Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor

RetroArch Additions Shaders
#2468

I’m having a lot of problems with HDR in general, not specific to Megatron but each implementation seems to have it’s own issues.

Without shaders, the default HDR settings cause clipping and black crush. If I make the following adjustments, it solves it:

Peak Luminance 1000 Paper White 350 Contrast 5.6x

However, with Megatron loaded no amount of adjusting these settings in either the HDR settings menu or the shader settings solves the black crush or clipping.

And WindowCast seems to have it’s own issues, too. There’s a ton of clipping with all shaders disabled and no adjustments in the HDR menu solves it. :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

With guest, the default settings in RA are pretty good but I have to raise contrast to 5.8x to pass the PLUGE. So it’s kinda just all over the place and I’ve resorted to creating multiple config files for now

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#2469

Just wanted to report that the scanline moire problem with the low TVL slot mask isn’t present (or not visible to the human eye) in guest-advanced when using the default scanline settings, types 0-2.

Some additional scanline options might be useful in Megatron (or maybe it’s possible to achieve the same results using the existing settings and I haven’t tried hard enough)

3 Likes
#2470

Interesting observation.

Is this with Azurfel’s build or the current official Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor build?

I’ve noticed white clipping once Paperwhite Luminance is set too high relative to my display’s actual capabilities. I never tried it without any shaders loaded though.

Not opposing you in the least but after quite a lot of tinkering and time, I’ve began to realize how powerful and flexible Sony Megatron’s scanline shaping controls are. You can probably get almost any look or shape you like but the controls are more analogous to analog knobs vs the button presets that CRT-Guest-Advanced uses in addition to its own analog style scanline shaping controls.

I vote for the latter. You may not achieve verbatim 1:1 results but you should be able to get something that’s at least comparable.

With my new Megatron NX preset pack I’m amazed at some of the details and beauty in rendering I’m seeing in the same games I’ve been playing so I think it’s just a matter of commitment and learning curve. You also have to try letting go of some of the entrenched ways and approach to doing things and you’ll only enjoy and appreciate the shader even more.

With regards to your calibration issues, if you hold on a bit, I can put together and share a preset that includes the latest decoupled CRT-Guest-Advanced-NTSC NTSC Section + Horizontal Filtering Section with the latest Grade + Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor.

Also, @HunterK recently posted some modifications of the Megatron Shader which includes some modulation noise, which can help immensely with moire issues.

I haven’t tried that nor Azurfel’s build yet as I’m really happy with what I’m seeing with the original build so far.

Here’s Hunterk’s modification:

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#2471

This is with the latest official, just updated assets to make sure.

Yep I probably just need to work at it some more.

I’ll take a look

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#2472

Where is this located? I just downloaded the latest Cyberlab pack

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#2473

These are the decoupled Guest NTSC + other shader presets I was talking to you about. I just added them to the same post I recently made with two other presets.

There are now several CyberLab Shader Preset Packs so you just have to scroll down until you get to my CyberLab Megatron NX Death To Pixels 4K HDR Shader Preset Pack.

It’s the one right below my CyberLab CRT-Royale Death To Pixels Shader Preset Pack.

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#2474

Is there any way to automate the updating/installing of these preset packs? Can they be added to the repo and updated via the online updater?

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#2475

I guess that might partly depend on if there’s enough demand for stuff like that. Then there’s the whole issue of maintenance.

It is something to think about though.

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#2476

Can you add your presets to the “presets” shader directory in RA? You’d have to update and submit a pull request every time guest updated, and… yeah. I don’t know if that’s actually easier for anyone

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#2477

Do you mean these?

I’m wondering if Sony Megatron Presets might best be bundled with Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor in the HDR folder. This is just because of how vastly different the setup and usage of Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor is from other more traditional shader presets.

Mega Bezel is like this and also Koko-aio.

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#2478

Great work @Cyber really well done! Im not sure what exactly is contained in these passes but the Megatron does a lot of the things in Dogways Grade which I presume some of this is based on. Thats fine just make sure everything is set to neutral (0) in the shader like brightness, contrast, saturation etc. Not sure how the colour spaces will play with this but if youre happy with the results then that’s great.

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#2479

Hi @nesguy no idea to be honest as Im not sure what is involved in interlacing. Does the console output a half res image and we in the shader just have to write out every other line based on the frame count?

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#2480

Yeah the Megatron overrides the settings in the main menu as its natively a HDR shader i.e it writes out a r10g10b10a2 back buffer.

Ok so going back to your use case. The HDR in Retroarch isnt really designed to cope with what you’re wanting. Its not really that great at doing a reverse tonemap - it doesnt give you the control you need for a PS2 image - especially the initial version in the built in shader. I need to update this shader with something more modern.l - its really just allowing us access to higher nits which is fine for NES, SNES etc.

Youre best bet is to use Reshade either with RetroArch or PSX2 and use the Lithium HDR shader(s). Its a much more modern implementation with all the bells and whistles you need - its also got a HDR analysis tool so you can see what youre doing by changing values.

2 Likes
#2481

I just added the new Grade instead of using the one that’s included in CRT-Guest-Advanced which comes bundled with Afterglow and some other stuff.

I mainly wanted it to use some of the new Sega Genesis/Mega Dive fixes, like the Luma Fix, the long lost Genesis/MD Palette and the SMS Blue Fix. The Vignette is also a nice addition.

I’m now onto my second wave of presets in my new pack, which takes advantage of everything I’ve learned from before and finally adding the functionality of the Guest-CRT-Advanced-NTSC Filtering Options section.

The result is some of the cleanest images I’ve ever seen using a CRT shader with full bleeding of dithering and transparencies.

#2482

@Cyber

I’m not sure Grade can be rendered 100% transparent/inert with settings alone.

The defaults definitely aren’t remotely transparent tho.

g_signal_type = "0.000000"
g_crtgamut = "0.000000"
g_space_out = "-1.000000"
g_Dark_to_Dim = "0.000000"
g_GCompress = "0.000000"
wp_temperature = "6504.000000"
g_CRT_sl = "0.000000"
g_vignette = "0.000000"

That seems to bring it closer, but it still noticeably alters the image if you A/B compare a screenshot with a raw/shaderless shot.

#2483

I don’t know too much about this but after some feedback from users, @Dogway mentioned how to set things to neutral using Grade and I think the defaults aren’t neutral by design.

He even went on to make a Grade-No-LUT version of the shader, which might be what you’re looking for if you want something more neutral to begin with.

I see. This is something I probably never do. I just want my images to look “right enough” for me. The most I might compare to is a high quality CRT photo, video or screenshot.

With the way things look now, I could just imagine what the improvement might be like if the tonemapping and other colour processing/rendering improvements you’ve been working on are finally completed and integrated into the official Repo!

That just might be the icing on the cake, or perhaps the cherry on top of the ice-cream?

#2484

It’s typically as simple as just offsetting the scanline/gap vertical position by one half texel on every other frame if the OriginalSize.y > ~400. The SNES 240p Test Suite has a toggle for 480i mode that’s good for testing. Also, R.P.M. Racing on SNES is interlaced all the time, making it a good test ROM, as well. Tekken 3 on PS1 is another.

2 Likes
#2485

Grade-No-LUT’s defaults are closer to neutral, but still aren’t transparent/inert, and as best i can tell, cannot be tweaked to be transparent/inert.

If you like the look you get, that is of course your prerogative, but understand that the defaults for either version of Grade are altering the image about as much or more than the Luma Fix, the MD Palette, or the SMS Blue Fix.

The issue is, this skews everything else, makes it harder to evaluate or discuss settings, and to systematically and repeatably achieve good results.

For a working example, a few days ago over in the Guest Advanced thread, you were evaluating whether having Expand Colour Gamut On of Off gave better results. If you had been using Grade with default settings at that time, Grade’s default white point of 8504* K alone would have had a substantial effect on the resulting image, and that effect would have gotten even stronger if you were to also use a non-neutral white point in crt-guest-advanced-ntsc.

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#2487

This is not what I was doing.

This had nothing to do with Grade.

This is not an issue for me. Also, it is obvious to me that if you adjust whitepoint or brightness or any other setting anywhere it is going to affect the results of other settings elsewhere.

I started using Mega Bezel, with many duplicated and triplicated settings from different shaders which all do the same thing.

I don’t need something to be “neutral” for me to end up where I want to be once I have the controls to do so.

Whatever tools are at my disposal, I use them to the best of my ability to achieve the results that I’m looking for.

I think a more interesting conversation might be for you to bring some of these things to @Dogway’s attention seeing that Grade is his baby.

Perhaps you might enlighten him as to certain things that he might have missed or perhaps vice versa?

I appreciate your expertise and perspective however, no matter what you do, what you build or design, users are going to use it however they will.

It is no secret that I build and design for what is pleasing to me, on my equipment first and foremost. I merely share my results for those so inclined to use them, that they may enjoy the same or similar wonderful experiences that I am having.

My presets represent virtual CRTs that float around in my head remember.

#2488

Self naming your own shader presets as the next gen of shaders is however not only what is pleasing to you anymore.

I tried them and they are in no way more quality oriented than all the most renown SDR shaders as of now.

A custom shader preset from a simple Mega Bezel megatron can look way better than a calibrated shader from yours somehow.

So yeah, probably stop making ultimates words for your presets, there’s no ultimate experience in these shaders, and anyone can have much better experiences with things not made to please you.