It's Squabblin' Time! guest preset edition

RetroArch Additions Shaders
#7

I’m glad everyone is getting everything off their chest tonight so that we can move forward after this. So let’s go through some of your post then.

So that’s what this is all about, some damn shadow mask settings? No I didn’t forget that I asked you about it I told you I wanted to take a stab at it. You treated it like it’s some big secret and didn’t want to give me the settings so yes I went to guest afterwards who I should’ve went to in the first place and asked him for the settings, they’re not yours and you don’t 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 don’t take long to put together presets. If that’s what your issue is then sorry for you, but you’re 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 “likes”? Not once did I ever mention anything here about having an issue because someone doesn’t hit like on my posts, I could care less about “likes”. That’s something a Instagram slut would say, stay on topic my guy.

C’mon Cyber, you literally posted that crap not long after I posted that video in my thread earlier, yeah it was a general statement but don’t play stupid, that was aimed at me.

Once again with this “likes” nonsense, this has nothing to do with anything of importance. If anything you’re the one looking for popularity with this “likes” nonsense. Can’t believe I even see a “grown man” talking like this.

Watch your mouth talking to me like that, I don’t talk to you that way so don’t talk to me that way, you’re not talking to a child here. Im very respectful and humble on this forum or I would’ve been banned a long time ago. The only reason you see other wise is cause I’m 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 it’s a little different, I’m 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 don’t throw shots at anyone here, I don’t 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 settings…

Even after this reply I feel no way towards you, I just put out my latest preset pack and I’m about to enjoy some gaming. I’m glad you finally got that off your chest though. The air is clear.

#8

Sorry, sorry. I guess everything needed to come out tonight lol. Even though you’ve been lurking for a year I still feel it’s proper to say welcome to the forum by the way.

#9

I don’t know what to say about this fight entirely but i most say that, just do your job and that’s it, don’t talk to each of you never again and that’s it

#10

just try to end this in the most polite way

#11

Thank you : D

I hope it doesn’t 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 it’s 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 you’re happy without having to compromise anything.

So I really hope both y’all do yous and retain your flavors in philosophies so they can be special and varied, you’re doing amazing works and life’s too short to fight : D

3 Likes
#12

i must come to agree a bit about that philosophy over there, but there is sometimes when it’s just impossible, it depends mostly in the type of people we are talking about so it’s more about the two of them than anything we could say about the situation, after all we are just only observers

#13

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 it’s synonymous to me.

There’s no need for you to be additionally cynical, immature and disrespectful in your response. Remember we’re trying to adult here, not insult each other back and forth.

You’re doing a really excellent job of deescalating.

It’s 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 it’s more about how your behaviour made me feel as opposed to “just about Shadow Mask settings”.

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 it’s not about Shadow Masks at all…this attitude of yours is what might be a turn off to some who didn’t have to see this side of you before. Maybe that’s what might have been the cause of what you perceived as a switcheroo.

Actually, you’re wrong about this and I’ve already told you this. It’s not just your presets that don’t get my likes and it’s not just your presets that I comment on and my comments and views remain consistent regardless of who made the preset. So you’re 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 didn’t know we couldn’t 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 don’t have the evidence to support what is in your head because it just isn’t real.

So yes, it’s 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 you’re 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.

#14

Far as I’m 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 wouldn’t be an issue to you since it’s 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 “waiting” for you to be the “first” 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.

I’m 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 “accurate” means absolutely nothing to me, it displayed in the same manner as the “crtsim” shader does and I liked that look point blank period. I continually express that I make my presets how I want it, it doesn’t matter if I make all black and white presets that’s my choice and my business. You came in seeming like you were trying to “school” me on something I already decided on and I wasn’t having that especially after those comments I saw earlier. If that wasn’t your intention then my fault but that’s how I took it.

He/she didn’t feel anyway about anything you’re adding things in that was never said, a question was simply asked that’s all. Go back up and see for yourself.

Like I said in my last reply I feel nothing towards you, I’m 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.

#15

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 don’t 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 wasn’t 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.

3 Likes
#16

I’m over this topic now. Both parties let out what they needed to say to each other and now I’m moving forward from this.

1 Like
#17

You hit the nail right on the head. Truth and reconciliation go hand in hand and the genesis of this begins here.

#18

This is an interesting tack, though.

We can’t 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, isn’t that better than nothing? If the goal isn’t accuracy, then that’s fine, but I don’t think one should give up on the goal of accuracy just because it’s 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 there’s still some work to be done there, but that’s really the last hurdle to clear and they’re 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 you’re talking about 4K).

I don’t think brightness is the be all and end all of image quality and in many cases I’d 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 you’re in a completely dark room. I’d argue that things like contrast ratio and color balance are more important, brightness is more of a quality of life thing so we don’t have to view our TVs in a pitch black room all the time.

I’m not saying you should change what you’re doing, it’s 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 that’s not to everyone’s taste and that’s fine.

5 Likes
#19

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 “self-adjust” 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.

3 Likes
#20

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.

#21

What some people may not understand is presets which use opaque scanlines and 100% Mask Strength without too much darkness mitigation for example Bloom which decreases the opacity of the Mask will look progressively darker as the image is scaled down, for example in a thumbnail or downscaled version of a screenshot on the forums.

So in other words the darkness becomes exaggerated.

For the benefit of the uninformed (as well as others who may be have different encumbrances), I have been including notes in the vast majority of my screenshot postings which advise the viewer to view in FullScreen in the native resolution resolution of the screenshot or to zoom in until it “looks right” for those who may be viewing on lower resolution screens.

You see, some presets use every pixel available to achieve their final brightness, when downscaled, you simply have less pixels available to illuminate the screen. You can think of each pixel as a candle if you have less candles in a given area, wouldn’t you have less light being produced?

So be careful judging presets without viewing them at the native resolution.

Another thing is compression. Compression sometimes chips away at the emulated phosphors, since some presets use every bit of brightness available to them to get to their final brightness, chipping away from the phosphors can chip away at the overall brightness.

Lastly, making a video on YouTube and conveying these settings can be very tricky. There are so many different settings available for colour formats e.t.c. and most of the defaults are designed to get an acceptable image out to the masses within as little bandwidth as possible. Therefore they aren’t really catering for the type of settings that the more accurate presets (in terms of mask strength and scanline strength and bloom) require. One improper setting can make or break the brightness of the entire preset making it appear much darker than the original preset in action on an emulator. I don’t really know how many appreciate and understand that.

Other presets may have enough brightness headroom that it doesn’t take the presets below a certain threshold where it begins to look really dark. Finer Mask and Scanline details also require higher bitrates in order to be preserved than ones without Full Mask patterns.

Also, YouTube video producers, do sometimes learn from feedback as well as when they gain experience over time so over time certain aspects of their videos might tend to improve making the newer ones less likely to suffer from the mistakes which might have been encountered in the older ones.

I’m saying this because this has been my experience and I’ve tried to communicate with YouTube content creators in order to get the settings to look right (which is similar to how they look when played through the emulator).

Also, do note that my initial (still work in progress at the time) Shadow Mask Presets were deliberately low gamma in keeping with the appearance of the photo of the Old GE TV. I also posted pics of these presets on Reddit where at least one user said something that sounded very similar to this. I also do a lot of experimentation even though not everyone will agree with or like the interim results. Trying different things helps a lot in the long term.

As well as one YouTube commenter based on some older videos of my presets which he eventually rescinded once he saw newer more representative videos where the YouTube creator had started using different capture settings.

For NesGuy’s older Full Mask and Scanlines presets as well as Sony Megatron Color Video presets in action, it will be a bit unintuitive to attempt to judge or criticize them based on a GPU screenshot on the basis of a lack of brightness. This is only something that someone who doesn’t understand how these things work (or perhaps is suffering from other unspecified encumbrances) might do.

#22

You’re wise for 26. The thing is this, absolutely no one might be as offended if they weren’t very passionate about their various projects and contributions.

This is really the crux of the matter. (Some) of us put in hours and hours which turn into days then weeks of tweaking just to get that last bit of fuzz or blur out or that strangeness out of the preset to make it look just right.

So you can’t just come around after someone has toiled and sowed and expect to reap their satisfaction that comes with sharing that masterpiece or work of art with the world.

Would an artist give an unfinished painting to another to finish before it can be fully enjoyed by the masses? Is it wrong to feel good when people tell you you’ve done a great job and have made a positive impact on their lives?

Only someone with a different brand of integrity or one who might be lacking in compassion or empathy for others might want to unapologetically pursue a path like that, which takes away from the creator of the creation they admitted that they had so admired.

That really points to a negativity involved in the admiration of the art. A sense of,

"Wow!

“That looks soooo awesome, so beautiful!”

but

“Oh man, I wish it was me who came up with that!”

At least that’s what it can seem like. Everyone has their own version of morality spinning around in their minds.

The pressure of the pursuit of popularity can bring out all sorts of undesirable behaviour.

While this may sound harsh and it doesn’t even have to be what was going on, this is how it felt to me because I am very passionate about any and everything I do.

#23

I understand that, now i don’t think someone works on shaders for popularity cause it is so much of a niche still, however lets remind ourselves that this project is to commemorate decades of technology and of games that have been thrown away with the advent of lcd and of the 6th generation of consoles, and you are on top of it, don’t lose that pursuit between your group of people. Retro gaming is toxic everywhere, and luckly here there is still a lot of knowledge and respect given to everyone, this has been just a black spot on a paper and am glad you found a way to a better mood. Always looking forward to your discoveries, knowledge and taste in future presets aswell. Cheers!

3 Likes
#24

Hey @hunterk can you do me a favor and move all of these posts starting from this one to a new thread?

Edit: @hunterk I KNEW you were gonna use that title again lol.

You guys can have this thread, I’m done with this topic.

2 Likes
#26

I just saw this post, I don’t know what really happened, but please don’t fight, I think everyone has something to offer in their own way, no one is better than the other one, I’ve learned a lot with everyone’s posts here and helped me a lot, and not exclusively with one person. I think everyone has it’s own style and likes, and all CRT’s doesn’t look the same and everyone remembers the CRT’s in their own way. Just keep your good work, and keep enjoying all this thread and community. :fire::muscle::hugs: Cheers!!!:beer::beer: Have fun… Peace :peace_symbol::v:

12 Likes
#27

giphy

1 Like