New CRT shader from Guest + CRT Guest Advanced updates

[Nesguy]

The main difference I’m seeing is that the phosphors in the real CRT photo are much better saturated (particularly in the highlights) and don’t have any of that between-phosphor glow that you see in the shader.

Disabling glow and bloom would help close the gap. These lighting effects essentially blur the image in different ways to try to make it brighter, and are only really necessary with an SDR display.

[Nesguy]

I’ll have to see an actual example of the OLED subpixels looking like CRT phosphors before I’m ready to conclude that we’ve solved this problem. I think the spacing between active subpixels is going to be too much to be overcome by the displays’s natural bloom, and you’ll always have that very obvious grid. Hopefully, I’m wrong about this.

[RetroGames4K]

Thanks I’ll check that out…

[ckf92]

Come one… it’s normal…it’s because you are using scart cable!!!

In this forum when there are speaking about NTSC i’m pretty sure its not with the scart cable… it’s more like with composite… (all video signal in yellow cinch cable…) isn’t it ?

This kind of halo and melt color is because the 3 colors is melting in the signal cable…

With scart RGB is separated so the video signal is clean.

It’s like on PSX… when you connect with composite the result is fucking bad… but with scart it’s clear. I think there is something confuse between NTSC and PAL on the subject… Pal have more lines but 50hz (before the PAL60 appeared with dreamcast) NTSC have less lines (so a little bit less resolution) but 60hz… Also the colorimetry is changing between PAL or NTSC…

Now people can correct me… if i said some big mistake.

[nfp0]

@Cyber

He recommended regular Bloom for Slot Masks and Mask Bloom for other Mask Types.

Ah, my bad, I misinterpreted then. I thought he was recommending Mask Bloom for all cases.

@Cyber

I think if you want a 100% accurate experience by disabling Bloom in order to try matching the look of a real CRT, you’ll end up with issues where brightness is concerned, so you’ll need to compensate by having an extra bright screen with the brightness cranked all the way up, which seems to be par for the course with “accurate” CRT Shaders and Presets.

Sure, but that’s not what I’m going for. I have no practical way of constantly raise/lower my TVs brightness so I want to keep it at a normal level. I know I need bloom to have enough brightness with a CRT mask. That’s not the problem.

@Cyber

When I read your mclip @ “000000”, I actually thought that it was at 1 instead eh. My apologies for any confusion. I haven’t tried it at 0 so I wouldn’t know what to expect, I doubt it would mess up the Bloom at 0. It’s at 1 it will kill the bloom in my experience, using my settings.

From my experience, keeping, mclip at 0.5 and Bloom at 0.5 looks the same as mclip at 0 and Bloom at 1. Or at least, very similar. So I still don’t know the purpose of mclip. I imagine it might interfere with other parameters though.

@guest.r

I assembled a sortoff normal ntsc preset with slotmasks:

bloom = "0.800000"
bloom_dist = "1.250000"
halation = "0.100000"
gamma_c = "1.200000"
brightboost = "1.250000"
brightboost1 = "1.250000"
shadowMask = "6.000000"
maskstr = "1.000000"
mask_layout = "1.000000"
slotmask = "1.000000"
slotmask1 = "1.000000"
slotwidth = "3.000000"
double_slot = "2.000000"

Looks like something i can use for gaming without much thoughts. But i also test it on a display set at about 380-400 nits and this can make a huge difference. Display gamma is also important, together with contrast. Assuming that all displays produce very similar results can lead to some sort of missunderstanding. A perfect example for this is the very nice megatron shader where the right display makes all the difference.

Thank you for the preset! I’ll try it as soon as I can

Not sure how many nits my TV is set to output, but it’s probably lower than 400. It’s calibrated by a colorimeter though, and I verified that it’s gamma tracking is spot-on.

@RetroGames4K

If I can I’ll post it later. I’ll want to try with the HD Version. i was trying with the NTSC…

Please post the NTSC version too. It’s the one I’ll be using.

[nfp0]

@RetroGames4K

I’m runing Nintendo 64 with ParaLLEI N64 core.

I recommend you use the Mupen64 core. Parallel is kind of deprecated and Mupen64 absorved it’s features, such as Parallel RSP and RDP.

Most Nintendo 64 games output 240p, but some are 480i. I’ve tested both 240p and 480i N64 games with this shader and they work perfectly with guest’s default parameters. I use Mupen64 with ParallelRDP and ParallelRSP. Hit me up if you need help setting it up!

@Cyber

There are a couple reasons I use Blargg though, one of which is that it is a CPU based filter so my theory is that it might free up precious GPU resources that can go towards the intense HSM Mega Bezel Reflection Shader and I also lament that most of the time my CPU is way underutilized at the same time.

That depends if you’re using 2 or 3 swapchain images and how your driver handles them. Typically, with 2 swapchain images, the CPU and GPU processing is sequential, to reduce input lag, while with 3, the CPU is preparing 1 frame in advance while the GPU is rendering the previous frame in parallel. In the former case, both CPU and GPU contribute to the time it takes to render a frame, but in the latter case, only the slower of the 2 is the limiting factor.

Now, it depends a lot on what GPU you’re using, but I would say any modern GPU will always be faster at processing the NTSC calculation than your CPU.

Your CPU will always seem underutilized with emulators because they’re mostly single-threaded. Even multi-threaded ones typically have one heavy main thread, and light auxiliary threads. You can check this easily by enabling fast-forward and check the CPU usage. For example, Mesen at fast-forward (producing frames as fast as possible) uses only 7% of my CPU. That’s because it uses 1 or 2 cores and cannot make use of the remaining resources.

And don’t forget that the Blaarg processing will only happen sequentially, after the core’s frame is ready, so it will not be more efficient to run it on the CPU.

Now, this obviously depends on the hardware you’re running it on, and how heavy the HSM Mega Bezel Reflection Shader is. I’m talking about a modern CPU with a modern GPU. And ofc, I might be wrong, but I think that’s how things work on RetroArch. But please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong!

[Cyber]

@nfp0

But please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong!

Oh no, it’s okay, I believe you. Lol

Actually, my (now possibly debunked) performance theory was kinda low on my priority list as to why I use Blargg NTSC. I mainly use it because I think it’s cool. Lol

I’ve always wished I could’ve tweaked it and made it work well with certain cores, for example Mednafen/Beetle, so when I learned that I could through a post by @Juandiegous, I eventually went to town on it and was really satisfied with the results and the simplicity of the parameters. The only thing I’m not 100% sure about are some of the parameter ranges but I trial and error’d my way till I got the results I have right now.

Custom preset para Blargg NTSC Mega Drive video compuesto

Hola a todos. He comprobado que la opción de filtro de video del core GenesisPlusGX Blargg no realiza bien la función de dithering en su preset “video compuesto”. Al desplazarse el scroll de forma lateral las transparencias en azul alternan un cuadro con saturación y otro menos saturado. Por otro lado las otras opciones “S-Video” y “RGB” dejan entrever las bandas verticales del dithering porque son demasiado nítidos. [internal blargg ok] [internal blargg wrong] Este parpadeo me resulta compl…

[nfp0]

I just tested your preset and here’s the problem I mentioned earlier showing itself again:

Here’s the preset you just posted:

And here’s your base NTSC preset:

As you can see, Mario has a very ugly glow around him on the slotmask preset that is not an NTSC artifact, because it is not present in your base NTSC preset. This glow is even more distracting in motion than in the screenshot.

Another problem I found is that you have a bit of clipping on the highlights:

[guest.r]

@nfp0

As you can see, Mario has a very ugly glow around him on the slotmask preset that is not an NTSC artifact, because it is not present in your base NTSC preset.

I can still see it in the base ntsc preset. It just manifests itself a bit differently.

Here is an example of crt-geom-ntsc:

Clearly something ntsc shaders produce in this specific case. But you can try GTU, crtsim, mame-ntsc…

@nfp0

Another problem I found is that you have a bit of clipping on the highlights:

The highlights aren’t acutally ‘clipped’, just the contrast is manifesting a bit differently. Bloom applies a smoothing effect which in counjuncture with ntsc smoothing, washes out the transitions. (ntsc smoothing is quite aggressive, it can dissolve dithering, transparancy effects etc.).

The main deal is that the implementation is probably not going to change.

But you can reduce the Substractive sharpness parameter from filtering option to mitigate the effect. Increasing NTSC resolution scaling helps here also.

Edit: at least with my display the color bars (R,G,B) are clipped even without any shader:

[DevonCM]

@guest.r

at least with my display the color bars (R,G,B) are clipped even without any shader:

That probably means you’ll need to fix your display’s settings then. Try using this: http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/

Might need to go back through and check everything again once it’s corrected. I wonder if this explains why your presets always look washed out for me.

[guest.r]

@DevonCM

That probably means you’ll need to fix your display’s settings then. Try using this: http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/

Yeah, my vibrance was 1 point too high.

@DevonCM

Might need to go back through and check everything again once it’s corrected. I wonder if this explains why your presets always look washed out for me.

I didn’t post any ‘official’ presets, just some templates. You can still correct them to your liking.

[ckf92]

People!! it’s very good all your work about NTSC ugly preset… but when you will be finish to play… it will time to work on the “ultimate CRT GUEST very light clear neat shader” (joke inside)

Really your shader is awesome already …

[RetroGames4K]

I know, I’m just commenting a point of view. I just wanted help for making the HD version look like my CRT Tv. That’s all. I like the NTSC how it looks too…

[ckf92]

i agree with you … in my case i don’t care about ntsc version because for me the result is not very good except maybe for dithering and transparency… and i don’t have the nostalgy about playing game in such conditions

In my case if we can find a perfect preset for 1080P looking the closest possible of CRT - scart could be perfect for me.

[nfp0]

@guest.r

I can still see it in the base ntsc preset. It just manifests itself a bit differently.

You’re right! I can see it a bit indeed. And I’ve tried your slotmask preset on the non-NTSC version and there is no artifact at all.

It’s a shame that it manifests so strongly with the gamma correct and brightness boost controls. I fiddled with Substractive sharpness but it doesn’t help at all. Increasing NTSC resolution would ruin dedithering, so I don’t use it.

@guest.r

Edit: at least with my display the color bars (R,G,B) are clipped even without any shader:

With no shaders, the R, G and B bars are not clipped at all on all my monitors and TVs. That would mean problems on RetroArch or on the core. But I see you’ve already found the problem in your monitor settings so all is good.

Anyway, thanks for the help! I’ll try and arrive at some middle ground where the halo is not as pronounced.

[guest.r]

@nfp0

Increasing NTSC resolution would ruin dedithering, so I don’t use it.

This ‘haloing’ seems to manifest itself quite strongly on blueish backgrounds. NES games also automatically trigger 3-phase ntsc filtering, which isn’t able to dissolve dithering/transparency effects.

I guess it’s a good idea to create a separate preset for games which use 3-phase or 2-phase ntsc filtering.

(this depends on horizontal input resolution: up to 300px: 3-phase, greater than 300px: 2-phase. But it can be also set with a parameter.)

I like @sonkun’s approach, where he created quite many very nice presets.

[nfp0]

@guest.r

I guess it’s a good idea to create a separate preset for games which use 3-phase or 2-phase ntsc filtering.

I thought about that, but I kinda want to simulate playing all my games on the same “TV”, as that’s pretty much what happened back then. And since the 2/3-phase thing is already automatic, I don’t have to worry about that.

[c9f5fdda06]

@guest.r

@DevonCM

Try using this: http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/

I recommend this too. I was lucky enough to buy NEC monitors that use a probe that make it so that they calibrate themselves. Sometimes I take it for granted.

[guest.r]

@nfp0

And since the 2/3-phase thing is already automatic, I don’t have to worry about that.

Yeah, but you can at least increase ntsc resolution scaling for SM(B) and save it as a game preset. You have the means.

[Cyber]

@nfp0

but I kinda want to simulate playing all my games on the same “TV”

You can do this but you are using an emulator so you would also have to take into account the differences in video output from the various consoles and systems.

This can also be simulated by the use of shader parameters.

If you think of the shaders as a tool to only simulate the CRT TV side of things then you’re going to miss half the plot. The importance of this can be seen when comparing Genesis RF and Composite Video output to SNES, NES & Turbo Duo. The characteristics are infamously different.

Create the perfect preset for SNES, then try playing a NES game like Ninja Gaiden using those same settings and see for yourself, Ryu is just going look all wrong.

Make a sweet NTSC de-dithering preset for Sega Genesis and you can enjoy colours that rival any other 16-bit console. Use that same de-dithering preset on a high res system like the Turbo Duo and say goodbye to any idea of legible text. Meanwhile at the same settings you can read the text clearly in any Sega Genesis game.

Okay, I’ve given away a little too much of my secret sauce. I hope you’ll understand where I’m coming from.

From the way you sound, I have a feeling Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor might be a really good fit for you, where accuracy and matching CRT qualities down to the phosphor are of paramount importance.

Have you given that a try?

If you want to learn more about what I have said above you can head over to my thread and take a read through my first post and look at some of my videos.