New CRT shader from Guest + CRT Guest Advanced updates

@guest.r, there are green and magenta in your Mask 5.

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And the RGB is seen in Mask 2 (it’s Aperture Grille too, isn’t it?).

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Is the Mask 5 displaying correct?

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Yeah, mask 5 is the trinitron version of the mask 0 (subpixel correct spacing, mask width of 2). Mask 2 is the lottes rgb mask (mask width of 3).

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Okay thanks for the knowledge. I have no clue about calibrating a monitor hahaha. Just a macbook air 13 2013 monitor. I think I have to read in a bit about color spaces and srgb…

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Haven’t been seriously playing around with Guest Advanced for a while and did not know it has become so powerful!! I just spent a couple of hours and made a preset that looks pretty exciting (to me personally obviously) and I almost know for sure that I can make it look really really good, if I want to spend the rest of the week (:stuck_out_tongue:) tweaking and trying out all the combinations of different settings like I did with some of my custom presets that I use religiously.

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Hey @guest.r I was wondering would it be possible to add the “Rolling Scanlines” parameter from the newpixie-crt shader to your shader? I’m seeing the guys talk a lot about it in the show off your shaders thread and that made me curious. If for nothing else it’ll be just an extra aesthetic added to the best shader on Retroarch. Gives off a nice nostalgic organic kind of vibe and I would love to add that feature to my guest shader preset.

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@HyperspaceMadness kind of did this already with his excellent HSM Mega Bezel Reflection Shader which is based on the CRT Guest Advanced Shader with some further customization.

You can get it here:

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It’s up to guest what to add or not, obviously, but I think it’s nice for different shaders to have different effects. Not to mention that rolling scanlines aren’t really a thing, AFAIK. I’ve only ever seen one display that might have had them, and I think that was really just an optical illusion caused by interlacing/field-swapping.

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My shader presets which I originally started by extensively tweaking the New pixie clone preset has a very measured amount of deconvergence noise in them to achieve that same analog, organic feeling to the image that you might be describing. My most recent updates did away with the rolling scanlines and fake scanlines in favour of more accurately generated and aligned scanlines but the overall vibe and feeling is still there. They’re not too overly sharp and “digital” and they’re not too soft and blurry in my opinion.

I have several videos and screenshots but they are based on the version with the rolling and fake scanlines and need to be updated. I invite you to try them out and see if that’s the type of look you’re seeking. I have a feeling that you might like them.

My post also has several notes to help you get even more out of the presets by suggesting different core options and stuff like that. It might be worth a read.

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The only time I saw that rolling scanlines effect was when watching TV and there was another TV on screen. And I think it happens due to camera not matching refresh of the other TV (29/24 vs 60/50hz)

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Hey there!

Rolling scanlines are unfortunatelly not compatible with the current scanline codepath and i would have to introduce another if/else situation. But i guess they are not too hard to implement as the excellent Mega Bezel version already supports them. I’m not sure if all scanline features could be preserved. But will keep this request on the TODO list.

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Yeah the fake scanline version is not very hard because it just takes an image and does a very simple brightness modulation on top, but this has none of the scanline dynamics that are a lot of what makes Guest-DrVenom great.

The other thing I have noticed is that to have something that does not have a very strobe-like or swimming-like result as the scanlines move, You have to adjust the image image behind to be either significantly blurred (This is what the actual NewPixie does), or have some sort of Up-Rez from something like XBR or ScaleFX (This is what the Mega Bezel Newpixie Clone does).

If the image is a relatively sharp pixellated image from the core then you get what feels like strobing or swimming as the scanlines become aligned with a pixel then go in and out of alignment with a pixel.

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I already managed to get a decent implementation over ‘real’ scanlines, but looks better with subtle settings. As pixels shouldn’t move, it’s only logical that the scanlines ‘cut’ them. No way around this with pixel enveloping scalines i guess. :wink:

New parameter is at the end of the ‘Scanline Section’.

New Release Version (2021-10-22-r1):

Notable changes:

  • Rolling scanlines added to standard and NTSC versions.

Download link:

https://mega.nz/file/BtBzVaBA#Yatx54XwGYtM5fbwiH9ADCLvE4__OnlByX87vz9MrDI

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This. What people think of as “rolling scanlines” was just interlacing, 100%.

It’s odd how certain things have become visual vernacular for “crt” or “recorded video.”

In a movie or TV show for example, whenever they show what is supposed to be recorded footage, scanlines are often added to the image even though they wouldn’t be there in real life on a digital recording. It’s just something that visual effects people started doing to indicate to the viewer “this is recorded footage.”

Rolling scanlines are kinda like that, I think.

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Were old recording standards/formats (VHS, Video-CD) actually displayed in 240/288p? The latter has definitely the resolution, but that doesn’t matter if the output device doesn’t handle it. The 3DO for example is even a console that output always 480i , except with a mod or on some Japanese machines with a 240p switch.

There is no analogue TV standard that uses 240 lines. AFAIK 240p is a hack of 480i found exclusively on some 8-bit and 16-bit home video game consoles.

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Hey Guest. I just downloaded your latest release from scratch and I don’t see the NTSC preset. Is that intentional? What’s the right way to update? Thanks again for your awesome shader!

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To update the shaders including ntsc ones you must copy the content of the .zip into the crt folder. The preset itself is in the /presets folder.

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This is what is in the zip file:

Are you only including updates in these zips?

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The package is complete, minus the ntsc preset. They can be unzipped to any folder, but the ntsc version needs the crt folder as the unzip destination in order to update.

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ok I understand now. The NTSC preset is in shaders\presets not in the zip.

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