xBR algorithm tutorial

RetroArch Additions Shaders
#79

From the other thread (mdapt)…

Let me know if you ever plan to create an optimized v2 of that xBR5dilation filter. :wink: I’m willing to donate $$$ if that’s an incentive (if you do that sorta thing). I think it’s better than you think and I will post pictures if it helps to see where I’m coming from.

Finally, thanx for all your hard work. For people who ‘get it’, this is what the retro scene is REALLY about.

There’s no much room to optimize that single pass shader. It really needs to be breaked in multipasses. So, I need to know what is better in this beta compared to the multipass version. You need to be more specific about it.

If you are curious, I make RetroXMB games so the different presets are useful since I can tailor each .pkg with the best possible look so that they will start up directly on the XMB looking good without the user being forced to configure it themselves (which take me out of the experience a little).

Thanx again. X-D

Do you publish them in some site or forum?

#80

Added to common-shaders many xbr optimizations and a multipass version that has anti-aliasing and can be run at any aspect ratio.

#81

An informative whitepaper for a technique similar to xBR:

Thought you would be interested, Hyllian :slight_smile:

#82

Yes, Hunter, an interesting read.

It reminds me more of that old microsoft research paper about pixel art upscaling. Though it doesn’t use splines.

I don’t know if it could run using only retroarch shader specs. If I’m not mistaken, it seems to use polygons instead only framebuffers.

#83

Finally managed to got xBR lv3 and lv4 right (only in test app for now).

Some comparisons: http://imgur.com/a/Xbu5W#0

#84

For those who don’t know what levels mean in xBR filtering, here’s an image about it:

#85

Which SABR shader would be best when running at 960x720 resolution? I tried this one: http://gitorious.org/bsnes/xml-shaders/source/10dc41dc22b7e1f80ae5c7ec66458cc5bcaf4fb4:shaders/OpenGL/v1.0/SABR.shader and it’s very good although I get a line down the middle and a few artifacts here and there.

Could someone suggest what would be best at 960x720? Also, it must be a shader that uses XML 1.0 as it’s for NeoRaine.

Thanks!

#86

There’s only one SABR, so you have no choice other than that.

#87

can’t wait to test out the lvl4 shader. It looks really nice!

#88

The translation for shader paradigm will be a hell lot harder! Because performance is a big issue for these two new levels. While LV1 and LV2 do not interpolate beyond their pixel borders, lv3 and lv4 bleed their interpolations beyond the center pixel. They bleed into their pixel neighbors. So it adds a new level of complexity to implement.

#89

Ah well I hope you can make it happen someday. In the mean time, is your test program still publicly available? I’d like to try them out on a few pictures if so.

#90

This is a only 4x version of the LV4 I just developed:

https://anonfiles.com/file/95553996f5223220944d8d258202c13e

#91

Hi Hyllian, I don’t know if you’re checking pms in this forum. I have a request regarding the standalone exe you released a while back in the zdoom forum. since It’s probably not too interesting for others here I thought it would be better to discuss it in private.

#92

xBR LV3 added to the repo:

https://github.com/libretro/common-shaders/tree/master/xbr/xbr-lv3-multipass

Its the first complete xBR LV3 Ive ever done.

EDIT: Only tested on PS3. It`s working flawless.

#93

Sweet man, I just saw it almost as soon as you posted it. Just converted it to glsl so I can try it kms. Can’t wait to test it out. Thank you!

edit both the cg and glsl version seem to have some glitches in linux with glx and kms driver. Can’t really test in windows since I got rid of it but it probably works better there, lol.

#94

I think maister will have some more work on his cg2glsl script. :stuck_out_tongue:

#95

I already posted this on byuu’s forum, but it may be helpful to repeat: I had problems with it on my radeon card using the OpenGL driver, but using the D3D driver in Windows works great. So, probably chalk it up to weirdness with AMD’s OpenGL shader compiler.

#96

Try this 3xBRLV4 No Blend standalone app: https://anonfiles.com/file/ca64833f5adb4bd6bb1a9aa6e8ddb62c

Original:

3x:

#97

wow, thank you very much. state of the art xbr right here :wink: I’ll compare it to the one I used before.

btw… where did you find dat dragon? this sprite is awesome.

#98

You know, I’ve never been able to get this working properly on Windows. Using the GL video driver on a GTX 570 with the latest WHQL NVidia driver (320.49). I load it in my config file with video_shader = “./Shaders/xbr-lv3-multipass/xbr-lv3.cgp” and this is the output I get: http://abload.de/img/retroarch-0919-230603ind1u.png

I’m not usually a fan of smoothing filters like this anymore, but I’d at least like to try it out since this seems better than what I used years ago, HQ4X. hq4x.cg just crashes RetroArch for me, btw.