New sonkun crt guest advanced hd presets thread

RetroArch Additions Shaders
#1051

Hi @sonkun, I tried your latest presets and I think they look gorgeous! However, I have some questions:

  1. I use a MacBook Pro with a resolution of 3024x1890px. Is it better to use the 1440p or the 4k presets?
  2. When using a 4k shadow mask preset, the alignment of the shadow mask does not seem to be correct–I think the “next row” needs to be shifted by 1.5. Also is the transition from red to green to blue supposed to smear like this?

Tetris (USA) Shadow Mask 4k
Tetris (USA) Shadow Mask 4k1102×1027 825 KB

  1. I found some statements of recommendations of yours from ~1 year ago.

To sum it up most systems used 2-phase, nes, snes, master system and atari 2600 used 3-phase. I personally use the neutral or u-warm presets on all systems from the 4th generation and below. For s-video I use the u-cool presets on all systems from the 5th generation (32-bit, 64-bit era) and 6th generation (dreamcast, ps2, gamecube) and I use rgb u-cool strictly for arcade games.

I use Shadow Mask for the older 8-16 bit systems, aperture grille for the 32-64-128 bit systems and Slot Mask for arcade.

Do you still use your presets like this for an authentic look or would you recommend something different?

1 Like
#1052

Hello and thank you for trying out my presets and I’m glad you’re enjoying them.

Since 1890p is a bit closer to 2160p maybe 4k? I’ve never played on 1890p but things still seem to look ok in your shot.

I believe the alignment looks like that because of the green deconvergence setting I’ve applied which I think "shifted the position of the Mask slightly. I use deconvergence because it seems to help with reducing moire by a little bit. The smearing could probably be due to the various settings I use to help brighten my presets to absurd levels such as glow etc so that could explain why the mask looks that way.

These days I use the normal presets for everything. I may switch to warm or cool every now and then just to see the differences though.

Absolutely. I’ve been using Shadow Mask composite a lot these days on those older 8/16 bit systems. If not that then Slot Mask for sure.

1 Like
#1053

Thank you very much for taking your time to answer my questions. I have one more: you mentioned that NES and SNES both use phase 3. Would you recommend switching the respective parameter to phase 3 for these two systems? If so, do I need to set any other parameters?

3 Likes
#1054

About that and I should’ve said this in my previous post, as far as 2-phase and 3-phase is concerned my presets will now automatically choose the appropriate one for you so you don’t have to do anything but enjoy your games. I wrote that at a time when I stopped using the guest ntsc shader and was trying a different method out. Now I’m back to using the guest ntsc shader and couldn’t be more happier, it’s now updated better than ever and it allows me now to get a clean and sharper composite image.

So no need to worry about which phase to choose, my composite and rf presets got you all covered. Funny thing is I recently found out that Sega Megadrive which I thought was only for 2 phase games actually has games that run in 3phase. One game is Virtua Racing. You’ll see it if you load up my “composite artifacts” preset and notice the diagonal rainbow lines (2 phase games produce vertical lines).

1 Like
#1055

So when I understand you correctly it doesn’t matter if I use composite-standard, composite-artifatcs, or composite-megadrive-rainbows, it will always choose automatically the correct phase? If so, can you share some details how this is done?

Which preset do you recommend for the Dreamcast via VGA? Is there a preset that supports VGA DoubleScan like koko-aio?

1 Like
#1056

That’s correct, use any composite preset you like without a care in the world, it’ll take of all dithering stuff for you automatically, that’s the beauty of that amazing shader.

How that’s done you would have to ask guest.r himself, I don’t really get into the behind the scenes technical stuff, I’m just a loyal guinea pig that likes to play around with the settings and create my own little magic lol

That’s a good question, I never made a “vga” specific preset before. I usually just slap a rgb preset over dreamcast or maybe composite. You did give me a potential idea now though.

1 Like
#1057

I notice in a specific Mega Drive game (Tiny Toons Acme All-stars, ntsc) that when I pick soccer and play in Forest stage and pick Rainbow or Artifacts shaders, the shadows on the field become garbled during movement. Though that was not the case on the late December version of the shaders.

1 Like
#1058

I had a feeling it was gonna be exactly what I thought it was, that’s the checkerboard dithering blending at work. I believe @guest.r reworked the ntsc shader after adding in the “rainbow” setting to where you now get full vertical line and checkerboard dithering. Previously in my megadrive rainbow presets where I was using the “mame ntsc” shader in the mix it wasn’t displaying the full dithering correctly.

If im not mistaken you probably saw the soccer forest stage dithering looking like this in the second pic?

If so that’s not how it’s actually supposed to look and the jittering you see now is how it should be. Also you can stop it completely if you want by turning the “ntsc fringing value” setting down to 0.

3 Likes
#1059

Having a dedicated VGA preset would be awesome for Dreamcast via VGA and DOS games :wink:

2 Likes
#1060

NTSC value is at 0.00. If I record it via Retroarch it does not show unfortunately so I had to use the mobile phone.

Notice the soft grass patches during movement. They start to flicker. is this expected behavior?

2 Likes
#1061

Yes it is. I have the “ntsc artifacting value” and the “ntsc fringing value” settings activated in the two non standard composite presets (they’re also activated in the rf presets as well) which gives off that effect. If you want a non “jumpy” composite image then you should use the standard composite presets as I’ve deactivated the rainbows and artifacting in those presets.

2 Likes
#1062

When 2-phase mode is triggered, then fields aren’t merged by the default (Auto) setting.

With fields merged (parameter value of 1.0) the flickering should be gone at the expense of fringing and some coloring effects.

1 Like
#1063

This is something I was wondering about just this weekend. Is this how it works over all consoles and CRT TVs as well, meaning, in 2 phase mode fields are never merged or is this just a shader implementation thing?

Previously I had PSX set to merge fields and I was experimenting with the Mixed Phase Mode. Now I’m trying to use the Auto Mode more often and saw some rainbowing in the spotlight at the character select screen in Marvel Super Heroes when I set Merge Fields to Auto.

Even though I played quite a bit of Marvel Super Heroes on PSX back in the day, I have no clue which is accurate now.

1 Like
#1064

Have you tried the World Championship Soccer II (Genesis) game? For me, it’s impossible to play.

Unfortunately I had to activate “NTSC Merge Fields”.

1 Like
#1065

Is it possible to create a parameter to control the intensity of the flicker?

#1066

I personally love the flickering, makes the games come alive. To completely get rid of all flickering though is easy just put these two settings down to 0:

RetroArch_20240226_230932
RetroArch_20240226_2309323840×2160 1.75 MB

My standard composite presets come pre-configured that way.

2 Likes
#1067

What does merge fields do? I never kenw what is it for, and when to use it?

1 Like
#1068

You can start from this post.

Here are some experts from the above article. The first set of comments are about systems which average colourburst artifacts/merge fields while the second set of comments are about systems which do not.

Colourburst averaging/merging of fields

“The SFC’s composite isn’t that bad, as its PPU cycles around the colour burst artifacts with each frame.”

“These don’t look so bad in composite, thanks in a large part to the colour burst averaging that happens between successive frames on the NES/Famicom/SFC/PCE.”

No colourburst averaging/merging of fields

“Sega’s 8-bit system is pretty notorious for its poor video quality. It smudges horizontal details all to hell, and introduces colour fringing and rainbows even in areas that contain only black & white!”

“Anyway, the NG’s composite video is just horrible. It’s a bit dark and muddy, even greyscale graphics get significantly blurred, and there’s a horrible checkerboard interference pattern around strong colours.”

“The Mega Drive gets its own page because of its notoriously bad composite video. Once I set up my digitizing equipment and took snapshots of a few games, I just got carried away and took pics of many of my favourite games. Or, I took pics of especially egregious examples of just how much the MD muddles, blurs, and confounds the composite video display to the dismay of its hapless users.”

“Dithering: You either love it or hate it. For a low-colour system that can’t do transparencies (like the MD) dithering is a necessary evil, and the composite display of the MD conveniently blurs almost all evidence of dithering.”

“Hyper-saturated colours, especially visible in reds and yellows, cause terrible fringing & colour smear through composite.”

“…unfortunately a side-effect of this vertical-only dithering (“transparency”), besides smearing, is a nasty rainbow effect:”

“That’s all for now! I hope you enjoyed my extended visual rant on the shittiness of Mega Drive composite video!”

3 Likes
#1069

Technically I can’t explain it, but it stops the flickering when activated.

I’d like the option of an attenuator.

#1070

I think this phenomenon is caused by Windows configuration or GPU configuration. I’ve encountered it myself. In that case, I changed the mask slot to a different one and the flickering disappeared. The strange thing about this is that the flicker does not record when recording with RA or NVIDIA. It was as if the monitor was physically flickering.

In my case, it was caused by having an Overlay on my desktop that had nothing to do with RA (it was caused by a tool that displays CPU/GPU heat and fan speeds, well, Rainmeter).