So, I’ve set up Mega Bezel with my first core (SNES9x) and it looks amazing. Truly next-level stuff, imo. My monitor is a 27" 4K LG IPS with HDR400 (this is relevant), and right beside it I’ve got a MiSTer FPGA device running the SNES core hooked up to a 1998 consumer model Sony Trinitron TV (through RGB Scart). I’m using this comparison to calibrate my shader presets, because my intent is to use RetroArch for cores which are not presently existing in FPGA/MiSTer form (PSX/Saturn and later). I’ve dialed in a preset with Mega Bezel using the CRT Guest SM shader that is… I’ll say 95% spot-on to my Trinitron CRT TV, looking at them both at the same same. It’s pretty jaw-dropping, imo. In order to accomplish this, I’ve had to crank my 4k monitor to 100% brightness (400 nits), which is around 3x as bright as my old 1080p monitor… but doing this was required to offset the loss of brightness inherent to turning up the scanline and mask parameters to the point where they looked “close” to a real CRT TV. So, basically, I’m saying that there’s probably no point in me sharing a screenshot/preset because your monitor has to be capable of at least 400nits output, otherwise it will look dim. So far, so good however!
BUT, I’ve noticed a performance-relevant behavior in Mega Bezel that I would like to report. When I originally set up Mega Bezel, I ignored the advice to set my Aspect Ratio to my screen resolution (3840x2160) and just used the Core-Reported Aspect Ratio setting. The only downside was that it limited how wide I could make the bezel/frame. However, it performed great on my aging-model 3.6ghz i7 processor and GTX 1060 gpu. This evening, however, I revisited my preset and decided to try setting the Aspect Ratio to my screen resolution. It looks great… just like you’d expect from the screenshots in this thread. However, doing this made me lose around 10% performance - enough to where I was no longer hitting 60fps consistently with RunAhead enabled etc. In other words, just the act of using Mega Bezel to fill the sides of my screen with background Carbon Fibre texture (or extra-wide bezel/frame - or anything, I should image), was enough to tank my framerate by a significant margin. For the time being, then, I’ve reverted back to using Core-Reported Aspect Ratio and my only loss is that the sides of my monitor remain black for the time being… an acceptable tradeoff for the performance gains, imo. I’m not sure that anything can be done about this… but perhaps I will investigate using an “Overlay” image to fill the sides of my screen in future, rather than taking the hit of using Mega Bezel to populate this empty space… unless there’s a possible optimisation to be found here. Anyhow - just reporting what I’ve encountered!
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! Also thanks for the positive feedback!
