Mega Bezel Reflection Shader! - Feedback and Updates

Looks like they are using the :/shaders syntax that only works in Windows. :innocent:

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Thanks! It contains a lot of great work from other shader writers as well :slight_smile:

Thanks for pointing this out, I’ll fix this on the next release :).

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Can it be used on android phones?

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Possible on the newest flagship top of the line, but doubtful.

The Nvidia Shield TV Pro is the only Android device I know it runs on.

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Not sure what flat or snap means. Apps on a Mac are installed via a .dmg file and then dragged over to the Applications folder as an own App. RA is installed like any other App on /User/Applications. The folders a left on their default values. So RA is installed on my hard drive just as normal.

The Shaders work perfectly on my Windows Machine.

Any other way to identify the issue or get more detailed logs other than “could not load”?

EDIT: As mentioned. Standard presets and shaders work flawlessly.

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Ok, thanks, so you’re saying that when you navigate to this file

/Users/USER/Library/Application Support/RetroArch/shaders/shaders_slang/bezel/Mega_Bezel/shaders/HyperspaceMadness/hsm/hsm-add-params-all.slang

That the file is there?

I’m wondering if you can do a test to just move your whole retroarch folder to somewhere else on your drive and try it from there.

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Just moved over the whole RetroArch folder to /Users/USER/Desktop including the Roms and loaded everything from there. No luck, same issue.

Can maybe someone else test on a Mac as well?

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This is really weird, it’s saying that the file isn’t there, but it seems like it should be there.

Could you take a snapshot of your directory structure just so that I can visually double check everything is where it’s supposed to be? Also I assume you get this when you load the default STD preset?

This is the shaders folder.

Just found out something new: I was just testing everything out again, and weirdly the “GLASS” shaders from the Presets folder are the only ones actually working! So “MBZ__2__ADV-GLASS.slangp” works for example. Every other preset (incl. those in the subfolders) is not working at all.

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Maybe some files are missing from your installation. Like background.png for example. What resources/assets do all other presets use that glass doesn’t?

Have you tried setting recursive permissions on the folder to 755? (Or everyone R + W if you are using finder.)

I’m using DSR for upscaling other, non-Retroarch related stuff and now scanlines and even colors seem messed up, I had to take a picture as taking screenshots doesn’t show it, it’s like internally, the image is OK but is displayed like this, the last picture is an actual screenshot of the same screen. I checked and RA is displaying an 1920x1080 output, while the DSR upscale a few other games only, is there something in RA I can change to fix it? I have already tried setting true full screen and making sure it’s not upscaling to 4K. Speaking of which, upscaling to 4k does fix the issue, but it more than doubles the GPU load, which is an undesired effect for a shader that already takes a lot of time and VRAM to load at 1080p.

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Hmm, does your video card support integer scale?

If it does I think this might be the solution for you, the video card renders the GPU image at the lower res, then did nearest neighbor scaling right before it sends it to the display. I use this daily to run 1080p on my 4K monitor so that things look crisp instead of blurry.

Here it is in the NVidia control panel, it is available I think on Turing or later cards, on ATI it is available on earlier cards I think

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Mine is greyed out, it’s a GTX 1660ti, driver 511.19

It didn’t occur to me that enabling DSR would affect Retroarch at all. It seems that I need to disable this feature in Nvidia control panel, otherwise I need to force RA to use the maximum DSR resolution so it will display correctly.

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I think the issue wasn’t the DSR after all, and it was a strange one as I mentioned the screenshots seemed fine, but the actual output in real time was messed up. It seemed somehow related to the custom resize feature, when I install a new driver, it display a bigger area like it doesn’t detect overscan/underscan correctly, so I need to adjust it to fit my display properly. What I did was disable it and resize, DSR is still available for other games and Retroarch doesn’t seem to misbehave, so it was totally a particular setting on my end and a simple reset to fix it. I’m still not 100% sure, but after a few tests running different games that are using DSR and opening random cores/games, everything seems fine.

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Unfortunately DSR doesn’t apply as other settings. When you try making a new profile for a specific game/application, DSR isn’t even listed. The way DSR works doesn’t make sense to be added as a custom setting, as the user basically tell the driver the output can be displayed at higher resolutions, once you’re inside the game configuration, you can then choose those whether you want to keep your native resolution or upscale it.

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Retroarch seems to default to your desktop resolution, which in my case is 1920x1080, DSR was only “turned on” just in case I wanted to use other games with upscaled resolutions, RA was still at 1920x1080 and I could force it to use 4k but I don’t want that. It’s unrealistic seeing your GPU using almost 70% of its load in old games, doubling energy consumption without real visual improvement and taking even more time to load the shader, which is not the case in other games, if I use 4k in Sonic Racing Transformed, even on a 1080p display, the game looks fantastic, no aliasing and basically like a clean CG visual, same for GTA SA and many others, the GPU load is also around 50% or less. I explained above that the issue was fixed reseting the custom screen position, it was an isolated bug.

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No, both options were tried to no avail.

Technically speaking, yes, it’s quite complex and has a lot of options. It can get quite annoying, though, as even going in and out from full screen it needs to reload, or when you’re trying different systems for other technical tests, etc. There’s no point for me to use 4K in old console games, really, it’s just unrealistic to double loading time, energy consumption and work load without real visual improvement. It would be better if you tried your own suggestions before posting, as since the first one, we’re just chatting without any real addition to the thread, no offense intended.

1 Like

Mega_Bezel_Logo

Mega Bezel is updated to V 0.9.105 2022-03-22 Rev 1

Changes:

  • Some help has been updated to cover some of the new changes
  • Added SMOOTH-ADV Preset Tier, this has ScaleFX in it and the required UpRes in the chain
    • SMOOTH-ADV-NTSC presets added, so now there is an option for smoothed + NTSC
    • ADV has had ScaleFx removed. If you have any presets which used ScaleFx they should have their references changed to the appropriate SMOOTH-ADV preset
  • Updated to Guest-Advanced to crt-guest-advanced-2022-03-10-release1
  • Updated GDV-MINI, should not have problems with 4K by default anymore with CGWG mask
  • Added GDV-MINI-NTSC
  • Auto Fake Scanline Res Added as an option, Explicit Fake Scanline Res is still available
  • Added CRT Curvature Multiplier so it can be set at 0
    • This will set the crt curvature to 0 while the bezel stays curved
  • Added Rotate parameter for Ambient (Night) Lighting
  • Variations/Max-Int-Scale presets renamed to Max-Int-Scale-No-Bezel for clarity, also now the bezel and background are off
  • Black edge layering mode now shows the tube diffuse image when it’s 0
  • Added Tube Shadow Image
  • Added Empty Tube Thickness, so extra empty tube area can be added around the game screen
  • Snap to Closest Integer Scale adjusted for easier use
    • An On/Off switch has been added HSM_USE_SNAP_TO_CLOSEST_INT_SCALE and is OFF by default
    • HSM_SNAP_TO_INT_SCALE_TOLERANCE renamed to HSM_SNAP_TO_CLOSEST_INT_SCALE_TOLERANCE, and it defaults to 20
  • Changed Minimum border size for integer scale to be max size for integer scale instead for ease of use
    • Default value is 94.5 * of screen size
    • HSM_INT_SCALE_BORDER_MIN_HEIGHT is renamed to HSM_INT_SCALE_MAX_HEIGHT
  • Sonkun’s Presets have been updated to the latest and moved into a 4k and a new additional 1080p folder
    • The the 1080p presets have the curvature of the screen reduced to almost 0 and the bezel curvature increased so the bezel looks the same
  • Cyber’s presets have been updated
  • Updated/Added Day & Night presets in variations using the tube diffuse image
  • Variations/Smoothed-ScaleFX_… presets renamed to SMOOTH-ADV

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 very slow load time
      • Restart after changing the video driver
    • Open the Settings Menu and Set:
      • Video / Scaling / Aspect Ratio to Full
        • This will match your monitor aspect aspect ratio
      • Video / Scaling / Integer Scale to OFF
      • Video / Output / Video Rotation to Normal
      • User Interface / Show Advanced Settings to ON
      • Core / Allow Rotation to OFFImportant for FB Neo
      • Do this Before loading content
    • 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

STD

ADV with MDAPT on

SMOOTH-ADV

SMOOTH-ADV-NTSC

Standard Tube

Tube with Diffuse and Diffuse Shadow

Tube with Diffuse and Diffuse Shadow and Ambient/Night Lighting

Tube Gel before without shadow

Tube Gel With Shadow

Funky Monochrome Metroid

With Expanded Tube Area

With Colored Gel On top

14 Likes

Hi there - first off I wanted to congratulate and thank this entire team for creating something so spectacular. The HSM Mega Bezel and all of the presets for it are truly amazing, game-changers.

I have the shaders working well on my R7 3700x/GTX 1080 rig - but I can’t seem to get them going on a SFF emulation box I have been working on.

The SFF box is a R5 2400GE apu with 16gb of 2666 ram. I believe I have everything set up correctly (again, I have it running on another computer that is right next to it) but when I load a game and then load the shader, RA just hangs. So far I’ve only tried NES - so it won’t get much more lightweight than that core. Before I go down the rabbit hole of trying to get these shaders to work, is this little machine just plain too weak for the Mega Bezel shaders? I suspect it is, but I figured I’d go to the source to ask …

Again, awesome work - loving these on my main rig.

** UPDATE: After the ADV level presets crashed RA, I tried POTATO, and it loaded (taking 2 minutes) and ran. This encouraged me to try MBZ__3__STD, as this was the least intensive option that still included reflections. It took a little longer than 2 minutes to load, and then ran. However, Nestopia only hit 50 FPS max - so the actual play experience was sludgy. Conclusion: Ryzen 5 2400GE is simply not cut out for this shader pack. For what it’s worth, it was a glorious looking 50FPS :slight_smile:

5 Likes