Mega Bezel Reflection Shader! - Feedback and Updates

RetroArch Additions Shaders
#2451

The anti-flicker worked! Wonderful. I’ve n64 and GameCube up and running now, looking wonderful in the HSM presets ^^

Pretty much been able to get everything else running via RA, besides PCSX2 - it just seems to not run in RA, even with the right video render set: tried glcore and d3d11 both turn up failed to load content, and I believe I’ve the correct bios in place. They seem to run in the standalone PCSX2 just fine, though.

The reason I bring this up is, has anybody had success in combining ReShade and these Shaders? My thought would be, since I can’t get RA to run PS2 games atm, I can use PCSX2, with ReShade, and combine these shaders (I feel like I’m saying reshade, ???, profit here since I don’t know how difficult or impossible that may be) to get the same beautiful HSM output I’m getting for every other platform so far… is this doable?

1 Like
#2452

Thanks for confirming this, I’ll probably turn off anti-flicker by default since it can create this kind of artifact when used in a 3D game.

A number of people have gotten PCSX2 running, so it might be something with your setup. Try a fresh install of Retroarch just in case.

I would recommend continuing to work on getting PXSX2 working in Retroarch.

Reshade is a whole new system, and the only way to get the Mega Bezel running in it would be to port the whole thing to Reshade which would be a huge amount of work, and certainly won’t be happening any time soon by me :wink:

Hi I realized that I never answered this. if you are still getting the aspect ratio changing when it’s unexpected could you post what the debug text looks like so I can see what the resolution is? This will help me improve the auto aspect ratio.

To work around if the aspect ratio is wrong set your aspect ratio to explicit, or one of the predefined ratios instead of auto and it will stay stable.

2 Likes
#2453

In the spirit of updating past my initial queries, I thought I would just drop this in.

I’ve been sitting for a while on how to get past that “Failed to load content” issue, and I actually just now, went into the cores folder, removed the pcsx2 dll (and a .dll.zip of the same file name? Not sure what that is) dropped this: https://github.com/aliaspider/pcsx2/releases/tag/v0.1-libretro in, ran RA and ran a PS2 ISO. And it just worked. Loaded the HSM shader without a hitch, and I’m chasing apes with a net who have flashing red lights on their noggins, I couldn’t be happier :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

Hoping this may help anybody else who is going through the RA PS2 journey and maybe hasn’t quite found the right away about it. I followed all the usual guides (using the binary build of pcsx2 etc, getting the right bios) but I’m just happy to confirm I’ve finally got this working with this little process above.

The aspect ratio thing was the black cropping issue actually, I should have really clarified that it was the same issue I’d just explained it differently on two occasions, sorry! Consider all my concerns quashed!

4 Likes
#2454

Hey @HyperspaceMadness, can you tell if there is any really significant difference in performance and features with this new shader? Visually I didn’t see any major changes.

3 Likes
#2455

Performance wise I am getting on RTX 2060 at 4K with the ADVANCED preset:

  • Old Guest-DrVenom ------------------------ 80fps
  • New Guest-DrVenom-Advanced ----- 76fps

Feature wise it’s definitely an improvement, the interlacing options are better. There is also a slight blur that you can add which does a nice softening on the scalefx stuff or high res input.

It has deconvergance & noise

Afterglow has been corrected to work with brightened black so you can get scanlines on black and afterglow

The Glow should be more consistent than past versions, there are also some scanline pixel smoothing stuff which is better as well. Better organization & control of the Glow, Bloom, Brightness

It will have the color options put back in (Color Space, Color Profile, Temperature, Saturation & LUTs (This stuff is obviously in Grade, but this is much more accessable since it’s much fewer parameters, and Grade is really for the tweakers)

7 Likes
#2456

image

Mega Bezel is updated to V 0.9.013 2021-05-30

Changes:

  • Guest-DrVenom Advanced
    • Guest-DrVenom updated to Guest-DrVenom Advanced!!!
    • Additional Guest features added to other CRT shaders, e.g. interlacing, deconvergence
    • Added Threshold where afterflow appears
  • Turned OFF Anti-Flicker by default
  • Decreased Scale Increment for Cabinet Glass
  • Added BASIC-BORDER-EXTRA-PASSES preset
    • Added Max-Int-Scale__BASIC-EXTRA-PASSES in Variations folder
    • Has the scaling and extra image processing of the Mega Bezel but no Bezel or Reflection
    • No Curvature, uses integer scale and will scale to slightly larger than the screen
  • Resolution Debug Info
    • Fixed errors in rounding in resolution debug info
      • This should now report the correct screen size and integer multiples
    • Added text to show which base preset type is loaded
    • HDCore presets or other presets where there is resolution reduction in the first pass this is reported properly
  • Added MBZ__3__BASIC-BORDER-WITH-REFLECT__EASYMODE
    • Good for low spec systems, uses 1/3 less processing than Guest-DrVenom counterpart
  • X Position offset added to ADVANCED presets
  • Added Brightness parameter to the gamma in and out to adjust brightness after the CRT pass, should be helpful for things like vector games
  • Grade
    • Updated to latest version from 2020-11-20
    • This fixes the darkening which seemed to be happening before
    • Added On/Off Switch
    • Removed the LUT options from Grade since Guest’s LUT is now included
    • Removed Vignette since we already have a vignette in the Mega Bezel

Max-Int-Scale__BASIC-EXTRA-PASSES preset

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image1920×1080 889 KB

Smoothing Examples

No Smoothing

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Increased Horizontal sampling

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Increased Horizontal sampling with some downsample blur

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Increased Vertical sampling

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Note: @duimon has mentioned that grade vignette doesn’t affect the overall brightness whereas the mega bezel does, so I will probably update the mega bezel vignette to keep the overall brightness

6 Likes
New CRT shader from Guest + CRT Guest Advanced updates
#2457

Enabling “Threaded Video” under Settings/Video seems to produce surreal results. My frame rate was bumped to limits of the core used, but i have some suspicions. :smiley: Nevertheless, this mode might improve glcore performance, hard to say how much.

1 Like
#2458

What setting are you using here for the ‘downsample blur’? Looks great!

1 Like
#2459

Yeah it’s a nice effect

This is the settings in the preset in the variations folder

Smoothed-ScaleFX_Horz_Only__STD.slangp

HSM_CORE_RES_SAMPLING_MULT_SCANLINE_DIR = "500"
HSM_DOWNSAMPLE_BLUR = "100"
HSM_DOWNSAMPLE_BLUR_OPPOSITE_MULT = "0"

What this gives you is only the horizontal blur and no vertical blur. The other thing this preset is showing is MDAPT at 1 which blends the checkerboards.

Since now ScaleFX is always on, if you use core res sampling at 100% the image will be as if there is no ScaleFX, then as you change the sampling multiplier you reveal the results of the ScaleFX pass which smooths the contours.

4 Likes
#2460

Thanks! I hadn’t tested it first without asking. :blush:

1 Like
#2461

hsm
hsm1386×748 95.9 KB

Hmmm… lots of hardcoded paths this release. Is this the intention? This requires the whole shaders pack to be in the same directory as the RetroArch exe.

1 Like
#2462

Ah ok I forgot this. I’m now autogenerating the presets and I need to do a pass at the end of my preset generation to turn the absolute paths into relative for people with this sort of setup.

For my info, What is the reason you have your shader directory not in the retroarch root? On windows this is default. Are you on Linux?

2 Likes
#2463

Haha! My good friend! I could bore you with a thousand reasons why I set the environment up differently XD

And yeah - I’m on Windows. The main reason is that I am a developer developing a universal frontend for MAME, RA, and a few others. I separate the UI from the emulation completely, and I actually only use the RA exe, the cores, and shaders from from the whole RA ecosystem.

Another reason - more specifically is - is that it is far too easy to overwrite shaders during updates of RA , and looking at the base RA shaders pack, I can’t help but think there’ll be a purge sometime soon… a lot of nonsense in there poorly organised. Just keeping my powder dry.

1 Like
#2464

hsm
hsm1920×1080 669 KB

Honestly though… What a shader. What a magnificent project this is.

5 Likes
#2465

Thanks! Which front end do you work on if you don’t mind me asking?

1 Like
#2466

image

Mega Bezel is updated to V 0.9.014 2021-05-31

Changes:

  • Guest-DrVenom Advanced
    • Adjusted default interlace option so it is like the last version and will more easily used with fake scan lines
    • Changed presets to local paths
  • Grade
    • Removed the Vignette from the Mega Bezel and added back Grade’s Vignette which is looking good!
    • Set the CRT Phosphor Gamut back to the grade default 2
8 Likes
#2467

Not released yet, my friend. And still years of work ahead :slight_smile:

It’s a great project, though, as it gives me an excuse to test games and try out amazing projects like yours :slight_smile:

2 Likes
#2468

For the Crt Mask Size (2K | 4K) option, should I use 2K or 4K with a 2560x1440 monitor ?

2 Likes
#2469

Hmm good question, it’s really a taste thing about what you like better.

1 is one pixel for each different color in the mask, and 2 is 2 pixels for each. It also depends which mask type you are using some of these feel bigger than others.

You remind me, I need to use BendBombBoom’s settings to make a royale-like preset

2 Likes
#2470

Here is a screenshot of FF9 with Beetle PSX HW and its awesome downsampling feature, using PSX_Alt Dr Guest Venom Advanced, tweaked a bit ; it may be a little too dark, but what can I say, I love strong scanlines :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

[Album] imgur.com
2 Likes