I know it could be scary at first, but having knobs at low level gives much more freedom and possibilities to customize the final result (and are fun to play with!).
Writing the documentation just now, i’ll try to be as much clear as possible including short examples of what i discovered it could be done.
-edit- docs.md updated with exhaustive (i hope) explainations.
Wow! This all sounds immensely cool 
I think 4.1 will be the last release to carry old mask and scanline code.
In the development repo, i created another main preset called koko-aio-ng.slangp which is the parent of the preset under presets-ng directory, there is also docs-ng.md with updated documentation about the new features.
In this new “internal branch”, the old code has been ditched in favour of the new, and the shader speed is back to 4.1 levels (a bit more).
This to say, that if you want to play with updated features, you have to load a preset under presets-ng directory, but beware that they are not yet been upgraded, so the first thing you have to do after loading a preset from there is to activate low level phosphor grid emulation and configure it.
Strongly adviced to deeply read docs-ng.
Still playing around with the new phosphor settings/code…but, oh my goodness! Thank you so much for the work you have put into this.
My pov is biased because I know exactly what does what, but I hope you will find it easy to understand.
Bonjour kokoko3k. Un grand merci pour votre énorme travail. J’attend avec impatience vos nouveau reglage. Avec vos shaders je peux jouer sur mon pc portable sans vidé la batterie en 30 min. On se rapproche de HSM mais en plus léger.
Merci
I finished porting old presets to new (in presets-ng/) folder (they look the same).
Adapted and renamed pgrid* presets with more meaningful names, there are some permutations, sorry!
pgrid3-Corelevel_HMask-Aperturegrille.slangp
pgrid3-Corelevel_HMask-CoreLevel_Slotmask.slangp
pgrid3-Corelevel_HMask-ScreenLevel_Slotmask.slangp
pgrid4-Screenlevel_HMask-Aperturegrille.slangp
pgrid4-Screenlevel_HMask-CoreLevel_SlotMask.slangp
pgrid4-Screenlevel_HMask-ScreenLevel_SlotMask.slangp
Also, an handheld preset has been added, based on those shots from a real gba:
I reduced a bit the cell bleeding to account for camera issues.
Handheld-RGB.slangp
What combination of corelevel/screenlevel hmask/slotmask/aperturegrille do you prefer?
How does handheld preset look to you, any suggestion?
In the near future, I think I’ll be away for a while because of taxes (sob) and an holiday in Japan (yay!)
Hi Kokoko3k, Thanks for this update. What I see is very interesting. Please give me some advice: do you recommend using the core or the screenlevel with the pgrid for use on smartphones? PS good luck in your projects.
Hi Rob, given the low size of the screen, maybe I’d try corelevels ones first
Here are the results of a test. What I see I like very much. They will then be included in your definitive package right? Will there be a way to have a bezelwider version as well? Thanks for your work, your progress is fantastic
Yeah, they will be included.
The presets are already ‘bezelwider’, which means the bezel is visible on left/right sides only.
What do you mean?
Good morning, sorry it was my mistake, I’m already bezelwider in fact. I can’t wait for the final version to come out, what I see is even more beautiful than it was before, which I didn’t think possible. With this preset I have a dot mask effect that is neither too fine nor too coarse. Also I love the dot mask style, and I hope to try it on my Mini PC this week (I have yet to install Linux on it). Thank you so much for your valuable work.
Just to share and give some visual feedback : this is the PGRID3 preset with Hmask core level and Slotmask screen level. Added the FXAA and raised the Halo value to 0.08 - the first screen is with Deconvergence ON and the second with OFF - here are the results:
Open To Meraviglia
Together with the Super Nintendo here is one of my childhood dreams (realized thanks to emulation) Donkey Kong!
pgrid presets definitely need more tweaking; more halo seems a good idea, since they are a bit “extreme”, but i guess they may still be of interest for some use cases, when you push brightness very high on oled display to say one.
I agree, they tend to be a bit dark, increasing Halo and activating Bloom things improve significantly but I can’t find the perfect way. Unfortunately I didn’t take any screenshots but, as I said, I activated Bloom and brought Halo to 0.8 as a starting point. But they are small tweaks, the big part is present and, I repeat, it is spectacular. I’ve tried games for Final Burn Neo, and it’s amazing how well Hmask on core level scales according to the content. I keep the slotmask on screen level so as not to make the “dot” effect too coarse.
A question that is just my curiosity: if my memory serves me correctly there were CRTs in the 90s with a mask style like PGrid or do I remember correctly? Or is it just a style derived from the portable console LCDs of the time. I have confused memories about it. Thank you.
PGrid is just the name used in the presets which reflects the new low level phosphor implementation.
While it provides the same functionalities as before, it has the ability to scale the horizontal mask (well, even this functionality was already present), but this time when the mask is scaled so that there is more space between phoshors, they are able to grow in width and eventually blend each other when their light overlaps.
Also, when not using a preconfigured mask preset, this time the phosphors can be freely moved horizontally by sub/phosphor steps, so that you can achieve new masks not possible till now, like xxrgbxx (actually used in handheld preset do have a visible grid around them.
Or, you can move r g and b to the very same position to completely overlap them, clear the visible mask, and have a solid color instead
This is for the horizontal mask ofc, but part of the same implementation is used for level 1 vertical mask, where you emulate scanlines, and level 2 vertical mask, where you emulate aperture grille or slotmask.
Being able to switch from core to screen coordinates in each step, you can achieve different results, the implementation is simple by design, but may be difficult to master, that’s why i suggest you to take a read to the docs-ng.md file, where i tried to explain all the things in detail.
Since i failed to find a gameboy overlay around with a valid license, I just made one.
Feel free to reuse it as you like, it is in the main repo with a new gameboy-overlay preset in presets-ng folder.
More, if one would like to improve it (I’m not particular proud of the led) please, do!
…kinda weird to have it lying on the desktop at 1:1 scale (24’’) versus the original one waiting for you to make a quick game:
For some reasons beyond me (oh well…) I’ve had the idea to set multiplier to be an integer, but it seems that for low resolution contents, setting the mask to core resolution and then a bit lower than 1 (0.75, 0.875), produces interesting results, it gives me that typical sensation of being unable to focus my eyes on a point on the screen
hmasks pgrid* presets updated to use a tighter mask as in screenshots.
This is with pushed levels from the new preset pgrid3-Corelevel_HMask-CoreLevel_Slotmask-lightsOn.slangp: (@ROBMARK85)
