Shaders for Android

RetroArch Additions Shaders
#1

Hi, from times to times I give it a shot for the Android version of Retroarch. Back in 2013 I remember most shaders running slow due to the mobiles limitations back then. Then I got a Galaxy S5, and things became a bit more interesting as most crt shader were running at decent speed. So I just got a Xiaomi Mi6 (Snapdragon 835) hoping to finally get on more or less the same shaders I run on Windows version, but most are missing and the ones I realy care doesnt work well… NTSC makes the whole screen pink, I think it was ever that way and probably wont ever get fixed as afr as I know it has something with NTSC shaders need float framebuffers. GTU shaders are the same thing, propably there are more. Others such crt-gauss results in uneven scanlines at 1080p with integer scale on.

Its a bit frustating as there almost no information at all about Retroarch shaders/performance for non nVidia Android devices. I just got one the best Android devices atm to find out next that it really doesn’t matter as little has changed on Android side since 2013.

I just want make clear I love Retroarch and I have a huge respect for the team behind the project, It’s just my personal experience, I’d better stick with Win version.

#2

Its a shane android doesnt move forward as quickly as other platforms. I have seen many comments from devs moaning about android changing things, thats got to get frustrating.

Ìt just takes people to get these things going. I didnt like RetroArch’s lack of documentation so im doing what i can to help that situation out…maybe you could have a crack at getting some info down on shaders.

Sometimes if you start the testing/recomendation process someone with extra knowlege will see it and do the same.

Hunterk has done a huge amount of work testing, converting and tweaking shaders.

#3

If you have a solution for the float_framebuffer issue, I’m all ears. GLES simply doesn’t guarantee that capability, and most implementations apparently don’t support it. However, out of our 150+ shaders that I hand-converted from Cg to GLSL, the issue affects fewer than 10.

For the uneven scanlines on crtglow-gauss, does the same thing happen with other scanline/CRT shaders or just that one? If happens on all of them, your phone may be reporting one resolution but scaling it to another one behind the scenes.

#4

I believe uneven scanlines occurs only for non-multiple of 4 (like 5x, 6x, etc). Not sure why as I took a screenshot while running on android and openned it on PC and it didnt show uneven scanlines. It’s a problem for consoles with unusual native res like Sega Master System.