Please show off what crt shaders can do!

[md2mcb]

Help, please! I made a small, but useful, modification for the slang version of the crt-easymode shader. Since it’s a pretty forgotten shader, I’d like to present it for review and see if it can be uploaded to the official repository.

What I did was adding a new parameter, called BRIGHT_BOOST_CUTOFF, providing a separate value for brightness boost when the cutoff resolution for scanline gaps is achieved. My reasoning is: without the gaps, the picture becomes immediately brighter, so the user might want to scale down any boosting applied in that regard. However, I’m not a programmer and have close to zero knowledge about GitHub. If someone could test my modifications and help me putting this for review, I’d appreciate it. Also, I don’t care about credits, just want to share it with people, if it’s good enough; upload it in my place, if you will.

You can download it here:

crt-easymode for review - Pastebin.com

Thanks!

[KoKlusz]

@Dennis1

Here are some pictures running the Sony Megatron shader with a RGB Slotmask plus Lilium’s inverse HDR tonemapping on an LG OLED TV.

May I ask how to set this up? What emulator is this? RetroArch or Duckstation? How did you get Lilium shader to work?

[Dennis1]

The pictures are taken from Duckstation. I did a small tutorial on how to set everything up including Lilium’s inverse tonemapping:

Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor

Thank you Cyber, I will also take a look at CRT Guest and Super XBR. The Gaussian Blur shader works perfectly already and matches the look of my CRT. Do you mean by zipping and sharing to make a preset pack? I don’t know if this is easy, as this is a Reshade setup and not Retroarch and also there is more stuff to it than just a preset in Reshade, which I will explain now. First you need a HDR capable display, if possible an LG OLED, because I already tried it with a Philips Mini-LED monitor and…

[Dennis1]

Just discovered the Gtu50 Reshade shader and I think it works just a tad better than the Gaussian Blur shader I used before. It can blend pixels more than Gaussian Blur while keeping about the same sharpness and it allows more fine tuning too.

Such a substantial difference to a picture without shaders:

[Cyber]

@Dennis1

Just discovered the Gtu50 Reshade shader and I think it works just a tad better than the Gaussian Blur shader I used before. It can blend pixels more than Gaussian Blur while keeping about the same sharpness and it allows more fine tuning too.

Excellent! This is one of the things I use the decoupled CRT-Guest-Advanced-NTSC plus the Filtering section for.

[Dennis1]

Gtu50 works really well. Here is another screenshot from Tekken 2 on PSX:

[Cyber]

@Dennis1

Gtu50 works really well. Here is another screenshot from Tekken 2 on PSX:

Very convincing @Dennis1! Looking forward to the dedicated thread and obligatory @RetroCrisis installation video!!

[RetroCrisis]

Thanks for flagging - I’ll definetly take a look at this!

[Dennis1]

@Cyber

Looking forward to the dedicated thread and obligatory @RetroCrisis installation video!!

An installation video would be very nice indeed. I like Retrocrisis’ videos. What should I call the new thread? Do you have any suggestions?

Yesterday I tried very hard to find the sweet spot between sharpness and softness with the Gtu50 shader and I think I accomplished that.

Here are some pictures, which should be viewed in fullscreen, HDR enabled and SDR slider to maximum in windows, as they are otherwise too dark:

What I really like about the GTU50 shader is, that it keeps the picture natural looking without introducing artifacts. My focus is always on a realistic and natural look, so it does not appear that I am playing with a shader.

[Dennis1]

A little comparison what GTU50 does.

Without GTU50:

With GTU50:

And no shader:

[Cyber]

@Dennis1

What should I call the new thread? Do you have any suggestions?

I think it could be something descriptive for example:

Dennis’ Very Accurate Sony Megatron CRT Simulation feat. Lilium HDR and GTU50

How to Get Better Tonemapping and Filtering From Sony Megatron Using Lilium HDR and GTU50

How To Level Up Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor

How To Get The Highest Quality Image Out Of Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor

Dennis’ Guide To Turning Your OLED TV Into A CRT

Dennis’ CRT

D’ CRT

D’s CRT Shader

D’s Accurate CRT Simulation

D’ Most Accurate CRT Simulation

D’ Most Accurate CRT Shader

D’ Best CRT Shader

D’ Ultimate CRT Shader

D’ Ultimate Universal CRT Shader - Compatible With Almost All Windows Games

…are a few that come to mind.

@Dennis1

Yesterday I tried very hard to find the sweet spot between sharpness and softness with the Gtu50 shader and I think I accomplished that.

Does it blend dithering patterns in Sega Genesis/Megadrive/32X/CD/Saturn or TurboGrafx-16/PC-Engine/Turbo Duo games without compromising that sweet spot to recreate an RF or Composite Quality Input?

You can definitely publish what you’ve achieved but if it can’t do the above yet you can make additional presets to accomplish the above if you so desire.

@Dennis1

keeps the picture natural looking without introducing artifacts. My focus is always on a realistic and natural look, so it does not appear that I am playing with a shader.

I love this ethos! You definitely have the eye, technical knowledge and competence in order to achieve this. Thank you for sharing this with the world. Keep it up!

On another note, I figured out how to get a decent looking Shadow Mask out of Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor without the strange undesirable artifacts I was always getting before. It has to do with adjusting the Integer Scaling and Aspect Ratio.

Still wondering if it’s possible to get the equivalent of a Mask Stagger -4.50 Shadow Mask using CRT-Guest-Advanced-NTSC with the new simplified Shadow Mask controls and if I can get this exact pattern in Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor.

[Dennis1]

Wow, that is a big list of name suggestions, thanks

But I don’t want to name a thread “Ultimate” or “Most accurate” etc., because I think it depends on the individual taste of each person what looks good and what does not. And also every CRT has a different look, so there is no such thing as accurate anyway.

I think my shader preset looks similar to a Sony Trinitron Consumer TV or Low TVL Sony PVM with RGB input and no composite artifacts etc. Just a clean RGB picture. I counted about 540 lines from left to right which results in around 400 effective TVL if I am not wrong.

How To Level Up Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor sounds nice for a thread name

Lilium’s tonemapping and GTU50 certainly upgrade the shader IMHO.

@Cyber

I love this ethos! You definitely have the eye, technical knowledge and competence in order to achieve this. Thank you for sharing this with the world. Keep it up!

Thank you for the kind words. I think the shoutout goes to MajorPainTheCactus and Lilium for these excellent shaders. My competence is limited as I try just to use the available tools to get the CRT look right to my eyes. But thank you anyway!

@Cyber

Does it blend dithering patterns in Sega Genesis/Megadrive/32X/CD/Saturn or TurboGrafx-16/PC-Engine/Turbo Duo games without compromising that sweet spot to recreate an RF or Composite Quality Input?

I have to check if dithering is possible with some games (Sonic Waterfalls etc.) but I don’t think without an additional composite shader it will be there.

[Cyber]

@Dennis1

I have to check if dithering is possible with some games (Sonic Waterfalls etc.) but I don’t think without an additional composite shader it will be there.

GTU can do it but I’m not sure if it can maintain sharpness simultaneously like CRT-Guest-Advanced-NTSC, NTSC Adaptive or Blargg NTSC Video Filters.

[DariusG]

crt-sines glsl on an old xiaomi note 3 pro, that has a snapdragon 600-something and 120 GFLOPS gpu. Runs smoothly, max 90 fps. I believe without any tricks one would need approximately 400 GFLOPS GPU for the effects.

[Syh]

It’s really F’ing hard to maintain that balance with GTU ye, I ran it exclusively for blurring for a bit.

[Cyber]

In my opinion, the decoupled CRT-Guest-Advanced-NTSC + Filtering Section, NTSC Adaptive or Blargg NTSC Video Filters would be perfect for this as well as light blurring/blending/filtering. I know @DariusG was also working on getting something close to Blargg in shader format as well.

@guest.r would you be keen on the idea of releasing an officially decoupled NTSC + Filtering shader that keeps pace with your latest developments in CRT-Guest-Advanced-NTSC?

That would open up the possibility of an official ReShade port as well.

@DevilSingh ported CRT-Guest-Advanced-NTSC to ReShade. I wonder if the decoupling of the NTSC + Filtering Section could be done as has already been done using the Slang version?

[Syh]

It’s definitely doable, it’s just a matter of someone wanting to do it. (Personally I’m not confident enough to do it myself, filtering code is my nemesis)

[Cyber]

@Dennis1

Thank you for the kind words. I think the shoutout goes to MajorPainTheCactus and Lilium for these excellent shaders. My competence is limited as I try just to use the available tools to get the CRT look right to my eyes. But thank you anyway!

You’re welcome and while I agree that most of the credit is deserving of the Shader creators who made this all possible, people who do what we do, spending hours, sometimes days, sometimes months, sometimes years fine tuning the output of these powerful tools then digesting them into a format that is more palatable to the average person on the street who doesn’t know the difference between a shader and a shader preset, perform a valuable service and also help these things reach even further and wider audiences.

What is the point of doing this if it’s just a handful of people who get to enjoy it? So take your thanks, what you’ve done is not necessarily exactly the same as what a shader dev would do but I think there is enough room for everyone involved in the different stages to be appreciated.

[DariusG]

There is a version of blargg-like shader in glsl format already in ntsc folder. It uses the same filter blargg uses.

[Cyber]

It’s Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor (+passes from CRT-Guest-Advanced-NTSC+SuperXBR+Grade) so brighten your screen, right click then open in new tab, then press F11 to make Full Screen to view or zoom in until it looks right.

Introducing CyberLab Megatron NX W420M 4K SDR Game Turbo Duo Composite Shadow Mask Smooth Ultra Balanced.slangp

These were from an older version of the above preset. I’ll see if I can update when I get a chance.