I agree with the conclusion of how the final result looks in screenshots especially but on my big screen, some of the past ones I looked at still ended up a bit soft at native resolution.
Those past presets I looked at used I think the Smooth Advance NTSC plus XBR base preset (which I haven’t used before) with Sharp Smoother On so definitely some additional filtering going on there which affects the mask as well. MDAPT is also being used. Plus the blessing and curse of Halation, which explains why everything looks so well blended and natural while not being able to achieve proper focus (or in other words avoid looking slightly blurry/hazy) especially at far viewing distances.
Also mostly default S-Video NTSC is being used in there as well. This is one souped up base preset I must say!
So all @RetroGames4K might have to do to get proper blending of the Sonic The Hedgehog waterfalls plus the force field, plus the other transparency effects in his Sega Genesis preset is switch the NTSC preset to Composite or RF if sticking with defaults.
So it’s really the sum total combination of the settings used plus several of the base preset defaults that is responsible for this “analogish” but blunted “look” that we see.
When you zoom right in on the mask in the presets which @RetroGames4K used to compare to his CRT, the preset “phosphors” looked noticeably filtered and slightly softer than the actual CRT, which looked like a very high quality macro photo by comparison.
In many of my recent screenshots by comparison, when I zoom in at least on my PC, the mask doesn’t look like there’s any filtering going on at all. It looks like nearest neighbour scaling was used.
So I would add that the new XBR has been recently overhauled by @Hyllian as well as the new SharpSmoother, both with the effect of providing excellent filtering while doing a better job than ScaleFX in terms of preserving the look of the original content.
So maybe this is making a good case for giving a try to these updated shaders and Mega Bezel base presets for this magical, immaculate sort of natural blended look that we’re seeing here.
I have to give much credit to @RetroGames4K’s approach here because he definitely has an eye for things and even though he’s relatively new to the tools he asks a lot of questions and his perfectionism seems to keep him constantly aiming for improvement.
His approach to these tools is particularly fresh and especially his use of the myriad of options available for gamma, e.t.c. all add up to what we’re able to witness unfolding before our eyes.
Just makes me wonder how one of his presets might look if I attempt to simply sharpen it a bit just so that it would maintain proper focus at 6-8ft viewing distance on my OLED TV.
I think you’re now starting to see why I said that @RetroGames4K has some of the best looking presets I’ve ever seen.
With that said, I’m all for variety and I like having so many different (relatively) high quality options to choose from. It’s like having many different virtual CRT models from different manufacturers with varying characteristics, calibration and extents of wear and tear.
Like it or not, this might be the start of the future of retro-gaming renditioning right here. Where instead of trying to build an old PC to play old school games or grab and hoard one of the last working CRTs, we might just end up turning to whatever version of the latest great CRT emulations there are available to us and to fight against that is really fighting against the inevitable.
When we want to play DOS games, we turn to DOS Box or if we want to run an old version of Windows, Virtual Box or VMWare at least that’s what I would do.
I do have some ancient computer hardware lying around, including at least one working CRT monitor but those are more like museum pieces than anything that I will really consider trying to put together something that I can use with.
So great job and kudos to you @RetroGames4K! Keep up the good work!
