New CRT shader from Guest + CRT Guest Advanced updates

[Nesguy]

Mask 0.00 literally just darkens the display at normal playing distance. There is no discernible mask because the human eye cannot see one pixel wide details at normal viewing distance. If you can see the individual pixels you’re sitting too close to the display, by definition. If you’re trying to emulate a high resolution/high TVL CRT, it’s perfect. If you want visible mask effects and something that’s consumer-grade, then Lottes mask 2,3 and mask 8 are your best bet.

3 pixel masks can cause some annoying artifacts (irregular looking pixels) when using a horizontal integer scale that isn’t a multiple of 3, so that’s something to watch out for. I’m too nitpicky to use any masks for playing games on my current display (still can’t let go of my 1080p plasma), I think you need 4K or 6x vertical scale at a minimum to get a satisfactory result.

[guest.r]

New Release Version (2021-06-26-r1):

Notable changes:

• Trinitron mask distribution is better with interlaced modes.
• Slotmask strength is divided into two parameters for better customisation, especially with trinitron masks. Presets might be re-tweaked, but they should load the shaders without errors.

Download link:

https://mega.nz/file/glAwCLiC#I0yByE5N0VQ-M3PUXhIzDH-tb8jwGebBq5Ql1j7ypds

[guest.r]

An example of new slotmask utilization. Had to weight the benefits a bit, but’s it’s clearly a nice new option.

Edit: screenshots are probably best viewed at 100% Dpi Scaling.

[Nesguy]

@guest.r

Have you tried this yet? red, red, green, green, blue, blue, black? Using this pattern in conjunction with slotmask width 7.00, height 4px could produce some nice results at 4K and would be a closer approximation of the black space between slotmask triads.

Would still be about 300 TVL (308.571…) at 4K, good enough for a 15kHz arcade monitor.

[Linklyons]

@guest.r

I’ve been following along for quite a while now, and I hope I can get an honest response here as I love the work you’ve done.

I’m after “Developer intended” Quality, for NES/SNES and PSX (downscaled mode in the core).

I’m not looking for nostalgia, or even emulating a CRT past the positive effects the CRT provides that the developers relied on for their work. The effects of this particular CRT shader is like night and day and it’s amazing.

I’m currently trying to reduce the amount of unnessary additions, things that only really emulate the downsides of a CRT or the nostalgic values. (like fringing/artifacting) while figuring out which things are nessisary for a true image (Svideo filter on NES games causing completely different effects to pixels making some extradentary things like sand looking wavy instead of dots of pixels).

What, in your absolute just opinion, would you consider a good preset for bringing NES/SNES and possibly PSX to their original intended viewing styles while reducing things like scanlines,artifacting,blur to a minimum?

I am currently using the NTSC shader, in S-Video mode for NES/SNES. I have .05 Halation/Bloom. Scanline Type -1

I currently use a IPS 2560x1440 144hz gsync monitor, scanline saturation .25, spike removal at 2. Hor-Sharpness 4.5, sub-sharp 0.5. CRT mask -1. Everything else off/disabled.

I also found your Hi-res shader to be a god-send for PSP, as a majority of the PSP games I play are just PSX/SNES ports with a crappy bilinear filter that gets erased when you upscale the resolution, which brings them back down to raw pixels again which needs a CRT shader to look as intended from their original ports. Except now the internal resolution is not low enough for your original shader, so the Hires one fixed that for me.

Thank you so much for all the passionate work you put into this.

[hunterk]

I don’t think “developer intention” is something that anyone can really pin down. There was too much variation among individual CRTs to say any one effect was necessary/intended, and there are too many variations among developers, as well as regional variations (PAL vs NTSC).

I think the most you can infer is that developers were aware of the ways people would see their games and tried to keep those things in mind when designing their graphics. Likewise, you can pick the characteristics that make the graphics look the way you like them, but it’s dicey to try and read the mind of an overworked programmer 30+ yrs in the past.

[rafan]

Interesting insight from the creator of Tails and the creator of Sonic.

John Harrison - Mega Drive Shock (MegaDriveShock)

[Nesguy]

What am I doing wrong, here? Only Blargg seems to blend the waterfall properly?

blend mode 1

blend mode 2

blend mode 3

Blargg’s composite filter

EDIT: and here’s the old guest-dr-venom-ntsc-composite preset, still looking good:

[Syh]

Something I find interesting in those shots is almost none of them are properly doing the shield blending, even when the waterfall is properly blended it seems.

[Nesguy]

I think we need a reference shot from a CRT connected to a Genesis via composite to be sure that the shield dithering is actually blended. Only the last two shots look right to me as far as the waterfall is concerned, though.

[Syh]

Yeah that’s probably a safe bet, but tbh if it’s a checkerboard pattern with only half being actual color, imho it’s supposed to act like a blend in that situation.

But I’m not actually sure what kind of pattern the shield is using, and am to lazy to check

[Nesguy]

@Syh

checkerboard pattern with only half being actual color, imho it’s supposed to act like a blend in that situation.

Didn’t you just get a new CRT? Buy Genesis, buy Sonic

[Syh]

But I’m saving for a mister fpga tho…

EDIT: Should be ordering it 2 weeks, as long as nothing comes up…

[Nesguy]

That’s cool, I want one too. Here’s the guest-dr-venom2-ntsc preset using the S-video preset; seems to blend the waterfall (and the shield?) properly but isn’t that too blurry for S-video?

[Syh]

I thought s-video was just less color bleedy composite, but I’ve never actually used s-video personally or bothered researching it. (I’ve used coaxial, composite, and component inputs before).

Side tangent, most of my pre-ps1 days gaming on a CRT was done with composite going into a VCR, then out of VCR via coaxial to the CRT. (Which is a very different image output than say straight composite or coaxial into the tv.)

I feel like we are kinda lacking in the VCR side of signal emulation.

[Nesguy]

s-video is too clean to blend dithering, afaik.

[Syh]

Then yeah, I’d assume that’s way to blurry for an s-video output then.

[Nesguy]

So to summarize my findings: all blend modes in gdva look weird (maybe there’s a setting or something I’m missing), s-video in gdv2-ntsc looks good but looks like composite.

[Syh]

Minus the color bleed but ye kinda

I’m currently being a potato and haven’t bothered testing anything for a bit.

[guest.r]

@Nesguy

What am I doing wrong, here? Only Blargg seems to blend the waterfall properly?

Probably the GDV-NTSC default settings. If going for the waterfall, some tweaking might be required.

In many cases the NTSC preset produces screenshots, which don’t reflect temporal compositions also.