I hadn’t seen this before. I’ve been testing and it only works on retroarch version 1.19.1, for some reason it doesn’t work on the latest version 1.20.0, nor on nightly. If anyone else can confirm this.
The same thing happens to me with some Uborder presets.
There is a bug with the $CORE$ wildcard. Hopefully it will be resolved soon.
I’m new to Mega Bezel. I think I got the shaders and presets all installed correctly… small question: under the “glass” area of the bezel/border, is this a reflection or is the actual playable area of the game under the bezel?
I just played with a couple of presets for fun and to become familiar and some of my game seems to be “under”. Have I set something up wrong or is this default. Can I fix?
Awesome work! Thanks. This idea of using custom overalys next to Mega Bezel is what I’m going for, I think. I just want to make sure I’ve got the basics working correctly before I go off the beaten path,
It is a reflection. Automatic scaling should absolutely guarantee that all the game screen is within the bezel.
Which exact presets are you trying? There is a small chance that one is using shader cropping settings.
Can you post a screenshot of one you are concerned about? (Press “F8” during play. File will be saved in “Retroarch/screenshots”)
Edit: My bezel project presets should not use cropping. Make sure you have overlays disabled.
So, I experimented more… the presets that come with Mega Bezel seem to work fine. With my original post, I think I was using a CyberLab preset. I will look into this further.
Sorry! Again, this my first attempt at using a “bezel” shader… amazing work!
General question: I’ve been looking for a way to “zoom” the bezel to keep the aspect ratio but increase the size of the play area. I will keep exploring and reading guides and forums but a hint about applicable parameters and how to apply would be appreciated. For example, in the attached image, I want to try “zooming” to put the red lines on the physical edge of my monitor.
You want to use the viewport zoom option. It’s near the beginning of the shader parameters list.
If you wish to change the size of the screen you can use the Integer Scale Offset or Non-Integer Scale %.
Once Bezel Independent Scaling is not enabled the Bezel will scale in proportion.
If it is, then there’s another Scale % for the Bezel.
Yes… listen to Cyber… I misunderstood what you were trying to do. Sorry about that.
Viewport zoom will also work, but the mask only scales at integer intervals.
If scaling the background with the bezel is not desired, then “Non-Integer Scale %” is preferred.
After updating shaders (updated mdapt and pal-r57-shell) via online updater my simple preset based on Mega Bezel + mdapt + pal-r57-shell stopped working, only technical data on screen. Rolling back to the previous mdapt and pal versions did not help.
Try deleting (Or renaming temporarily) the “RetroArch\shaders\shaders_slang\bezel\Mega_Bezel” folder and updating again.
I’m fairly positive this is an issue with a flawed update.
Always keep a backup of your MegaBezel folder within the shaders folder tree, in case a Steam auto update breaks things. I’m permastuck on 1.12 MegaBezel because for whatever reason I cannot upgrade to the latest versions without breaking my custom presets. Certain features were added/changed, and no easy way to tell what is the issue that I know of.
So after the Steam update breaks stuff, just copy the old folder back over the new updated one if you have an issue. I’ll usually delete the new one before copying to be safe there’s nothing extra in there.
Neat thing about CRT tubes was way back in the day they would often fail, and then we could take them to a repair shop and a crafty technician would not always replace the internal tube with the same exact model. Sometimes our television set or monitor could be transformed into something else. MegaBezel/shaders let us explore those what-ifs, unlike anything else:
Typical blurry 80s VGA tube (normally .28 to .25 mm dot pitch, usually the former):
What if? Late 80s .42mm slot mask tube (sort of like a real 1084s monitor):
Which would you prefer to game on?
I love that we have options now. 
I guess it should be “period correct”. For Arcade CRT, generally speaking, they didn´t evolve so much, at least for 240p-ish games. However with VGA monitors (like Wing Commander needs), there is a big difference between early `90 models and late 2000 ones. Remember VGA was originally designed for 640x480 in progressive mode.
Yep, I love period correct stuff.
To this day I am still trying to track down two specific mid to late-80s VGA monitors:
Packard Bell circa 1987/1988 (these had a unique, ultra-crappy blurry look to them)
Compudyne VGA circa 1988 (these had a particular graininess to them and weren’t very reliable)
The Packard Hell screen almost looked like looking through a fish tank at the graphics. I know, this should not be desirable, but I swear that’s what they looked like, brand new, on store shelves.
Without our emulation efforts, these nasty gems will be forgotten. Not everyone(almost noone) had a PVM/BVM monitor or late 90s VGA screen. There’s a great deal of charm in enjoying a classic title on proper less than optimal emulated hardware, as that’s how most kids and adults got to experience them during the time period.
Can someone give me an example of somewhat-accurate interlacing params? something that works for PS2, and general 480i, and looks authentic.
I would also like to see an example of a proper VGA mode, since the option didn’t seem to do much by itself.
I’m using the ADV GDV presets btw.
There was just a new “Bob” deinterlacing option added to the Mednefen/Beetle psx and saturn cores. You can update the cores and try it out. Just mentioning because it’s new and some may not have tried it yet.
edit Oh sorry, you said ps2. Just ignore me.
Thanks for the heads up! I forgot that cores might have internal interlacing/deinterlacing options.
My problem is that I have no Idea what a proper “realistic” interlaced setup would look like, I don’t remember or have a reference atm.
I can’t help you there. I just go with whatever looks good to me. I can’t even remember what scanlines really looked like on TVs back in the day. We never really acknowledged them… they were just the lines on the TV. Never had the remotest thought that we were going to try to make our TVs without lines look like the old TVs with lines… I look at the scanline threads on these forums and I can’t really tell which ones look more like our old TVs. I lived through it all but never really paid much attention.
That’s so true! I used to just blindly use default settings, but after you set up all your cores with matching console bezels, you feel like fine tuning the content image is the next step. I think I’ll just copy whatever the standalone guest advanced has by default.
My problem with Mega Bezel was that I couldn’t see an immediate effect/difference after switching interlacing modes, maybe it needs more parameter tuning? I hope somone will post an example, actually two, one for 480i, and the other for VGA as-well.
