Koko-aio shader discussions and updates

RetroArch Additions Shaders
#1897

Thanks man! This is huge but it’s one of those things that no one will appreciate or notice until it’s already too late. It happened to me. It’s was a slow burn. Didn’t notice until I had to sit closer to the screen after a move.

At first I was second guessing myself, wondering if it was just YouTube compression artifacts but the un-affected area outside of the 4:3 gameplay area gave it away.

Then I started checking up close when watching other content and the permanent scanline gaps were there.

Can the X axis movement be disabled independently or made optional? I’m asking this because I imagine it wouldn’t be compatible with subpixel “accurate” CRT Mask shaders and presets.

Wouldn’t it cause artifacts in some cases if the underlying subpixels change while the generated mask subpixel layouts remain static?

The second part to this is, will you be willing to add a universal, standalone version of this to RetroArch?

#1898

Yes:

It is compatible, because it is the content that shifts, not the horizontal mask.

For the very same reason, the X shifting would not work, because a post-pass would have no way to differentiate between content and mask.

For similar reasons, Y shifting would destroy anything that snaps to real screen pixels, like slotmasks or shadowmasks; also it would shake any bezel (Uborder, MegaBezel…).
(The latter problem could be worked out by moving the image by screen pixels quants (now it uses fraction of pixels and smooths the motion), but that could produce a jerky effect)

1 Like
#1899

Hi @kokoko3k - I really wanted to thank you for your Slotmask TVL 410 and 500 presets - they are spectacular and extremely light - I’m already a fan of your VGA preset, now I’ve found these spectacular presets for consoles and arcades too, and I think I can finally turn my PC into a 360 degree retro gaming station. Thank you so much.

1 Like
#1900

Ok, here are my current settings that I use on a 4k Sony OLED (so, output is set at 2160p on retroarch), using Game Mode setting and BFI lv2 on the Sony settings, for anyone that wants to take a look.

Shaders should be uptodate from the dev repo.

Depending on your panel, you may need to dial down “input signal” (if you’re not using a BFI type setting on your panel) and “saturation” slighty, and change "sharp X from -70 to -75 for a little more sharpness (personally, I’d prefer a setting of -72)…If you do change input signal, you may need to slighty adjust “gamma out”.

Edit: should add I use Vulkan.

4 Likes
#1901

Oky, I think I managed to solve the issue:

There is a new backdrop image under “textures” directory, namedd backdrop_superhero.jpg you can use in place of the default one.

You can take a look to the gimp psource roject I uploaded in the secondary repository too:

Please, have fun :wink:

#1902

Will take a look tomorrow and report back.

#1903

Ever so slighty tweaked settings uploaded (as per previous post, configured for 2160p)

1 Like
#1904

Ok, finished tweaking…finally! On closer inspection, had a few things I needed to tweak further.

Let me know if anyone wants the new present (4k):

ghouls-250622-101855
ghouls-250622-1018553456×2016 1.54 MB

3 Likes
#1905

It still does look good on 1080p scaled down, so please, me :slight_smile:

1 Like
#1906

Cheers, will upload in the morning (uk time).

#1907

Here you go

1 Like
#1908

Thanks! I’ve tweaked it to mitigate moire and gain a bit of sharpness on 1080p:

PIXELGRID_NO_INTERBLEED_H = "1.000000"
PIXELGRID_SIZE_W = "1.000000"
PIXELGRID_TVL_X = "625.000000"
IN_GLOW_GAMMA = "2.22"
GAMMA_OUT = "0.400000"
IN_GLOW_POWER = "1.999999"
IN_GLOW_BIAS = "0.500000"
IN_GLOW_WARPSHARP_X = "0.200000"
IN_GLOW_WARPSHARP_Y = "0.200000"
PIXELGRID_MIN_H = "0.300000"
PIXELGRID_MAX_H = "0.750000"
PIXELGRID_Y_MASK = "0.400000"
PIXELGRID_Y_MASK_SHIFT = "-0.010000"

~~…also raised TEMP from 6900 to 7500 due to my personal taste ~~

Screenshot_20250623_152918
Screenshot_20250623_1529181920×1080 1.11 MB

1 Like
#1909

Nice! Which combo got rid of the last bit of moire?

#1910

There were 2 moire patterns intersecting.

  • first one due to scanlines; minimum scanlines was too low for 1080p with min->max gamma set to 5.0, so I’ve had to rise the minimum height, and to keep min->max proportions, I’ve raised the maximum height too. Still on scanlines, I’ve had to nullify “interline extra steepness”, because it produces very steep lines (moire).
    …at least doing that made the picture brighter, so i’ve put the main signal gain down.

  • second one due to the very high TVL, i just switched to screen coords.

1 Like
#1911

Perfect - just made some minor tweaks on my 4k version, based on these 2 setting re moire, and now that’s done the trick. Nice!

1 Like
#1912

You can easilly check for moire by using the: “show test pattern” parameter set to 9:00

#1913

Yeah, all done.

20 characters lol.

#1914

Hey, I think i managed to fix that, please, check in the dev repo.

2 Likes
#1915

Hi, I think either my install is busted, or it’s because I’m on nightly rocknix, but I can’t get the ambilight working no matter what now (neither with the koko that comes with rocknix nor the latest main which means it’s on my end).

I made sure the scaling is set to full in both ES and RA, the game launches stretched, then I apply koko shader and it “shrinks” to 4:3, I get the reflections on bezel, but not the reflections in the “black bars”. In shader options I made sure the ambilight is enabled, but flipping it off or on produces no difference.

this is what the koko shader I was using before looks like now

image
image1920×1080 1.33 MB

I’ll try in few more nightlies (I’m also missing option to disable decorations in the ES menu so I dunno what’s going on) edit: it also failed to load my saved presets for gb and gbc and I had to recreate them so something’s definitely afoot.

#1916

If you saved your presets as full instead of simple and did a big version jump, then breaking is expected.

But the missing borders are unrelated and probably Retroarch is using core aspect instead of full aspect for some reason.

Overrides in place, maybe?

Mmh but you said it starts stretched, and thay suggests full aspect, weird.

Have you tried other border shaders like megabezel/uborder?

What if you enable background picture parameter in koko-aio?