What are the best shader combos to make genesis or snes look good on a 1080p lcd

RetroArch Additions Shaders
#13

I usualy don’t like crisp pixel art but i don’t like sharp sabr or xbr as well it’s too artificial for me. So I use a specific shader to soften the image then I put a lot of other effects. I know it’s no more faithful to the real thing but i really like it that way :stuck_out_tongue: I know a lot of people won’t like but… here are my personal favorite combinations I switch depending on the game.

Xbr + 4xsoft

Xbr + 4xsoft + Reshade ! ( chromatic aberration+ 2 sorts of bloom )

xbr ( only horizontal ) + CrtHylian tuned for soft picture and dynamic scanline width

the same with additional Reshade effects

the same with stronger Reshade effects

#14

[QUOTE=Flamex;32776]I usualy don’t like crisp pixel art but i don’t like sharp sabr or xbr as well it’s too artificial for me. So I use a specific shader to soften the image then I put a lot of other effects. I know it’s no more faithful to the real thing but i really like it that way :stuck_out_tongue: I know a lot of people won’t like but… here are my personal favorite combinations I switch depending on the game.

Xbr + 4xsoft

Xbr + 4xsoft + Reshade ! ( chromatic aberration+ 2 sorts of bloom )

xbr ( only horizontal ) + CrtHylian tuned for soft picture and dynamic scanline width

the same with additional Reshade effects

the same with stronger Reshade effects[/QUOTE]

I never really liked that XBR look until I saw your screens where you combine them with scan-lines. They look really good.

What is the re-shade effect you speak of? One of the shader parameters?

#15

Thanks ! xbr+scanlines is the best combination I know so far . It gives good results with every games. Reshade is an external effects injector http://reshade.me/ It works with opengl/directx 32 or 64 bit. you should have a look since it offers vast possibilities. I use it because some multipass shaders are difficult to combine with RA The effects I use are : Chromatic aberration : sweetfx CA Short range warm bloom : CustomFX Gauss wide range bloom GemFX Bloom a bit of vibrance : SweetFX Vibrance All the parameters are tweaked and of course I have multiple presets

#16

Hey Flamex wow that pics look amazing from chrono trigger and mana. Maybe you could tell me exact wich shader i have to use to get this nice picture? Reshade i think i cant use on Android?! So to know wich xbr or where to find it with the scannline… Must be good enough for me. I dont find the right shader in the Tons to choose from.

#17

That’s pretty great that ReShade supports OpenGL now. I just wish they would open-source the framework. I can’t get behind a closed-source hobbyist framework that could get dropped/commercialized/whatever at any time.

It’s bad enough that we bought into Nvidia’s Cg framework, which they deprecated awhile back… It’s still the best way for us to support both GLSL and HLSL shader languages without maintaining two copies of each shader but the days of direct Cg support on Mac/Win/Lin are likely numbered :confused:

#18

I found my perfekt shader combo for playing snes on a 50" sony lcd TV with the Nvidia Shield Android tv Box.

Maybe you like it too :slight_smile:

First i choose super-xbr-6p.glslp

Then i deleted the Dark Level in gtu-v050 and added all three passes to the shader combo ( all have scale 1 / pass 2&3 is set to nearest)

At last i added ctr-hyllian.glsl to the combo but set the scannline from 72 down to 52.

I love it☺

Big thanks for all your work to bring us so nice shaders!

Hope my Englisch is readable �� im from Germany

Greetz :v:

Some Pics:

1 Like
#19

#20

[QUOTE=Taggy;32918]Hey Flamex wow that pics look amazing from chrono trigger and mana. Maybe you could tell me exact wich shader i have to use to get this nice picture? Reshade i think i cant use on Android?! So to know wich xbr or where to find it with the scannline… Must be good enough for me. I dont find the right shader in the Tons to choose from.[/QUOTE]

Thx! Sadly Reshade is for windows only. The only way is get it on your android device would be to stream from your PC. I assume it’s possible with an appropriate app but i never tested it :confused: In any case I think that all these shaders used natively would be too gpu intensive for a portable device…

The basic shader combination is in the “cgp” directory 2xbr-crt-hyllian.cgp I just tuned the parameters and changed xbr 2.8c to xbr 2.8a which is more rounded. it’s purely subjective. you’ll find it in xbr/legacy directory

Then you can add Reshade and activate effects as described above.

#21

[QUOTE=hunterk;32935]That’s pretty great that ReShade supports OpenGL now. I just wish they would open-source the framework. I can’t get behind a closed-source hobbyist framework that could get dropped/commercialized/whatever at any time.

It’s bad enough that we bought into Nvidia’s Cg framework, which they deprecated awhile back… It’s still the best way for us to support both GLSL and HLSL shader languages without maintaining two copies of each shader but the days of direct Cg support on Mac/Win/Lin are likely numbered :/[/QUOTE]

Thanks for these informations. So you mean that Nvidia won’t support cg anymore. That sounds bad to me since RA shaders are written for it with a lot of parameters that even non coders can change… it’s not possible with glsl shaders at the moment isn’t it ? NV create good technologies but they always fail at making them standards. I hope cg shaders will be suported by RA as long as possible.

Anyway, I also want to say a big THANK YOU to all RA developpers and staff. It’s an absolute must have for anyone interested in emulators. How can we support you ?

#22

Yeah, Cg will get killed off eventually, whenever Nvidia decides to stop providing the framework. Once that happens, we’ll probably switch to GLSL as the primary format and just keep the existing Cg shaders around for use on the PS3 and 360 ports (360 uses HLSL, of course, but it’s very similar to Cg and often requires no modifications for our uses).

Our GLSL backend supports runtime parameters (and everything else the Cg backend supports, actually, except for a handful of niche features that only crt-royale uses…) but our cg2glsl conversion script doesn’t, so when it automatically converts things, the parameters (and a few other things, like LUTs) get stripped out. I have hand-converted a few of the more important ones to correct that. If you download the glsl shaders from the online updater, they’re in the ‘hunterk’ subdirectory of the main glsl directory.

As for donations, we don’t currently accept them (except for hardware donations), but we do have a variety of expenses such as hosting and server costs, so we’ve discussed opening up for accepting monetary donations exclusively to cover those costs. Whenever we get that set up, we’ll put a donation button somewhere on the site. In the meantime, just enjoy the program :slight_smile:

#23

Here is my try to achieve HD look of retro games.

I’ve used AA 4.0 shader instead of XBR as it’s more accurate. Also I’ve used old “CRT-Lottes” shader as the new one is very heavy and not usable in conjunction with other shaders.

Overall shaders chain looks like this: AA 4.0 + jinc2-sharper + GTU + CRT shader

It’s for 1080p resolution. On my 1200p monitor this shader pack looks differently. Generally because of CRT shaders.

This chain is less heavy (~25% load on my GTX970) than Taggy’s variant on the previous page as it contains only 6 shaders instead of 11.

CRT-Lottes | CRT-Hyllian

#24

Hello All,

I’ve updated the pack with modified version of CRT-Lottes shader.

The most awesome feature of the updated CRT-Lottes is its shadow mask variation. Personally I prefer Shadow Mask 4 which is why it’s enabled by default in this pack. If you don’t like it you can switch back to Shadow Mask 3 which is used in the previous version of CRT-Lottes shader. Also don’t forget to change scale to “Don’t care”.

Shadow Mask 4 makes picture more detailed. Sounds strange but it’s how it looks for a human eye. This especially works for flat images like NES. Also CRT-Lottes hides dithering pretty well on Genesis.

NES

Genesis

SNES

#25

If you want to hide dithering on genesis check out the dithering shader cbod.

#26

It ruins to much details. In the end a picture looks way to blurred. Anyway dealing with dithering is not a main purpose of using CRT-Lottes. It’s just a nice bonus. It ease dithering just enough you don’t pay much attention to it from 10 feet distance to your TV.

#27

To each his own but it is funny you’re using gtu and crt lottes on top of each other when those two sepurately blur more than cbod does. lol

#28

Have you compared them side by side? I would love to see your results.

#29

Cbod

Lottes

GTU

I don’t see how cbod blurs more than lottes or gtu and combining the two blurs even more.

#30

Christ figure… you two think those screenshots look good?

#31

[QUOTE=Axiphel;43480] I don’t see how cbod blurs more than lottes or gtu and combining the two blurs even more.[/QUOTE]

With Cbod | Without Cbod

#32

cgwg-fast on my 46" led tv looks the most like my 27" toshiba crt tv. I find cgwg to look the most like the late 90’s early 2000’s crt consumer tv’s that were released. That is the ones that were of good quality.

its mostly preference, i find the heavier shaders like royale and lottes look cool but are more like arcade monitors.