Please show off what crt shaders can do!

[Squalo]

There’s this old thread on neogaf regarding scanlines, where people post captures of their setups. Some are real crts and upscalers, others emulators. Some look great, others quite bad and unrealistic. I keep reading about how good this and that shader look, but I don’t see many images, and those tend to be worth a thousand words indeed.

Retroarch shaders are the best in the business, but not always easy to implement, and we can learn quite a lot from each other. So let’s go, I will start with many examples of settings that I like, from different systems : )

[Kondorito]

Looking good Squalo!

Care to share the glslp, or parameters you used for them? I really dig the ones in use for Kirby, SMW, Fist of the North Star, and Crazy Taxi.

[Squalo]

Sure! The Snes examples posted here use a combination of aa-shader-4.0-level2-pass2, image adjustment and crt-easymode-halation (stacked in that particular order, or weird things happen). As for the Dreamcast, aa4.0 + i.a. Scanlines are provided by the reshade port of crt_hyllian, running on top of retroarch, since I haven’t found any crt shaders that natively work well with increased internal resolutions.

[Arviel]

These look really nice! What settings are you using for PSX? same as SNES?

[Squalo]

Ps1 here (whose aspect ratio is a bit too wide, my bad) is using a convoluted mix of hyllian’s scanlines from reshade (same reason as DC, increased IR) + the usual aa4.0lv2p2, i.a and easymode halation (which by itself makes the ps1 look fantastic at 1x IR).

Oh and Oddworld is aa4 + ia + fakelottes.

Note that these are all 720p. That keeps my old macbook pro and its GT650M cool, and it’s also a nice 3x integer multiple of 240p. For people with stronger graphics cards, higher resolutions will look better.

Also, many of these games are gamma/brightness/contrast/color corrected (that’s the point of the image adjustment shader of course).

[torridgristle]

Try the new ewa-curvature on some scanlines; compare it with the old curvatures.

[lfan]

Try crt-hyllian-3d shader for “high res” bigger than 400x400. You can change the multiplier_x and multiplier_y params.

[Great_Dragon]

Can you please post your shader preset files here?

[Squalo]

What game/s, Great_Dragon?

A good example of how important it is to color correct certain games: Megaman Willy Wars.

Original (yes, someone in Capcom decided that this gamma was fine)

Corrected

And come on people, post some screens. I would really like to see what other people can achieve!

[Squalo]

And a close-up (which is in fact how people usually post this sort of screens)

CRT emulation has really come a long way indeed. It’s amazing that old games can be made to look this good on modern monitors

[hostile1975]

Crt Aperture for FOTNS and CRT Kurozumi for MOTW

[ryuuji89]

still tweaking it but close to what I want

[Squalo]

At last, a few screens thank god : )

It seems like many people are buying into that ‘BVM look’… dry, ultrasharp with thick black scanlines and perfect geometry. And I wonder why. I played a lot of games in the 80s and 90s, and I don’t remember a single tv or arcade monitor that looked like that. It reminds me of the early 2000s when shaders didn’t exist and we simply slapped 75% scanline overlays on top of everything. LD-CRTs were blurry, bloomy and curvy, and I much prefer a smooth, organic, less digital look, but to each their own I guess!

[ryuuji89]

Well depends on each person(photographic memory)/tv/output and ofc the difference between what we see and what the camera capture. Also the shaders a a bit limited. And is also another debate of how games looked like because of the tech at the time vs. what they were supposed to look like. I’m pretty sure that flicker and distortion were a tech flaw. RGB was in EU and delivered best image clarity. Here is a sshot on a B&O mx6000 on retroarch_Wii 240p rgb scart … as u can see there is a huge difference between shader ap. grille and actual rgb output ap. grille (both closeup and what you see when playing at a comfy distance)

Personally, I cannot stand distortions + image not fitting properly the screen especially when playing on a flat screen led. 4:3 on a 16:9 screen is alsmot too much for me :)). But nevertheless that is me.

[butanebob]

The bloom in some of these screenshots is really awful :\ I use several CRT’s and not one of them look like that.

[Squalo]

@ryuuji89 - that looks great. A bit dark but still good. It also shows how blurry real crts are. The pixels melt. Do you use shaders? If so, have you managed to replicate that look with them?

Of course those characteristics (just like scanlines by the way, or glow, or in fact even chiptune music!) were flaws and limitations, but the industry learnt how to take advantage of them, to the point that they became an essential part of how we experienced videogames back then. 24p in films could be called a flaw as well, and there it is to this day, because it simply is part of the nature of movies.

@butanebob - yeah I like my bloom. So let us see some captures of those crts of yours, or your shader setup… or something. That is the point of this thread. Screen-less criticism cannot be taken seriously.

@hostile1975 - FotNS, the increased IR is the reason why you can’t see any scanlines. If you want them, try reshade. That’s what I use in those cases and it works great!

[Great_Dragon]

I thought you use system bases shader presets and not configure them for each game individually. That is very time consuming for me and it doesn’t make any sense for me. As I try to emulate CRT device of that era that produces image.

[Squalo]

I don’t configure each and every single game individually of course, only certain ones that need it (although once you know what you are doing, that takes seconds). Different systems yes. I already tried to do what you are trying to do, find a configuration that goes well with everything. And it does not exist. Well it does, kind of: play on a real CRT.

Still if you want a quick answer, I already gave one up there:

aa-shader-4.0-level2-pass2, image adjustment and crt-easymode-halation

That combination gives great results for everything that is 240p. The AAoffset default setting is 0.25, which is actually too high. Try 0.10 and if you need a hand with any other setting, here we are

[ryuuji89]

@Squalo the closeup pic of Streets of Rage is from a Bang&Olufsen MX6000 using RetroArch_Wii 240p @15Hz via RGB Scart no shaders. Posted it to show the difference between shaders and actual tv.

[Squalo]

@ryuuji89 - I know, did you read my answer? “It also shows how blurry real crts are. The pixels melt. Do you use shaders? If so, have you managed to replicate that look with them?”. Maybe I should have asked, ‘do you also use shaders?’. What I’m trying to say is that considering that you have that nice crt around, maybe you had tried to replicate the way it looks with shaders on a lcd screen. I know I would!