Ok what i think now what my mind remember of a blurry image, is a friking ghosting effect due to deteriorating screen, or bad calibrated consoles in ntsc 2 mode, as using something as ntsc 2 in snes reminds me of what i saw in my childhood days, still afterglow is quite an interesting and uncharted territory which i don’t have much knowledge of as i was looking here and saw a bit by tests is something completely different i’d imagined, so it will be something i cannot be that much of a help, gotta tell you this, this presets already for me are close to perfection
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Lol it’s ok my memory is jaded when I think back on playing those old consoles in the late 80’s early 90’s. Clearest memory I have is from when I owned the Saturn and PlayStation using the AV/svideo cable on a Toshiba aperture grille crt. I always changed the settings on the tv to give me the cool temperature look.
Yeah afterglow is a nice setting, I’ll probably come back to that another time though, I started doing some tweaking on my presets yesterday, already almost done I just gotta tweak slot mask. I wanted to tune the contrast down a bit plus some other things. It’ll be a small update nothing too crazy or different, not sure when it’ll be ready but shouldn’t be too long either.
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hello just to congratulate for the work which is really great I downloaded today your pack is frankly it looks really good it even reminds me of certain childhood memories in front of my old tv great job can’t wait to see the rest
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I appreciate the love and kind words and I’m glad my presets can bring back good memories from the past. Posts like this is what will always keep me motivated to try and make these presets look better and better. I’m in the middle of changing some things up right now so be on the look out for my next update coming soon.
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Is there a repository of the older versions of the shaders? I love how the version from January looks but it seems that in February the shader was updated with a sharper look.
I want to make the newer version to have that slightly blurrier look but can´t figure out what changed exactly. The one I´m using from January is 03-crt-guest-advanced-hd-slotmask-neutral-s-video.
Thanks for the amazing work 
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You might be in luck, I usually delete my old packs when I move on to a new one but they all remain in my trash bin so technically I still have most of my old packs. The only one I found from Jan was this one:
I hope that’s the one you’re talking about. You may also have to download whichever guest shader update I used at the time as well if my presets fail to load up too but try it out and see first.
You’re welcome and thank YOU for using my presets lol.
Also if they still work post up a pic of the svideo preset, wanna see what you were talking about.
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I have archived a few older sets. If I see it right, the oldest one in my archive goes back to crt-guest-advanced-ntsc-slotmask presets 10-03-2022 (Edit: Just noticed this is the US date format. I have older variants going back to August.) . Just saying, in case someone needs it. The only problem is, it would require older version of guests shaders as well (which I started to backup too).
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That version you uploaded is the one I have and like, so I guess the one I need is the next one from this post; you can see what I mean in the Super Metroid comparisson, sharper image, the mask is more notorious (I may be using the wrong terms though).
Below are some screens I took. All at 1440p, the first picture uses the shader 03-crt-guest-advanced-hd-slotmask-neutral-s-video from January and the second picture uses the shader 07-crt-guest-advanced-hd-slot-mask-neutral-s-video from the ORIGINAL set in your latest shaders.
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That’s cool that you archived some of my old sets. After taking a look I see that it goes back further, oldest I see is 03-20-2022. Maybe I should pull them all out of the grave and archive them somewhere in case someone wants a older pack.
Yeah that would be another thing since sometimes the new features guest adds pretty much will force you to use whichever one of his updates I used at the time to get the right effects.
I got you right here:
The mask looks stronger in that shot because that was before guest introduced the “mitigate slotmask interaction” setting. Using that setting the mask strength is slightly reduced, in return I get less moire on the screen so I accepted that trade off.
I’m glad you posted these shots. The more I look at them the more I feel the need to do some tweaking. As much as I like my current pack that’s out I definitely went a little overboard with the contrast, I gotta turn that down a bit especially on the rgb and svideo presets.
Speaking of tweaking I’m still in the lab, I thought I found a look I was satisfied with but in typical sonkun fashion I went and started tweaking again lol. Update still coming though.
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I’m really enjoying the RGB presets, they make the colors pop especially in pixel art games. NTSC 2 is nostalgic cause it reminds me a lot of my TV when I was a kid, but RGB is so crisp!
Found this website from a reddit post, it’s pretty cool for making before-after comparisons when you tap on the image, but I don’t know how to link it in a post.
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Maybe we should create an archive or subreddit or something to post pictures of games with these presets, as an example of how could possibly everything look like
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That would be cool; a neat demonstration of how much shaders can change things dramatically.
Here’s another one using sliders to compare: Imgsli
Example: RetroArch Example - Imgsli
I’m not tech savvy but this one has 5 ways to do comparison images but it has codes and stuffs so I think it’s not for just uploads.
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Thanks! With that set I can start playing with the presets. I compared the January and February sets and then February with the latest and I agree about the contrast, to me the sky looks saturated in the latest version, the colors seem to blend better in the other too (just my preference though).
Also I tested the compatibility of these versions with guest shaders; January and February work fine with the latest shaders using the Retroarch core updater, I only need to update them manually if I use the latest version.
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I think there’s a tad too much of glow and bloom: if you look at the rightmost and leftmost towers the details of the domes have been killed. You can observe the same in the centermost area of the sky, you just can’t see the pattern anymore.
Currently I’m using 0,10 for the first and a maximum of -0,40 for the latter, I think it’s the best combo if you don’t have a HDR monitor.
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Yeah that’s one thing about my presets, the colors definitely pop out, the trade off is that some small details start to get faded out due to the extreme brightness settings I use to get that “pop” look. I’m working on getting a balance between keeping that vibrant look while still toning down the brightness a bit, it’s proving to be a task since when I find a look that looks ok, something else looks off. Going back and forth tweaking can literally suck hours out of your day but that’s how it is once you go into the shader “lab”.
I’ve heard of that site before, I’ll check that out sometime thanks for the link. I like what it does to the images side by side.
That sound like a cool idea. Maybe showcase everyone’s presets to show the different styles, types etc. like a collage or something.
You’re welcome. Yeah I’m still working on a new look. Soon as I come up with something I like I’ll probably post a test preset for you guys to try out to get some feedback, suggestions.
You probably forgot but you’re the main reason I cranked the glow up months ago lol. But I think the reason for the Alladin pics is due to the sgenmix multipass shader I added into the svideo presets that he used in those pics. That shader is still a work in progress and sometimes it produces false positives on dithering games. I believe if you turn off the vertical line setting that would fix that pic up.
Thank you I’ll give those settings a try.
LOL I know and I take full responsibility for glow&bloom, but now with magic glow and a little more tinkering I’m quite happy with lower values (but I took pre-brightness to 1.10 and post to 1.20).
Regarding sgen, I’ve noticed that it produces some kind of artifacts. Try your s-video preset with Sonic (the first, Genesis): you will notice that the X for the number of lives is no more a X, but a bulky something. I’ve tried to mess with it a little, to have a MAME NTSC alternative, but I’ve never found a solution. If you use only one kind of blending (vertical should be the one) the artifact is less noticeable, but still present.
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Lol it’s all good I’m glad you suggested that back then, I always like trying different things. But yes I want to switch things up a bit for the next update, I’ll give all those settings you mentioned a shot to see how it looks.
Ah the dreaded “x”, yeah that’s the most notable offender, you’ll also see it in Super Mario World as well, the x I mean. Truth is I added sgenpt-mix multipass mainly to blend Sega Saturn checkerboard dithering with the vertical line dithering on low, it works excellent with Sega Saturn games but using both vertical and checkerboard dithering together especially with both at full strength causes some weird artifacts.
I think the way I have it set up gives the best of both worlds while keeping the false positives to a minimum even though it’s still there. It’s just something that needs to be ironed out in that shader in due time, until then I just keep it apart of my svideo presets as a way to “future proof” in the hopes that that shader gets updated to work the way it should one day.
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Ok so I came up with some new settings. For the most part I kept the overall look the same, my main concern was reducing the contrast/brightness a bit and I think these settings did the trick.
Test them out here:
Place presets right into your shaders folder not shaders_slang.
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First is the new one, second is the original, ok maybe without comparing them one by one the differences, aren’t visible, but looking at them with the two in front of me, i can see already colors are a bit toned down in the new one, i do have to say it looks better to my eyes
from final 9 again first one is the new one, and second is the original
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That was my aim right there too. Looking at the pics back and forth you can see the little dark patches in the water clearer. It’s like that for a lot of games where you can see more of the little details in the pixels more. I’m trying to find a balance between keeping the image vivid and bright while toning down the contrast a bit.
Glad you’re liking it. I’m not sure yet if these new settings are a contender for the next update but I feel like I’m in the right direction so far. Who knows maybe I might just use them.
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