New CRT shader from Guest + CRT Guest Advanced updates

[sonkun]

Ah ok. I thought they were somehow two different type of settings that you “merged” together or something. From what I noticed at least with my current preset samples and my crazy tweaking is that lowering that setting seems to make colors look a little more natural bringing it a bit closer to how things look when not using any shader at all.

Still testing things out in any case, I feel about 90 percent satisfied with how my current slot mask presets look, maybe one more tweak of something and they should be good to go.

[LenaSuphina]

It seems to be the newer ntsc shaders causing the issue. The newer crt-guest-advanced-ntsc-pass2 also causes an error, but it’s “error 1” rather than “error 6.”

[guest.r]

It’s best to do whatever works for you. Fortunately, the last working version is quite new. Blind fixing the shaders is somewhat hard, but even more inappropriate if the error might be somewhere else or unavoidable, like related to a specific build.

[guest.r]

Playing a bit with some new options:

:

[Fab]

Bright, saturated but also great contrast, I very like it. Have you tried the same options with NTSC, which is harder to mess with?

[guest.r]

Ntsc can also look very similar, but there are some tricks…at least horizontal bloom range should be bigger. Nevertheless, I’m posting some updates soon.

[Fab]

It looks so sharp, sweeeet!

[Hari-82]

This looks awesome! do you think that is possible to do something similar but @1080?

This is where I’m at with

Advance

and NTSC

[guest.r]

Sure, it shouldn’t be this different with 1080p and 1440p. Maybe you can use mask 9 with 1080p.

[kokoko3k]

Bit off topic, but how do you achieve this:

I mean, look at the " x 0 0" characters, in the upper image, you manage to shrink its shape. Usually, using blurs, you mix the near pixel along x axis and the result is wider.

I even tried to achieve the same effect by playing with shader parameters (not ntsc version), but without much success; btw I was more interested in the implementation and, though i think it looks really good, if there are any other reasons you pursued that look; i mean, bright pixels tends to grow, not shrink themselves.

Also, the red on the left definitely overflows over the gray, so maybe it is some ntsc specific code that comes into play?

Thanks in advance!

[guest.r]

NTSC sharpening uses some gamma tricks to do things differently compared with linear gamma. The overall ntsc interpolation is done in curved space, although post-filtering is linear. But it seems the effect can thin instead of thick regarding bright pixels.

Edit: there is also some additional blur in curved space, so i think this is important.

[GPDP1]

Speaking of which, is it possible to fully detach the NTSC passes from the GDV-NTSC preset for use by themselves in a preset or appended to other shaders? The NTSC passes used there are already quite a bit more advanced than the standalone NTSC-Adaptive shader, after all. I tried reducing the number of passes up to the 8th pass, which works, but there’s still the afterglow passes before it, and removing those causes the preset to not load.

[guest.r]

You can use the shaders in other situations if you set the aliases right. There’s a bit of interleaving between passes.

First ntsc pass should have the alias name “NPass1”, the pass before ntsc shaders “PrePass0”, unless you remove the blend mode functionality in ntsc-pass 3.

[RetroGames4K]

I like how it looks. it’s getting better with time. Well done!

[guest.r]

New Release Version (2023-08-14-r1):

Notable changes:

• New (negative mask bloom) effect nice improvement.
• Bloom Distribution implemented for negative values too. User can now control how bright ‘pure’ masks can become without adding bloom mask mitigation.
• New scanline option added for thinner dark scanlines. It’s now quite easy to have flat 'bright scanlines and very thin dark scanlines. It’s implemented in a way which does not disturb existing presets.
• New color grading options: per-channel gamma adjustments.
• Small code tweak.

Download link:

https://mega.nz/file/kk4SDY7J#4XO20xs-cvDhO8SuJ78RgFKQcnD_W4RDKDt5SYKN3n8

[RetroGames4K]

Wow That was fast, I just posted an image I’m going to try this new version

[RetroGames4K]

Wow! Mask bloom negative values look better now

[guest.r]

Thanks for testing. It might be a subject for further development, though.

With new bloom sampling mode and other features, I’m re-discovering ordinary mask bloom again. It can be very good for aperture presets. In fact, I’m pleasantly surprised…good features are colors are very nicely preserved, scanline saturation too. Just a hint, where is a good start for some specific aperture setups…

[Hyllian]

I think the last presets I posted here with your shaders have improved with new release without changing any params. Congrats!

[ProfessorBraun]

Some testing with negative values for bloom distribution setting. Glow and halation are disabled on purpose except for bloom.

“Different bloom sampling for this one”

This is very useful since it doesn’t affect the brightest value in the gray ramp. Some nice results can be achieved by lowering mask gamma.