTSC Filter for, just more customized.
You might say it’s 2 layers but remember you can control how much or how strong of an effect is being applied from each layer. Coming from a music production background, mixing things especially in small, almost unnoticeable quantities and parallel processing is quite familiar to me.
Also, It doesn’t matter to me if I’m using 2 or 3 or more of a similar thing, what matters to me at the end of the day is how the output looks to me.
I’m pretty sure that the mixing or rather any interaction between the 2 is not the reason things look blurry. Blargg Filters have their settings. Depending on the resolution and sharpness settings the image will look sharper, clearer or softer as desired. In this case this is the setting I’ve settled on which gives this balance between fully blending the effects and Sharpness/resolution/blurriness.
I disagree that it’s blurry though. It looks in focus to me from 8ft away on a 55" screen. It will look even sharper if viewing from closer to the screen.
We’re also getting into subjective territory which is kinda not the reason I shared these screenshots. It was just to show why the Blend Mode 1 bleeding didn’t bother me so much and to show you that there was an alternative to the built-in Genesis Plus GX Blargg NTSC Video Filters.
One more thing I would say about sharpness and Genesis dedithering on the whole is that there is always a compromise somewhere. Remember the effect takes advantage of limitations in hardware so by its nature it’s not going to be a 100% perfect solution compared to hardware based transparency.
Using algorithms like SGENPT-MIX or MDAPT, you can have the image remain extremely sharp as in RGB sharp yet still get blending and transparency, however the cost is in the artifacts and false positives.
I have older shader presets which are intended to be used exclusively with the Blargg Filter Presets in which I have cranked up the sharpness as high as it would allow before seeing certain artifacts. So my presets don’t all have 1 particular look, they cover a very wide range of preferences and flavours.
Someone mentioned that they found the presets a bit too harsh/sharp. In came my Le’Sarsh 4K_Optimized Presets which softened things up a bit.
If you’re used to presets being a certain level of sharpness, then anything less sharp than that is going to stand out and we all have our preferences as well.
Be sure to also judge my screenshots using a 4K OLED TV (or BGR LCD) at full screen, native, PC input, Game Mode, RGB 4:4:4 Full Colour Format if you want to see them they way they’re supposed to look as well.
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Thanks for the detailed insight! 
I had no idea. I thought those were fixed. In fact, I checked just now and I have no filters installed, but that’s probably because I compiled it from source, so I need to download them separately.
Sure, but I was wondering where are the files sourced from for releases. It would be easier to check changes and update if they were available in the repo.
I thought the only purpose for Guest’s NTSC variant was to apply the NTSC compression, which is already being handled by Blargg. But if you’re specifically using it’s features to go for a certain look that’s fine as well! As you said, what matters is the end result.
Yeah! Sure, I understand. And now that I know Blargg’ NTSC filters are configurable I’m probably gonna play a bit with them. And I’m gonna give your Blargg settings a try as well.
Yeah. I’m used to sharpness levels similar to how mid-range consumer CRTs look on S-Video. I have one here at home and that’s the look I’m going for. But yeah, that’s completely subjective.
There’s no other way I look at pictures on my TV (LG C1)
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I just share my personal settings as a favour to the community so releases do the trick for me in this regard. Aren’t the releases a part of the repo or are you talking about the RetroArch repo?
If that’s what you’re referring to then they are in the RetroArch Repo but they were renamed for technical and consistency reasons by the RetroArch team. They’re called “Blargg_SNES_Custom_Psuedo_XXX_XXX.filt” where XXX_XXX are the console output they were tweaked for and the (relative) video standard that they’re attempting mimic.
When I started making them I sought to use them to simulate the console output side of the signal chain and used the Shader to simulate the TV Input side.
It’s not based on any actual TV or anything else in reality, just me reverse engineering my vision for the distinct quality characteristics of each system and set. So it’s a bit arbitrary.
The caveat is that Blargg made different filters for different consoles but we only have the SNES version to play with. It would have been interesting if we had the others as well but from what I gather its not necessarily a simple task.
Remember again, I’m not using standalone CRT-Guest-Advanced-NTSC so there’s a lot more going on under the hood than just using Guest-CRT-Advanced-NTSC part for NTSC compression. I could be using it because I like how the same blend mode works in certain circumstances but that feature is not available in the other CRT-Guest-Advanced variants. Same goes for the Adaptive Sharpness. Sharpening controls on the whole work a bit differently and the result is you might get a different image in the end. Remember the effect can be regulated especially by the use of the NTSC Resolution Scale Parameter so that can act as a passthrough. Plus I just wanted to see what would happen if I tried to mix the Guest Artifacts and Fringing with the Blargg. I like to think outside the box and try different things.
The thing I’ve noticed with sharpness is that viewing distance plays a significant role in determining whether something looks sharp or not. That same preset that looked a bit out of focus or blurry at 8 or 9 ft away might look really crisp and in focus from 5 to 6 ft away.
Haven’t you ever noticed that?
Also in my examples above I didn’t only include screenshots from presets which used CRT-Guest-Advanced-NTSC. The first set used CRT-Guest-Advanced. So if you’re saying that both sets are similarly blurry, then that’s your proof there that it’s not necessarily the combination of Guest-NTSC and Blargg NTSC filtering/encoding that’s causing the blurriness.
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Well, technically, the “releases” is a GitHub feature, while the actual Git repository would be the files themselves, pushed from your local repository.
But no matter! I followed your description and found your filter files in the RetroArch repo. Thanks!
I always wondered why we never got the others.
Yeah, you’re right. It’s certainly not the combination of them both.
And yeah, definitely, things will look very different at different distances. I noticed that when I was trying shadow mask presets up close on my monitor, but they looked much better on my TV a few meters away.
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You’re welcome. Do note that these don’t include my latest filter presets that are available in my Custom Filter Preset Pack. The original ones are still relevant though so I kept them around as well. I like to use the original S-Video preset with TurboGrafx-16/Turbo Duo games and the new S-Video preset with Sega Genesis games.
Don’t forget to post some screenshots of your Genesis preset so that I can “put a face to the name”.
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I’ll make sure to! As soon as I get back to tinkering. 
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Hi, amazing Project!
My question ist how can i get the shader without the Bezel?
And it feels like the colours are to Saturated. Rambi the Rhinoceros in DK2 looks red and not grey animore for example.
Thanks, best wishes!
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Thanks very much.
Really? This is supposed to be the best part. Anyway, I’ve answered this question a number of times here but I don’t remember the exact steps off hand.
You can use my No Reflection presets and set the Global Graphics Brightness to 0. Also increase the Integer Scale %, Integer Scale Offset or Non-integer Scale % until the image fills the screen.
You can also set the Aspect Ratio to Full in Shader Parameters and set the Aspect Ratio in RetroArch to Core Provided.
You can search this thread for additional solutions.
Alternatively, you can try the following preset which doesn’t have any Bezel and fills the screen.
This would most likely be a user preference thing. Also, there should be a bit of variety across the pack spanning different periods of experimentation, learning and development. Some people love the look of the “old” presets so I left them as is while adding new stuff.
Another thing is that some presets are still under development so they would be tweaked over the course of time. Good examples of this are my Neo GX presets, which started off relatively dark, but since then I’ve added bright variations.
The way I remember CRTs or at least mine, the colours were rich and vibrant. Feel free to lower the Saturation and raise brightness or Gamma to suit your individual taste.
You can still post a screenshot and let me know the exact preset you’re using though and I’ll take a look at it.
You’re welcome.
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About the brightness of the CRT.
Before 1997, there were a minority of models that made the whole game darker by pressing “external input” instead of “channel 2 etc”, but after the accident of “Denno Senshi Porygon” Darkening “game modes” began to increase.
As far as I remember, I think that Panasonic implemented it in all models. Also, most CRTs are installed, and SONY/aiwa was no exception.
The game button is the same terminal as VHS and DVD, and many people didn’t like it getting dark, so I think there were many people who played with a display such as “Video 1” instead of “Game”.
In fact, CRTs have a flicker that LCDs don’t have, and I think that reduced the brightness a little, but the SONY/aiwa had a flicker, but it was very bright and glaring.
Also, this is my subjective opinion or memory, but the older the model is, the brighter the cathode ray tube tends to be (unless it deteriorates due to life).
CRTs have evolved to be gentle on the eyes, and in the 2000s, “anime mode” and “cinema mode” were added, making them even darker. I hated it.
This story is about the consumer model.
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However, this is about Japan and Japanese (NTSC-J) CRT models, and I don’t know about CRT models outside of Japan. 
But I think that Japanese brands exported outside of Japan have a similar mechanism…
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Thanks for the insight. Since you seem to know a lot about Japan, do you know anything about the following games?
From what I’ve gleaned so far, these two games seem like two of the best games for the PC-Engine yet, absolutely no one seems to talk about them.
Sadly due to the language barrier, I haven’t been able to play them. I wish there was something that could be done about this. Even a text based walkthrough/translation would be a great help for me.
I’ve read about a stalled translation effort. Did you know that these games are almost completely unknown in this part of the world?
Have you played them?
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