Nesguy's masks. Feedback wanted

[Nesguy]

Hey everyone, I need some community input on these before sending them off to @HyperspaceMadness for inclusion in the Mega Bezel. Please let me know what you think can be improved.

The purpose of these presets is compatibility on a wide range of displays. They’re all subpixel-agnostic and meant for 1080p displays, but once I know what changes to make I can make some 4k versions as well. I believe I can also transfer these same settings to the the guest-fast version for increased compatibility.

These aren’t intended to be accurate at the phosphor level, but rather to emulate only the black space of a mask and to convey the mask texture at normal viewing distances. Feedback would be very appreciated. I’m particularly interested in things like brightness, color fidelity, scanline width and variation, mask detail, sharpness, etc. Be brutally honest, please.

Please note that I’m working with a base of 250 nits on this monitor, so brightness/backlight may need to be adjusted on your display, but this is well within the range of any SDR display.

EDIT: new settings, new screenshots

RGB-360-TVL

RGB-540-TVL

NTSC-360-TVL

NTSC-540-TVL

RGB-Aperture-540-TVL

The files can be found here if you want to try them out.

GitHub - Patrickdroid/Retroarch-Shaders

[Drybonz]

I’m not the pickiest guy about my scanlines, but that RGB 540 looks great to me, from the pictures.

[Nesguy]

Thanks! The 360 TVL is the same thing but with a coarser mask and a bit more brightness to compensate. The aperture grille is the one I’m least satisfied with, currently. It’s tough getting good shade separation in the brights while maintaining the scanline gaps. For whatever reason the slot mask is easier to work with.

[JHorbach1]

The only “bug” I find was in the Aperture mask, when playing some games the scanlines seems to “flicker”. It’s the only way I can describe this, to replicate it, just play Super Mario 64 at native resolution and look at the sky when moving Mario around. I loved your masks.

[guest.r]

The flickering may be caused by the FRC feature of some displays. When i went from 8 bits + FRC to pure 8 bits some previous flickering didn’t happen any more.

[Nesguy]

Yes, what Guest said. This can happen with some displays when displaying very fine masks at high strengths.

[Nesguy]

How’s the brightness, here? I’ve had to exaggerate the beam width variation by a lot to get a decent gamma curve, i.e., scanlines go from razer thin over darks to blobbing out and connecting over brights. This is a consequence of using brightness boost, which introduces clipping. You have to use the scanline variation to distinguish the brighter shades, which leads to the blobbiness. I can only make it brighter by making the brights blob even more, so you lose scanline definition, or just living with the clipping and having a lot of merged colors. I’m viewing this at 250 nits, which seems adequate, but more nits would probably be better.

[HyperspaceMadness]

@Nesguy

How’s the brightness, here?

I’d say still a bit dark with a normal monitor brightness level. One of the difficulties people have who are not already down the rabbit hole of max mask strength is that they seem too dark and they don’t know why and just pass them over.

[Nesguy]

Thanks for the feedback! Yes it’s a lot like the problem with “vivid” mode on a new TV vs a calibrated image, no one likes the calibrated image because it’s not bright enough and they don’t understand the benefits that a calibrated image brings.

Also it’s kinda hard to define a normal brightness level these days, even among SDR displays there’s a wide range - like 250 nits max to 400+ nits for a premium SDR display.

Maximum mask strength is a real challenge on an SDR display, and I find that with very fine masks, the effect is really diminished with decreased mask strength. However, I was able to push the brightness a bit higher while still maintaining decent shade separation in the highs - now the brights REALLY blob out:

I think this may be as good as it’s going to get. It may not be for the casual user, and thus will probably never be as popular as the “MOAR brightness” presets, but it should at least be satisfying to the purists.

[Drybonz]

Yeah, they do look too dark in the pictures, but I find that my screenshots never really look like what I’m seeing in-game as well.

[Nesguy]

Hows the second shot looking at 250 nits?

[Drybonz]

It looks dark to me, but I have an HDR display, so I’m used to poppin colors.

There’s a lot of variables going from one guy’s monitor to a screenshot to another guy’s monitor.

[Nesguy]

Could ABL be interfering with the maximum brightness? Are you certain you’re viewing the image with your display at 250 nits?

@Drybonz

There’s a lot of variables going from one guy’s monitor to a screenshot to another guy’s monitor.

Indeed, screenshots don’t tell the whole story.

[Drybonz]

Mine is at 400 nits.

[Nesguy]

That’s wild, man. I don’t understand how it could be too dark, then. The mask is no more than a 50% reduction in brightness, so that takes you down to 200 nits. The scanlines are less than a 50% reduction, so you should have well over 100 nits (which is the max that a CRT could do). I think there’s something else going on, maybe

I think maybe people are wanting things to be brighter than they appeared on a CRT!

[Drybonz]

I think it’s just personal preference as to what looks “bright” to a person.

I mean… don’t use me as a guide because the way I have my stuff set up I think most people wouldn’t like it.

[Nesguy]

Sure but if we’re going over 100 nits for the final image, we’re going above and beyond what a CRT was capable of. Which is fine, of course, but I’m just trying to make the image look like it would on a CRT.

[Drybonz]

I think you are probably right. My perception is probably tainted by years of modern monitors.

[Nesguy]

Yep, I think if you’re used to viewing a very bright image such as modern monitors are capable of, it’s going to take some time to get used to CRT-level brightness.

This is very much like how manufacturers added “vivid” mode (also called “store mode”) to their TVs starting in the 90s in order to sell more TVs. They figured out that if you could make your TV look brighter than the one next to it, people would buy it, never mind the fact that it’s an inaccurate image in a lot of ways.

Also ambient light is going to be a factor, in a dark room your pupils will dilate and let more light in.

[Drybonz]

I think if I force myself to be objective and consider the CRTs I grew up with, I would say your screenshots look about right.