New CRT shader from Guest + CRT Guest Advanced updates

Hi, I just wanted to drop in and say THANK YOU for your amazing work. I’m relatively new to RetroArch and its possibilites like shaders etc. I’m owning a Steam Deck and, because it’s a powerhouse and like THE device for (retro) emulation right now, I’ve tried to get a nice crt look on it and settled down with your shader pack after trying out several shaders. It has a 7" screen with a resolution of 1280 x 800, so as you can imagine, it’s really hard (or maybe impossible) to get a decent look. But I think I managed something, well at least for my personal taste. Having no real clue about all the sader stuff (it’s wizardry in my eyes) didn’t make it easier by the way :D. Anyway… as being new, I can’t create new topics (I guess) but when I can, I’ll make one with the preset files etc.

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Hey there!

The simplest way to get a trinitron look is to use scanline type 2.0, together with a 5-10 (or 13) mask.

I have no personal experiences with OLED TV’s and especially not with panels which include a white sub-pixel to boost brightness. Therefore i’m not able to say if there are any circumstances which produce some odd looks.

If things are bad with ‘colored’ masks one can still use masks 7 or 8 black-white masks. Mask size of 2.0 might look better with 4k with these.

Greetings!

I’m very glad to hear the ‘advanced’ shader fits a nice purpose even on a display with a lesser resolution. I guess you can get very nice results even if you use non-integer scaling, especially with less pronounced scanlines. Stronger scanlines might also look nice and you can even use the shader-built-in integer scaling, just to mention it. OTOH you should have no issues running higher resolution content in interlaced modes, there are plenty of mask options which should look very nice.

Last but not least, welcome to the forum and feel free to ask a question or two about the shader and thanks again for sharing the experience. :smiley:

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Can you repeat this using Mask 6 and Mask 13 please?

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Sure! I can’t do it now though. I’ll try to get back to you next week.

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Mask 13 with size 1 looks great to me. My TV is an LG C9. I use HSM Mega Bezel Reflection Shader with the glass preset – based on guest’s shader.

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In fact, I’m not using integer scaling at all in the video settings of RetroArch. With integer scaling, the screen becomes very small and the Steam Deck screen is already not the biggest :D. But that’s okay, games look fine without it in my eyes and the shader is doing awesome work. The best mask i find are 0, 5 or 6 with that low resolution. 6 for an aperture grill dotted Trinitron look and 5 or 0 if you want more prominent horizontal scanlines. Both look good in my eyes and it’s just a matter of taste. Good to have choices. :slight_smile: Interlaced mode btw is bad in my case, it’s messing things up so i deactivated it. :thinking:

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You should definitely try it with a proper interlacing mode. Modes 4.0 and 5.0 are without flickering, while mode 4.0 is sharper vertically.

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Progressive scan always looks better than interlacing :stuck_out_tongue:

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I tried this and there’s some issues. There’s these weird columns that stick out. It’s not noticeable up close, and it doesn’t show up well through a camera, but when I sit back from a distance I can definitely notice them.

Other settings, and even other shaders seem to have this issue. CRT-Easymode of all things does it, so it might be some kinda problem with my display? CRT-Geom-Deluxe looks fine, though.

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That usually means there’s some sort of scaling happening between the shader output and the display

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So I have to fiddle with my TV’s settings, or my monitor’s resolution, in order to fix it?

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Make sure the resolution you use is the native one of your monitor or TV. If your TV is 4K, then use 3840x2160.

And also make sure Settings->Video->Bilinear Filtering is OFF.

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CRT-Guest-Advanced-Hires mask 10 with stagger 2 and interpolation 5 is great when used with blargg’s shaders

not only it feels like a pc monitor but it really smoothens the image

also it works well under 1080p or using integer scaling under snes9x slang

i still wish to see this ported to dosbox ECE, even if there is now the reshade port of it, Guest pretty much became my number 1 replacement over royale xm29.

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Hello, guest.r. I got a question about your color profiles.

Couple of years I have tried various shaders to reproduce the same color of my Sony PVM-14L2.

There were many shaders that imitate sony trinitron, but it seems to be more focused on appearance(shape) than color.

Then I tried your color profile 5 (trin) of this shader and it matched amazingly! I wonder how you did it. Did you just rely on your eyes to make adjustments?

Unlike the standard colors, the Sony Trinitron series seems to have its own color tuning. I think that’s the tricky part.

And I would like to know if there is a tip for expressing the color of trinitron like this, but setting it to 6500k instead of 9300k.

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Dr. Venom provided this profile from the Sony Trinitron specs paper as i remember. There is one more specific profile for a Philips model too (4.0), just to mention it. In general it’s not so common to get across one.

Currently there is one trinitron profile at D65, namely if you set ‘Lut colors’ to 1.0 (other color profiles are not to be used in this case). Alternately using color profile 5.0 and changing color temperature is also an option, but not this accurate.

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OK so there are a few things here that I think I can help fix for you. Clearly moire bothers you. The simplest way to fix this is to disable curvature. In addition I would make these changes (for 4K):

[CRT SCREEN SCALING]

Integer Scale Mode = 1

Base Integer Scale Max Height % = 100

[CURVATURE]

Curvature Mode = 0

Also, as @RealNC said, make sure you are outputting native 4k (if your PC is not able to then you will have to live with it, unfortunately) I have a lot of experience fiddling with with these settings so feel free to share any other concerns. Feel free to DM me.

BTW I just realized that some of these options are from HSM Mega Bezel, sorry :sweat_smile:

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i love crt shaders, but most of them are based of svideo or composite in ntsc.

i would love to have rgb scart mode with support of pal.

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New Release Version (2022-06-18-r1):

Notable changes:

  • as i remembered my new lut png’s aren’t compressed yet, now compressed lut’s are included
  • bloom distribution parameter range increased to 3.0
  • old mask 12 removed (it can be ‘achieved’ with mask 11 and bgr layout)
  • better mask 11 controls
  • new mask shift/stagger options with negative parameter values

Download link:

https://mega.nz/file/xsJV1YjS#QzXXO2kKtc-22LZtZr4FCkrN0WdLWtO5_cc-0G8U_Kg

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Well that was a short break lol. Good to see you back with another update

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Just some tweaks for the repository update. :wink: Still have to write some documentation, i’ll probably use my ‘short break’ for this. :grin:

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