Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor

RetroArch Additions Shaders
#2754

AzMods20251018

Readme with additional details

Built on top of:

  • Image Adjustment (2024.02.07) by hunterk

  • crt-guest-advanced-2025-10-18-release1 (rev5) by guest.r and Dr. Venom, based in part on Themaister’s NTSC shader

  • Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor (2023.10.09) by MajorPainTheCactus

  • with additional functions based on or inspired by Grade by Dogway

All included “CRT Megatron” presets are currently tuned for the LG C1 and other similar displays (WRGB subpixel layout, with approximately 800 nits Peak Luminance).

The included version of Image Adjustment has been modified to allow for finer control of the effects as i found appropriate.

crt-guest-advanced-ntsc has been modified to add or expand the following options

GPGX MS color fix

Corrects Genesis Plus GX’s Master System color output, which includes minor errors i discovered while implementing the Sega MS Nonlinear Blue Fix.

  • 0=off
  • 1=on (color saturation scaled to a maximum value of RGB 255)
  • 2=sat239 (scaled to a maximum value of RGB 239)
  • 3=sat210 (scaled to a maximum value of RGB 210)
  • 4=sat165 (scaled to a maximum value of RGB 165)

Sega MS Nonlinear Blue Fix

An implementation of the behavior described in Notes & Measures: Nonlinear Blue on Sega Master System 1 & Other Findings by bfbiii.

This setting automatically adjusts to work with the GPGX MS color fix settings.

Sega MD RGB Palette

An implementation/approximation of the Mega Drive/Genesis RGB palette as discussed here.

Downsample Pseudo Hi-Res

As i understand it, 15KHz CRT displays would treat double-horizontal resolution modes (512x224, 640x240, etc) as tho they were not doubled, resulting in a blending effect, called pseudo hi-res. A number of SFC/SNES games are known to have used this behavior for transparency effects, including Breath of Fire II, Jurassic Park, and Kirby’s Dream Land 3, and as far as i know it is the correct behavior for any device originally meant to be displayed on a 15KHz CRT TV/monitor.

  • 1 = off

  • 2 = Triggers the blending effect whenever the horizontal resolution is more than twice the vertical resolution. This works well with cores that either always output a pseudo hi-res image for compatibility (such as bsnes-jg), or cores that only use pseudo hi-res for pseudo hi-res content (such as SwanStation). True high-resolution/interlaced content is not effected.

  • 3 = Triggers the blending effect whenever the horizontal resolution is 480 or higher. This is needed for cores that display pseudo hi-res content in a true high-resolution container (such as Mesen-S and a number of bsnes variants). Unfortunately, this halves the resolution of true high-resolution/interlaced content, as there is no way to differentiate pseudo hi-res and true high-resolution/interlaced content in these cores.

Internal Resolution

Modified to allow up to 1/16th downsampling. (It’s a surprise tool that will help us later.)

Sony Megatron has been modified to add or expand the following options

HDR: Content Color Gamut

Out of the box, RetroArch and Megatron clamp colors to the Rec. 709 gamut (Expand Gamut set to Off in RetroAtch, or HDR: Original/Vivid set to Original in Megatron), or stretch that Rec. 709 gamut to an unusual non-standard gamut created by someone at Microsoft (?Chuck Walbourn?) called Expanded 709 (Expand Gamut set to On in RetroArch, or HDR: Original/Vivid set to Vivid in Megatron).

Obviously, this is undesirable, as all of the major “retro” color gamuts include colors that fall outside of Rec. 709.

Serendipitously, i found that it was possible to turn this problem into it’s own solution by simply adding additional color gamuts to the “HDR: Original/Vivid”, renaming it “HDR: Content Color Gamut” to better reflect it’s newfound purpose.

When using this setting, Colour System should be set to 0/r709, and Phosphors should be set to 0/NONE.

Options are as follows:

  • 0=Rec 709/sRGB (SDR HDTV/Windows gamut)
  • 1=Expanded 709
  • 2=NTSC 1953 (The OG color system that was only really used for like 5-8ish years back when basically no one owned a color TV anyway. If you are Brazillian or from a SECAM region, it may also match some old CRT TVs you’ve used with really weirdly intense greens? Hard to say. This sort of thing is kind of underdocumented.)
  • 3=RCA 1958 (?1961?) (Millennial’s grandparent’s old TV with weird colors #1.)
  • 4=RCA 1964 (Millennial’s grandparent’s old TV with weird colors #2.)
  • 5=SMPTE C/Rec 601-525 line/Conrac (Baseline standard gamut for Analog NTSC.)
  • 6=PAL/Rec 601-625 line (Baseline standard gamut for Analog PAL.)
  • 7=Dogway’s NTSC-J (Baseline standard gamut for Analog NTSC-J.)
  • 8=P22_80s (Dogway’s Grade gamut for 1980s-early 1990s TVs.)
  • 9=Apple RGB/Trinitron PC (Should approximate basically any Trinitron monitor from 1987-the mid to late 1990s. By the early 00s, they were SMPTE C instead, at least for high end monitors like the FW900.)
  • 10=guest’s Philips PC (Gamut used by a number of extremely popular monitors that used Philips tubes, including Philips CM8533, Philips VS-0080, and Commodore 1084)
  • 11=P22_90s (Dogway’s Grade gamut for mid 1990s TVs with tinted phosphors.)
  • 12=RPTV_95s (Dogway’s Grade gamut for late 90s/early 00s rear projection TVs that game manuals said you shouldn’t play games on due to burn in risk.)
  • 13=Display P3/P3-D65 (Common wide color gamut. Variant on the gamut used for film with shared primaries. Might be useful in the future if someone makes a WCG pixel game that looks best with a CRT shader?)
  • 14=Rec 2020 (HDR gamut. Again, might be useful in the future if someone makes a WCG pixel game that looks best with a CRT shader.)

Gamut Overshoot Fix

A fix MajorPainTheCactus came up with to deal with the color errors i noticed using lilium’s HDR analysis shader. (Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor)

He decided not to implement it at the time, as he didn’t think it wouldn’t make a perceptible difference, but a friend and i both came to the conclusion that it makes certain test pattern colors look more like they do with no shaders applied, so i have continued to use it. There should be no downside. (Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor)

  • 0=no fix
  • 1=the 7-decimal clamp
  • 2=the 6-decimal clamp (results in non-zero blacks, perceptible in a sufficiently dark room)

Scanline Multiplier/Divisor

Multiplies or divides the number of scanlines.

Useful for cases like DOS games meant for 31KHz displays, which output 320x200 that was then double scanned to 640x400.

The divisor options are handy for displaying increased internal resolution output from 3D cores that don’t include a good downsample option, such as PPSSPP. I strongly recommend using this setting in conjuction with crt-guest-advanced-ntsc’s Internal Resolution setting to reduce shimmering.

  • -1,0,1=1x (Default/off)
  • 2=2x (Doublescan)
  • 3=Auto 2x (Automatically doublescans any content with a vertical resolution of less than 300, while leaving higher resolution content unchanged)
  • -2=1/2 (Reduces the scanline count to one half default)
  • -3=1/3 (Reduces the scanline count to one third default)
  • -4=1/4 (Reduces the scanline count to one quarter default)
  • -5=1/5 (etc.)
  • -6=1/6
  • -7=1/7
  • -8=1/8
  • -9=1/9
  • -10=1/10
  • -11=1/11
  • -12=1/12
  • -13=1/13
  • -14=1/14
  • -15=1/15
  • -16=1/16
4 Likes
#2755

AzMods20251022

Readme with additional details

Built on top of:

  • Image Adjustment (2024.02.07) by hunterk

  • crt-guest-advanced-2025-10-22-release1 (rev2) by guest.r and Dr. Venom, based in part on Themaister’s NTSC shader

  • Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor (2023.10.09) by MajorPainTheCactus

  • with additional functions based on or inspired by Grade by Dogway

All included “CRT Megatron” presets are currently tuned for the LG C1 and other similar displays (WRGB subpixel layout, with approximately 800 nits Peak Luminance).

The included version of Image Adjustment has been modified to allow for finer control of the effects as i found appropriate.

crt-guest-advanced-ntsc has been modified to add or expand the following options

GPGX MS color fix

Corrects Genesis Plus GX’s Master System color output, which includes minor errors i discovered while implementing the Sega MS Nonlinear Blue Fix.

  • 0=off
  • 1=on (color saturation scaled to a maximum value of RGB 255)
  • 2=sat239 (scaled to a maximum value of RGB 239)
  • 3=sat210 (scaled to a maximum value of RGB 210)
  • 4=sat165 (scaled to a maximum value of RGB 165)

Sega MS Nonlinear Blue Fix

An implementation of the behavior described in Notes & Measures: Nonlinear Blue on Sega Master System 1 & Other Findings by bfbiii.

This setting automatically adjusts to work with the GPGX MS color fix settings.

Sega MD RGB Palette

An implementation/approximation of the Mega Drive/Genesis RGB palette as discussed here.

Downsample Pseudo Hi-Res

As i understand it, 15KHz CRT displays would treat double-horizontal resolution modes (512x224, 640x240, etc) as tho they were not doubled, resulting in a blending effect, called pseudo hi-res. A number of SFC/SNES games are known to have used this behavior for transparency effects, including Breath of Fire II, Jurassic Park, and Kirby’s Dream Land 3, and as far as i know it is the correct behavior for any device originally meant to be displayed on a 15KHz CRT TV/monitor.

  • 1 = off

  • 2 = Triggers the blending effect whenever the horizontal resolution is more than twice the vertical resolution. This works well with cores that either always output a pseudo hi-res image for compatibility (such as bsnes-jg), or cores that only use pseudo hi-res for pseudo hi-res content (such as SwanStation). True high-resolution/interlaced content is not effected.

  • 3 = Triggers the blending effect whenever the horizontal resolution is 480 or higher. This is needed for cores that display pseudo hi-res content in a true high-resolution container (such as Mesen-S and a number of bsnes variants). Unfortunately, this halves the resolution of true high-resolution/interlaced content, as there is no way to differentiate pseudo hi-res and true high-resolution/interlaced content in these cores.

Internal Resolution

Modified to allow up to 1/16th downsampling. (It’s a surprise tool that will help us later.)

Sony Megatron has been modified to add or expand the following options

HDR: Content Color Gamut

Out of the box, RetroArch and Megatron clamp colors to the Rec. 709 gamut (Expand Gamut set to Off in RetroAtch, or HDR: Original/Vivid set to Original in Megatron), or stretch that Rec. 709 gamut to an unusual non-standard gamut created by someone at Microsoft (?Chuck Walbourn?) called Expanded 709 (Expand Gamut set to On in RetroArch, or HDR: Original/Vivid set to Vivid in Megatron).

Obviously, this is undesirable, as all of the major “retro” color gamuts include colors that fall outside of Rec. 709.

Serendipitously, i found that it was possible to turn this problem into it’s own solution by simply adding additional color gamuts to the “HDR: Original/Vivid”, renaming it “HDR: Content Color Gamut” to better reflect it’s newfound purpose.

When using this setting, Colour System should be set to 0/r709, and Phosphors should be set to 0/NONE.

Options are as follows:

  • 0=Rec 709/sRGB (SDR HDTV/Windows gamut)
  • 1=Expanded 709
  • 2=NTSC 1953 (The OG color system that was only really used for like 5-8ish years back when basically no one owned a color TV anyway. If you are Brazillian or from a SECAM region, it may also match some old CRT TVs you’ve used with really weirdly intense greens? Hard to say. This sort of thing is kind of underdocumented.)
  • 3=RCA 1958 (?1961?) (Millennial’s grandparent’s old TV with weird colors #1.)
  • 4=RCA 1964 (Millennial’s grandparent’s old TV with weird colors #2.)
  • 5=SMPTE C/Rec 601-525 line/Conrac (Baseline standard gamut for Analog NTSC.)
  • 6=PAL/Rec 601-625 line (Baseline standard gamut for Analog PAL.)
  • 7=Dogway’s NTSC-J (Baseline standard gamut for Analog NTSC-J.)
  • 8=P22_80s (Dogway’s Grade gamut for 1980s-early 1990s TVs.)
  • 9=Apple RGB/Trinitron PC (Should approximate basically any Trinitron monitor from 1987-the mid to late 1990s. By the early 00s, they were SMPTE C instead, at least for high end monitors like the FW900.)
  • 10=guest’s Philips PC (Gamut used by a number of extremely popular monitors that used Philips tubes, including Philips CM8533, Philips VS-0080, and Commodore 1084)
  • 11=P22_90s (Dogway’s Grade gamut for mid 1990s TVs with tinted phosphors.)
  • 12=RPTV_95s (Dogway’s Grade gamut for late 90s/early 00s rear projection TVs that game manuals said you shouldn’t play games on due to burn in risk.)
  • 13=Display P3/P3-D65 (Common wide color gamut. Variant on the gamut used for film with shared primaries. Might be useful in the future if someone makes a WCG pixel game that looks best with a CRT shader?)
  • 14=Rec 2020 (HDR gamut. Again, might be useful in the future if someone makes a WCG pixel game that looks best with a CRT shader.)

Gamut Overshoot Fix

A fix MajorPainTheCactus came up with to deal with the color errors i noticed using lilium’s HDR analysis shader. (Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor)

He decided not to implement it at the time, as he didn’t think it wouldn’t make a perceptible difference, but a friend and i both came to the conclusion that it makes certain test pattern colors look more like they do with no shaders applied, so i have continued to use it. There should be no downside. (Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor)

  • 0=no fix
  • 1=the 7-decimal clamp
  • 2=the 6-decimal clamp (results in non-zero blacks, perceptible in a sufficiently dark room)

Scanline Multiplier/Divisor

Multiplies or divides the number of scanlines.

Useful for cases like DOS games meant for 31KHz displays, which output 320x200 that was then double scanned to 640x400.

The divisor options are handy for displaying increased internal resolution output from 3D cores that don’t include a good downsample option, such as PPSSPP. I strongly recommend using this setting in conjuction with crt-guest-advanced-ntsc’s Internal Resolution setting to reduce shimmering.

  • -1,0,1=1x (Default/off)
  • 2=2x (Doublescan)
  • 3=Auto 2x (Automatically doublescans any content with a vertical resolution of less than 300, while leaving higher resolution content unchanged)
  • -2=1/2 (Reduces the scanline count to one half default)
  • -3=1/3 (Reduces the scanline count to one third default)
  • -4=1/4 (Reduces the scanline count to one quarter default)
  • -5=1/5 (etc.)
  • -6=1/6
  • -7=1/7
  • -8=1/8
  • -9=1/9
  • -10=1/10
  • -11=1/11
  • -12=1/12
  • -13=1/13
  • -14=1/14
  • -15=1/15
  • -16=1/16
3 Likes
#2756

In Reshade 6.6.1:

13:01:32:698 [16368] | ERROR | Failed to compile ‘C:\Users\awright\Documents\Fightcade\emulator\fbneo\reshade-shaders\Shaders\SonyMegatron.fx’: C:\Users\awright\Documents\Fightcade\emulator\fbneo\Shader@0x000002644F24DC00(277,16-53): warning X3571: pow(f, e) will not work for negative f, use abs(f) or conditionally handle negative values if you expect them C:\Users\awright\Documents\Fightcade\emulator\fbneo\Shader@0x000002644F24DC00(282,20-29): error X3504: array index out of bounds

image
image3839×2159 725 KB

#2757

AzMods20251027

Readme with additional details

Built on top of:

  • Image Adjustment (2024.02.07) by hunterk

  • crt-guest-advanced-2025-10-27-release1 by guest.r and Dr. Venom, based in part on Themaister’s NTSC shader

  • Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor (2023.10.09) by MajorPainTheCactus

  • with additional functions based on or inspired by Grade by Dogway

All included “CRT Megatron” presets are currently tuned for the LG C1 and other similar displays (WRGB subpixel layout, with approximately 800 nits Peak Luminance).

The included version of Image Adjustment has been modified to allow for finer control of the effects as i found appropriate.

crt-guest-advanced-ntsc has been modified to add or expand the following options

GPGX MS color fix

Corrects Genesis Plus GX’s Master System color output, which includes minor errors i discovered while implementing the Sega MS Nonlinear Blue Fix.

  • 0=off
  • 1=on (color saturation scaled to a maximum value of RGB 255)
  • 2=sat239 (scaled to a maximum value of RGB 239)
  • 3=sat210 (scaled to a maximum value of RGB 210)
  • 4=sat165 (scaled to a maximum value of RGB 165)

Sega MS Nonlinear Blue Fix

An implementation of the behavior described in Notes & Measures: Nonlinear Blue on Sega Master System 1 & Other Findings by bfbiii.

This setting automatically adjusts to work with the GPGX MS color fix settings.

Sega MD RGB Palette

An implementation/approximation of the Mega Drive/Genesis RGB palette as discussed here.

Downsample Pseudo Hi-Res

As i understand it, 15KHz CRT displays would treat double-horizontal resolution modes (512x224, 640x240, etc) as tho they were not doubled, resulting in a blending effect, called pseudo hi-res. A number of SFC/SNES games are known to have used this behavior for transparency effects, including Breath of Fire II, Jurassic Park, and Kirby’s Dream Land 3, and as far as i know it is the correct behavior for any device originally meant to be displayed on a 15KHz CRT TV/monitor.

  • 1 = off

  • 2 = Triggers the blending effect whenever the horizontal resolution is more than twice the vertical resolution. This works well with cores that either always output a pseudo hi-res image for compatibility (such as bsnes-jg), or cores that only use pseudo hi-res for pseudo hi-res content (such as SwanStation). True high-resolution/interlaced content is not effected.

  • 3 = Triggers the blending effect whenever the horizontal resolution is 480 or higher. This is needed for cores that display pseudo hi-res content in a true high-resolution container (such as Mesen-S and a number of bsnes variants). Unfortunately, this halves the resolution of true high-resolution/interlaced content, as there is no way to differentiate pseudo hi-res and true high-resolution/interlaced content in these cores.

Internal Resolution

Modified to allow up to 1/16th downsampling. (It’s a surprise tool that will help us later.)

Sony Megatron has been modified to add or expand the following options

HDR: Content Color Gamut

Out of the box, RetroArch and Megatron clamp colors to the Rec. 709 gamut (Expand Gamut set to Off in RetroAtch, or HDR: Original/Vivid set to Original in Megatron), or stretch that Rec. 709 gamut to an unusual non-standard gamut created by someone at Microsoft (?Chuck Walbourn?) called Expanded 709 (Expand Gamut set to On in RetroArch, or HDR: Original/Vivid set to Vivid in Megatron).

Obviously, this is undesirable, as all of the major “retro” color gamuts include colors that fall outside of Rec. 709.

Serendipitously, i found that it was possible to turn this problem into it’s own solution by simply adding additional color gamuts to the “HDR: Original/Vivid”, renaming it “HDR: Content Color Gamut” to better reflect it’s newfound purpose.

When using this setting, Colour System should be set to 0/r709, and Phosphors should be set to 0/NONE.

Options are as follows:

  • 0=Rec 709/sRGB (SDR HDTV/Windows gamut)
  • 1=Expanded 709
  • 2=NTSC 1953 (The OG color system that was only really used for like 5-8ish years back when basically no one owned a color TV anyway. If you are Brazillian or from a SECAM region, it may also match some old CRT TVs you’ve used with really weirdly intense greens? Hard to say. This sort of thing is kind of underdocumented.)
  • 3=RCA 1958 (?1961?) (Millennial’s grandparent’s old TV with weird colors #1.)
  • 4=RCA 1964 (Millennial’s grandparent’s old TV with weird colors #2.)
  • 5=SMPTE C/Rec 601-525 line/Conrac (Baseline standard gamut for Analog NTSC.)
  • 6=PAL/Rec 601-625 line (Baseline standard gamut for Analog PAL.)
  • 7=Dogway’s NTSC-J (Baseline standard gamut for Analog NTSC-J.)
  • 8=P22_80s (Dogway’s Grade gamut for 1980s-early 1990s TVs.)
  • 9=Apple RGB/Trinitron PC (Should approximate basically any Trinitron monitor from 1987-the mid to late 1990s. By the early 00s, they were SMPTE C instead, at least for high end monitors like the FW900.)
  • 10=guest’s Philips PC (Gamut used by a number of extremely popular monitors that used Philips tubes, including Philips CM8533, Philips VS-0080, and Commodore 1084)
  • 11=P22_90s (Dogway’s Grade gamut for mid 1990s TVs with tinted phosphors.)
  • 12=RPTV_95s (Dogway’s Grade gamut for late 90s/early 00s rear projection TVs that game manuals said you shouldn’t play games on due to burn in risk.)
  • 13=Display P3/P3-D65 (Common wide color gamut. Variant on the gamut used for film with shared primaries. Might be useful in the future if someone makes a WCG pixel game that looks best with a CRT shader?)
  • 14=Rec 2020 (HDR gamut. Again, might be useful in the future if someone makes a WCG pixel game that looks best with a CRT shader.)

Gamut Overshoot Fix

A fix MajorPainTheCactus came up with to deal with the color errors i noticed using lilium’s HDR analysis shader. (Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor)

He decided not to implement it at the time, as he didn’t think it wouldn’t make a perceptible difference, but a friend and i both came to the conclusion that it makes certain test pattern colors look more like they do with no shaders applied, so i have continued to use it. There should be no downside. (Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor)

  • 0=no fix
  • 1=the 7-decimal clamp
  • 2=the 6-decimal clamp (results in non-zero blacks, perceptible in a sufficiently dark room)

Scanline Multiplier/Divisor

Multiplies or divides the number of scanlines.

Useful for cases like DOS games meant for 31KHz displays, which output 320x200 that was then double scanned to 640x400.

The divisor options are handy for displaying increased internal resolution output from 3D cores that don’t include a good downsample option, such as PPSSPP. I strongly recommend using this setting in conjuction with crt-guest-advanced-ntsc’s Internal Resolution setting to reduce shimmering.

  • -1,0,1=1x (Default/off)
  • 2=2x (Doublescan)
  • 3=Auto 2x (Automatically doublescans any content with a vertical resolution of less than 300, while leaving higher resolution content unchanged)
  • -2=1/2 (Reduces the scanline count to one half default)
  • -3=1/3 (Reduces the scanline count to one third default)
  • -4=1/4 (Reduces the scanline count to one quarter default)
  • -5=1/5 (etc.)
  • -6=1/6
  • -7=1/7
  • -8=1/8
  • -9=1/9
  • -10=1/10
  • -11=1/11
  • -12=1/12
  • -13=1/13
  • -14=1/14
  • -15=1/15
  • -16=1/16
1 Like
#2758
1 Like
#2759
1 Like
#2760

Hey man, thanks a lot for your continued support and dedication to our beloved shader tools!

I’ve tested it and was able to eventually tweak things to my liking after some experimentation. Although I’m strongly intertwined and invested in the shader stack I currently use, I’m not ruling out a switch over to your cleaner and more accurate stack at some point in the future.

Nonetheless, you’ve taken the, (abandoned?), no offense to @MajorPainTheCactus Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor shader and kept it in line with current trends and developments which is quite commendable and appreciated and something that others might eventually live and grow to appreciate.

I think this shader “suffers” from being a bit “ahead of its time” for the average user and it also has a bit of a marketing / PR issue since its difficult to showcase on current setups to mainstream audiences.

Those who know, know though but that is a niche of a niche.

So I would like to nominate AzMods20251108 for a RetroArch PR to reside alongside the existing Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor shader which can remain as a simpler, leaner foundational vanilla version.

I propose that you take a look at the stack I currently use in my miniLED Epic preset pack and include and incorporate some of the additional features which may lie therein, for example additional RGB Masks which replaced some of the “8K” Masks and Optional presets which incorporate XBR-LEVEL-2.

The IMG_MOD_CYBERLAB Grain feature can be excised in favour of the new RF Noise feature from decoupled CRT-Guest-Advanced-NTSC.

That’s about it basically.

Again, thanks a lot to you, @guest.r, @Dogway, @HunterK, @MajorPaintheCactus and all others who helped make this shader what it is today.

6 Likes
#2761

I’ve been thinking it might be time for a separate “AzMods” topic myself, since this thread has gotten pretty quiet lately. I’ll probably consider if i want to stick with the AzMods name or go with something else, and then post that some time in the next couple weeks, with a few new additions i have been considering.

I will take a look and see what i might be able to include!

3 Likes
#2762

In hindsight, I’m almost certain that those were the white subpixels alone.

1 Like
#2763

@MajorPainTheCactus @Azurfel

I’ve been loving the original presets for Megatron, especially now I’ve got Retroarch working in HDR on my LG BX.

I’ve been working on getting them going in Reshade on my Bazzite mini-PC build; and I’m having mixed results.

I’m interested to know what settings @MajorPainTheCactus uses in his show case video on Youtube with Dead Cells; and I’m also interested in a discussion about the best way to setup the CRT_HEIGHT resolution in order to get a decent CRT emulation whilst still making text in modern games more readable.

I got into this hole with Octopath Traveller, and I am finding with that it needs a close-to-native CRT_Height resolution and a high TVL to make the high resolution text in the game readable. I’ve gone with the JVC shadowmask preset on that game with the resolution settings matching the game; and whilst the effect is subtle it is worth it.

Another game on Steam which really benefits from a shader is Jack Move; and it looks great.

I was using the Guest Reshade port previously but its GPU overhead is considerable in comparison to Megatron, and on miniPCs you need all the power you can get!

Thanks again for all your work on this guys. /essay

#2764

Hi all, if anyone’s using a Radeon 6000 series on Windows, please check Megatron using aperture mask with the vulkan video driver. Any issues? On my machine, instead of a mask I’m getting a solid colour, sometimes red, sometimes green. If I remove the amd drivers the mask is fine, but obviously my gpu performance drops considerably until I reinstall the drivers. It’s only the vulkan or opengl video drivers in RA experiencing this, directx is fine

#2765

@Wilch1 What display are you using? What’s it’s native resolution and subpixel layout?

What desktop resolution are you using? What preset or Shader Parameters have you tried?

Did you set the Display’s Subpixel Layout to match your Display’s subpixel layout?

Post some screenshots and / or photos of the screen so that others can see what you’re trying to describe.

Have you tried rolling back or updating your GPU Drivers to the latest version, including Beta versions?

Are you sure your colour format is set to RGB 4:4:4 Full for no chroma subsampling?

#2766

I registered just to comment on this issue. I have 6900xt and same problem, when I use aperture mask whole screen is red color only. Other masks works normal, only aperture grill is not working properly. For me problem started when Windows 11 was updated to version 24h2 and it is broken ever since then, before that it was working fine. I also have win10 partition and it is fine there also.

#2767

I’m using LG OLED42C2 TV, native 4k, RGBW. Running at 4K 4:4:4 RGB full range. I’ve tried both RGB and RWBG subpixel layout, both look the same. Aperture mask at 300 & 600 tvl displays the image in red. 800tvl is blue and 1000tvl is magenta.

I’ve tried the aperture mask from other shaders without any issues including guest advanced. It’s only megatron and only the aperture mask, the others are fine. I’ve seen a similar glitches with limited RGB range and other mismatches before, but this is different. Everything is set up correctly. It only happened after installing a Radeon card, I was on nvidia for years before this.

I’ll try and get a picture, but basically the game graphics are mostly intact, except everything is just a shade of bright red, blue or magenta. There is no mask showing at all. It’s very odd…

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#2768

I knew I couldn’t be the only one. I think there’s a driver regression or something. It looks fine with the AMD drivers removed, but that’s hardly feasible for gaming

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#2769

You can try older drivers and see if the issue persists. See if you can track down which driver started the issue. Try removing drivers completely by using Driver Cleaner.

Another thing you can try to isolate the issue is using a Linux installation via USB or CD.

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#2770

Can’t hurt to try. @bigretrofan when did the issue present itself for you, might be easier to track down a working driver. Unless a Windows update caused the issue as you alluded to.

Already tried linux and the shader works perfectly. Didn’t try the proprietary AMD driver though

Update: and to reiterate; this is a vulkan/opengl issue. No problems with dx11/12

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#2771

In recent times I’ve actually been using DX11/12 in RetroArch you know due to the ability to enable Hard GPU Sync via Waitable Swapchain and setting Max Frame Latency to 1.

I don’t get these options when using Vulkan. Instead the lowest I’m able to set Max Swapchain Images to is 2, so unless I’m missing something, DX11/12 is currently able to achieve lower latency than the generally regarded as superior Vulkan?

I don’t seem to notice a difference switching back and forth between video driver APIs though. Some have stated that it’s possible to switch Hard GPU Sync On manually for Vulkan.

Well I haven’t seen that option in the RetroArch menu in many years but it can be added to the config file. Not sure if it actually still works. I tried adding it but the menu options never changed to what was available in DX11/12.

Hopefully someone more knowledgeable about this can confirm or deny whether or not there exists a potential 1 frame latency advantage by using DX11/12 over Vulkan in RetroArch currently.

So what I’m saying in a nutshell is that there may be some positive side effects if you have to settle for DX11/12 in the meantime as a workaround.

One con that I could remember was that Mega Bezel took much longer to load using either DX11/12 vs Vulkan. I’m can’t remember if that was ever resolved.

#2772

I thought vulkan already benefited from Hard GPU Sync hence the setting wasn’t required, but it’s been a few years since I looked into it.

I’d be interested to know about any frame latency differences.

I’m not averse to DX. I did see a delay in loading heavy shaders when I used them, but not with megatron. But some cores force a specific video drivers e.g scummvm forces opengl so I wouldn’t be able to use aperture there. I’m not really averse to using dot/slot mask with certain cores either, but I’d like to see ths issue fixed, as niche as it is.

UPDATE: I’ve found an amd driver which works: 24.5.1 with vulkan 2.0.299 from May 2024, although I might just live with the compromises rather than running an older driver…

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#2773

This is great and the first step towards resolving the issue permanently. The next might be to try to find the specific driver in which the problem started.

You can probably report it to AMD as well as the RetroArch dev team.

I’m not sure if you already did but can you restate the exact “Display’s Resolution”, “Display’s Subpixel Layout” and “CRT Resolution (TVL)” settings where the issue is occurring?

From this, I can look at the Subpixel Mask Layout to confirm if it is correct and we can also use this information to try the same Subpixel Mask Layout in another shader like CRT-Guest-Advanced to help eliminate the shader as also having an issue which might be contributing to the problem.

By the way, are you the same @Wilch who used to post here in the early days of Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor when it was now getting proper WOLED support?

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