Mega Bezel Reflection Shader! - Feedback and Updates

I feel honored that you included my presents, I’m glad you like them and I hope everyone that uses them enjoy them as well. Only thing I will say is that the naming for each preset I feel should be renamed to what I intended each one for. The one labeled “Sonkun__32Bit__STD-NTSC.slangp” I use for Arcade/32/64/128 bit/480i/Interlaced mainly, the one labeled “Sonkun__Arcade__STD-NTSC.slangp” is what I only use for 8/16/PC systems like Sharp x68000, PC-98 etc. Just thought I’d define what use both presets I made them for more clearly. Once again thank you for including my presets.

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Thanks for the reminder @HyperspaceMadness! These are settings I used to play around with a lot in the earlier days of my shader preset development. I definitely can take a revisit as a way to maintain a relatively authentic, classic image while decreasing excessive pixelation at close viewing distances without introducing any additional Blur.

The only thing though is that by increasing this the number of scanlines is also going to increase so that might interfere with scanline alignment in some cases or alter the look of the overall image in other ways that may or may not be desirable. There always seems to be a trade-off/compromise somewhere when doing these things.

I’ll definitely play around with it again though. The proof will be in the pixels!

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Thanks for sharing these they’re great :star_struck:

I’ll definitely rename them to match what you suggest, I think I mixed them up when reading your post

You’re welcome!!! :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

Yeah, once you have scalefx on and start changing the number of scanlines vertically, you really aren’t looking at the original pixels from the core image anymore, but rather a quantized version of the ScaleFX pass.

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I’m a bit hesitant to reply. First off I’m very impressed what the community has done with this shader/bezel reflection business. it’s amazing.

second a truly minor contribution on my behalf, if it is at all… I was mocking about with mame and mame machines the other day and I got Apple II working… so I made a bezel for it… it’s not gorgous hi-res as the ones in this pack but Maybe, if it i’s used at all it could work as a start of, or something… I dunno,

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A little update on my gaming CRTs sideproject powered by the Mega Bezel shading powehouse. The new variation system leverages on five factors to deliver 56 per-screen combinations:

  1. CRT technology: APERTURE GRILLE, DOT MASK, SLOT MASK, PLASMA
  2. Connection cable: RGB and COMPONENT
  3. Visual variations: ENHANCED (scalefx, mdapt), SHARP, SOFT, FAST (potato), MONOCHROME AMBER/GREEN/WHITE
  4. Distance from screen: NEAR, NORMAL, FAR
  5. Ambient lightning: DAY, NIGHT

Here’s some samples (view full resolution images to enjoy CRT details):

Monochrome Plasma / composite / Sharp @ Commodore 1201

Slot-mask / RGB / Soft @ Commodore 1080

Dot-mask / composite / Soft @ Ikegami htm-1550r

Aperture Grille / RGB / Sharp @ Sony pvm-14l5

The combination of different cable connections, visual variations and CRT technologies will deliver a never seen before variety, with some space for further expansions (S-VIDEO, RF, Monochrome variants, color temperatures, specific curvatures).

Some examples: if you like crispy, vivid, better-than-original smoothed graphics go with RGB ENHANCED. If you prefer a bloomy, softer and bright experience, choose COMPOSITE SOFT. If you need a realistic and modern sharp detail, try RGB SHARP. Feel nostalgic? Taste a MONOCROME amber, green or black and white experience.

You will find more details on the announcement post.

Can’t wait to complete this and release to the wild! Atm I’m tuning the setting for each specific monitor to feel more like its real-life counterparts. Time for some trial-and-error process… wish me good luck! :crossed_fingers:

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Hey this is quite a nice reference shot!

Why don’t you try to re-draw this with some vector application like Adobe Illustrator or equivalent? It’s a quite simple shape and a very good starting point for making great hi-res assets :wink:

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@HyperspaceMadness have you ever considered allowing gradients? Or will that be too weird?

Edit: To specify I mean on the Bezels of course.

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Really liking this last major update, @HyperspaceMadness. Seems to run good enough on my home laptop now to use the advanced presets for many systems, and at least standard on more demanding ones. I recently moved my laptop to a different room, where I now have it hooked up to a 42" TV instead of the Ultrawide monitor at the moment. Even at “only” 1080p, it still looks verrry nice.

Thank you again to you , @Duimon, @Cyber, @TheNamec, @soqueroeu, and everyone else for such dedication and effort into this ever-expanding project!

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Hey thank you indeed for your continuous support and enthusiasm! It really fuels my motivation in devoting countless hours to Mega Bezel projects :muscle:

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Thanks for the feedback @Neofuuma, it’s great to hear that the improved performance is making it more accessible :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

Yeah I totally agree! The community is one of the central things that motivates our team & project and has encouraged us to bring this project to the level of finish it has reached. Thanks everyone for your contunued support! :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

I also want to shout out to the Mega Bezel team, the work you’ve created and your feedback has really allowed us to reach a new level with this stuff. Without all of that contribution and direction it would only be a shader, with its addition it’s so much more! :star_struck:

To more fun in 2022! :partying_face:

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Cheers!! Clinks

I agree with and appreciate this post! You’all should read the kinds of comments people have been saying about HSM Mega Bezel Reflection Shader and my presets when they try them for the first time! Most have been more positive and appreciative than I would have ever imagined!

I have an idea to do a collage of some of those positive affirmations, which convey and embody the impact our work is having on people’s lives! It just makes me want to reach out and find more people to share this experience with and show them what they may not have known they needed - to paraphrase one comment!

Due to the pandemic social life and doing many of the things that I would normally be doing no longer exists so this “place” has become a virtual clubhouse for me. It’s my favorite place on the internet right now!

Thanks again for the opportunity and camaraderie! All the best for 2022!

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On another note, is it possible to have in between values for ScaleFX? I know the Pre-Scale function probably regulates this but it would have been nice to have some ReShade like wet/dry blending controls.

I can imagine some of my presets with maybe 50% or 25% ScaleFX applied to them might look pretty awesome. It would be a simple way to fine tune things not necessarily simple to implement though. If not a wet/dry slider, perhaps a strength parameter can work wonders as well.

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So the core resolution multipliers are basically this. Scalefx itself takes the core image, does its calculations then outputs an image 3x the core resolution. With the core res multiple at 100 we are sampling at the core resolution. At 300 we are sampling at the full scalefx output resolution, so values between these will sample at an intermediate resolution.

As mentioned before if you keep the core resolution multiple at 100 and increase Downsample Blur along the scanline direction you can get some antialiasing of shapes while not increasing the sampling resolution.

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Mega_Bezel_Logo

Mega Bezel is updated to V 0.9.096 2022-01-05 Rev 1

Changes:

  • Fixed Tube Highlight with Flip Viewport
  • Fixed 3DS Screen Transparency
  • Updated Cyberlab presets

HERE ARE THE LINKS!

Shader Package Approx. 15 MB

Extra Examples Package


INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS

  • You MUST use Retroarch Version 1.9.8 or Later (It will fail to load on earlier versions)
  • If you have previous versions of the Mega Bezel installed:
    • Delete the old Mega Bezel stuff from shaders/shaders_slang/bezel
    • Inside the .zip is a bezel folder, copy the bezel folder into your Retroarch/shaders/shaders_slang folder
    • The final path to the Mega bezel should be Retroarch/shaders/shaders_slang/bezel/Mega_Bezel
  • Set video driver to Vulcan
    • It will run in GLCore but seems faster in Vulcan
  • Some users have run it successfully in D3D11 but with a slow load time
  • Set Video / Scaling / Aspect Ratio to Full
    • This will match your monitor aspect aspect ratio
  • Set Video / Scaling / Integer Scale to OFF
  • Set Video / Output / Rotation to Normal
  • Set Settings / Core / Allow Rotation to OFFImportant for FB Neo
  • Load a preset in the shaders menu, Mega Bezel shader presets are found in:
    • shaders/shaders_slang/bezel/Mega_Bezel/Presets
  • When you save a preset make sure you have the Simple Presets feature set to ON
    • This will save a preset with a reference to the preset you loaded plus whatever parameter changes you made
    • This will keep your presets loading properly when the shader updates in the future

3ds POTATO!!!

The parameters needed to be copied over from the STD preset for proper alignment, and second screen left/right crop should be set to 10

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I would recommend setting

[Bezel General]
  CRT Potato: 2

Edit: Forgot to ask if Reflection works with the Potato Shader or not? If reflection does work then is it just a bug?

The reason I keep asking about this is because any Scanline Dir Multiplier setting below 300 is a blurry mess for me. At 100 which is supposed to be the core resolution it’s basically unusable. It’s only when I get to around 450 - 600 that things appear to be in focus. This is with every blur inducing setting that I can think of switched off. This effect is exacerbated when Post CRT Brightness is increased.

The results are similar with ScaleFX on or off. Is this expected behaviour and do you have a similar experience?

…I just learned the hard way that [GDV - FILTERING] Horizontal Sharpness below the default 5.20 setting resulted in negative Sharpness (blur). I was inadvertently compensating for this by using high Core Res Sampling settings. Actually I wasn’t trying to compensate initially. It was just that because of my high Core Res Sampling settings in my earlier preset work I didn’t notice the negative effect of setting Horizontal Sharpness to 1.00.

Now that I’ve learned this, I should be able to get my sharpness/filtering settings right where I want them to be and do some further experimentation with lower Signal Resolution and Core Res settings.

By the way, why is a setting of 1.0 recommended for Subtractive Sharpness instead of the default 0.50?

Thanks a lot for the explanation again. It should make much more sense now that I should be able to use it properly.

By the way isn’t the Sampling Res in Resolution Info supposed to change when you change Core Res Sampling Settings? I noticed it’s not updating at all. I know you recently added caching to the Resolution Info.

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Nice. Looks like you also fixed the weird line in the screen. (Intentionally?)

I will have to do some work on my dual screen potatoes. Thanks!

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With Subtractive Sharpness set to 1.0 the filter width is tuned to mimic cubic/lanczos/spline filtering along with it’s properties. It’s quite more efficient than to include these as a separate option since Subtractive Sharpness can also be lower or even higher.

Subtractive Sharpness of 1.0 looks ‘best’ with horizontal sharpness from like 2.5 to 4.0.

The default setting of 0.5 (instead of 0.0) was chosen to still support the gaussian properties of the filtering while limiting the filter width - which can be quite large.

The value of 1.0 is endorsed for a special scenario. Nevertheless, the horizontal filter is quite versatile and can be tuned how one prefers.

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Yeah, this is supposed to update, so it’s a bug which needs fixing :slight_smile:

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Glad it’s gone, not sure what fixed it :upside_down_face:

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