It’s related to glow and magic glow, mostly.
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It’s in the [CRT Mask Options]. The last one.
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Nice, this is what I’m talking about. Here’s a full-strength mask pic to show the base mask and Magic Glow working in tandem:
About the only thing I can think of that would improve this is making it so the slot mask does not show up on the base mask, but only the phosphors. Judging from pics, that’s what should happen on slot mask CRTs.
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New Release Version (2023-07-14-r2):
Notable changes:
- Base (black) Mask strength slotmask correction
- New grade version included with afterglow support
Download link:
https://mega.nz/file/J4ggAahC#vp1aSquWex8ii2wsbB2VE5TTbYw_bWHuID0omiE8eb0
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Perfection.
I did have to set Magic Glow Mask Strength to 0, though, as that was lighting up the slot mask.
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Oh damn, I didn’t expect this to come so soon. This is looking like the update that will get me back into the shader lab and start experimenting again. Can’t wait to try this update out, thank you once again @guest.r
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Yeah negative values of the regular glow still show the slots too. But it looks like that might be the last thing that needs tweaking and then this feature is good to go, except maybe individual color control to reduce the “gray” effect and help the green stand out more.
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Slotmask presence on magic glow mask strength feature is important for other magic glow applications, so it will likely stay in it’s current state. The only feature that might change is regular glow for it’s negative values.
Since we are talking about two different exposures of the phosphors, it might be authentic as it is now. First is external light source exposure (daylight, bulb, camera flash…), second are reflected electrons, which bounce back from the “thick glass” and light the phosphors.
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Yeah, those are both external though, relative to the slot mask at least. As far as I know the only thing that should affect that is the electron beam / scan lines, unless there’s something else inside the tube that can light the phosphors through the mask. Maybe halation? I’m not familiar enough with that one.
But most of this glow stuff isn’t “authentic” or “realistic” beyond very low levels anyway, so I’m mostly just concerned with what looks better. And I think a little of the negative glow looks great combined with the ambient-lit phosphors when trying it with slots turned off, so I’m confident it would be great with that change at least.
I actually might even want to use both positive and negative glow combined to different degrees, but I’m not sure that would be possible. Maybe I could just increase the halation a bit or adjust the bloom to balance it more. Not gonna go too crazy playing around with it until it’s in Mega Bezel though.
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New Release Version (2023-07-15-r1):
Notable changes:
- Ordinary (negative) glow doesn’t apply slotmask
- Some glow code optimizations
Download link:
https://mega.nz/file/UsYk0a4a#6uBw1KvuoSkgbyDxW_3oRv0FMinjzEh4fKQpWuq_mXI
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Very interested on this topic of black phosphors. Maybe you could take shots at different EVs to capture the whole range. Also if you take a RAW photo you can infer from pixel values the CRT nits, if someone is into replicating that.
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what is EVs and RAW Photo?
I have a whole range photo here:
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For pixel smoothing, halation based setups can look very nice. Ofc. bloom/halation pass parameters can be adjusted too…
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Since we’re on the subject of glows and blooms, can we have a short summary of what each of the glows does?
There are ordinary glow, magic glow, negative glows(?), halation and negative halation. This can get a bit confusing for a new user when no descriptions are available.
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Most of these questions have been asked and answered before right in this thread. I’m not sure but some of the answers might also be found in the readme included with the shader.
I know HyperSpaceMadness did a really detailed readme of all of the Mega Bezel Parameters which covers some of the CRT-Guest Parameters as well but I’m not against an annual or bi-annual readme repost refresher course in the Forum threads.
Then again these functions are mostly WYSIWYG so when you turn a knob if you like what you see then that’s where it should be.
If you go close to the screen and turn all of the knobs one by one, you’ll definitely see what each one does and begin to learn much more about the shaders in general.
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To be honest I also missed what magic glow does 
Also, priorly knowing what a knob does other than what is visible to the eye, can help to understand how it interacts with others 
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An important aspect of this is searching the topic before hand to see if the answers to the questions in your mind might have already been posted.
I know this has been mentioned previously but Magic Glow illuminates the area around a bright phosphor by illuminating the surrounding emulated RGB phosphors exclusively.
Regular Glow tends to “cheat” a bit and just adds the colour without using the mask to achieve the glow.
So you’ll end up with the Mask plus whatever coloured pixels in between which is not accurate to the way CRT phosphors worked.
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I guess it doesn’t hurt to explain it a bit…
- Bloom is a mask mitigator with specific distribution, based on the bloom passes. It doesn’t apply on black pixels. Negative values use a bit modified version of it with weaker brightness falloff.
- Halation is an alternate mask mitigator, but it applies on black pixels. Negative values use a slightly different code to apply it.
- Mask Bloom is “the mask mitigator”, based on bloom passes.
- Glow lits the very dark surroundings of bright pixels, based on glow passes.
- Magic Glow can be all of the above and also a wery wide fullscreen effect to light the surroundings of bullets, explosions etc.
But i advise to play with the settings a bit, it can be fun. 
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Thanks very much @guest.r for the detailed explanation.
These are my observations of some of the side effects and characteristics of those parameters which were explained above.
All three of these seem to add white to the affected pixels competing with and diluting the Mask the more is applied.
Halation tends to cause blur as a side effect.
Glow fills in the surrounding area with the intended colour without relying on the emulated phosphors.
Magic Glow, fills in the surrounding area by not using any colous or white that is not generated by the emulated phosphors themselves.
While it’s behaviour still does not match what a CRT does, it doesn’t mess with the existing mask emulation the way other Glow techniques can. So from an accuracy perspective it’s probably less bad especially when used sparingly.
If you want your emulated phosphor primaries to look like this you’re going to want to hold off on too many of those options I mentioned before. Even Magic Glow can be abused and it ends up looking like there’s a heatsink sticking out the top and bottom of the originating pixels.
CyberLab CRT Guest Advanced Presets anyone…?
Of course there are also side effects to doing things this way as well as now getting things as bright as they need to be without clipping might be a bit more of a challenge.
The prize though is being able to experience something that makes you feel like you’re getting that nostalgic CRT-Like experience from viewing distance all the way to the point where you put your nose against the screen to check if it’s really an LCD or OLED you’re playing on.
Then the question in your mind might be, “Wow! This is just like I remembered! How’d they do that?”
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