Please show off what crt shaders can do!

[Cyber]

@RetroGames4K

And I think it looks better IMO.

Once you like it that’s the most important thing, but that’s not accurate to the CRT, even with a Slot Mask display if I recall correctly.

In my opinion, I prefer the previous attempts which looked closer to matching your CRT.

I didn’t even have to zoom in to see the pattern and all it does to me is raise you’d black level and decrease your contrast ratio in the process.

Again, this is merely my opinion. You are the one who must decide when it comes to your presets.

I’m talking specifically about the raised Base (black) Mask though. The new Mask Edge mitigation looks awesome. I don’t like how the scanlines can be seen over the Base (black) Mask and it’s prominence.

[RetroGames4K]

@Cyber

Once you like it that’s the most important thing, but that’s not accurate to the CRT, even with a Slot Mask display if I recall correctly.

Well I got 2 presets, the one before and this other"different" to test things, It’s not deffenitive yet, I still have to improve scanline strength, also I’m a bit confused about “gama correct” and “ntsc gamma correct” do both go in the same direction, or oppossite one to another? What happens sometimes is in a dark game looks good like wing commander, but when I change to a brighter game, then. It looks a bit off, also happens when I try with a brighter game and then change it to a darker game.There’s something I’m still missing, I think I will keep the 2 presets and work on both to get to a conclusion, there’s still work to do. I also like the first preset I showed you with wing commander, but then I change to a game like Super Mario World and it doesnt look right, there’s something in the “middle” between the 2 that I haven’t found yet, maybe scanline size or gamma Correction, Im confused If it has to go possitive or negarive. For now I will rest a bit. Thanks for the opinion as always it helps me to improve.

[RetroGames4K]

@md2mcb

Seems good. How do you think it compares to your CRT? And it’s also refreshing to see some Sonic 1 screenshots without focusing on that damn waterfall.

As I said to @Cyber , it looks good in a game, if I start working on a darker game I get closer to the settings and looks good, but when I change to a brighter game, it doesn’t, that’s why I’m a bit confused and I keep changing from brighter to darker, I know I shouldn’t do that because then I keep changing things all the time and that’s not good because then I will get no where. I’ve been working on my mobile phone, but I will switch to my computer so I can See better the errors, from now on I think I will do that, on a small screen I can’t see all the details.

[Jamirus]

I would assume that different content needs different presents anyway, since I don’t any shader could just extrapolate that correctly once you have settings that reasonably resemble one type of content with a given signal. E.g. 50 vs 60 Hz looks obviously different on the CRT because of the different resolutions. Something like Wing Commander wouldn’t even take up all that screen space etc.

[RetroGames4K]

Ok guys, I switched to my computer, and I made quite a few small changes that I couldn’t see on my mobile device, I used the “Wing Commander preset” and I raised “complementary gamma” from 1.25 to 1.65, also I changed “ntsc filter width taps” from 0.16 to 0.17, I lowered “raise blacks” from 0.04 to 0.01, also changed on the emulator Pico Drive the aspect ratio settings from “CRT to PAR”. I though that having it on that setting would look better, at least on my CRT it’s with that setting and it looks good, but not on the shaders. I will check other emulators just in case if I changed something and try them later.

Also, just to let you know, the emulators have to be set in accuracy mode, or interpreter, or cycle exact like on amiga when available, those options also makes a difference in strong masks. I’m not saying this is perfect, I suppose I need a bit of more tweaking in some other areas but I think it’s a bit better.

Here are some screenshots made from my PC.

[Jamirus]

Funnily enough, aspect should be the other way around Pico Drive “CRT” is supposed to mimic the correct aspect and thus needs to scale (make the image taller by scaling on the horizontal axis). That shouldn’t be necessary on the real CRT, I set any core to 1:1 pixel aspect/PAR or similar settings for this reason, since stretching is accomplished by other means.

[RetroGames4K]

Making some progress…

[mas]

[RetroGames4K]

[RetroGames4K]

I’m just trying same mask 6 but instead of height size 2x1 is 1x1. Also trying different gamma. Which one do you prefer?

[kokoko3k]

Both look good, but first one for me.

[kokoko3k]

[Obsolete]

Hi there! I’ve tried DesMuMe to finish Professor Layton, that I started on Melon DS (or Melon DS DS). The hybrid display mode of that core has an option to avoid the small screens resolution downscale.

Having checked first with MelonDS, CRT shaders wouldn’t accept to run hybrid, except for CGWG-fast (and setting the number of scanlines to 193, DS screens being 192p). With DesMuMe I could apply them and on CRT-Guest the scanlines would fit.

So here it is, color corrected, multi resolution hybrid mode CRTified NDS… You can download the presets for 1080p, and here it is for 4K.

Raw pixels :

CRTified :

Raw pixels :

CRTified :

I’ve played it on the TV screen like that, but also got it in top/down vertical mode with my old box and the rotating screen and on the android phone (with Melon DS which is IME a bit faster), syncthing to sync the save folder between them all but I still had to use a save converter for dsv and sav/srm files.

[Cyber]

I prefer the gamma in the top/first image but I like the added shadow detail and contrast of the second one as well. Maybe you can just adjust whatever Gamma setting you used in the top one to one step darker and that would be nicer overall. That doesn’t seem to be a good image to test Gamma though.

You can try the title screen of Donkey Kong Country where the boombox is on top of the trees before it explodes. If Gamma is too dark, you may not be able to see the speaker cones/surrounds.

Right now I’m struggling with that one because in my current combination of TV model, TV settings and Sony Megatron Color Video + other shaders setup most SNES games seem to look better when the Gamma is set a little darker and crushing the blacks in that boombox. When the cones are clearly visible most other games look horrible and incorrect Gamma wise.

On another note. The Slot Mask seems too stubby for me. I haven’t seen many real Slot Masks looking like that. It probably needs to be at least one step higher for it to make sense to me.

[RetroGames4K]

@Cyber

You can try the title screen of Donkey Kong Country where the boombox is on top of the trees before it explodes. If Gamma is too dark, you may not be able to see the speaker cones/surrounds.

Thanks for the tip, I followed your advice as always

Is this gamma ok? I can see the speaker cones…

[Cyber]

@RetroGames4K

Thanks for the tip,

No problem man!

@RetroGames4K

Is this gamma ok? I can see the speaker cones…

Well, I guess that is good if you can make out the dark details but I really can’t say much except it looks good on my phone screen.

You might have to test other games as well, for example some brighter games like Joe & Mac, Street Fighter II’ Turbo Hyper Fighting, Super Mario World, Super Mario Kart and Super Mario All-Stars to see if they look too dark and/or compare with the ultimate reference, your CRTs.

Why not follow up with a similar comparison shot comparing your old settings to the new ones?

You can also use 240p Test Suite to assist.

It’s a lot easier to pick between 2 screenshots with different gamma settings and say which one I liked better than to just judge one in its own.

It does look good though and I like the way the green glows at the number of players select screen. Not seeing anything off with the colours either.

[RetroGames4K]

I tried to make gamma the closer I can. This is my CRT.

And this the Shaders…

Also on my thread I posted some more Images…

[Cyber]

@RetroGames4K

I tried to make gamma the closer I can.

Oh! Great work man! For the next step you can try nudging the White point in the shader towards the cooler side (higher colour temperature value) as the real CRT’s tiles look more blue, while the shader pic’s tiles has a bit more red in them making them purple…

The CRT shots also look slightly desaturated but adjusting the White Point to a cooler colour temperature should take care of that as well without you having to lower the saturation.

I’m judging based on the photos which could be influenced by camera settings and other environmental factors. If what I’ve noticed isn’t reflected when viewing in person then leave it alone but I have strong feeling that the photos are telling the truth.

Another parameter which affects things like overall tinting, colour temperature and white point is the “Phosphors” shader parameter by the way.

[RetroGames4K]

@Cyber

Oh! Great work man! For the next step you can try nudging the White point in the shader towards the cooler side (higher colour temperature value) as the real CRT’s tiles look more blue, while the shader pic’s tiles has a bit more red in them making them purple…

Thanks, I think I have colour default, maybe I should raise it a bit, also whitepoint is set at -0.65. about the purple thing I don’t know what you mean. I’ll check it later, while I’m going out right now.

@Cyber

I’m judging based on the photos which could be influenced by camera settings and other environmental factors. If what I’ve noticed isn’t reflected when viewing in person then leave it alone but I have strong feeling that the photos are telling the truth.

I think is the camera that makes things desaturated, it shows more vivid colours in real life. It’s hard to me to make a good photo, I try, but I think My mobile device isn’t that good My CRT is Pal, maybe colours are different, also I think the snes Image is on RGB also I’m using Snes9x emu, I’m not sure how accurate is this emulator, I know that emulators if there are not that accurate, colours tend to be weaker is BSnes Better? Also I’m not an expert, but I can notice that with amiga, using cycle exact and changing it to less accurate, the image looks weaker.

[RetroGames4K]

@Cyber

The CRT shots also look slightly desaturated but adjusting the White Point to a cooler colour temperature should take care of that as well without you having to lower the saturation.

I think you are right, I’m quite a noob in this stuff, but is it possible that amd radeon software interfieres with the temp colour? It was set in 6500k by default, but if I leave it on auto colours tend to be more saturated. And I’m a bit confused, that’s why also affects my shader style. I know is emulated, and the video comes out from VGA to Scart.