New CRT shader from Guest + CRT Guest Advanced updates

[guest.r]

Hmmm…there is one more thing. You could disable gpu screenshots temporarily and post this image, maybe it’s worth to take a look, nevertheless:

Original resolution sources are pretty cool for testing…

[ROBMARK85]

Hi @Guest.r - first of all thanks for your work with your shaders - I kindly needed some advice from you, who are the creator. I wanted to try to get a decent SlotMask on my 1080p monitor (even if I know that it is difficult to get it with this resolution). I made many attempts playing with the “Slot Mask strength bright/dark pixel” command and with “Mitigate SlotMask interaction” also taking inspiration from some works done by artists in the community. But if I wanted to create something without touching too much with the settings (the default ones with the 0 mask are the best I found for my screen) and if I wanted to create something very realistic (I would not like to use Lottes because its SlotMask although good does not exist in any CRT monitor) and maintain a high TVL (with the basic plug and play settings I have a TVL of about 520), although strongly conditioned by my resolution, what and with which values ​​do you recommend I act without touching too much the various values? In particular, do you know of any values to enter that I can consider good? Thank you so much for your help.

[guest.r]

You can get nice slotmask effect with hight TVL 1080p mask 0 or mask 5. But i also suggest to try mask 9. It’s better if you lower the slotmask height by 1.0. I remember having some really nice slotmask presets with my 1080p display.

Next you can use scanline mode -1.0 and integer scaling (shader has this option) with overscale.

Mask strengths are a personal preference, i can’t really help here at this point.

If you want to increase slotmask height to 2.0 at 1080p then i advise no-scanline mode for best results.

Edit: oops, when mentioning “width” i actually meant “height”, my bad.

[ROBMARK85]

Thank you very much, you are very kind - I will do some tests and share them to kindly have your authoritative opinion - thank you very much

Update:

I opted for mask 0, increased the SlotMask values to 1 for the “dark” and “bright” entries, activated the “SlotMask in bright scanline” but did not change the width to 1, leaving it in “auto” mode because I had the feeling that it had no effect and I did not like the result. I am aware of your advice and I did all the tests to apply it, even using mask 9 or using the mode without scanline, but this seemed to me to be the best result. Very honestly, what do you think? Should the image be considered wrong? @Guest.r

[sonkun]

Like this?

This shot was taken with the “gpu screenshot” setting turned off.

[guest.r]

New Release Version (2024-12-20-r1):

Notable changes:

• Old: new functionality added with NTSC shaders to better preserve ‘edge’ colors.
• New: fine-tuning of the new functionality for some specific cases.

Download link:

https://mega.nz/file/kkBGFQgb#wsoBqy8dE29893pc6MCHuR-GKDoHbQclfjAQ34ppiMQ

[sonkun]

Well damn that was fast lol. I think you already know the first game I’m about to test with this. I’ll be back with my results soon.

[guest.r]

I’m sorry, @ROBMARK85, i accidentally mentioned “slotmask width” when i meant “slotmask height”. Width is best on auto indeed.

With bezel and 1080p you are best with height 1.0, maybe 2.0 with no-scanline mode, you can also re-read the above post for more info.

But it’s definitelly paying of to do some tweaking once you got the base masks working.

Well damn that was fast lol. I think you already know the first game I’m about to test with this. I’ll be back with my results soon.

Yes, some more testing is good, the “hack” is pretty close on this situation, hopefully it works in general on similar cases.

[sonkun]

And BOOM just like that the issue is gone:

You came through once again with your legendary wizardry, that small area that looked slightly de-dithered is now fully blended like all the other blue sky layers. I don’t know how you keep improving this shader but I’m gonna be on the front lines for this ride as one of the ambassadors for this shader until the end of time, thank you man.

I will test things out with other games throughout the day and report back if anything comes up, in the meantime I’ll go ahead and swap out the previous link for your new shader update in my thread.

Edit:

Another test. Previously on the last update I also noticed the blood in the background for Streets of Rage 3 at the title select screen was also slightly de-dithered but didn’t speak on it, this new update fixed that as well. It’s now also fully blended again:

I can’t believe I’m at a point where I can achieve a crisp composite image and still get the benefits of full blended dithering, this has been a dream of mines since I first discovered the guest ntsc shader. I think this update should be pushed upstream soon.

[ROBMARK85]

No problem, in fact thank you very much for your kindness and availability. As soon as I get home I will do other tests with the correction you gave me. Thank you very much.

Update: in the “experimental” folder inside the “Mega_Bezel” presets there are several examples of your Slot Masks (they are in fact called Guest Slot Masks) which together with other effects are masterpieces! The first two screens are related to the second Slot Mask (I only removed the reference to an overlay to leave it empty) and the third screen refers to the third Slot Mask. Found by chance and are a fantastic surprise, there is also a nice example of a modified Aperture Grill. A lot of stuff! @Guest.r

PS. Since Mega Bezel relies heavily on your work, I hope that in the future we could have plug and play presets not only with Aperture Grill but also with Slot Mask, maybe with various variations. I’m fantasizing and I understand that it’s difficult to manage over time being updated, but it would be majestic to see the results of the presets inside the experimental folder.

[guest.r]

Hey @ROBMARK85! I’m glad you found these presets fine-working with 1080p resolutions. There are some very nice guest-advanced presets of all three mask types out there, also honoring 1080p. Maybe you can try them out, porting (copy/paste parameter values) to mega bezel is not this hard. NTSC shaders work a bit different with mega bezel, so there maybe isn’t an 1:1 conversion on the table, but should look similar nevertheless.

[ROBMARK85]

Thanks @Guest.r - I don’t know when they were created (the GitHub related to the Mega Bezel reports the words “over a year”) and they also use some “external components” (like the Duimon glass effect) without which they wouldn’t have the same effect, but I’m sure since I opened the file with notepad that they refer to the “GDV_ADV” presets. The settings I saw are easily transportable with some small changes to the reference coordinates on a new preset that has the “GDV_ADV” as a reference. They shouldn’t have had major changes in the final result compared to their creation looking at the updates that have been made by your Gest_ADV. To date I don’t know if and when there will be updates for the Mega Bezel, but it would be nice for the future to have various variants like these as an alternative to the basic presets, maybe to be put in a special folder. Unfortunately I try to study and modify things manually but I can’t get the fantastic results that you artists get. Thank you very much always for your work and for your help.

[ynnad4]

Hey there, amazing job as always with this project.

I’ve been recently trying to achieve this real hardware, Sega Genesis recording. It seem to look almost the same except for the mountain colors. I just can’t get the same or very similar type of green colors.

Do you have any idea how to get the right color image please ? @sonkun maybe you know bud, you’re also an experienced guy.

I dont know if this an issue with the Genesis cores or can be achieved through RA.

The mountains seem to have a yellowish type of colors but cant just get it right. And this type of colors are present on the overall Composite video recordings I’ve found for many years, even the experience I used to have.

Sonic: Nature Islands - Pre-Alpha 11 Hardware Recording

1st image is real hardware

2nd is BlastEm core

preset thus far:

#reference "crt-guest-advanced-ntsc.slangp"
TNTC = "4.000000"
sega_fix = "1.000000"
internal_res = "2.999999"
cust_artifacting = "1.000000"
ntsc_rainbow1 = "1.000000"
GAMMA_INPUT = "1.800000"
gamma_out = "2.400000"
m_glow = "1.000000"

[sonkun]

If we’re just talking colors I say the grade shader is your best bet along with playing with all those color tint settings. The combinations are endless when combining settings together, I’m sure it’s possible to produce a replica of your video with grade not to mention with a lot of blur added in.

[ynnad4]

Could you make a try please ? If not asking too much

[sonkun]

Unfortunately I don’t have much time these days to be in the lab tweaking especially if I really get into it. Tweaking settings literally can suck minutes, hours, days out of your life. If you want just load up one of my composite presets then default all the settings and go from there. Take a dive trying out those different tint settings just to see what they do, don’t let the large amount of settings turn you away, it actually gets fun experimenting.

[guest.r]

I think i can add a hint: under [ Filtering Options ] you can try to lower the Maximum Sharpness parameter for out-of-the-box blurring effect, so you can keep Internal Resolution lower.

[Cyber]

You can try adjusting the White Point to be a little warmer. That would definitely shift the lighter greens towards yellow.

You said only the mountains look different but in your images the sky looks darker on real hardware.

Making things warmer might affect that. You can also increase Saturation if the yellow is too faint as that will bring it out more.

You can experiment with different phosphor presets. Those settings have a huge effect on the overall colour balance.

If using Blast’Em, I don’t think you need to use the Sega Brightness/Genesis Luma Fix.

On another note, I know Mega Bezel enables this automatically for Genesis cores. Does it take into consideration that Blast’Em may not need these fixes @HyperspaceMadness?

[Jobima]

what core need Sega Brightness/Genesis Luma Fix? and what it did? and if the core need it and it was off what will happen?

[RetroGames4K]

Ok here we go. I know is not perfect, but I like opinions if I’m missing something. At least the base thing, gamma, contrast, brightness, colour etc, is done.