New sonkun crt guest advanced presets thread

sonkun · 13 March 2023 17:50

I appreciate it and my presets will always be here ready to welcome you back with open arms. Yeah standard is the way for me, gotta respect that natural pixel look, the scalefx presets are a nice bonus though, if it wasn’t for you they wouldn’t even be there at all so thank you as well for putting in the request.

As far as being “authentic” I look at them somewhat that way, I always say my presets are more “a mix of basic crt attributes that invokes a nostalgic vibe with a modern twist.” I like how that sounds, I should use that as a caption in my first post haha.

By the way I’m already working on my next update, hd presets are returning, guest adding magic glow to the hd shader almost turned me into a kid on christmas day. I’ve already put together my first sample rgb preset that I’ll probably post up later today for you guys to try out.

ROBMARK85 · 13 March 2023 18:42

My change of mind was born when my brother-in-law had pulled out his old CRT - and the effect of your shader is very close - maybe that CRT had a bad calibration but in my eyes it was fantastic. I love the slotmask and your version looks great in 1080p. I wanted to ask you two questions. The first is : what is the difference between the guest advance and the HD version ? The second is: tomorrow in your projects you will also work on something for Computer (I come from MS-DOS and it would be nice to use your work) and handled them ? Thanks again for your work, now I’m rediscovering the Darkstalkers saga and with your shader it’s beautiful

ROBMARK85 · 13 March 2023 18:44

The Capcom Fighting Collection is a beginner’s job, your work is light years ahead.

sonkun · 13 March 2023 19:34

That’s amazing to know, I haven’t laid eyes on a Slot Mask tv up close in person in years since the 90’s actually so that makes me feel good about my presets reading that, thank you.

The difference for me is that the hd version has this certain “sheen” to it that I don’t see with the standard version, my answer is based off of eyeballing the two shaders back to back. I just like how the hd version looks more plus it gives off thicker lines on pixel edges that I also like better than the standard version. For a more technical answer maybe @guest.r can give you a better accurate answer.

For the second question I figured Shadow Mask presets would be a suitable pc shader preset to use? Or are you looking for something a bit different?

Thank you for the kind words. We all gotta start somewhere, I say keep going until you’re satisfied. You can get pointers from all the guys here but in the end it’s up to you on how you want your presets to look since it’s for your personal use. If you go back to some of my old posts you’ll see how crazy some of my presets looked (my current ones may still may look crazy/crazier by some lol) but I kept going now here we are today getting YouTube videos talking about them.

ROBMARK85 · 13 March 2023 20:12

Then I will use the Shadow Mask, perhaps using the neutral settings since the PC did not have such strong regional differences situations due to the TV format and how the consoles were connected. A thousand thanks.

lokq12 · 14 March 2023 14:43

can you combine this with the mega bezel one?

sonkun · 14 March 2023 15:14

That’s possible, but that’s out of my power to do myself since that’s not my project. You’d have to ask the creator @HyperspaceMadness for that.

sonkun · 15 March 2023 15:03

HD is King

Little rgb sample of what I’ve been working on swapping back over to the hd guest shader with the new magic glow added in:

I’ve pretty much adapted the same style of settings from the standard version presets over to hd to make it look like a seamless transfer, main differences is that sharpness looks a little sharper (and better) on things like pixel edges than rgb settings from the current pack using the standard guest shader.

Try out the sample pack:

https://www.mediafire.com/file/dd93adcqbl4ue0i/sonkun-crt-guest-advanced-hd-rgb-presets-sample-pack-03-15-2023.zip/file

Place presets right into your shader folder. This pack works with guest’s latest shader update version (2023-03-11-r1) so be sure you’re updated to that version before trying the pack. New update coming soon

soqueroeu · 20 March 2023 17:55

Sorry for my lack of knowledge. Are there any cons to using RGB presets with older Core systems? RGB always look better to me.

How to know that chosen shader will not cause loss? I’m still not sure if RF/Composite/NTSC fixes anything or if they exist just for nostalgia.

sonkun · 20 March 2023 18:00

It’s true you get the sharpest clearest picture using the rgb presets but what you will lose and not get are all the dithering/blending effects like the Sonic waterfall. The old systems played on crts took advantage of those kind of effects so it all comes down to if you prefer a sharp crisp clear image or you can play with rf/composite to get the effects that devs at the time took advantage of. I think there’s a youtube video out there that goes more in depth on the topic but I’m too lazy to find and link it lol. But yeah that’s pretty much the answer in a nutshell.

Ejimolkol · 21 March 2023 00:02

I’ve been wondering since im a bit overwhelmed by options but whats the best option for neo geo my laptop can handle the originals but not scale fx, so im looking for something that can emulate the dithering on the neo geo. I know metal slug 1 has the rainbows during stage 1 last time i checked.

sonkun · 21 March 2023 00:33

Hello and welcome to the forum, yeah the scalefx presets are kind of gpu demanding. For dithering you can try either the composite or svideo presets. I’ve added the “sgenpt-mix multipass” shader to my svideo which deal with checkerboard dithering and some light vertical line dithering. Composite 2-phase will give you rainbow effects though.

Also be on the look out for my next shader pack update coming this week, I’ve reworked my composite 2-phase presets so expect a different look on the next update.

Ejimolkol · 21 March 2023 21:53

might i ask Vectorman (USA, Europe)-230321-144746 what are the best settings for this game im getting the clouds rapidly flashing i think its dithering am i right?

sonkun · 21 March 2023 22:39

Definitely the 2-phase composite or rf presets, 2-phase is the output that the Megadrive/Genesis system used so you’ll get the intended effects on screen while using those presets.

Ejimolkol · 22 March 2023 01:28

thanks just to be clear im using j-cool composite 2 phase megadrive rainbows Works good for sonic actual rainfalls especially in 1&3 uggh 3 with those red lines always gets to me. Its only stage 3 with this problem its blue instead of pink when in normal play but paused its pink like it supposed to be

Ejimolkol · 22 March 2023 01:28

Vectorman (USA, Europe)-230321-173259 this is how it looks when not paused the clouds flicker and scroll whilst flickering is that a dithering effect?

sonkun · 22 March 2023 02:15

Ah ok.

What exactly is going on here? Mind posting a screen shot?

This screenshot looks like you’re taking a pic of just the raw image. Mind going to your settings and then go to Video and make sure “GPU Screenshot” is set to on? That needs to be on to take screenshots with shaders activated.

By the way these are new composite 2phase settings I’m working on:

Standard 2phase:

Megadrive version:

sonkun · 27 March 2023 17:43

New Version Release (03/27/2023)

Changes Made

Updated to guest.r’s latest shader version (2023-03-11-r1).
Swapped out using the standard guest shader back over to the guest advanced hd shader since “magic glow” was added to it (HD I missed you). “hd” added back into the thread title.
Changed up all ntsc 2-phase presets, swapped out the mame shader pass for the maister 2-phase shader pass so we’re going from this

Previous settings:

to this:

Tweaked ntsc 2-phase “megadrive rainbows” presets to match the new standard 2-phase presets in appearance to give unification between the two.
Removed the “tvout-tweaks” shader pass from all ntsc 3-phase presets.
Raised interlaced scanline settings, interlaced content now will not be so exceedingly bright. Changed interlace mode to 3.
Added in a ntsc 2-phase rf “megadrive rainbows” preset, total presets now go from 56 to 64 to choose from.

As always you can grab the latest pack in the first post.

Theoldnation · 31 March 2023 09:04

Best SHADER ever, I was looking for quite a very long time for something like this and I had found it with you, thanks for your hard work and I’m quite enthusiastic to test it out

sonkun · 31 March 2023 10:29

Thank you, I’m glad you’ve chosen my presets to replay all your favorite classics with. I’ve been looking for something like my presets for a long time too lol, searched high and low and couldn’t find anything I quite liked, closest thing I found was the amazing work that @ProfessorBraun does, I’m a huge fan of his work and also @kokoko3k who I’m also a fan of. I think his work deserves more recognition outside of just the Libretro forum, I may just ask Youtuber Retro Crisis to do a video on his presets some time to help promote and get his name out there more. And also this guy’s shader who I’ve been keeping a close eye on, guy is producing something amazing with every update video he puts out. I hope to see his work on RetroArch one day.

On another topic I keep rediscovering how amazing Magic Glow is, in the parameters settings there’s a settings section called “Glow Pass Settings” there’s 2 “sigma” settings there one for horizontal one for vertical. I’ve turned both of those down to 20 on all my presets but if you raise them up you can make the overall image look a bit softer.

Here’s how it looks with the glow sigma settings on 20:

On 30:

On 40:

Going pass 40 was making the image too soft for my taste. It’s a cool little feature, was thinking of putting out a quick update with those settings maybe turned up to 30 but haven’t decided yet.