New CRT shader from Guest + CRT Guest Advanced updates

Jobima · 13 January 2025 16:21

here with CRT Guest Advanced without any ntsc

it seems has some problems with bit depth

guest.r · 13 January 2025 16:27

Gamma Correct just makes very dark graphics more visible, that should be it. If you want some cleanup, then just disable afterglow and lower the Black Level parameter by some points.

Jobima · 13 January 2025 16:33

I don’t want to disable them, maybe it’s better to move “Gamma Correct” function to the top of shader chain (like afterglow settings or color tweaks)?

guest.r · 13 January 2025 16:45

Prior application would affect scanline dynamics and i don’t want to do this. Post-application would be even worse. If you have issues with this, you can also increase mask boost and lower mask gamma. In general, i’m not changing these parts of code, not planned. Maybe some ‘garbage’ cleaning in core ntsc shaders and this would be it.

Cyber · 13 January 2025 18:42

You can’t just turn up the knobs too 11 and call it a day with these things. Remember these things just edit the image or rather turn up the gain but the brightness we see requires nits to be generated by the display. You can’t just edit in more nits. So if you push any setting too far, you’ll get side effects. They might manifest in clipping of colours, highlights, oversaturation, loss of dark details e.t.c.

What I’m trying to say here is that if you want to produce an image that is bright and accurate compared to a real CRT then you need to have a display that can produce enough brightness to match a CRT’s brightness even after all of the masking, scanlines and other brightness reducing CRT effects are added to the picture.

So do some research on @Nesguy’s and @MajorPainTheCactus’s work in this regard and you’ll begin to understand that you can’t always use software to solve what is essentially a hardware issue and expect to get similar results.

Sometimes we just have to learn to deal with the limitations and try our best to master and extract the most out of the software tools that we have available to us.

sonkun · 13 January 2025 23:49

Ah well ok then. Besides that everything else seems to look as good as it’s always been, both checkerboard and vertical line dithering still looks good while sharpened:

I guess I can go ahead and swap your previous update out for this new one.

guest.r · 15 January 2025 18:02

New Release Version (2025-01-15-r1):

Notable changes:

Old: new functionality added with NTSC shaders to better preserve ‘edge’ colors.
Old: fine-tuning of the new functionality for some specific cases.
Old: more fine tuning, should fix/mitigate some situations.
Note: is best used with low taps number or/and color bleeding reduction.
Old: some refinement on the effect, originally the sampling was point-like, producing very cut transitions (Sonic waterfall mountains…), now it’s more like sharper-linear.
New: improved logic of the effect. Isn’t perfect, but should do better ‘blending’.
New: Now NTSC Preserve ‘Edge’ Colors only works with 2-phase mode, the main reason is other modes don’t produce the 2-phase color smear in the same way, effects also removes all ‘desired’ artifacting. Small bugfix included.

Download link:

https://mega.nz/file/8shEUKja#7dtWeHcvGrkvHykN2QjlxFXmrFRNRU80ZlEPwjc_liA

sonkun · 15 January 2025 22:43

You’re a monster, definitely wasn’t expecting this update. Ok so right away I went and tested the Shinobi III waterfall and it looks better than before, those red areas no longer look like they’re “coming through” the waterfall anymore.

This is with the edge setting on 10:

Looks pretty damn good to me. Hopefully when the professor reappears he sees this new amazing development.

guest.r I just have one request, pleeeease enable the edge setting for 3phase again as well, it may not be useful for taking care of smearing like it does for 2phase but it indeed helps on pixel edges. Here’s an example.

First here’s without the edge color setting. Look all around Mario himself, from the back of his cap, his upper arms even the edge of his nose:

All those outer areas seem to have the pixels “faded” out.

But with the edge color setting on:

All those areas look more “filled in” now. That’s one of the main reasons I love that setting so much please don’t take that away from 3phase lol.

Jobima · 15 January 2025 23:24

maybe it’s better to separate them like chroma scaling

sonkun · 15 January 2025 23:27

Who knows. I just know I need that for 3phase it helped in making the colors pop more on those edges. Every thing else looks good.

Superdonkeyjack · 16 January 2025 00:37

Can I use these new updates with Pants sonkun mods?

sonkun · 16 January 2025 01:35

Seems to be working, just tried it out.

guest.r · 16 January 2025 16:43

Bad news is, it’s looking like another parameter has to be tweaked. But the option to have edge colors preserved with 3-phase will be probably included in next release.

sonkun · 16 January 2025 16:52

That’s lovely news actually, that gives me the perfect excuse to put out a new pack myself, all I’ve been doing is just editing in your current releases into my current preset pack for the past month now lol.

I’m assuming you’re gonna go with the separation option like Jobima suggested, I’ll just wait until release to see what you do. 3phase definitely benefits from some color edge love imo so looking forward to seeing it again.

Guess I’ll go and get Notepad ++ ready for some editing, that’s my number 1 program I use that helps me batch rename multiple presets in less than 5 seconds.

guest.r · 19 January 2025 17:49

New Release Version (2025-01-19-r1):

Notable changes:

Some cleanup, new functionality to preserve scanline strength added.
Clean scanlines w. bright colors functionality improvement.
Preserve Edge Colors parameters split for 2-phase and 3-phase modes.
With 2-phase and Preserve Edge Colors number of taps is decreased to 8, since coloring is off otherwise.
Some “4-phase” and filtering improvements with low tap values.
Edit: small improvement to the ‘Smooth Mask’ feature.

Download link:

https://mega.nz/file/UlgGXAYL#q-DE-Kjm6fDfxu2MSDj5mc8gCtErVMFct9nKkrRrOyY

RetroGames4K · 19 January 2025 12:00

You are the best! I’ll try it later

sonkun · 19 January 2025 15:15

Nice. Just tested it out and 3phase edge coloring looks good like previously.

The first and immediate thing that I noticed though is now soon as I load up one of my presets these newly added moire patterns now appear out of nowhere?

This is how my rgb preset looked from last update:

This is how it looks now with the new update:

So I figured maybe it had something to do with that new “Preserve Scanline Strength” setting so I tried turning that off and it’s still there:

I’m scrolling up and down the parameter settings but is there some other setting I have to tweak to fix that?

guest.r · 19 January 2025 15:25

You can try to disable the retweaked feature Smooth Masks in bright scanlines. It’s a bit more aggressive, maybe it’s causing moire with some presets.

I tried some of you’r curved presets, but with 1440p. Didn’t notice moire in general, but it’s a different situation.

sonkun · 19 January 2025 15:27

Disabling that setting fixed it right up:

Excellent.

On the flip side that new Preserve Scanline feature might be a good replacement. I don’t know why I’m so excited for this release but every time you put out a new update I feel like I just got a new game that I can’t wait to play with lol.

Anyway I’ll continue testing things out and report back if I come across something. Thanks once again.

Jobima · 19 January 2025 16:09

is there are a way to get hyper BW Trinitron mask 8 with Trinitron mask 6? mean the 6 mask will be overlaid on the 8 one especially when the color is more saturated and far from gray scale (I am not native english speaker but I tried to describe it as I can)