Perhaps these might have made better points of reference even though they all are bad in their own ways since its not so easy to properly capture a CRT on camera.
Are you sure it always gets it right?
You finally got something to say to me? My name wasnât mentioned but I see the little subliminals you and that other guy were throwing just now in the âshow offâ thread, doesnât take a genius to read between the lines and you coming to my thread with your âbadâ videos after I posted mines above only confirms what I said. I wonât even waste time talking over there, least I know I live rent free in some peopleâs minds on here.
I let you slide last time but this time youâll be getting a piece of my mind. I use to think you were cool, you use to even compliment my presets all the time but I see you switch up when you get around certain people on here. Thatâs alright though cause you always seemed like a phoney two-faced follower to me anyway so Iâm not surprised one bit.
Not once do I throw shots at peopleâs presets here that look dark and lifeless to the point itâs hard to even see what the hell is going on on the screen, I just mind my business and keep it moving.
And no thank you to your reference videos, I chose the video I chose because thatâs the closest thing that I found that does what the artifacts of the âcompositeâ shader pass that I use for my 3-phase presets does.
From what Iâve tested for the most part it is. If itâs not always right oh well.
Edit: Not sure why you deleted your post but Iâll leave this screenshot here so itâs known exactly who Iâm addressing in this post after your post dissapears in 24 hours.
If youâre gonna talk crap about someone donât go around trying to act fake friendly with that person afterwards, thatâs something weirdos do. Keep that same energy after revealing how you really feel. Itâs sad I even had to make this post because me and you are some of the most active (and talked about outside of these forums, I know cause I look around) guest shader preset makers as far as RetroArch shaders go and you were cool as hell up until not too long ago.
Probably sticking my foot in it, butâŚ
I have no idea what Cyber said that triggered you, but Iâve noticed a pattern that you take any criticism of your presets personally and are quick to adopt a very hostile posture. Why not just look at it as valuable feedback and try to learn what you can from it while staying true to your own vision? Clearly youâre very passionate, and thatâs great, but that passion can sometimes lead to anger when we feel our work is being attacked, even when not warranted. Responding this way to criticism inhibits our personal growth, and is just generally unpleasant to be around and not a great look.
Trust me, I do what I please with my presets as Iâve already been doing up to this point, thatâs why my presets are the way they are now. If I followed âfeedbackâ from certain people (you being one of them) here then my presets will look like most others, dim dull lifeless and no fun to play with. Plus what I read out there earlier is not âvaluable feedbackâ, itâs two people talking crap about me and maybe others without mentioning names, letâs not play dumb here or do I gotta go screenshot quote for quote and break down each sentence between the both of you as proof? Plus if I need feedback thereâs literally only one person I would want or need it from and thatâs from guest himself, unless I come to one of you myself I donât want or need your two cents on anything Iâm doing because I have a certain vision for what I want and the typical âadvice giversâ here either try to sway me to the look theyâre going for or just donât help at at all.
You guys keep talking accurate this accurate that, well Iâll say this again for the millionth time, NO ONES shader presets on this whole forum are accurate 1 for 1 with a crt and NEVER will be, itâs stupid to even keep mentioning it. We simply donât have the tech for it now even if weâre closer to matching the look. It doesnât matter if youâre on the latest QD OLED it still will never be the same. If you want accurate buy a damn crt already. Thatâs why I just have fun with the settings (brightness etc) because theyâre there to compensate for these LCD screens thatâs currently the norm.
Me and you will probably have our little scuffles here and there that just seems to be tradition between me and you at this point and Iâm ok with that, at least youâre not fake acting like you liked my work in the beginning then switched up on me out of no where, you were clear from the start that my presets arenât your thing and I respect that.
The most confusing thing out of all of this is why even the subliminal shots at all? Like I said I donât go around throwing shots at anybody, if I donât have anything nice to say I donât say anything at all but it seems every now and then I see someone talking crap or âvaluable feedbackâ by the usual suspects. Oh well.
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I really wanted to avoid the whole back and forth as well as the whole petty argument thing. I didnât want to make a mess of your thread either.
What I will say is that you seem a bit delusional. I donât have to like all of your presets to prove anything. I might chose to like the ones that I do when I feel like it and everyone here has a right to do so.
Also, you have changed around here in the past few months. You used to be a bit more humble, respectful, respectable and approachable in my opinion.
You seem to have conveniently forgotten about asking me for my Shadow Mask settings which I was saving for a release. If I gave you my settings before I release my presets, then why should I even bother making and releasing my presets?
Do you think that is fair? Do you know how many hours I spent tinkering and tweaking trying to figure things out?
I told you two things.
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Was that you will get the settings when I release my presets.
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Was that I prefer to teach a man how to fish. I then went on to tell you exactly how I went about arriving at my settings by trial and error and by going up close to the screen and observing. I told you exactly how many possibilities there were for Mask Stagger settings and suggested that you go through each one until you find the one which looks the way you liked.
You seemed hell bent on copying/reverse engineering my Shadow Mask preset even though I told you that I might have wanted to release it to commemorate 1,000 posts with Kazoo included.
None of that mattered to you. You didnât care at all to take a hint and be a little patient nor to give a little credit. At this point it seems as if the most important thing to you is being âpopularâ.
I wonât sugar coat it but since RetroCrisis made a couple YouTube videos about your presets you seemed to have lost it a bit. It doesnât really look good. Others here have noticed it and have tried to respectfully and politely bring it to your attention but you canât see it.
You are free to do as you please though but if your actions, choices and behaviour make people lose respect for you then you canât blame them for staying in their lane.
I found it a bit pathetic that after I didnât divulge my exact Mask Stagger settings to you, you went and begged Guest himself for the same settings. You also didnât hesitate to parade how much easier it was for you to get information from Guest (as opposed to how difficult it might have been to get similar information from me).
Then you shamelessly created a Shadow Mask Preset using settings that were just given to you and acted like you did something.
I didnât like those presets because I didnât like them. I continued to hold my corner when I heard you use terms like âcommercially mainstreamâ to refer to your preset pack.
I donât like everyoneâs presets here. Everyone doesnât like my presets and thatâs how it is.
There are people who used to like my presets as well but they donât click like on my presets anymore, do I get butthurt about it and throw tantrums?
When I make a general statement about presets and curvature or people using video tapes and other non CRT sources for reference, that is not a you thing. Youâre not the only person who does this or has presets which donât look like mine, Nesguyâs, Major Pain The Cactusâ nor RetroGames4Kâs.
Get over yourself.
You just happened to post an example of what I was talking about so I posted in your thread to open the discussion about certain aspects of the videos in question.
You responded with this seemingly pent-up toddler temper tantrum.
Youâre calling me the Kettle but when last have you clicked like on anything I posted here? Have you ever clicked like on anything RetroGames4K has posted either? Why is that?
So you can take this however you wish but I didnât come here to look for any argument, quarell, fight, flame war or anything of the sort with anyone here.
Once people maintain a certain level of respect and decorum we can all co-exist.
So try to behave yourself like a grown person please. Maybe then, we can continue to discuss interests which we have in common.
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Dang I just had to make an account after lurking in this forum for almost a year.
I really hate it when I see people that made me happy fight. I donât have an antâs d##k of knowledge about how any of yalls stuff works, but I know how much using these shaders have brought me so much joy, whether itâs Cyber or Sonkun.
Each shader has its own flavor, I donât really care about accuracy or not, all I know is that theyâre so amazing each in their own right that whenever I get bored playing a game, for the first time I just switch between shaders and keep playing, itâs that much fun.
While I understand that some creators aim for accuracy, I also know that others aim for âhow I remember it used to lookâ, not saying any of you is aiming for this or that in particular, just that sometimes Iâd want to eat stake from another restaurant from time to time, both are great, just that lifeâs too short to be in one place, you know.
I hope yâall let bygones be bygones and keep doing the amazing things youâre doing.
Thereâs only one thing Iâm siding on with over here, itâs about the âfeedbackâ part, if everyone aims for accuracy, honestly, this would be the most boring thing ever, cause after that what are we left with except less flavors and less exciting variations. Each one of yalls do you, just thereâs no reason to fight cause you make everyone happy and this is the closest thing Iâve felt connecting to my childhood memories and nostalgia, how I remember things looking and the memories and feelings they brought back.
So yeah please donât fight : P
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Iâm glad everyone is getting everything off their chest tonight so that we can move forward after this. So letâs go through some of your post then.
So thatâs what this is all about, some damn shadow mask settings? No I didnât forget that I asked you about it I told you I wanted to take a stab at it. You treated it like itâs some big secret and didnât want to give me the settings so yes I went to guest afterwards who I shouldâve went to in the first place and asked him for the settings, theyâre not yours and you donât own them, you just wanted to be the first one to put out a preset with those settings but you move too slow and I donât take long to put together presets. If thatâs what your issue is then sorry for you, but youâre gonna have to get over it and maybe stop trying to make a gazillion presets that you yourself can hardly keep up with.
What are you even talking about here with âlikesâ? Not once did I ever mention anything here about having an issue because someone doesnât hit like on my posts, I could care less about âlikesâ. Thatâs something a Instagram slut would say, stay on topic my guy.
Câmon Cyber, you literally posted that crap not long after I posted that video in my thread earlier, yeah it was a general statement but donât play stupid, that was aimed at me.
Once again with this âlikesâ nonsense, this has nothing to do with anything of importance. If anything youâre the one looking for popularity with this âlikesâ nonsense. Canât believe I even see a âgrown manâ talking like this.
Watch your mouth talking to me like that, I donât talk to you that way so donât talk to me that way, youâre not talking to a child here. Im very respectful and humble on this forum or I wouldâve been banned a long time ago. The only reason you see other wise is cause Iâm a little more vocal these days, you on the other hand who I thought was a nice guy have been showing a different side and now I see why. Nesguy use to come for me a lot back then and I actually either just brushed it off casually or let it slide, these days itâs a little different, Iâm suppose to just act like everything is ok when the same person and now you try to throw little slick comments? Like I said before I donât throw shots at anyone here, I donât even come to you asking for advice in fact that question about the shadow mask settings was the only time I remember asking you for anything but never again.
All over some shadow mask settingsâŚ
Even after this reply I feel no way towards you, I just put out my latest preset pack and Iâm about to enjoy some gaming. Iâm glad you finally got that off your chest though. The air is clear.
Sorry, sorry. I guess everything needed to come out tonight lol. Even though youâve been lurking for a year I still feel itâs proper to say welcome to the forum by the way.
I donât know what to say about this fight entirely but i most say that, just do your job and thatâs it, donât talk to each of you never again and thatâs it
just try to end this in the most polite way
Thank you : D
I hope it doesnât come to both of you not talking to each other, you both follow different philosophies and approaches, these things happen all the time at every place, discussions can get tense but itâs always great when two greats can come to an understanding about what one would appreciate the other one to not do and the other would appreciate that so things would get better.
When my sister had her divorce the judge asked both she and her husband about what is happiness, both replied with different answers then he said, happiness is when youâre happy without having to compromise anything.
So I really hope both yâall do yous and retain your flavors in philosophies so they can be special and varied, youâre doing amazing works and lifeâs too short to fight : D
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i must come to agree a bit about that philosophy over there, but there is sometimes when itâs just impossible, it depends mostly in the type of people we are talking about so itâs more about the two of them than anything we could say about the situation, after all we are just only observers
This is just me responding to your comment about me complimenting your presets in the past. I equated that with likes which is a device which we use as a tool to convey feelings on the internet. If I compliment something I will certainly also like it so itâs synonymous to me.
Thereâs no need for you to be additionally cynical, immature and disrespectful in your response. Remember weâre trying to adult here, not insult each other back and forth.
Youâre doing a really excellent job of deescalating.
Itâs a bit more than that but you need to understand what taking responsibility for your actions is before you can understand that.
The way you handled the whole situation was a bit less than honourable in my view. So itâs more about how your behaviour made me feel as opposed to âjust about Shadow Mask settingsâ.
When someone is expressing to you something that you have done which may have offended them in some way or led them to respond in a certain way, there is much that can be gained from just trying to listen and understand. Not everyone will even give you the opportunity to understand where you may have gone wrong.
You see itâs not about Shadow Masks at allâŚthis attitude of yours is what might be a turn off to some who didnât have to see this side of you before. Maybe thatâs what might have been the cause of what you perceived as a switcheroo.
Actually, youâre wrong about this and Iâve already told you this. Itâs not just your presets that donât get my likes and itâs not just your presets that I comment on and my comments and views remain consistent regardless of who made the preset. So youâre not special in this regard. So in other words, my comment is focused on an issue, rather than a person.
It just happened to fall in your garden and I make no apologies for that as I was not trying to belittle you in my post in your thread today but merely to open the door to discussion. I shared those videos in particular because they all (well not all but the first set I posted) showed the same console hooked up using similar connections to real CRTs but the output and artifact characteristics were very different.
The focus was different, the moire patterns looked different, the motion artifacts looked very different.
I didnât know we couldnât discuss these things here, especially since @theoldnation had brought up the topic because he/she felt a certain way about how the artifact looked.
So what you are actually doing is surmising evil because you donât have the evidence to support what is in your head because it just isnât real.
So yes, itâs good that things have been let off but at the end of the day the spoken word is like a spunt arrow and it can never be brought back so if youâre sincere about moving forward it will be evident in the way that we communicate and deal with one another as well as others going forward.
So I apologize if there was anything that I have done in response to what I might have felt was a transgression on your part which may have offended you and I am willing to forgive same and move on.
Far as Iâm concerned I did nothing dishonorable or wrong. Like I said I wanted to make some shadow mask presets along with aperture because I wanted to expand beyond just slot mask, I noticed you were making shadow masked presets so I simply asked what settings do I use to get that look. Since me and you typically traded words on here being as active as we are I figured that wouldnât be an issue to you since itâs just mask settings but it was more personal for you I guess. Yes you said you were trying to put things together for some celebration but that has absolutely nothing to do with me and I owe you nothing as far as âwaitingâ for you to be the âfirstâ to put out a pack with shadow mask presets, so I went to guest to get the settings instead since in the end this is his shader anyway. So things happened the way they did.
Iâm not sure why you even felt the need to even come here showing those videos. Truth is I seen all of those beforehand, the guy asked if that water effect was suppose to look like that and I said yes and showed him the source of reasoning for my presets. Weather that artifact effect is âaccurateâ means absolutely nothing to me, it displayed in the same manner as the âcrtsimâ shader does and I liked that look point blank period. I continually express that I make my presets how I want it, it doesnât matter if I make all black and white presets thatâs my choice and my business. You came in seeming like you were trying to âschoolâ me on something I already decided on and I wasnât having that especially after those comments I saw earlier. If that wasnât your intention then my fault but thatâs how I took it.
He/she didnât feel anyway about anything youâre adding things in that was never said, a question was simply asked thatâs all. Go back up and see for yourself.
Like I said in my last reply I feel nothing towards you, Iâm good and relaxed and enjoying my night. So if this is everything that needs to be said I do plan to move forward from this with no problems at all cause I will look back on all of this and laugh eventually.
I am a 26 years old guy and i feel this is the biggest problem with retro gaming and the retro community itself. We want to play the games that made the medium what it is now, and often we find gems, games that are even more refreshing than current ones if taken with retrospect in mind, and the people who should also bring the past to the glory it has and that is going always more forgotten, are blaming eachothers for forum activity. I donât know your age but real grown up man take these things to private spaces in order to resolve any negative atmosphere and any negative point of view.
I personally looked at first to shaders in order to have the most true to original experience of the 80s and 90s in terms of gaming, and you nailed it to this point, but seeing people discussing in these terms on 2023 for such an hobby that is strive for the beauty of the past, is out of mind.
I used both sonkun and cyber presets in their entirety and they are so different and so unique that everyone will find its favourite and honestly appreciate that authors who work their ass off for free in order to give us these shaders, whenever they come released.
Sonkun, if cyber already had it done and was waiting for a special moment that rewards the community who reads this stuff (even your both complaints), it is not mandatory to wait for sure, but when someone tells you that idea after you ask him, maybe he wasnât having it on you that much, but trusted that you would have been happy after his release and so the community who waited for it.
Sometimes you waited weeks for releasing updates to your presets and nobody worried or rushed you, you could have managed it a bit better, or even have talked to cyber beforehand about your changed intentions to avoid any possible conflict.
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Iâm over this topic now. Both parties let out what they needed to say to each other and now Iâm moving forward from this.
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You hit the nail right on the head. Truth and reconciliation go hand in hand and the genesis of this begins here.
This is an interesting tack, though.
We canât be 100% accurate so why try being accurate at all? I think there may be a problem here. If the goal is accuracy, then if you can get 99% or 95% of the way there, isnât that better than nothing? If the goal isnât accuracy, then thatâs fine, but I donât think one should give up on the goal of accuracy just because itâs not possible to be 100% accurate. At least in terms of a still image, I think the recent Reddit thread and the photos in the Megatron thread have demonstrated that we have reached a point where a shader can be indistinguishable from the real thing. BFI and higher refresh rates can close the gap in motion clarity although thereâs still some work to be done there, but thatâs really the last hurdle to clear and theyâre already pushing monitors that boast a 500Hz refresh rate (albeit on an IPS panel).
In general, the reason why there are so many brightness effects in CRT shaders is to make a dull LCD look more like a CRT. Once we move beyond SDR LCD displays into the world of HDR displays with self-lit pixels, the need for these effects diminishes because the actual display characteristics are closer to those of a CRT. This allows us to use simpler shaders with fewer effects to achieve a very true to life image, at a far lower performance cost (definitely a concern once youâre talking about 4K).
I donât think brightness is the be all and end all of image quality and in many cases Iâd prefer lower brightness to some of the other compromises that have to be made to make the image brighter (e.g., clipping). Ambient light control is a thing. Backlight control is a thing. Fun fact: a movie in a theater is about 50 nits, but does it seem dull and lifeless? No, because youâre in a completely dark room. Iâd argue that things like contrast ratio and color balance are more important, brightness is more of a quality of life thing so we donât have to view our TVs in a pitch black room all the time.
Iâm not saying you should change what youâre doing, itâs better to have a range of options to satisfy a range of preferences. In general I just appreciate a more scientific and objective approach to things, but thatâs not to everyoneâs taste and thatâs fine.
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I agree with this, I think videogames, unlike photos/still images are meant to be played more then a few seconds: that means that our eyes will âself-adjustâ to brightness (but also saturation and sharpness).
Brightness became an issue (in a certain range of course) just when comparing images back and forth, the same goes for other parameters, but while actually playing for even just few minutes the relative brightness become a non-issue. I also give other factors more importance: general balance, contrast, color balance, not to crush shadows or clip highlights.
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For now I just suggest to all of you, do what it looks best to your eyes obvs while trying to have some consistency with the real experience to some degree.