Koko-aio shader discussions and updates

[kokoko3k]

@kokoko3k

Maybe I’m going to reimplement everything to overcome the complexity.

After a lot of tinkering, I came to the conclusion that using the old code and just tweaking its exposed parameters leads to very similar results.

The mask saturation and steepness is high and being not picky as my previous attempts it is forgiving versus final monitor characteristics and bad calibrations.
Plus, phophors are allowed to grow and no extra code is needed, so all in all, I flushed everything lol.

Will also probably convert maxmask* presets that were pushed to the repo that were using the flushed code to use the tweaked parameters.

Basically, I just pushed the input gain to a very high value to reach mask saturation, disable any HALO, just used a bit of bloom to smooth things and tweaked min phosphor width to the minimum and max to a value that would balance the big input gain.

Sorry for the noise!

[Starman99x]

Is there a proper solution for cores that flip the shader upside down? (and other directions too).

Rotating the bg_over is easy, same for the spot, but since the bezel doesn’t have evenly matched brightness/contrast on its sides, it looks off when rotated. And there’s no parameter to fix it.

But I wonder if all of this can be fixed in RetroArch’s settings? It’s weird that some cores have this problem while others don’t.

[kokoko3k]

You have to flip the bezel texture and make a preset with an override.
That’s a long standing bug in retroarch and I don’t feel comfortable to workaround it if that implies lowering the shader performance by adding an option for that.

I think you can switch drivers from/to Vulkan/GLcore and see if the flip issue is solved.

In that case you can override the video driver in retroarch.

[Starman99x]

What about the bezel file/image? Maybe it can be edited to look right from all angles. The other flipped features can be easily fixed with an override.

[kokoko3k]

Sure, it can be edited to look specular and so freely flippable, but the bezel would look worse. Again, since the bug is not in koko-aio, it is something that needs to be addressed by Retroarch; I’m not going to change the defaults that looks right as they are now to workaround the problem.

Just to be clear, the bezel is treated by the presets the same as other images, so you can modify it and include in the preset, i don’t see big issues here.

[Starman99x]

Yeah I didn’t notice that at first, I’ll make flipped copies for my setup. Thanks.

[Duimon]

@kokoko3k

but the bezel would look worse.

@Starman99x

If I may expand on this. The “luminance” channel (RED) of the inner bezel image is shaded differently on the sides, top, and bottom. (Still %100 RED but at a different value.)

I have flipped straight and curved default bezels in my Duimon-koko-aio repo. I also have rotated versions where the shading is applied relative to the final orientation.

They can be found in the "Duimon-koko-aio\Graphics\_bezel\flipped" folder.

If you are interested in using wildcards to automatically flip based on the core and video driver you can look in my "Duimon-koko-aio\res\base\_flip" folder for examples.

[Starman99x]

Wow I had no idea that you made a koko-aio pack, I was waiting for it ^^

[ofy90]

Hello, I’m really enjoying your shaders!

I’m sorry if this was already explained before but I’m having trouble understanding the preset organization and differences. So I have a couple of questions if you don’t mind.

What are the differences between the presets on folder “4.1” and “ng”? There are some presets that look similar on both, so is there a superior/newer version?

Also, I noticed there are presets on the main folder (koko-aio) that seem to share the same names with the presets on the 4.1 folder. E.g. monitor-bloom-bezel is in both directories but they seem to have different code. Which of them should I be using? I have a regular 1080p IPS display btw, if that’s the deciding factor.

Thank you!

[BarbuDreadMon]

@Starman99x

Is PS1 emulation using the rotation api call ? Or is that a different issue related to video drivers unlike the one reported in https://github.com/libretro/FBNeo/issues/1044 ?

@kokoko3k

That’s a long standing bug in retroarch and I don’t feel comfortable to workaround it if that implies lowering the shader performance by adding an option for that.

Are there performance concerns with the rotation uniform ? I implemented it to solve those problems.

[kokoko3k]

It is nothing related to the rotation uniform, unfortunately.

Some cores just appear to flip the y coord internally when using HW renderers.
I remember, but not sure nor tested it, that this happens only on one of the output drivers, not sure if Vulkan or GLCore.

As per the performance concerns, nothing specific, it is just that every addition in a shader code leads to a (small) decrease in performance, even reading a “flip” parameter and acting accordingly, but again, rotation uniform is not specifically related.

[BarbuDreadMon]

Which PS1 core and renderer is this ? Maybe i can figure out why it’s happening.

[kokoko3k]

@ofy90 Yes, it has been explained multiple times, but np, I’ve time right now.

Presets-4.1 contains presets made when koko-aio was at version 4.1, which is pre NG.
They share a distinctive mask, the only one possible at the time; the look of those presets is meant to be frozen, apart from minor tweaks or from time to time.

Presets-ng contains presets made after koko-aio ng version was released.
ng release carried a complete rewrite of the mask code allowing it do be far more flexible and feature rich, while mantaining the ability to replicate the old code.
> Read more here < New presets will appear there.

Presets:Handhelds-ng contains presets to emulate handhelds possible after ng version was released.

@ofy90

Also, I noticed there are presets on the main folder (koko-aio) that seem to share the same names with the presets on the 4.1 folder.

Nope, there are no such thing; the main koko-aio folder does not contain any preset, apart from the koko-io-ng.slangp which is meant to be the parent of all the presets, but is not meant to be used.

However is true that there are duplicates names; the folder:
Presets_HiresGames_Fast contains a copy of the 3 afromentioned folders (4.1,ng and handhelds) which are intended to be more performant with cores that have an high output resolution (dreamcast, ps2…) > Read more here <

The advice is to just pick the one you like, easy.

[kokoko3k]

Oh, it would be really great!

It happens with various cores that use an HW renderer.
This is Swanstation with HW renderer + GLCore output Driver:

This is exactly the same, but with Vulkan:

[Starman99x]

I was testing your koko-aio pack and it’s super cool! I noticed that it works fast out of the box, do you use static configs? It’s very nice.

I was wondering if you could make a GBA_SP preset with a brighter screen than the base GBA (which is also cool as it is). Oh and I noticed that the GBA texture itself is using a slightly inferior design to your Mega Bezel version.

I think all handhelds need now on the shader side is a thin reflective bezel to match the Mega Bezel.

[Duimon]

@Starman99x

if you could make a GBA_SP preset

I think I made an SP preset. (I’ll have to check.) If I did you can tweak it to your hearts content. For most of the color handhelds I added a local override to select an alternative base preset.

@Starman99x

I noticed that the GBA texture itself is using a slightly inferior design to your Mega Bezel version.

I updated many of my handheld presets shortly after doing the koko pack. The updates were geared towards ultra-wide mode on the Mega Bezel so I’m in no huge hurry to update the koko pack.

[kokoko3k]

@Starman99x

I noticed that it works fast out of the box, do you use static configs?

It references the in place shader, so it depends on where you install it, so if you installed it “under” a koko-aio with static config, it uses it, but it does not provide any static config by its own (and it couldn’t without shipping a copy of the shader itself).

[Noromu]

Hi Koko I downloaded the latest update a few hours ago and my PSP is upside down

[kokoko3k]

See some posts ago, it depends on retroarch.

Try to switch to Vulkan, does it work?

[Noromu]

ok I will read previous post, if the test was in Vulkan