Overlay vs Shaders

RetroArch Additions
#1

Hi guys,

I was struggling to find better performance with my new soc and I was stuck with the shaders, then I checked out about the overlay effect and, luckily, I found info about it here in the forum. Actually I remember many years ago you could use a simple png to have a scanline effect so I couldn’t understand how I could use only those shaders.

I Haven’t had time to check the overlay yet (actually I haven’t notice them so where them are?), but I am pretty sure with an overlay effect I can improve the look and feel of many games without losing performance anymore (I got unplayable snes emulation because the shaders) so my real question is, why the shaders are so heavy? I almost got crazy about the dramatic lose of performance…

Thanks! :grin:

#2

Many of the shaders are heavy but there are some very lightweight ones, like zfast-crt and crt-pi, as well as crt-potato*, scanline-abs-sin, etc.

However, you can indeed use overlays for simple scanline-y effects if you go to settings > onscreen display > onscreen overlay. There should be a subdirectory called ‘effects’ IIRC that has some faux phosphor and scanline overlays you can try.

#3

Hi,

sorry for being so noob…

To find the overlay I had to enable the advanced setup however the folder was empty, even the shaders you suggested are absent. I don’t understand if I have to download all those stuff manually or if I can do it through the GUI, from download content I didn’t see shaders and overlay.

Never mind I found them:

Thanks!