New CRT shader from Guest + CRT Guest Advanced updates

[guest.r]

Lottes masks are better with stronger blur, mild scanlines and ofc. higher resolution displays, 1-3 should be very nice with 1440p, 4 with 4k. They are setup in the shader in a way, which allows easy use when you get other settings right. And there is the ‘maskBright’ instant brightness compensation. I like to mention that mask 2 can be setup as an ordinary RGB mask when setting maskBright to 1.0.

Slotmask is quite nice because of it’s adaptable size and strength, using it with other masks sure can give nicer results, but more strength/brightness fine-tuning.

[Syh]

@guest.r Shots are looking amazing, after you finish updating I’ll probably rebase my branch and finally post it, may have to ask for some assistance here and there if you’re cool with it.

[guest.r]

It’s hard to say, indeed. Bloom is still a bit place-holding, but i’m pretty content with almost all of the features, alas fixing bugs and regressions. But it’s cool with helping…

[Syh]

The main things I’d like incorporated into bloom is mask visible over bloom (halos), and scanlines visible over bloom. (I tend to like this look more as it makes the bloom less in your face imho.)

I’m already doing this in my branch, it’s just probably a really simplified method of doing it tbh.

[guest.r]

I’m having a crazy idea right now to save glow/bloom to frame history with different size settings and the same two passes could do glow and ‘bloom optimized glow’ at the ‘same time’. I’m eager to try it out, although it’s with side effects.

[Nesguy]

@Hyllian

Guest-dr-venom’s slotmask is really nifty, you can combine it with any aperture grille pattern and set the slotmask width accordingly. Looks somewhat better than the Lottes masks, IMO. I know you’re concerned with ease of use, which I appreciate, but it’s a feature I sometimes wish I had in Hyllian.

Here’s a fast & easy example I just whipped up:

[Syh]

I mean you could probably slot it into hyllian if you desired, as iirc guests mask code is fairly plug and play, at least it used to be, haven’t poked around the updated codebase yet.

[Hyllian]

I’ll let the advanced features for guest’s. If it’s a new mask, you could include inside hunter’s include masks file and crt-hyllian will apply accordingly.

I try to keep crt-hyllian running fullspeed on PS3 using 5x scale. And it’s at the limit. For example, crt-geom only run fullspeed on PS3 using 4x scaling, the same with easymode or lottes. So, that’s my limit when I tweak crt-hyllian. It must be very light.

[Nesguy]

@guest.r

I think RBG is common enough that it’s worth including blue-yellow and RBGX as mask options. This is more complicated, but maybe there could be a toggle switch for RGB and RBG subpixels which automatically switches the mask colors…?

[guest.r]

I think this was already discussed, and it turn out, that the magenta-green mask has even subpixel spacing even on RBG displays.

On RGB it goes like this: xox oxo xox oxo -> oxoxoxoxoxoxox

On RBG it goes like this: xxo oox xxo oox -> xxxoooxxxoooxxx

It’s different, but cannot say it’s better or worse. Same with mask 5, mask 7 is BW. I think the only mask in question is new mask8, which is specially for 4k RGB. Might add a ‘mask 9’, since shuffling the channels doesn’t do the trick here. But i really don’t know how common the RBG setups are with 4k, maybe they are getting obsolete on PC screens, uncommonly used on TV’s. Tricky to find out.

[HyperspaceMadness]

Does anyone know how the green/magenta masks work on an oled? Maybe @c9f5fdda06 knows?

[Nesguy]

Ah yes I remember this now, thanks for reminding me

We can also use RGB aperture grille with RBG pixels. Looks like this

RXXXXGXBXRXXXXGXBX

Also, mask 8 can work at 1080p, but it’s like a 19” TV (270 TVL) at that resolution. Depends on what you’re going for.

[Nesguy]

Depends on the subpixel structure, if it has the white subpixel then the subpixel masks won’t ever work as intended. That said, naive tiling looks much better at 4K than at 1080p. At 8K / retina resolution it’s no longer an issue.

[Tatsuya79]

Hey, thanks for this great shader!

Playing around with it to get something like a dedither + ntsc color while keeping as much details as possible.
I’m getting close to that but I’ve just noticed a dark tint turning completely black with LUT color set to 3:

The same spot with LUT 2 (blue rocks are fine now):

[guest.r]

I’ll try with a stronger color transplantation in the dark spectrum. 10.0/255.0 should pick up some problematic colors. If there are some ‘problem causing’ color altering passes before, the problems can become visible.

[Syh]

No offense but I’ve gutted the LUTs in my branch, in favor of grade, but I also micromanage tf out of all aspects of the settings lol.

[guest.r]

Yeah, grade is a piece of work. But i like the LUT’s nevertheless, also connected with some sentiments.

Meanwhile, i’m liking the new options with relevant games. The catch is that high initial blur allowance produces natural bloom with ‘CRT gamma’. Needs some mask ‘makeup’ and it looks lot better.

Also newest version works better with low color count games as the previous version.

[Syh]

Completely understand, just was stating my preference lol.

Bloom looks fairly controlled in that shot, very nice.

[Syh]

Is the bloom in that shot intentional bloom or a side effect of something else?

[guest.r]

Some bloom was added. But it’s rather a fast setup. Brightboost would also do. Bloom, in general, has mostly two components in linear space. First is plain brightness increase, the other is spatial. Very high blur increases the second.