CyberLab Death To Pixels Shader Preset Packs

I’m a bit confused, the mask looks rotated to me.

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Maybe I’m wrong and @guest.r is already rotating the masks when his tate mode is on which is what I set with the scanline direction…

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I just rotated the screen.

Rotated scanlines look like the mask rotates also. I not sure it aligns perfectly, but it rotates.

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I just tried running Varth in vertical mode and it was a disaster. When I finally got it vertical, it ended up stretched horizontally.

I’m going to read through the thread to see what others did then come back with my findings but it’s not happening automatically after following the setup instructions. I even tried the base preset and it was the same.

I suspect it’s my fault as this is the first time I’m trying to run any game vertically in RetroArch.

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I suspect you have the RA core setting to allow rotation on. It needs to be off. So in this case it will not happen automatically…yet. (HSM is working on a feature.) You will have to turn the setting of and then rotate the CRT in the shader parameters.

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I had turned it off and it still didn’t work as expected. I will have to do some backtracking through some posts and see exactly how everything is supposed to be setup.

If I don’t get through, I’ll probably post some screenshots of what is happening and ask some further questions.

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I’ve been playing around with Core Res Sampling on the RGB Sharp 1440p PVM Edition preset on Flycast, and I must say I really like the Scanline Dir Downsample Effects on Code Veronica X :

https://imgur.com/a/bd2UgmF

Maxing it out to 200 gives a really good looking blur that smoothes out the edges quite nicely, don’t you think ?

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That is correct, I explained myself wrongly before. The Viewport zoom doesn’t change anything AFAIK, but the zoom ITSELF changes the appearance of the scanlines and mask. It is not super obvious but it is there, and my “OCD” can’t handle it. :laughing:

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Okay, well I hope your OCD can handle the changes to the mask settings I just made. Thanks to your screenshots, I continued some work on my 1440p Optimized presets that I had scheduled. Also, I wasn’t able to get Varth looking properly on my first attempt at vertical gaming. Can you summarize and post all the settings you had to change in RetroArch, FBNeo and my Shader Presets to get things working properly please so that the next time I’m online I can follow your recommendations and get things up and running easily?

You can let me know if everything still works properly with the new update I just posted.

The ZOOM is not integer, but the mask is integer. This means that the mask is only scaled to the scalines at integer stages. The rest of the time the mask will not perfectly align with the scanlines.

Either of the scaling methods that scale the screen will produce more consistent results, but if you want perfect sub pixel alignment use integer scale.

The mask only scales at integer to avoid sub pixel misalignment.

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Without the Viewport zoom the mask does not ever scale unless you change the MaskSize parameter in the guest parameters.

With the Viewport zoom if you scale up enough it will switch to the next integer scale (this is independent from the integer scale we use for the screen). E.G. If the MaskSize is set to 1, I think you would have to zoom in to around 200% for the mask to scale up to the next increment.

I’m probably going to put in a parameter to control if the mask scales with the Viewport zoom or not.

And probably default to not scaling the mask.

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Long time no see @Tromzy! I’m glad you’re having a good time with your customizations!

@HyperspaceMadness has been talking about the anti-aliasing effect this setting can have for quite some time now. Once you like the results you’re seeing, I’m happy.

There was a time when my presets probably had that setting at 100 or 200, that was back in the rolling scanlines days (but that was before the recent changes to the blur behaviour and strength). I’m now very sensitive to blur though so I’m very cautious about its use particularly in older 8 and 16-bit era games. If there’s too much blur, things appear out of focus for me, especially at close distances and that can wreak havoc on my eyes.

Have you tried setting the setting above it to 200? Also, you can add blur in a different way (I think it works and looks differently) by lowering the Signal Resolution in GTU settings. There are 3 settings to use. The 1st affects the resolution and sharpness of the image itself, while the other 2 seem to affect the colour resolution and can cause the colours to blend into each other more to create an NTSC Composite effect.

Have you tried my new Arcade - Sharp, Arcade - Raw, Composite - Pure and Composite - Sharp presets yet? Just by using those alone, you should see a reduction in aliasing due to the mask and scanlines settings.

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Vertical Mode Enabled! It wasn’t really hard to do.

Settings...Core...Allow Rotation - Off
Settings...Video...Output...Screen Rotation - Normal
Shader Parameters - Rotate CRT Tube - 1

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Yeah, once you figure it out it is pretty easy. That gives me hope @HyperspaceMadness can find a way to automate it. (We just need a cool magic trick.)

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Perhaps this step as well as an instruction to save a Game Preset in the first post of the HSM Mega Bezel thread and/or readme, might go a long way?

I couldn’t find the Settings -> Core -> Allow Rotation -> Off, but I turned ON “Enable Vertical Mode”, and checked the other two that you did, and got Raiden Fighters looking pretty.

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Try this:

@HyperspaceMadness has since updated the HSM Mega Bezel Installation Instructions to include this.

That definitely looks awesome! I could imagine that on a high-end Laser TV or some decent projector!

That’s definitely making a case for having a 65 or 75" instead of a 55" one for those vertical gaming moments where you still want things to look big! Of course someone could just invent a giant rotating wall mount designed to accommodate a 55-incher.

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Ok so I made the changes and here is the comparison:

Original Composite sharp

After setting

Int. Scale Mode = 0

Non-Integer Scale % = 100

After further setting

Interlace and fake scanlines trigger res = 475

So as you can see the brightness becomes a bit too much. Any way to fix this?

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What exactly are you trying to accomplish by doing this?

It’s bright because you removed the scanlines.

You can lower the Post CRT Brightness Setting. Probably set to 100 might bring the brightness around where it was before.

That setting is near the top.

The reason I asked what you what exactly you were trying to accomplish was because there shouldn’t be any scanline anomalies at the stock preset settings but then I remembered you would like to maximize screen real estate.

I just have a feeling that there might be something wrong your approach. I did my Dreamcast testing a while back and I doubt you should be having issues if you try to make the screen larger. Trying to make things smaller, well that’s another story. What happens when you just use Viewport Zoom?

I’m going to retest this by the way. I find image 1 looks the best. I wouldn’t settle for those scanline issues in 2 and those mask “highlights” in image 3 just to get things larger. Perhaps you might want to look into minimising the Bezel thickness as @Duimon has shared in a prior example.

As you can see there are artifacts I wanted to get rid of as per @HyperspaceMadness instructions. Idk if they are visible in the screenshot.

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