I hear you. I guess it’s a little easier for me to dive right into a new update since I’m just tweaking two presets, you on the other hand have a whole bunch in your stable. I think you should be good to go with tweaking a bit since according to guest from earlier he doesn’t plan to put up another update for now unless something is reported.
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Well I hope no one pays me any mind when it comes to this and slows down the pace of progress on my account. I’m cool with the price of progress as things ultimately move forward and get improved. So I do what needs to be done.
The way I do my presets is interesting. Most of them are linked and only reference a couple sub base presets which reference the main base presets in the shader. This means that many times when I improve one preset many others get improved (at least partially) “for free”!
The challenge is in testing to make sure everything is okay afterwards. Sometimes it feels eerily strange to spend hours and days on one then when I move to the next one it’s still good enough to leave it as it is.
While I can make all my presets full, static and independent, I like this method because it keeps things moving and sometimes results in interesting accidents. I always have the option of retaining a previous look by importing all of the referenced parameters into a particular preset I want to freeze or preserve like my venerable Cyberlab__RGB-Sharp__PVM-EDITION__ADV presets which represent a whole era of my Shader Preset Pack long since passed that some users seem to prefer for whatever reason.
Part of the reason I have so many presets is because I realized that presets looked different at different resolutions and I wanted to address that, so that multiplied the count by 3 and I also wanted to simulate different types of output signal characteristics, not just a single screen with a singlular output signal style coming from each core.
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I don’t know if you noticed but a lot of people are definitely paying your shader presets mind, ever since the HSM Mega Bezel Reflection Shader project started gaining traction I’m literally seeing new users signing up here and going straight to that thread to give praise to the project and the shaders which I think is amazing, I think even my presets gained a little small fanbase lol.
So you’re basically saving your presets with the “simple preset” parameter turned on it sounds like, that’s pretty much how I do it with my presets as well. I try to update my presets the way guest updates his shader, only touch it if it’s something that really needs to be other than that don’t fix what ain’t broke. Some people still use your old presets cause there’s something about it they like I guess.
That’s cool that you have different shaders for different eras etc., my two presets are based off my own nostalgic reasons, I played all 8/16 bit systems on composite then soon as the 32 bit era came in I got a new tv and it was s video going forward up to the Dreamcast era, me lumping in handhelds into one of my presets was just me being a lazy ass lol.
I’m speaking this into existence now but I believe the guest shader along with our presets and everyone else that’s contributing here and there on different things will be part of the reason more and more new users will come here, it’s already happening now which is why you should do your best to keep your shaders up to date, our presets are gonna become somewhat like “advertisements” in the long run to attract new users lol
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I’ve noticed and this isn’t completely by chance. I’ve been doing my part to help users at first here but now mostly outside of this forum to see what can be possible and share what makes me even more excited about retrogaming. Look at the number of views on my thread in such a short period of time. I’ve encouraged users who have benefited to share with others as well.
Plus the uniqueness of my preset names as well as the quirkiness of my thread with all the screenshots, ensures that people are going to at least remember something about them. Then there’s the quality of the shader presets themselves. To me they’re top class and do what I want them to do with the pixels. I wouldn’t use them myself if they weren’t or didn’t.
For many new users they’re definitely much better than what they’re used to seeing as not everyone is in this niche we find ourselves in. I love imagining the joy of new satisfied users based on the many positive comments and feedback I’ve received.
HSM Mega Bezel Reflection Shader has also proven to be a very popular platform and with our presets included its only a matter of time for things to snowball. The baseline for quality is already there so it should only be up from where we are now!
The thing with the standard RetroArch Shaders is that it’s possible that there are just too many. HSM Mega Bezel Reflection Shader provides a curated subset of high quality Shader presets along with that spectacular reflective bezel that goes along with one of my mantras of making things more accessible to the less savvy users.
I see you’ve also been doing your thing on Reddit as I have. Maybe not as actively as me but things have slowed down a bit now as far as me personally trying to help people improve their experiences by introducing them to my presets as well as HSM Mega Bezel Reflection Shader.
Remember if you wink in the dark, no one will know you winked.
I don’t really have a choice as they’re what I use myself everyday and this has definitely become a passion project, labour of love and a stimulating and relaxing hobby to me in recent times.
It’s very interesting that this whole shebang started for me because nVIDIA and RetroArch took away the cgp shaders that I were using for years and competely satisfied with. I came out of my comfort zone and after first achieving some success with adding back cgp support to RetroArch, I saw and fell in love with HSM Mega Bezel Reflection Shader and the presets I saw running on it as well!
I gave it a try, started messing around and the rest is history!
This just came to mind. @sonkun Are you considering making a new thread for your shader presets?
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Yup, I can feel your passion for this through your post, you’re really into this. I pop up on reddit every now and then to promote it lol and that’s nice how you got started with all of this. As far as starting my own shader post I’ll pass, there’s only 2 presets to talk about and I only touch them every now and then lol
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It would be nice to see some high quality photos of them in action, like what’s going on in the PVM shader thread. I’d really like to see the community stop fixating so much on screenshots because they can be very misleading, especially when it comes to how masks actually look.
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I’ll see what I can do. Don’t really have much as much spare time on my hands as before, still trying to update and test my latest presets with the latest available guest advance and HSM Mega Bezel Reflection Shader changes and it’s been a trickle. I did set aside some time to test @soqueroeu’s latest V2.0 of his TV Backgrounds though and I liked them so much that I came up with a little preset based on what I’ve learned so far.
The testing of this new preset was going well enough, when I encountered some huge moire artifacts when certain backbone colours were on the screen. The effect seems to be more noticeable when viewing from a distance, at certain viewing distances I guess it disappears.
The first thing I tried was resetting scanline settings to default. This resulted in much lighter scanlines and reduced the effect of the moire but didn’t seem to completely eliminate it and of course it messed up the brightness and saturation balance of the preset.
This wasn’t as bad when Blargg’s RGB Filter was enabled but things no longer looked acceptable when it was turned off. I kinda stopped there for now.
With that said, some of the screenshots I posted above may have had Balrog’s RGB Filter enabled in my NES Emulator core options. My presets look even sharper with it turned off but it does add a nice bit of post processing flavour to the final image though.
It isn’t something I would recommend for Sega Genesis cores because it actually makes the blending of the waterfalls in Sonic The Hedgehog look worse since I already have MDAPT taking care of that in my Blending and Transparency presets.
These screenshots below were taken before and after I remembered I had left Blargg on and are properly labelled.
Someone shared a custom Blargg preset on these forums that’s supposed to improve things when using it. I’ll have to give it a try again soon now that I’m seeing how well it works (particularly the RGB Filter) with my latest presets.
Blargg NTSC OFF
Blargg NTSC OFF
Blargg NTSC RGB ON
Blargg NTSC RGB ON
Blargg NTSC RGB ON
Blargg NTSC OFF
Blargg NTSC OFF
Blargg NTSC RGB ON
I can get superb results with my 4k sdr tv settings if i only lower the mask strengths a bit from 100%. Otherwise the colors aren’t right, the brightness is almost there. If a mask is RGBX… type, then it comes to convergence, mask falloff, and scanline faloff to picture a target crt experience. Otherwise it’s a very personal preference to use 100% masks only, and a waiting game to.
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A very good compromise can be to use mask strengths between 95 and 100. For example 98.
You have to manually edit the preset file to enter those increments I think. Not sure if things are more granular if you click on the parameter and open the value selection menu.
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You can also use mask gamma for fine tuning. Like set the mask to 0.9 and decrease mask gamma. I like to mention this because it’s a quite useful feature but commonly overlooked.
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Yes, I’ve noticed it and experimented with this I’m my recent presets as well. After lowering my mask strength to 98 or even 95, mask gamma can be used to redarken/resaturate the mask without somehow darkening the image.
It really alters the image quite a bit though in terms of brightness and colour.
What are Scanline and Mask Falloff for?
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This is mostly usable when using stronger scanlines, especially with darker pixels. Mask falloff emulates individual phosphor sizes ‘shrinking’ if the color component is weaker in presence. When mask strength is quite high this can also help to saturate the appearance. Scanline falloff determines how fast the scanlines are getting thinner with certain setups. Default value is still 1.0 as neutral to old behavior, but lower values can be more realistic.
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New Release Version (2022-02-15-r1):
Notable changes:
- rolling scanlines fixed, look much better now. prior versions produced (dark/black) artifacts due to discrepancy between processed colors and scanline weights.
- available with standard and ntsc versions.
Download link:
https://mega.nz/file/k1hxmSpS#n1snXv8NW0f_4r3uqYhqrS6sP5UGNWfKj9MSXo8Y34w
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Where can I read up-to-date documentation about this shader and it’s parameters? I was reading the README on the Libretro slang shaders repository about the special parameters for mask 7, but I can’t get the value Slot Mask Height and the others to do anything. I tried with various masks and nothing changes. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.
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Masks require some experience to setup indeed. I didn’t refresh the documentation yet because the shader was in development, which required most of the attention.
But otherwise it’s quite intuitive and you should be proficient after like half of hour of tweaking.
If you are after BW masks, then you can use mask 7 (width of 2) or mask 8 (width of 3).
Slotmask effect is seperate and can be used with any mask, maybe not with mask 1, which already includes it’s own slotmask effect.
To activate slotmask, just increase both slotmask strengths to like 0.5, match the width with the mask and that’s it.
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If you are after BW masks, then you can use mask 7 (width of 2) or mask 8 (width of 3).
To activate slotmask, just increase both slotmask strengths to like 0.5, match the width with the mask and that’s it.
I tried what you just described but nothing happens. Changing mask width with mask 7, 8, or any other, does no change at all to the picture.
I’m on Linux on Vulkan, if that matters.
EDIT: My bad, I was just adjusting one of the mask strengths and not the other one. I can see an effect when I change mask width now.
Indeed it would be very hard to find this out without any kind of documentation. Thank you for the help and for this amazing shader!
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I’m just here to cheer you up. I’ve been using your shader for a long time, it’s the best for me so far. I was just like “mehh, it misses some proper overscanning options, for games that don’t fit fullscreen very well” (I was using venom2.) Then I knew about this advanced version and I saw you implemented overscan. Perfect, game, set and match for me.
However, the version in Retroarch (in-app download) repo still misses Overscan X, although it seems it was added in your shader a few months ago?
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Yes, I haven’t updated the one in the repo in a while. Guest is very active in adding new features, so I only update it periodically.
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Way less headache inducing 
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Alternatively, is there a git repository for the latest version of this shader published anywhere else @guest.r ?
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