INTRODUCING the world's best shader for retro 2d pixel games!

[djayjp]

You can finally throw your CRT (and CRT shader…!) in the garbage!

Play games that are absolutely faithful to the creators’ intent, but look even better than you remember them looking!

After spending thousands of hours going through nearly every (reasonable) permutation of the existing shaders, I’ve optimized my own neural net (read: brain lol) to create a new generation of interpolation shader, called Alphultima, that features the PIXEL BLENDING of bilinear (but without any of its artefacts) with the crisp edges of a nearest neighbour approach, all without any visible scanlines/mask. Smooth, yet sharp. Impossible? Guess again!

Sprites benefit the most.

Note that it includes 6 levels of sharpness/smoothness as I’ve discovered that perceived sharpness is relative to the perceived size of pixels to one’s eyes, with smaller pixels appearing sharper and larger pixels appearing smoother; viewing relatively large pixels at typical monitor viewing distance/size of display will look much smoother than typical TV viewing distance (eg, 55" 4K TV from ~5.5-6’ away or further), so basically it’s intended as being 3 levels of sharpness per display type.

Viewing on a TV, it should look 97%+ of the platonic ideal and basically everything should look absolutely perfect. As of today the issue of how to optimally upscale an image should be considered essentially solved, at least in the TV use case.

Viewing these images on a monitor will not look nearly as good, so I strongly encourage to check it out for the TV use case.

PLEASE ENSURE YOU DISABLE ALL SHARPENING ON YOUR DISPLAY (this shader was mastered on an OLED with sharpness set to 0, super resolution disabled, and screen shift disabled).

See the results for yourself!:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1OzjVwno5TSC00H0fQpGav8c54vHyRzye

(Images should be ordered from sharpest to smoothest)

The different levels include: -Very Smooth -Smooth -Medium Smooth -Medium Sharp -Sharp -Very Sharp

Lessons learned/insights gained: -The most perfect starting point for an image is 2x bilinear, then with another 1x linear pass on top. -The scanlines/mask do not actually need to be visible to do their job of sharpening the image! -The creator of Fast Sharpen is a genius and it can generate incredible results if you adjust the “amount of sharpening” parameter.

Limitations: -Sharpness varies based on how contrasting the screen elements are. -Dims the image slightly. -Still can’t get full screen GBA games to look good from monitor viewing distance.

Please let me know what you think and… I just need someone to help me turn it into its own shader package and upload it to the RA shader library !

[Winter47th]

First, I want to congratulate you on making this, and showcasing the intent of why it was made relevant to having it close to the creators’ intent.

I took a look at the screenshots, and I’m no expert, can’t stand on technical grounds to say how close it is to the creators’ renditions and RGBs, scanlines and all that.

However, as this is your first showcase, regardless of the appreciated contribution you’ve added to the community, and the thousands of hours you’ve spent on this, which I do not doubt is both fruitful and useful, having an opening statement of throwing all CRT shaders into the garbage is … quite the statement!

I’m not trying to sound unappreciative, but that intro disregards the efforts and unimaginable countless collected hours the community provided for free, out of their own time, fueled by sheer passion alone for the scene, the collaborations made, the lessons learned, willing to share without asking for much in return except appreciation and valid criticism.

No effort or contributions deserve to get thrown in the garbage, every shader is enjoyable, has its own flavor, many aim for accuracy and are pretty remarkable leaving you wondering how much dedication was put into them, some are experimental and fun, others are for nostalgia and moving the scene forward.

I wish this wasn’t the first comment on this thread, as it’s not my intent to try to derail it in any way, but as you’ve spent thousands of hours, it might be helpful to realize how you would not be where you are if not for the contributions of everyone who came before and most are still around and the lessons and expertise we keep learning from them.

Anyway, keep up the great work and I look forward to this interesting work.

[djayjp]

Yes, absolutely! It was just a tongue in cheek comment, poking fun, facetious thing to say . Not serious in any way. That said, I personally feel that (now anyway) it’s unnecessary to have a bunch of stuff on the screen (aka scanlines and masks) that just gets in the way of the beautiful art underneath . Looking at the comparison screenshots, I think that makes it abundantly clear and I’m quite certain that the original artists would prefer this shader, liberating their art from the oppression of lines!

Thank you for your kind, considerate, and thoughtful comment!

Hopefully more of the community sees this highly unique interpolation shader and we can get it added to the library

[BiRaitBec]

Images are not enough, share your presets as a shader.

People have different resolutions, different displays and so on. You made yours on your hardware but that doesn’t mean anything if the hardware you have is still a minority in the world.

[djayjp]

Well of course one can view the screenshots on the display one intends to use to see how it would look on their display, but sure I’ll put the settings together later today and post them.

Please note that I also actually optimized the sharper modes using a 1600p OLED monitor (with the rest on my LG OLED TV).

[djayjp]

By the way, I’m taking suggestions for other shaders I should compare it to and add to the gallery of comparison screenshots.

[djayjp]

Ok here are the Presets:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/15J1zr_aR47wzf8mm7hK6N9ZLPgJtnE97

[djayjp]

In case you’re not comfortable clicking on the Google drive link with all the screenshots, here’s a taster (please zoom in or download to really see the difference–last one is mine):

[djayjp]

I 100% guarantee you it wouldn’t look anywhere near as good. Post a screenshot here and you’ll see. And that’s basically what the “CRT” one above is. The difference is that there are no visible scanlines lol, get it?

[djayjp]

I added a Lanczos3-x pass to the Very Sharp setting, increasing sharpness a further ~5%:

[djayjp]

Increased sharpness a further ~10-15% by slightly raising the mask intensity:

[DariusG]

Sorry to disappoint you but we were doing these kind of things around 10 years ago with mame 0.120, prescaling and overlays for masks. That’s why it’s not that interesting really. Where is gamma correction, saturation controls, display gamuts, interlacing controls and more and more. And still is quite blurry to say the truth.

[Winter47th]

I really appreciate your dedication to your work, it shows heart, but I hope you also take this into heart. I didn’t want to reply to your post in the other thread as to not derail it, but judging from that, and the outcome of this thread, and your previous engagements, I’m going to presume that you might feel that your work is not being appreciated or recognized.

I’m not going to respond from the onset that I know about all the technicalities that go into making a shader, and even if I did, it’ll be easily disassembled. But, the reason why you might feel your work is not getting the recognition it deserves is that from the beginning you came in swinging, as if you’ve found the holy grail to end all other grails, and by that I mean you left no room for opinions or arguments, you knighted yourself and asked that without proper screening or peer-to-peer discussions to have your shaders added to the pipeline because it’s the world’s best shader signed-and-sealed.

It’s not nice to go to someone else’s thread and trying to start something to get yours noticed, it did, but not in the way it should have, and it could have been handled better.

Each project is someone’s passion project, this is niche work, and that makes it more appreciated, yours included, but this being as your first attempt, it might have been more realistic to start a little bit humble, i.e. ‘here’s what I’ve been working on, it took me this much time and effort, what you guys think?’, instead of ‘I made the best work ever, all other works are garbage, add it to the official distro’.

I’m not trying to sound preachy, but given the results of the reception, and the latest attempt at hijacking someone’s thread, I hope you see this as a learning experience, you can either take from it what you think would help you handle things better the next time, or disregard it and keep to your character, and I’m hoping it would be the former.

[djayjp]

No, you’re incorrect. Absolutely none of the shaders or presets published on RA produce any results even remotely similar to what has been achieved here.

If you truly believe that then I challenge you to tell me, specifically, which shader or preset does do so (which doesn’t exist)…

And have you tried it on a TV? If you had you wouldn’t be saying it’s blurry. Most CRT shaders are blurry btw. And ppl can alter the image if they wish. I want a faithful reproduction of the intended image, sans lines or masks.

Also I don’t think you understand the intended purpose or basis of an interpolation scaler.

[djayjp]

You’re right, it’s a little preachy!

Of course anything I say is my opinion, so if I say “This is the world’s best shader” obviously that’s what I truly believe as I’m the one stating such.

Alternate interpretation: maybe ppl shouldn’t take things so personally and seriously and get offended so easily? Lol we’re just talking about how ppl like to have their games look after all! I really think it’s the best, so?

The objective truth, however, is that there has never before been a shader which features pixel blending, is sharp, and doesn’t feature visible scanlines or masks. It didn’t exist. Until now. And, yes, I truly believe that is the Holy Grail of image upscaling for retro pixel art.

Other than for nostalgia, there is now truly zero purpose for having visible scanlines or masks as it only detracts from the actual, original art.

I’m certain that if we conduct a “man on the street” poll and a poll for the original artists, they would agree this is the best shader. Most people really don’t like scanlines btw!

[djayjp]

FINAL VERSION (at least until/if the genius Fast Sharpen shader is updated to go beyond a sharpen setting of 2.00 max):

[DariusG]

@djayjp

Absolutely none of the shaders or presets published on RA produce any results even remotely similar to what has been achieved here.

It has been done because you already use them on your preset.

@djayjp

I challenge you to tell me, specifically, which shader or preset does do so

xbrz, sabr, etc

@djayjp

I want a faithful reproduction of the intended image

Intended image is the way it looked on a CRT, as this was the medium the were using. It’s like you state that Salvador Dali wanted to paint on Photoshop.

@djayjp

I don’t think you understand the intended purpose or basis of an interpolation scaler

I don’t think you understand this is just a preset and not a shader.

[thingsiplay]

Hi. I have trouble downloading the preset (which the browser plugins could be part of the problem). When I try to download, it Google tells me it will convert it to a document format and nothing happens. Could you upload a regular .txt file or upload the preset to https://pastebin.com/ in example?

BTW while your communication style is a bit cheesy and over confident, I don’t care much. In all fairness, its your personal opinion and I respect that. The reception isn’t very positive so far, but don’t let you discourage that. But maybe work on the communication style.

[djayjp]

Sorry dude but you’re completely clueless here. It’s ok we all make mistakes.

Pro tip: check before claiming.

These are great shaders–if I wanted to turn my games into vector art…

[djayjp]

Thank you!

Does copy and paste not work?