So, it’s an overlay you prepend (or append?) using alpha transparency at the game frame.
yes that’s it exactly
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thanks for your contributions, buddy.
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Thank you, I appreciate that!
That slotmask reminds of an aperture one, indeed. My inspiration for that was the JVC D-series. I never saw one in person, but real offscreens of that legendary CRT TV showed some amazing crisp slotmasks, with very good scanlines.
I tend to focus on 1080p output, but this time I risked some 4k presets too. I hope some feedback appear about it.
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I made a comparison of some of those masks to show more clearly the differences. It’s easier to show with the 4k presets.
But first, I’d like to show two slotmasks screenshots at 1080p that clearly shows that they aren’t aperture (just look at the shark textures):
Now, as my monitor is just 1080p, I made a trick to see how it looks at 4k. Using custom resolution, I zoomed until 9x integer scaling, which is more or less 4k. So, I took the screenshots (they’re only a 1080p frame inside the whole 4k) to show how the 4k presets will look closely.
4k/crt-royale-fast-ntsc-composite-slotmask-snes.slangp:
4k/crt-royale-fast-ntsc-composite-aperture-snes.slangp:
4k/crt-royale-pvm-ntsc-composite-snes.slangp:
4k/crt-royale-pvm-rgb.slangp:
And, putting all four side-by-side:
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Can’t do feedback for 4k; I only have 1080p. Is integer scaling recommended for these shaders? Or, can I do without integer scaling?
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They work well in non-integer scalings.
Though using integer scale will always assure pristine evenly spaced scanlines for any cases.
First RF preset: crt-royale-fast-ntsc-rf-slotmask-nes.slangp:
Unfortunately, a still doesn’t capture all nuances of this preset.
With some tweaks, it works with other systems:
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Just discovered crt-royale-fast exists, and that it works perfectly on my machine. I got curious and looked it up on the forums - Lo and behold, it was made by Hylian too!
You’re something else, man. You’re like the Santa of low-budget gamers.
Probably the sharpest, clearest CRT shader I’ve tried.
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I never paid much attention to Royale until Hyllian gave it an uplift. It’s a great choice and not too hard to fiddle with. Regardless, Hyllian made quite a few interesting presets of his own. You can check them on the presets folder. I like the crt-royale-fast-composite-slotmask, it has a great balance between sharpness and blending, sporting a fine-tuned mask that looks good even on 1080p.
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Ah, Royale is such a unique shader. Not the most advanced. By today’s standards, crt-guest-advanced is the most full-featured and flexible.
But crt-royale can provide unique visuals when tweaked. The fast version take some shortcuts to speed the shader and is visually optimized for 1080p displays.
When combined with PlainOldPants’ ntsc shaders it can give some of the most realistic visuals I’ve ever seen. I’m still waiting for the fast @PlainOldPants edition some day.
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I think what really sells me the effect are the little… (subpixels?) tiny dots
so instead of the big square pixel, you have tiny dots that leave it sharp while making the art shine
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Not to take anything away from CRT-Royale or the fast variation but quite a number of Shaders emulate down to the subpixel level or rather phosphor level, including CRT-Geom, CRT-Guest-Advanced, Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor, Koko-AIO, so that’s not something that’s special or unique about CRT-Royale.
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By the way @Hyllian, how would I go about adding BGR versions of all of my CRT-Royale Preset Pack presets while leaving everything else the same?
Or at least just add the option for users to be able to switch between BGR/RBG using the existing RGB only presets?
Royale’s masks are png files. You just need to swap red by blue and save another png with the same name. Unfortunately, you can’t have both.
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I’m aware… perhaps my wording did not convey what I was trying to say. The ones you mentioned are solid choices and emulate it really well, but they have a different feel, no? The “dots” look different. They all emulate what you say, but they do it differently. Like different flavors of awesomeness.
To me personally this one sells me the effect the most. Maybe the other ones offer what I mentioned, but they have their own unique way of doing it.
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Royale-fast really reminds me of the last crt tvs I had. Back then, I made whatever I could to play my games using component cables. The shader can easily replicate that bright, but not over-saturated picture. Ironically, I could never achieve a satisfactory look with stock Royale; it’s probably all my fault, but Hyllian really made everything easier, so I grew spoiled.
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I’m guessing you already did this somewhere so I don’t have to reinvent the wheel, right?
I thought you were working on a version where you could have toggled the RGB or BGR masks using the Parameter which allows you to choose a LUT at the top of the Shader Parameters list.
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I didn’t made the switch param, but now you reminded me that I’ve uploaded the BGR pngs to the repo already. That’s what Royale-fast load in its preset.
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