It looks great on a big screen TV from a relatively far viewing distance though. Although if comparing phosphors vs pixels on many CRT displays including arcade displays the phosphors might not align as well with the edges of the pixels on many graphical elements compared to a slightly higher TVL mask.
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Wonder if anyone has done some testing on the BRAVIA 8 WOLED TV. I know it uses some LG panel of RWBG layout. This is the structure according to RTINGS: https://i.rtings.com/assets/products/n0kSjgfE/sony-bravia-8-oled/pixels-large.jpg?format=auto
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What would you like to know?
It uses LG Display’s RWBG WOLED Panel so Mask 12 Size 1 with BGR Mask Layout 1 in CRT-Guest Advanced should give you properly spaced triads.
There are many folks who use RWBG OLED panels who have passed through these forums and I have shared more than just a few presets made using an LG RWBG WOLED Display.
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I think that’s what I’d like to know for starters, thank you!
Didn’t get my TV to look great using my old presets of CRT Guest, but once I have some free time I’ll have a look at your presets for RWBG or try customizing my own based on the info you gave me. Cheers
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Having lots of fun with magic glow, bloom, halation, etc. Still trying to figure out what sorta look like best haha. I like a sorta soft glowy look but i also wanna preserve some of the crisp contrast of my OLED tv. Trying to avoid the appearance of LED backlight blooming on black backgrounds. It’s a difficult balance. Also problematic is text. I might like the glow effect on an image but then text might appear distractingly smeary. I’ll have to play around with it more but does anyone have any tips or tricks with this stuff to share?
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Hey! Don’t forget to also include bloom and (magic)glow pass settings, can make a big difference.
I’m also a fan of the dual_filter_bloom shaders in blurs folder, which can be appended to most crt shaders.
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Currently i’m trying some PSX games with increased internal resolution + NTSC version of crt-guest-advanced. Some less pronounced features can give very good results without much tweaking.
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Composite video is so essential for PSX/N64…
I like the lower TVL mask for composite video, too. Hides a lot of stuff you don’t want to see. It’s almost like composite video and consumer-grade CRTs were made for each other.
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It is. And it’s a shame it’s so hard to go and set those emulators up to display the graphics how they were actually displayed. Both PSX/N64 emulation defaults to smoothing out all the dithering and little quirks of the OG graphics.
Which, yes that at least makes them look like we remember them. And makes them look nicer for the new generations coming in to experience them. But also it’s not honest. I feel. ;p
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Frankly, that’s it. I had lots of in-person gaming-related interactions with younger folks and they almost always have an initial shock with retrogaming, even if they’re genuinely interested. The general style, looks, progression, mechanics, difficulty and feeling of those games are already different enough for youngsters, and if you also throw in a vastly unique display simulation to them it will certainly be a “double shock”.
With that in mind, I can’t really blame emudevs for trying to “smooth out” first impressions, at the expense of the (fewer) old-enough players. Personally, as long as both options are readily available, I don’t mind. Still, it would be nice to have some kind of encouragement for the new players to try out a more classic look, even if just as a curiosity.
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Elegantly written. Respect.
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At the beginning of modern emulation, like 20, 25 or more years ago, those remembering pete’s plugins, ePSXe, 2xSaI, HQnX etc. would say enhancement were the way to go. The main difference regarding actual state is that all was displayed on crt tube monitors and the user could viably choose from a set from availible (fullscreen) resolutions. Totally different experience. How it happened, i like FF7 Cloud’s hair a bit more defined now, please take no offence. 
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No yeah of course not! ^^ I myself enjoyed some Ocarina Master Quest at 1280x960 on those monitors.
A huge upgrade over actual N64 hardware. I think people go through emulation phases. I had my naked pixels phase with Genecyst and Nesticle back in the day.
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New Release Version (2025-09-14-r1):
Notable changes:
- ntcs: small optimizations and cleanups
- ntsc: mixed phase mode 5 added, preserves chromatic effects of 3-phase mode better
- ntsc: number of TAPS increased to 48, viable for 2-phase and chroma bleeding
- ntsc: smart dithering deblur mode added, doesn’t deblur blended dithering
- ntsc: Speedup with increased internal Resolution options added, removes ntsc horizontal shader bottleneck greatly, can be also used with pre-scalers for performance reasons. Total speedup can be up-to-2x. A word of wisdom, some edge-smoothing presets scale to viewport resolutions, which is a great deal especially for guest-advanced-ntsc. Now the speedup mode can be used, there are also included faster pre-scaler presets with the shader pack.
- ntsc: speedup mode is not neccessarily cool for ordinary resolution usages, just to mention it.
- ntsc: some testing and feedback is welcome.
Download link:
https://mega.nz/file/x85zDZ6R#fEq4VBlQWHgcTM6NyfwHGlCGWoCcgejIkEWoIpXiyDM
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cool! thanks for “Speedup with increased internal Resolution options” do I need to set it to 4 if I scale to 4x in the core?
is “mixed phase” alternative to “Auto”? what’s the difference between the two? What is better for general purpose use?
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The more the faster. You can also do without, it’s purely optional. Bigger resolutions can handle more of it without quality loss though.
Mixed phase will not be triggered by “Auto” mode, this is only for 2-phase or 3-phase. Mode 4 has been around for a long time now, with pretty much neutral chroma handling. Mode 5 has full 3-phase chromatic effects. Mixed phase modes 4 and 5 can blend dithering, where pure 3-phase cannot, so you can use them with 3-phase games to blend dithering or with some cores like for Amiga, Saturn, PCE…
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I did a test and seems work so good! thanks! I will use it in my preset in the next update
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I was using a good Scart cable with my PSX/PS2. The emulators should smooth out all the dithering, I don’t know about you but I was not seeing any dithering when I was playing, nor “staircase” edges and pixels wobbling like crazy. It’s not that they were not there, it’s just that viewing them via a CRT that was also way smaller that today’s TVs made them imperceptible. Unless you are using a good CRT shader, displaying games enchanced/upscaled is actually closer to the original experience. There are also many details in 3d models that are not visible at native res on PSX.
That being said, I cannot stand the fonts when games are being upscaled which is why I want a good CRT emulation, plus there are some effects (e.g. bloom) that without a CRT are being lost in 2D elements, especially notable in 3D games with pre-rendered backgrounds.
@guest.r is it possible to have a mask option that automatically chooses the “best” (an appropriate one) mask implementation based on screen resolution?
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SCART is basically exclusive to Europe, so it’s unlikely that artists working on games in Japan or America intended for them to be displayed this way. The low res textures and dithering definitely benefit from composite video- the fog in Silent Hill is a famous example. The quality of the composite video can be adjusted in shaders. You can actually completely disable the “pixel wobbling” if desired. To each their own of course, but IMO composite video is even more essential for 5th generation consoles than some older consoles like SNES and NES (which rarely made use of dithering).
PSX emulators are actually not that difficult to configure for an authentic look- N64 is more of a headache.
I also don’t like what upscalers do to fonts and small details. You’re absolutely right that CRT shaders at native res are the way to go. These games were intended to be seen and played on CRTs.
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