Hyllian shaders and presets

[Hyllian]

This is a collection of shaders and presets fine tuned by me for a plug 'n play experience.

Latest releases are now available in this first post:

New release: hspack-24-03-31-r1

• Added nnedi3 and super-xbr presets in downsampling folder for 2x, 3x and 4x internal scalings;
• HiRes detection optimized with new algorithm reducing from 12 to just 2 samplings;
• Some curvature bugs fixed;
• LUTs changed again. Now a grade-composite with deeper blacks is available;
• slotmasks (from crt-hyllian) tweaked for better contrast.

nnedi3 with downsampling:

Slotmask better contrast:

[Hyllian]

I made some progress on my crt-hyllian. Finally I’ve figured out how to untap the power of RGB/BGR mask without using special bloom or halation. There are two presets, one RGB and RGB-sharp.

Release: crt-hyllian-2024-01-06-r1

rgb-sharp:

rgb:

[svbtext]

sorry if this is a dumb question, but where in the shaders folder do i install this?

[Hyllian]

Hi, you just need to put “hyllian” inside “shaders_slang” folder.

BTW, here’s a new release: crt-hyllian-24-01-07-r1

What’s new:

• Added four new presets: crt-hyllian-composite, crt-hyllian-composite-sharp, crt-hyllian-svideo, crt-hyllian-svideo-sharp.

[Hyllian]

A good composite preset using @guest.r’s ntsc shaders. Chroma scaling really makes a difference. It’s very good with Genesis games plagued by dithering:

#reference "shaders_slang/crt/crt-guest-advanced-ntsc.slangp"
wp_saturation = "1.000000"
contr = "0.000000"
ntsc_cscale = "4.000000"
ntsc_ring = "0.500000"
ntsc_gamma = "2.000000"
cust_fringing = "0.000000"
cust_artifacting = "0.000000"
HSHARPNESS = "1.000000"
HSHARP = "1.200000"
SIGMA_HOR = "0.500000"
S_SHARP = "1.200002"
MAXS = "0.180000"
FINE_BLOOM = "2.000000"
mask_bloom = "0.000000"
glow = "0.000000"
spike = "0.000000"
bloom = "0.000000"
halation = "-0.400000"
hmask1 = "0.500000"
brightboost = "1.000000"
brightboost1 = "1.000000"
gsl = "-1.000000"
scanline1 = "6.000000"
scanline2 = "26.000000"
beam_min = "1.000000"
beam_max = "0.850000"
tds = "0.000000"
beam_size = "1.000000"
scans = "1.000000"
scan_falloff = "0.100000"
scangamma = "2.200000"
shadowMask = "6.000000"
maskstr = "0.500000"
mcut = "1.000000"
maskboost = "3.000000"
mask_layout = "1.000000"
mask_gamma = "2.200000"

BTW, when the ntsc-adaptive in libretro repo will be updated with all these developments?

[sonkun]

I’m just imagining all the sexiness that could be had with royale-ntsc with all those new ntsc-adaptive features like chroma scaling.

Edit: I thought that was one of your tweaked royale presets at first that’s why I mentioned that shader, my comment still stands though lol.

[Hyllian]

Forgot to fix gamma:

#reference "shaders_slang/crt/crt-guest-advanced-ntsc.slangp"
wp_saturation = "1.000000"
contr = "0.000000"
ntsc_cscale = "4.000000"
ntsc_ring = "0.500000"
ntsc_gamma = "2.000000"
cust_fringing = "0.000000"
cust_artifacting = "0.000000"
HSHARPNESS = "1.000000"
HSHARP = "1.200000"
SIGMA_HOR = "0.500000"
S_SHARP = "1.200002"
MAXS = "0.180000"
FINE_BLOOM = "2.000000"
mask_bloom = "0.000000"
glow = "0.000000"
spike = "0.000000"
bloom = "0.000000"
halation = "-0.400000"
hmask1 = "0.500000"
brightboost = "1.000000"
brightboost1 = "1.000000"
gsl = "-1.000000"
scanline1 = "6.000000"
scanline2 = "26.000000"
beam_min = "1.000000"
beam_max = "0.850000"
tds = "0.000000"
beam_size = "1.000000"
scans = "1.000000"
scan_falloff = "0.100000"
scangamma = "2.200000"
shadowMask = "6.000000"
maskstr = "0.500000"
mcut = "1.000000"
maskboost = "3.000000"
mask_layout = "1.000000"
mask_gamma = "2.200000"

A bit better now!

[Hyllian]

New release: crt-hyllian-24-01-12-r2

What’s new:

• Added two configs: crt-hyllian and crt-hyllian-sharp. I think these are better than the ones (crt-hyllian default) in main repo. Contrast is better;

• Some small tweaks on other versions to improve IQ.

crt-hyllian-composite:

crt-hyllian-svideo:

crt-hyllian-rgb:

crt-hyllian:

[Hyllian]

I made a mistake in the last release. The rgb presets are wrong.

Here’s a fix: crt-hyllian-24-01-12-r2

Added a no-scanlines preset and an alternative sharp rgb preset.

TIP: circle through the presets using M and N from keyboard.

[Hyllian]

These are some presets I’ve been tunning using @guest.r shaders. I’m not taking any credits here, it’s all to @guest.r great work! I’m just releasing my view through presets. With some or other small changes in LUTs. I specially like the composite preset, because it gives the best IQ I’ve ever seen in genesis games.

guest.r-24-01-13-r1

[ComfyTsu]

Your noscanline presets are really great for lower resolutions

[Hyllian]

You mean 8bits?

[ComfyTsu]

That looks good too. I meant for lower display resolutions like 720p where you can’t really use shaders with scanlines

[Hyllian]

Oh, i see! Yeah, it works well at 3x or even 2x.

[Cyber]

@ComfyTsu

I meant for lower display resolutions like 720p where you can’t really use shaders with scanlines

Why can’t you use scanlines at lower resolutions like 720p?

I remember back in the day we used scanlines with Nesticle, Genecyst, Callus, ZSNES, Magic Engine, SNES9X, EPSXE, NeoRageX, Zinc and Mame at various resolutions, including 1280 x 1024 and 1024 x 768 and 800 x 600. Am I missing something?

I remember loading up one of my presets on a 1366 x 768 LCD I have some time ago and was able to easily get a nice looking result using one of my presets with just one or two adjustments.

[yuzqailo]

I don’t know how to describe it but there is a difference between the sharpness of the text between these two images with the first being rgb and the second being svideo. It is most obvious between the grates of the bars below the main character and the capital ‘N’ in the text box.

[Hyllian]

@Cyber

Why can’t you use scanlines at lower resolutions like 720p?

I think he meant about using 720p and getting all crt effects with good quality. In fact you can use scanlines at that res, though most crt behaviors are lost.

[Hyllian]

@yuzqailo

I don’t know how to describe it but there is a difference between the sharpness of the text between these two images with the first being rgb and the second being svideo.

Yes, and that’s an expected behavior. In terms of shaders, they’re very distinct: svideo uses adv-ntsc while rgb uses just adv.

Do you think rgb and svideo should have identical sharpness?

[Jamirus]

I believe scanline behavior differs between shaders when the scaling factor is too low, like 2x leads to basically a mask only picture, but you can get that on higher res displays too if the input res is high enough.

But as long as you have at least a scale factor of 2x, scanlines can be fine. In my experience, it’s non-integers that are a problem when the scale factor is too low.

Low res displays will limit the mask selection that will look good (depends also on the size of the display though).

Speaking of masks, will the old phosphor layouts come back? My main gripe with the older versions was that the sharpness could use a bit more differentation in my view, but I like the shots here in this regard. But I thought it was practical to have the additional shadow masks available without needing to attach an additional pass.

[Cyber]

@Jamirus

In my experience, it’s non-integers that are a problem when the scale factor is too low.

Back in the day this is probably what might have often caused scanlines to look uneven in ZSNES (or possibly SNES9X) in that case we just enabled Bilinear filtering and the scanlines looked okay (by 90’s, 00’s emulation standards of course).