Please show off what crt shaders can do!

Yeahhhh… I’m going to just start posting my images on an image hosting site instead of using the forums method of uploading images (seems to destroy the quality :joy:).

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I’m curious can you try my preset ,then post a screenshot on libretro,then on pasteboard. i want to see how it looks on my screen with lower resolution,i assume you have 1080p screen. :man_mechanic:

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That’s not a problem, but it’ll probably be tomorrow before I post them. I’m currently on mobile and using my tv (which is my computer monitor…) to watch wrestling, lol.

But for sure I’ll do that tomorrow, and yeah 1080p.

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Sure when you have time :muscle:

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Sorry ALL the wrestling is on tonight XD.

I may get it uploaded tonight, lol.

EDIT: Most likely it will only be a few images, probably a Super Mario World shot, Little Sampson, and Marvel vs Capcom, maybe one of the CPS3 Street Fighter games.

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can you post some shots with the following changes?

GLOW_WIDTH = "0.50000"
GLOW_HEIGHT = "0.50000"
GLOW_HALATION = "0.00000"
GAMMA_INPUT = "2.400000"

Also some shots with the dotmask (magenta/green checkerboard) @ same resolution and slotmask at 10x? whatever LUTWidth/Height is appropriate.

Trying to figure out what’s going on with my own preset.

Edit: also those scanlines still look uneven to me, but that could actually be TN panel inversion artifacts from the display I’m using; hard to tell. If you’re using integer scale you have to set aspect ratio to “custom” and set a custom res for it to work right.

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Current CRT-Aperture settings; should look good on any HDR display when using black frame insertion @ 120 Hz and maxing out the backlight, assuming the display doesn’t have automatic brightness limiting. It will also look good on any non-HDR display when not using BFI and increasing the backlight.

If the display is at least 500 nits then these settings should result in at least 100 nits. If you’re starting with 600 nits you can push the mask strength as high as 65% while still maintaining adequate brightness.

If you’re using the slotmask, OTOH, you can push mask strength to 25% if you start with 500 nits, or 40% if you’re starting with 600 nits.

I just wish I had all the mask options in CRT-Aperture :stuck_out_tongue:

alias0 = ""
BRIGHTNESS = "1.000000"
filter_linear0 = "false"
float_framebuffer0 = "false"
GAMMA_INPUT = "2.400000"
GAMMA_OUTPUT = "2.200000"
GLOW_DIFFUSION = "0.000000"
GLOW_HALATION = "0.000000"
GLOW_HEIGHT = "0.500000"
GLOW_WIDTH = "0.500000"
MASK_COLORS = "2.000000"
MASK_SIZE = "1.000000"
MASK_STRENGTH = "0.400000"
mipmap_input0 = "false"
parameters = "SHARPNESS_IMAGE;SHARPNESS_EDGES;GLOW_WIDTH;GLOW_HEIGHT;GLOW_HALATION;GLOW_DIFFUSION;MASK_COLORS;MASK_STRENGTH;MASK_SIZE;SCANLINE_SIZE_MIN;SCANLINE_SIZE_MAX;SCANLINE_SHAPE;SCANLINE_OFFSET;GAMMA_INPUT;GAMMA_OUTPUT;BRIGHTNESS"
SCANLINE_OFFSET = "1.000000"
SCANLINE_SHAPE = "1.000000"
SCANLINE_SIZE_MAX = "1.500000"
SCANLINE_SIZE_MIN = "0.500000"
shader0 = "C:\Program Files\RetroArch\shaders\shaders_glsl\crt\shaders\crt-aperture.glsl"
shaders = "1"
SHARPNESS_EDGES = "3.000000"
SHARPNESS_IMAGE = "1.000000"
srgb_framebuffer0 = "false"
wrap_mode0 = "clamp_to_border"
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I don’t know the problem, all i can i say it’s everything is even for me. you can try to use dsr (dynamic super resolution) to simulate 4k with nvidia gpu if you have one ,still don’t know if it’s gonna look like me.

Here’s a screen on 800% zoomed (maybe you need to zoom if the grid it’s not scaled correctly on pasteboard) https://pasteboard.co/IKQ0wpx.png

Sure i can do that,let me a couple minutes to take screenshots with your settings

Edit: Screenshots with settings you asked ( by this order -> 9x delta_1_4x1_rgb,9x m/g checkerboard,10x slotmask) 2 and 3 doesn’t have the same checkerboard pattern with each scanlines.

1.https://pasteboard.co/IKQb2F0.png

2.https://pasteboard.co/IKQd8Bd.png

3.https://pasteboard.co/IKQdEG4.png

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Wowww… I’m really not a fan of the m/g mask (option 2). Personally I enjoyed 1 the most and 3 seemed nice.

Take this with a grain of salt though as I’m on mobile.

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Yeah I think it might be TN panel inversion artifacts I’m getting; certain mask patterns interfere with the subpixels in a weird way with TN panels.

I’m wondering why the mask disappears completely over bright colors? I think that’s the disadvantage of the blend overlay shader vs CRT-Aperture’s mask strength parameter. Ideally, white should be 100% magenta/green and the dark lines (the black gaps between scanlines) should have a certain amount of black added to them.

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yeah it could be scaling weird on your phone; mask 2 looks fine to me when zoomed in to 100% on my display

edit: also, if I’m not mistaken, they’re all magenta/green. 1st is aperture grille, 2nd dotmask and 3rd slotmask. It’s hard to tell though because of the way the blend overlay shader adds white to bright lines instead of adding blacks to dark lines (the way CRT-Aperture does it).

edit2: I’d probably raise scanline_shape some when using mask 2 or 3 since slotmask and dotmask CRTs aren’t quite as scanline-y as aperture grille CRTs

Here’s one with mask on white areas,but picture is so dark https://pasteboard.co/IKQrtja.png

yes 1.0 for min and max scanlines beam values will do the job,but whites areas are darker unfortunately,that’s why i’m using aperture

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I’d leave those alone because it seems to do weird stuff to color when I mess with those; scanline_shape adjusts the minimum thickness.

If you check out CRT-Aperture without the reshade shader and set mask strength to 100 and use the same settings for everything else, you’ll see it’s nowhere near as dark. This shot also shows what the phosphors should look like at different intensities:

same thing in fake4K:

Should be bright enough if you max out the backlight.

EDIT: actually the two images (the one you posted and the fake4K one) are similar in overall brightness. The difference is that the highlights / bright phosphors are more intense with CRT-Aperture’s method. This more closely resembles what an actual CRT does.

If that’s the magenta checkerboard, I don’t hate it at that lower TVL (still not the biggest fan of it, but it looks marginally better. To me at least, still on mobile. XD)

It’s the magenta/green aperture grille… and it has to be viewed at correct scale or it will look terrible and not have the intended effect at all.

edit: ideally you’d be viewing this on a 4k display so that the mask maps to the subpixels correctly. Otherwise, there’s a shot I posted above that can be viewed correctly on a 1080p display.

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Ohh, and I completely understand what you’re saying but I’m not looking at the image as a whole for this opinion that I have, I’m zooming in to look at the phosphors (like a macro shot?). I do this whenever anyone posts screens on here, I’m just not a fan of how it looks close up (which would be an issue for me as I have a 32 inch screen that I view from about 4 - 4 1/2 feet away, and I can see Lottes/guests masks pretty noticeable at higher settings from this distance). This is my personal opinion that I’ve made by looking at it via mobile haven’t tried it on my computer yet but I will before I continue to complain about it anymore.

The magenta/green masks won’t work right at all unless viewed at the right resolution and scale.

The reason for using magenta/green is detailed in cgwg’s excellent write-up here.

The Lottes masks don’t take into account the LCD subpixel structure so the LCD subpixels wind up being spaced unevenly. This causes blue to be washed out(?) by red and it all turns into magenta/green (you can see this in a macro shot). The magenta/green mask keeps the LCD subpixels evenly spaced so blue doesn’t get washed out and it actually looks like RGB in a macro shot. It’s also closer to how a CRT actually works.

A bit of pixel bleed in the second shot. Also the scanlines look a bit wacky due to the aforementioned TN panel inversion artifacts. Second shot shows the colors more accurately (looks better the closer you get to normal viewing distance)

Just want to explain some later changes to crt-guest-dr-venom, more precisely scanline spike mitigation. It’s already working with the GLSL version and i’ll see what can be done with the slang one.

I think it looks much better now with scanline type 1&2.

Old behaviour can be achieved with setting the “Scanline Spike Removal” parameter to low values.

Cheers!

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Could you explain the update a little? Mainly because viewing the image via mobile the only real difference I noticed is that the spike mitigation image was (softer?) at least that’s what I was seeing, at least mainly around (higher contrast?) areas I guess, I noticed it really well on black and white areas, wasn’t super noticeable in the face image but in the space invaders it was really visible in my opinion. You could also see it (slightly?) with the red lines, it had some interesting effects on the multi-color thing in the space invaders area, and its fairly noticeable in the text.

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Gaussian scanlines have some issues with stronger scanlines, for example “bright scanline spikes” happen when the horizontal sharpness is at preferred medium values.

Once you see it in action/PC screen it get’s quite obvious.

It was on my TODO/FIX list quite some time, it was annoying for me especially with games that use black backgrounds.

In general it should work out very well, since the solution works with different horizontal sharpness levels, maybe some substractive sharpness (like the default 0.05) should be used to avoid some situations.

Ofc., if it’s not so likeable, old behaviour can be used. :grin:

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