Please show off what crt shaders can do!

[RealNC]

Oh, 4K. I don’t know how those look at 4K. I only have a 1440p display. I was referring to the 1080p image of Virtua Tennis. That looks completely wrong to me. (Viewed unscaled, of course.) That mask structure is just too huge for a monitor. It needs to be finer. Of course very old monitors probably had a coarser dot-pitch, but surely not as coarse as the one in that screenshot.

I went through about 4 VGA CRT monitors in the 90s. They all share the same characteristic: when viewed from a normal distance, meaning just sitting in front of it and using your PC normally (as opposed to touching the screen with your nose and squinting your eyes to see the mask), then the screen looks almost like things are being painted on a canvas. The screen appears to have a fine “wavy” pattern to it:

(That’s a VGA CRT on a PC, not a SNES. The game is running in an emulator.)

One of the best ways I currently know of to replicate the look, at least on my 1440p display, is with crt-guest-advanced’s mask 6 with stagger set to 1. Slot mask parameters all set to 0. They don’t look right on 1440p.

[Cyber]

@RealNC

Oh, 4K. I don’t know how those look at 4K. I only have a 1440p display. I was referring to the 1080p image of Virtua Tennis. That looks completely wrong to me. (Viewed unscaled, of course.) That mask structure is just too huge for a monitor.

You still don’t seem to understand what I’m trying to say. What monitor are talking about? All monitors were not created equally. The Commodore 1702 Monitor was basically a TV without a tuner.

Compared to PC VGA Monitors a Commodore 1702 Monitor’s mask structure would be pretty coarse. So if you’re saying that the mask is waay too coarse to be a PC VGA Monitor, I would agree with you but that doesn’t apply to all computer monitors.

I don’t think it has anything to do with the resolution of the screen and screenshot in question although it’s harder to get things as fine at 1080p resolution.

If you played Dreamcast on a Commodore 1702 Monitor it might not look that far off from the screenshot when it comes to the coarseness of the shadow mask, which is something that I can distinctly remember noticing when playing my Turbo Duo games on one back in the day.

Those Computer Monitor presets were inspired by my desire to create a shadow mask preset to more closely recreate how the image might look on a Commodore 1702 Monitor not a PC VGA monitor. I used Lottes in my first attempts but in more recent times I’ve been able to make a couple presets using slot mask patterns.

I think it does a pretty good job of taming some of the aliasing - a possible positive side effect of the coarseness of the mask. If I were to create a PC VGA Monitor preset and run Dreamcast at 1x Native Resolution on it, things would be pretty sharp with the mask pattern very tiny but with much more aliasing at that native resolution.

Essentially the coarser mask produces a sort of half-tone effect kinda like what was seen in magazines. Depending on who you ask, this could be seen as an enhancement or desirable effect.

[RealNC]

OK. The preset appears to be called “computer-monitor”, and in my mind that immediately translates to PC monitors.

[Cyber]

That’s understandable but I was a Commodore man before I became a PC guy and the Commodore 1702 Monitor hooked up to a VCR was my TV for almost all of my youth. My fondest console gaming memories were experienced on its glorious, clean, sharp and vivid slot mask display!

Old school games seem to look decent with the 1080p Optimized version as well, especially if you don’t try to stick your nose into the screen but instead view it from a few feet across the room as one might be inclined to do if playing on a 40" TV. Which is how my systems are setup.

From close-up Lottes Mask 3 (or is it 2?) looks very nice from a coarseness perspective, however I have yet been able to get it working properly as I get alternating dark and light scanlines no matter what I try. I’ve tried default scanline settings, Integer Scale, Non-Integer Scale, same thing, so it’s unusable for me at the moment.

[RealNC]

@Cyber

From close-up Lottes Mask 3 (or is it 2?) looks very nice from a coarseness perspective, however I have yet been able to get it working properly as I get alternating dark and light scanlines no matter what I try. I’ve tried default scanline settings, Integer Scale, Non-Integer Scale, same thing, so it’s unusable for me at the moment.

I’ve been using the lottes mask too in the past. When guest.r added the “mask shift/stagger” option, mask 6 with stagger 1 became the better option. For a scanline-doubled VGA monitor look, I mean. It’s too fine for emulating an old-school Commodore monitor.

[Cyber]

@RealNC

I’ve been using the lottes mask too in the past. When guest.r added the “mask shift/stagger” option, mask 6 with stagger 1 became the better option. For a scanline-doubled VGA monitor look, I mean. It’s too fine for emulating an old-school Commodore monitor.

Will try that one again sometime, probably when I’m ready to start emulating DOS Games.

Those Computer Monitor Presets were created before the Mask Offset was added and at the time I wanted all of my presets to have visible RGB “phosphor” triads when viewed from up close to the screen.

I like they way they look when I use them in the way that I use them (including the 1080p Optimized version that you spoke about), which is from a few feet away from a 40" screen, even with the mask being as coarse as it is when viewed up close or zoomed in.

[DevilSingh]

Some more ReShade VHS screenshots :

Raw (for comparison) :

[Jamirus]

It’s not like one has to limit it to the standard shadow mask (dotmask/trio) either, aperture grille is after all a thing for VGA monitors and so is slot mask (“Cromaclear”).

[sonkun]

Here we go another guest shader update another shader pack update. I switched up the Slot Mask this time around and did a little tweak here and there. @guest.r I ended up sticking with the negative value Bloom Strength setting over the new Mask Bloom setting that you just incorporated, for some reason I like the overall look the negative value bloom gives off more:

https://www.mediafire.com/file/72ng8xirsxenobd/crt-guest-advanced-ntsc-slotmask_presets_07-13-2022.zip/file

You must have guest’s latest shader update for my presets to display properly which you can find
here.

Edit: As of 7/13 I updated the pack so if you downloaded it before then please grab it again, had to fix a few things.

[Nesguy]

Here’s the latest iteration of my NTSC preset aiming for accuracy. Also made some small tweaks to my RGB preset.

@HyperspaceMadness these can replace the existing presets whenever you do the next update. Thanks!

GitHub - Patrickdroid/Retroarch-Shaders

[sonkun]

Hey everyone quick update, I went and retweaked my last shader pack, main thing that I tweaked was the sharpness, I managed to get a nice sharp image with guest’s new sharpness settings but I made it too sharp, here’s an example of how it looks from the previous pack:

Notice the inner top of Mario’s hat and the saw-tooth jagginess in the red area, after retweaking the sharpness it now looks more smooth like this:

So you still get a nice sharp image but with the pixels smoothed out how it’s suppose to look. You can grab the updated pack back at the same post here.

Edit 2: switched from mask 6 to mask 9 and adjusted the black levels, updated the pack once again and can be grabbed at the same spot.

[ledoeye]

I discovered this CRT shader called crtnewpixie shader and i really like it! But whenever i use this shader, my blacks appear grey instead of black is there anything that can be done in the slang file? Aside from this,10/10 shader love the scrolling scanlines effect

[HyperspaceMadness]

@ledoeye

whenever i use this shader, my blacks appear grey instead of black is there anything that can be done in the slang file?

You could put an image adjustment shader as an additional pass overtop the crt pass and adjust the black level so that the gray area becomes black.

The image adjustment shader is here: misc\image-adjustment.slang

[ledoeye]

Thank you it worked!

[sonkun]

Here’s my latest shader pack update. I added in some of that Mask Bloom to shake things up a bit, minor other tweaks here and there:

https://www.mediafire.com/file/t0uqkfhlzuzkf1c/crt-guest-advanced-ntsc-slotmask_presets_09-12-2022.zip/file

You must have guest’s latest shader update for my presets to display properly which you can find here.

[Cyber]

CyberLab__Slot_Mask_IV_OLED_for_CyberLab_or_Core_Blargg_S-Video_or_RGB_Filter.slangp + Blargg_NTSC_Genesis_S-Video_CyberLab_Special_Edition.filt

Note: Remember to zoom in or view fullscreen or original size in order for these to look correct because of the mask and scanline settings.

[Hari-82]

My current preset for 1080p

[ProfessorBraun]

[sonkun]

Always liked your style, good stuff. Did you make use of contrast and black level in those pics?

[DevilSingh]

Just a little comparison between screenshots I posted here 2 years ago as a CRT shader newb vs now.

2D games before (CRT-Geom default settings) :

Now (LUT, NTSC-Adaptive and CRT-Geom) :

3D games before (Old CRT-Guest) :

Now (My ReShade-VHS preset) :

(All images are from the standalone PCSX2 emulator with ReShade shaders.)