/vr/ - Retro Games

Whatever fancy shader shmader you put on your brain gets used to it in half a minute and you don't notice it anymore. Doesn't matter, don't bother with it

>>9696276
Well, you are wrong. If you allow yourself to get used to seeing raw pixels you're just going to cheat yourself out of seeing better graphics in your games.

>>9696285
I don't really care, this has no impact on the game

>>9696258
You pick the one that looks best to you, or tweak one until it's to your liking. I'd think this would be obvious.

>>9696285
>hiding the art behind filters makes the graphics better

You're chasing the dragon of nostalgia and making ridiculous claims to justify it. Just accept that things look worse because you're not a starry-eyed 6 year old any more and stop trying to resurrect a past that never actually existed.

>>9696293
No.
You have a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept.
The shader is showing you the actual art of the game.
Without it you're looking at an unfinished product.

>>9696293
>six year old kids in the 90s were pointing out the pixels on their TV screens

>>9696258
Bilinear and leave it at that.

using an RGB filter, in one image

>>9696319
>nooooo there were no pixels back then! I know because in my memories the games didn't have any!

Put down the rose colored glasses before you go blind bro

>>9696290
looks too dark.

>>9696330
Looks pretty good on my screen. Still working on it, though. I'm working on ways to brighten it up a bit without completely washing out the colors or the mask.

>>9696336
good luck but it's an inherent problem with trying to translate the blooming phosphors of a CRT to a flat panel. On a flat panel you're essentially just blocking off parts of the screen so it's going to appear duller and dimmer than it should. Maybe filters that make full use of HDR will finally be able to deliver a decent result, idk.

>>9696336
Also, my potato GPU is too weak to handle the standard Guest-Advanced, so that shot was taken using the Fast preset, which doesn't have some of the fancier effects that maybe would work to mitigate the loss in brightness better. It does have some glow options, but they're pretty heavy-handed so I only added a tiny smidge.
>>9696342
Sony Megatron already does this, and appears to look excellent. Unfortunately my supposedly HDR-capable TV hardly looks any different in HDR, and I don't currently have a cable capable of carrying an HDR signal anyway, so I've not tried it myself.

reminder for all rawpixelfags

I've tried to use some of the megabezel and cyberlab presets but it tells me that it failed to apply them. Anyone know what might be happening? I've tried putting the megabezel folder under just "shaders" and also under the "slangsl" folder

>>9696293
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kILeyo1iv0A
1:30
Game developer explains why raw pixel lovers are dumb zoom-zooms, or basically shitheads who first played these games on emulators on their computers.

>>9696368
>nooooo it's impossible to disagree with me unless you don't know what you're talking about!

Cope and seethe, nostalgialord. I'm older than you and I'm living in the present. Feels good. I think I'll go play a retro game without smearing filters all over it in a desperate bid to feel like a kid again.

>>9696379
>to feel like a kid again
Lol, so this is "everybody who disagrees with me is blinded by nostalgia"? Which fallacy is this? Appeal to modernity?

>>9696286
Basically This.

But shaders are interesting if someone out there was documenting and emulating screen features e.g. chromacast, shadow mask, aperture grille and went as far as comparing various implementations. Otherwise it is kinda meh, I'll just do square pixels.

>>9696379
troll

>>9696286
Shaders impact the visual appearance of the game.

>>9696383
Yes. Telling you to play 30 year old games without having a computer modify them visually is an appeal to modernity. You got me. Excellent deduction.

>>9696408
Restate your original points in plain English pls.

>>9696293
You're making troll posts instead of making arguments. Make an actual anti-shader argument if you can.

>>9696258
It depends

>>9696437
kek

>>9696426
My point is the "CRT effect" didn't have nearly the impact you remember it having and the reason you remember games looking better on CRTs is because you were a kid, not because of the scan lines. I thought OoT looked amazing on my CRT as a kid, but I went back and played it years later on that exact same CRT with the exact same cables and it looked like absolute shit. Why? Because I grew up.

At best, there may be one objective issue here that people are missing. They say that raw pixels look "jagged" and "blocky". Okay, sure. When zoomed way up close, yes, they do. But are you sitting as far from your monitor as you used to sit from the TV? No, you're like 1/5th the distance, at minimum. Pull up a CRT vs raw pixels comparison and view it from 10 feet away like you would have back then. I guarantee they'll look the same. It's not necessarily that game graphics were designed to be blurred into an incoherent mess by shitty monitors, it's that they were designed to be viewed from across a living room.

>>9696514
Holy retard

Using shaders and making "muh real tv" fags cry is always a joy. Keep seething tv fags, while I enjoy some kino shaders.

>>9696514
>hey say that raw pixels look "jagged" and "blocky". Okay, sure. When zoomed way up close, yes, they do. But are you sitting as far from your monitor as you used to sit from the TV? No
I agree with this. I don't have a problem with "blocky" pixels because I don't full-screen games when I emulate. I size them AT MOST 2x in a window and they look great without any kind of filter.

>>9696514
No everything you've said is wrong
To perfectly upscale shit using nearest neihbour scaling you need >10000PPI

I go in raw or play on an actual tube TV.

>>9696595
You are safe crtuber. They aren't going to start documenting and emulating CRTs with historical accuracy. It just isn't gonna happen. Just weird stuff that never was.

>>9696575
That's only true if you're using non-integer scaling, which you shouldn't do ever anyway. Integer scaled nearest neighbor is lossless.

>>9696624
The problem with integer scaling is that it fucks up the intended aspect ratio in a lot of games

>>9696575
>>9696624
>>9696641
Just use sharp bilinear. It prevents shimmering artifacts and looks virtually indistinguishable to nearest neighbor unless you autistically examine the pixels like in pic related.

>>9696641
True integer scaling preserves aspect ratio. 2x2 becomes 4x4, 16x16 becomes 48x48, etc. Both resolutions are multiplied by the same number, so the ratio remains the same. The only time the aspect ratio is changed is when you pick different numbers for each resolution, which I would never do. Retro games - all games, really - should be upscaled true integer nearest neighbor when possible.

here is the point where someone posts that shot of the moon from chrono trigger

>>9696680
>just ignore it bro

>>9696659
Sharp bilinear is ideal if you can't, or don't want to, scale at an integer factor. If you're scaling integer it doesn't actually do anything special. It just applies NN up to the highest integer factor that's below the desired resolution, then applies bilinear after that point. So you get only the tiniest bit of blurring which, if you're sitting an appropriate distance from the screen, you shouldn't even be able to perceive.

tl;dr Non-integer NN is shit and should never be used. True integer NN is objectively superior to anything else, but isn't always practical.

>>9696258
crt royale is still the best
its exactly how i remember it on my crt

The only time I'd ever use shaders is on a phone, I set up RA recently and it actually looks decent on a small screen. Other than that I really don't see the point, it's always just going to look like you've ruined an LCD image.

>>9696710
You'd still want to use it for AR correction. Especially for 5th-gen, where many games use weird internal resolutions like 512x240 or something like that.

>>9696715
just make sure you turn down or disable the glow halation and diffusion effects.

>>9696595
No. There's no reason to take such a ridiculous polarized position. Shaders are very good now.

>>9696717
If I'm emulating a console game on my computer, I don't generally fullscreen for just this reason. I scale up to the biggest integer that will fit on my screen and then play it like that. Always looks great. I do usually emulate on my phone these days because I'm an oldfriend and rarely have the time to just sit at a computer for hours on end, and in that case yes, I use something like sharp bilinear because I always scale to aspect fit. The picture-in-picture look on a phone is just gross.

Does anyone have the shader for that MMX4 image or the image itself? That one I feel accurately replicated CRTs screens.

>>9696563
Poor little underaged poser thinks his input matters. You'll never experience the real thing and you'll never fit in.

>>9696735
FROM the MMX4 image, rather.

>>9696514
Well, you are simply wrong and ill-informed about the technical differences in the way a CRT draws a picture vs what you are seeing as raw pixels on an LCD monitor or upscaled raw pixels on other technologies (including PC CRTs). A CRT will draw a pixel with varying intensity so that the physical size of the drawn area will change. No amount of sitting back from the screen will correct this.

Additionally, and as an ad-hominem attack on you I think dwelling on the experiences of users when they were kids as well as using OoT as your go-to example game really speaks to your level of geek authority on this subject. That is: very little.

>>9696761
addendum to this post: the crude example doesn't take into account how a fine pitch CRT with more "advanced" technology built will try to mitigate this varying intensity aspect that /vr/ era games may have used to artistic effect.
This is why you'd do better to use a coarse pitch CRT for most games rather than something like a PC CRT in 240p120 mode (disregarding the additional issue of ghosting that mode creates).

>>9696293
This one didn’t play on original hardware.

>>9696771
2nd addendum: However, with a high resolution PC CRT with a fine pitch you can use shaders to simulate a low-dot-pitch CRT. This actually works very well, especially if your CRT has a switch on the back to increase the overall brightness of the screen. Or play in a dimly lit room. I measured my PC CRT using a program on my phone to be outputting cd/m2 well within the normal usable range even with the shader applied (can't recall the exact number but it was over 100). It won't knock your socks off with brightness and contrast but it was was quite good imo.

>>9696293
>that never actually existed.
You know we can literally put these things side by side and compare them right now, right? You think the people that make these shaders don't have CRTs themselves? And many of the users don't themselves own CRTs?
You're an idiot.

>>9696680
>>9696693

>>9696848
It's very easy to immediately notice that the moon is wrong in 16:13, everyone knows it should not be oblong like that

>>9696848
Isn't 16:13 actually right though, given NTSC 10:11 PAR fuckery?

>>9696359
The dev himself admits raw pixels look and are better, and not that all systems were affected by blurriness and non square pixels.

Thanks for the reminder indeed

>>9696761
What you're describing is color bleed and has nothing to do with "drawing a pixel with varying intensity". CRTs work by illuminating a grid of red, green, and blue phosphor dots, collectively called a pixel. The pixels don't change size. They're fixed to the screen. The only reason you'd get noticeable color bleed is if your saturation is way too high and the circuitry in your CRT can't keep up with the voltage changes. It's not supposed to do that. You're forcing smearing in your games because your nostalgia is for a TV that was set wrong. This kind of behavior is exactly what I'm talking about.

If you're going to go all Redditor and start tryharding about your le epic and glorious geek authority, at least be correct while you're doing it.

>>9696897
No, 4:3 is correct in terms of what a CRT would be displaying. Some game artists were just dumb and didn't take certain art assets into account.

>>9696951
Yeah, the CRT itself is 4:3, but IIRC consoles didn't actually output their image precisely in that aspect ratio. I forget the technical details, but in the end the aspect ratio tends to be a little bit narrower, I think. And of course, due to their analog nature, there was variance from set to set, with some TVs overscanning a bit too much, others a bit too little, stretching the image slightly too much horizontally, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssluTgfkdlg

>>9696387

It amazes me sometimes to learn that people actually have taste this bad. I know I can just listen to the most popular songs of the moment, anytime, to be reminded of that. Still, somehow there is room for amazement. I guess here it's the contrast between dry adult talk about stuff like aperture grills and the crude, caveman-level aesthetic sense needed to accept square pixels. How can both be rooted in the same mind? It's a mystery.

I get the same feeling sometimes from threads about game soundtracks in which people dismiss ones like Secret of Mana or Castlevania IV that have a tiny touch of inaccessibility to them as being nothing but annoying noise or boring ambiance or whatever.

>>9696437
>someone actually made a shader to mimic actual genesis composite
topzozzle

>>9696951
>Some game artists were just dumb and didn't take certain art assets into account.
Yeah, like Nintendo

>>9697037
ya hate to see it

>>9696293

>>9696514

>>9697052
byoutiful

>>9696258
>in during raw pixels
raw pixels

>>9696916
No. This is not color bleed or smearing. Those are different and separate concepts.
You still have limited understanding of the technology and art style.
Lurk more.

>>9697068
NPC response

>>9696951
Like if you take the PS2, the standard high res interlaced mode is 640x448, but actually what the NTSC signal going out is, is more like 704x480. The expectation is that the TV will be showing ~640 pixels horizontally and ~440 vertically out of that signal.

640x480 as a standard 4:3 resolution exists because of 1) VGA monitors, and 2) being the nearest equivalent resolution for LCDs.

Or maybe I'm full of shit, damned if I know.

>>9697082
What's it like not being able to take an obvious joke?

>>9697083
Oh and even in PS2 games the "what is a circle" issue still exists, because eg. in Armored Core 2 the radar is a circle at 1:1 PAR and in the Sakura Wars remake the text box graphics are a circle at 10:11.

>>9696916
>le kids
>le nostalgia glasses
>le redditor
>le zelda
got anymore shithead brainlet takes to get out of the way?

>>9697059

I just stick with the mega bezel package and tinker with all the individual options to suit my weird likes, such as cheats for blending sonic waterfalls together and blending for flickering sprites so they properly look transparent.

>>9697126
Post the contra one. Gets me every time.

>>9697210

>>9697217
kek thanks

>>9697140
Yeah, I really think Mega Bezel is the best one (just turn off the stupid fisheye lens curvature setting they threw in to emulate drunken gaming just because).

>>9697140
>>9697228
Actually, Mega Bezel ADV Smooth is perfect for the games I want to play, but it only works as ADV Smooth Glass. I want the one without reflections, but for some reason, the ADV Smooth option causes the audio to slow down and crackle. ADV Smooth Glass has no problems while also reflecting the game around the edge of the screen. What gives? Can I fix this?

>>9696258
CRT shaders are like vegan cheese, some weirdos like that shit. But sane people realize that sometimes going without is better than some gross imitation. Pixels is the right answer.

>>9697328
This was infuriating to read. 9/10.

>>9697228
nice

>>9696514
>Why? Because I grew up.
Played an Apple II game on the exact same CRT and exact same cables I used when I was a kid. I turned on color graphics but the game was in black and white.
Why? Because I grew up.

>>9696514
>and it looked like absolute shit.
That's a skill issue, and it's on you.

>>9696359
Not surprising. Any artist worth their salt will design their work around the medium and dev time is spent figuring out what they need to get it done. Obviously if you take something made to take advantage of a blurry image and make it clear, you lose something that the artist originally intended.

Funny to think from their retro compilation comment that a pixel-perfect, RGB image is exactly what they wouldn't want, despite people modding their systems to achieve just that. This is part of why I have every type of game boy and try to play games on each system based on when they were released. You get a better feel for what designers were working on, and what people who played it (as well as game reviewers) were seeing and commenting on when they saw the games.

>>9697228
this looks ok, how do I use this?

>>9696379
>living in the present
>plays retro games

>>9697954
>>9696389
>>9696383
stop feeding him (you)s retards

>>9696359
He just said that Mega Drive looks awful in the interview. Does it really matter if that awfulness is fully emulated or not? Those games aren't about their visuals they might as well be text only

>>9696514
this is a weird claim to make when many people still have CRTs and still szee the benefits of them. it's ok if it's not your personal preference, anon. we can all enjoy our own things

>>9696906
No.
He admits RGB is better.
RGB is NOT raw pixels.
You're still going to have the effects of the CRT beam and mask when you view RGB on a CRT.

>>9697953
https://www.libretro.com/index.php/retroarch-introducing-the-mega-bezel/
I think it comes standard in Retroarch's updatable shaders collection now, but you can download more options yourself, if I'm reading right. I definitely recommend the Smooth options if you want a pre-rendered graphics game like the DKCs or Mario RPG: >>9697302
but I don't know how it'll look on more standard games versus the typical Advanced or Standard MB shaders.

>>9698074
What the hell is this, a CRT filter for John McClane?

>>9696258
Raw pixels.

>>9698092
It is! It simulates a whole-ass monitor for whatever reason, but it does run at your full resolution if you follow the setup adjustments, and you can probably just turn that off by tweaking the setup. I'm stupid, so I don't like the mess with the guts for these things myself.

>>9698074
Why do a lot of filters do this ugly YouTube video reflected border bullshit? Doesn't it give you a headache?
The shader itself looks good though.

>>9698121
Hell knows why. There's a version without it, this effect is designated by "Glass" in the preset name, but for whatever reason, the reflection-less version causes my computer to choke and slow down/distort the audio, whereas the one with these damn reflections works perfectly.

>>9698092
kek

>>9696258
Whatever MAME does that has a slight blur. It's good enough.

Is it really correct to refer to images scaled through nearest neighbor as showing "raw pixels"? If you think about it, nearest neighbor is just another method for scaling or interpolating the image, like bilinear or bicubic, or hell, even shit like 2xSaI or Scale2x. It's still adding pixels that weren't originally there. So, wouldn't raw pixels really be be the native image coming out of the console before any scaling or what have you, like in pic related?

>>9696916
Those are phosphor triads, not pixels. CRTs have no way of targeting individual triads. You are fundamentally mistaken in your understanding of how a CRT works.

>>9696258
What's a good shader for using on a Retroid Pocket 3+?

I use the CRT-Soft or CRT-Medium preset on my Mister and run it at 720p. I really only use it for games with verry detailed spritework or PS1 games with pre-rendered backgrounds. For something like Mega Man with simple sprite work I think its fucking useless.

Hate any and all CRT filters that try to make it *nostalgic* too. Fuck off with your trinitron TV bezels, just blend the pixels.

>>9698469
>Hate any and all CRT filters that try to make it *nostalgic* too
You don't like the soulful vcr filters? :(

>>9698469
>I really only use it for games with verry detailed spritework or PS1 games with pre-rendered backgrounds. For something like Mega Man with simple sprite work I think its fucking useless.
I've always felt the way. There's really nothing to gain from making it look like you're playing Super Mario World behind a screen door. Games like Doom and DKC absolutely need something to preserve what the developers intended for you to see, though, because they just look like garbage otherwise.
>>9698469
Fuck off with your trinitron TV bezels, just blend the pixels
And of course the one I like the most does this silly shit for no reason.

>>9699112
>Doom
Not quite so sure on this one, as it always looked blocky due to Mode 13h line-doubling, unless you played it on a really coarse low dot pitch monitor way back in the day.

>>9698074
Why does it look worse today? Compare the eyes in particular. All I did was update the shaders folder and more, but it's the same preset and everything. I can't believe this.

What is the best CRT shader?

>>9700947
It depends on your display, your tastes, and the game. It's all a crock of shit and it isn't worth it, just get a real CRT.

I won't argue for or against people that use pixel filters. But I need to call out bowing/warp every time.
If your set was like that, it was not properly calibrated and at least in my personal experience that was rare if ever.
Color blending at least makes sense, but emulating warp seems like it's simulating a pure defect that doesn't even have incidental benefits.
I'll defer to another old head, Jeff, on this https://a.pomf.cat/oyqnnt.mp4 whether you want to respect his anecdote or not.

>>9701032
That bowing is present on all curved screen crts to some extent, especially when viewed obliquely. I agree though it's stupid to waste resources emulating that

>>9701032
It's generally exaggerated in an unrealistic way, but curved screens will absolutely look warped if you're not looking at them straight (in which case they're going to only curve away from that direction though) or from far enough away. Flat screens will usually look warped because they are.

I wonder if any shader bothers to emulate something as stupid and shitty as the thicker vertical lines at the horizontal edges of a flat CRT.

>>9701032
I would add to your point that by the time of the late 80s CRTs were becoming far less round than they used to be. Nanao was advertising "flat" arcade CRTs in the early 90s (actually about as flat as your average 90s PC CRT monitor, so not truly flat like the later 2000s flat tubes).

If you played games on a color television from the 60s you might see bowing like that but of course the perspective of the glass would compensate for it in a way that you can never replicate with a shader.

I would say if people REALLY want some curvature with their shader it should be as slight as possible.

>>9701160
>I wonder if any shader bothers to emulate something as stupid and shitty as the thicker vertical lines at the horizontal edges of a flat CRT.
I tried to do that with reshade and some lens distortion effects but I don't have the know-how to pull it off correctly. I think it can be done.

>>9696514
That’s BS
Here’s two CRT’s, one with a cleaner signal and look

>>9701267
and here's one of the other major factors CRT looks better

>>9701145
no it's not, why would you think that

>>9701272
Because it is. That's what happens when pass light through a curved glass surface. No where near as intense as the shader look though and it's honestly not something you should notice unless you're sitting off to the side of the screen

>>9701286
What do you think you're able to adjust geometry for mate, do you think CRT's are curved like this?

>>9701291
Cool, now move 4 feet to the left...

>>9701304
yeah, now what?
still looks normal
Is your argument literally pic related?

>>9701313
That's a flat screen

>>9701349
No anon, that's illustrating perspective

>>9697059

People who prefer nearest-neighbor shading for these games are broken and evil.

>>9698308

This is a good point.

>>9701427
no it's not
>>9698308
how big do you think CRT's are mate, the only reason it looks like it does at nearest neighbour is because that how digital screens function, even on a gameboy you have fairly sharp pixels

>>9701431
to add to that one of the main points of CRT shaders is to make the Image look like it's native resolution on a modern display

>>9701431

If you don't understand what the dude was saying then you don't need to post. It's okay to just read instead of blurting out random crap.

>>9701441
>It's not raw pixels unless it's native resolution
I understood it perfectly anon

>>9701357
Anon...

>>9701509
Anon
>>9701313

>>9696258
I don't, I just pick the one I like the most

>>9696359

It was never consistent. If you look at SNES games, it's random as to which ones had their graphics designed for 4:3. The blur from composite output is the same way. Unless you want to display each individual game differently depending on what the developers said, there's no objectively right answer.

>>9696258
I don’t use them so I don’t care
>>9696276
>>9696286
Good posts.
> how do you know which one to pick?
Try them. Holy shit the state of shaderposters.

>>9701032
>>9701160
>>9701251
This is making me think about all the potential flaws you could emulate. Cracked glass, dead pixels, magnetic interference that hasn't been degaussed, sticky substances on the cabinet buttons.
What's the worst things you could replicate?

>>9701970
Degaussing shader fucking WHEN

>>9698121
Most probably to prevent oled burn-in

>>9701032
What game is he playing?

>plug console into my 25 year old CRT that I'll never give away
>turn it on
simple as

>>9698308

>>9698308
If you're going to do nearest neighbor you might as well go with CRT-Royale. You're already in the filter camp.

>>9701435
Yeah, at their core CRT shaders are just another way to scale the image to better fit our modern screens, albeit one with more fancy visual effects such as adding a phosphor mask, scanline bloom, glow, etc.

This is probably the closest to lookin' good for real Dong can get on my setup, but I'd like to see what a 4k display can do. I'm cheap, but I'll need a new computer at some point.

This one or none.

>>9696735
Found iiiiiiiiiiit~!

>>9696735
you will never be with a woman and you will never be loved and your old tv will never fill the empty void in your heart

>>9696290
>You pick the one that looks best to you, or tweak one until it's to your liking.
i don't care what i like, i care about authenticity
if something looked worse in the '80s, then i want it to look worse

shaders in 8k when?

>>9703453
There's an 8k already?

>>9703453
I'd think trying to draw a shader like Guest-Advanced in 8K would make most GPUs buckle.

>>9698308
correct, raw pixels aren't, and nearest neighbor square pixels are more related to 2xSai filters than true raw pixels which would be tiny on a modern screen

>>9704074
There's, of course, screens like that on the 3DS that can display such low resolutions without scaling. Only issue is you can't really correct the aspect ratio without some pixel fudging. Probably not a big deal for something like NES and SNES where only the odd asset here and there looks off, but something like CPS1/2 arcade games definitely look weird and stretched.

>>9696258
crt-guest-advanced has good defaults, doesn't require integer scaling, and comes at less performance cost than crt-royale. If your potato can't run it, try crt-easymode or gtuv50.

Has anyone gotten Mega Bezel to work? It crashes retro arch no matter what preset I use

>>9705010
Yeah, I just had to buy a GPU, then it started working.
I think they say you need around 4GB of vram to run it well and I only had 2GB on board before.

>>9705120
That makes no sense I have a 16GB Radeon running Vulkan and it still crashes

>>9704995
>comes at less performance cost than crt-royale
Not true anymore, or at least according to my admittedly weak GPU's usage chart, and understandably so given how much more advanced it is than Royale these days. It does load a hell of a lot faster, though.

>>9696293

Captain Buzz Kill

>>9701145
No they didn’t. Also why would you emulate looking at the screen from the side?

>>9705120
My vram is listed in MB and I can run a lot of Mega Bezel presets (though some just crash).

alteraposter are you still the one making these threads

>>9706624
OP here and no I’m not that guy

>you need top-of-the-line hardware to emulate a shadow of what pieces of junk older than you are could do
Tragic irony

>>9707559
Same thing with AI lol

>>9701515
Ok you're just trolling me now. Show me a side shot of a curved screen that's absolutely straight or just admit defeat

>>9702801
lmao

>>9696258
I think they all look like shit
I'd rather find a way to hook up my pc to a tv

i just spent the last 2 hours trying to remove whatever megabezel setting added the blue glow on the bottom right of the tv border.
turns out its burn-in from the windows taskbar and doesn't exist lol.

also if you guys have any shader/filter you like using for 3d systems please post.
this needs some more brightness or something.

Hmmm.... What do I use on retro bat....... Recently I've enjoyed the classic crt RF shaders

>>9708836
Try playing with the bloom, glow and gamma settings. The latest version should have a setting called Magic Glow that I think works really well.

Well?

>>9708839
I have been telling myself that if I truly wanted an accurate experience I would have to go all the way down to RF. It would be fun if they decided to emulate the interference from aerial broadcasts. from "snow" to the silhouette of some guy on a talk show superimposed when the game is displaying a dark screen.

But that's the part of my true experience that I truly don't want to revisit. The snes official composite AV cable + SCART adapter was not a possibility for a kid with very limited allowance.

4me, it's

>>9703315
listen, that's a nice bit of projection there, and you might never experience this, but "being with a woman" or "being loved by a woman" will not to fill whatever void is in your heart either

live your own life, work on improving yourself, the rest will follow

>>9709940
That one looks really good. Any way to get rid of the bezel?

>>9709940
Aside from other critiques I might have that is very inaccurate for that particular game. A Naomi game like that should be running on a very crisp 29" arcade monitor with a fine pitch slot mask. The game should be very vibrant and vivid.

>>9710951
>Any way to get rid of the bezel?
you can edit the code if you want
>>9710978
>inaccurate
>it should
don't care

>>9696258
I can just take my Megadrive and hook it up to my 1989 TV. I still have both for this reason. It only has composite input, but it looks better than RGB input on my other sets (probably since it is a pretty small TV, only 14").

looks better than any shaders and better than rgb scart via ossc on my 42" tv.

>>9709530
These simplistic games really don't need a shader in the slightest but it looks fine to me.

I use CRT guest advanced fastest, with a few tweaks. Works like a charm and doesn't rape my GPU.

>>9711867
What tweaks? I never know what to do beyond just slapping on the preset and calling it a day, unless there's some obnoxious feature I want to turn off, like screen curvature.

>>9703440
Well, then prepare to spend a lot of time not playing video games. I’ve done it. It’s not worth it. Use one of the CRT Guest or CRT Royales depending on your resolution and actually enjoy some games instead of pursuing an authenticity that will never be reached. You’d be better off getting a real CRT than descending into the autism trap of tweaking shaders all day.

>>9711886
This post is completely correct.

>>9711879
I changed stuff like color temperature, added a little bit of deconvergence, some bloom, and changed the mask type to Lottes. My old CRT had this reddish warm tone and glow so I just tried to replicate it. The "royale-xm29" kinda does the same, pic related. But the good thing about the "guest" shaders is that they're easy to tweak and you can make them look like any type of CRT, from a fucked up blurry PAL with color bleeding to a Triniton with cold colors and so forth.

>>9696258
I just the pixelated look. Tbh its often better made than much of the copypasta rendered models now

>>9696258
I just use mega bezel super eagle ntsc for everything

>>9705010

I'm able to run the smooth presets on 3090 just fine, although n64 and ps1 games get the gpu pretty hot

I just put on whatever NTSC filters are available. I like the look of shitty rf and composite video, looks more organic

>>9711886
kek there's this dude on the libretro forums that may actually be autistic that's currently going through this. He was endlessly tweaking shaders and making threads about them until one day he stopped posting altogether for like two or three months or so, until like last week when he started again, saying something like "I told myself I would stop tweaking shaders and actually play games but here I am again". He's an extreme example, but it really can become addicting to a nasty degree.

Would high refresh rates, HDR, curved displays and 4K be enough for a modern display to come close to emulating a CRT?

>>9712731
>4K
Plenty good for convincing scanline and mask behavior.
>HDR
Takes care of brightness issues and simulates bloom effectively.
>high refresh rates
Would have to be in the 1000Hz range to overcome motion blur, so otherwise strobing would have to be used, but that darkens the image a lot, so we need brighter displays.
>curved displays
A meme.

>>9696258
Like this

I'm satisfied with bezel

>>9701267
>Component

Use a CRT with Composite.

If I reviewed shaders would anyone accept my advice?

t. 30+ years intense CRT autist

>>9696848
That 4:3 is NOT how Snes actually looked like, someone took a video capture of an sned running yoshi's island and it looked pillarboxed at 640x480

>>9713951
doesn't matter. everyone played in 4:3 tvs.

>>9711891
seems lacking in contrast on the right

>>9713936
damn i wish it worked on my retroarch

>>9696258
all i want is light scanlines (with no gaps) that match the pixels dimensions whats the best way to do this anons? fbneo has a good scanline filter but everything else i've seen looks like shit

r8

>>9714045
why not just use the gbc shader?

>>9714053
because this is super gameboy emu

>>9714045
looks way too hard, at least on my monitor (1440p)
do you play from your couch?

>>9714058
no my desk

>>9714038
It's still going to be CRT-Royale or CRT-Guest-Advanced, just with tweaks to the parameters.

I tend to use composite or S-Video shaders in emulation. Anything sharper just looks off on some systems. I have a MiSTer hooked up to an old CRT, and on Component, SNES is alright, but it looks way too sharp for Genesis and PS1 dithering. Recent composite cores look much better.

>>9714021
What's the issue? If it crashes maybe try an older version of the package, i also had issues running the latest package for whatever reason

>>9714021
It works pretty okay for me (the basic presets and even a few advanced ones work) on my dogshit scam """gaming laptop"""" with a sub-200 MB vram graphics card from 2018. I don't know how or why.

>>9714159
Yeah, same here, I have a gt 1030 and it just werks, it does take a while to load though

>>9714149
what video renderer are you using? im using vulkan becuase i have an amd card but maybe that isnt the best

>>9714203
You actually need to use vulkan for it.

>>9714214
[INFO] [Video]: Does not have enough samples for monitor refresh rate estimation. Requires to run for at least 4096 frames.

i ran a log and this is what I got, I assume this is what leads to RA crashing

>>9703194

>bezels
I'd rather use the highest integer scale possible, including cutting off part of the screen if necessary. Most games have an action-safe area that would have been in the overscan of a consumer television CRT so cutting out this area will not hinder gameplay.
By using a higher integer scale the shader has more resolution to work with and can be more effective.

Extra note: if you don't own a 4k monitor and wonder what shaders look like on one just run a 4k resolution on your 108p monitor with the screen cropped down to 1080p. You'll get 4k quality for the portion that is visible.

>pic
An example of cropping, but ignore the shader settings because those are what I use for playing on my PC CRT, including +5 brightness boost to simulate the way composite video doesn't have great blacks and the way I prefer to play SM. It won't look right at all on your LCD monitor other than as example of the cropping I'm talking about.

Here is how I usually play.
>inb4 "that looks shit"
I assure you that when viewed through my PC CRT monitor it looks very, very good and captures the essence of playing on a consumer television through composite video. I've played thousands of hours on all kinds of consumer and professional CRTs for 34 years.
This is how I ended up. With RetroArch + Shaders on a mid-90s CRT workstation monitor. It's not a trinitron.

The shaders are helped by the fact this monitor has a set of switches on the back to change expected impedance level of the RGB signals. I run it in in the 1000k mode which brightens the screen (at the cost of a little bit of "hot" whites) to compensate for the loss of brightness to the shader.

>>9713924

>>9714305
>>9714347
Oddly nostalgic looking for me, reminds me of the old bastard TV I used as a kid.
Good choice on ROM hack too.

>>9713924
How did you get Mario to look so nice and clean, but the HUD so hideous?

>>9714203
Vulkan is required and its also the fastest option both for AMD and Nvidia.

>>9714473
i dont even know then. I tried making a log but it doesnt log the crash or anything leading up to it

>>9714489
are you using linux by chance

>>9714489
Are you sure you installed it correctly? You need to follow the instructions to the letter, the Mega_Bezel folder needs to be in shaders_slang/bezel and the soquerou presets folder need to be inside the Mega_Bezel_Community folder located in shaders.

>>9714514
Oh and to be sure there are no issues you should at the very least have updated Retroarch to the latest stable version.

>>9714492
no just on windows
>>9714514
this is exactly how it was installed

>>9714534
Do the bezels run without the background presets at least? If not i have no idea what the problem might be, you could also try switching from Vulkan to GLCore

>>9714045
I don't understand why anyone would choose to play GS in SGB mode

>>9714687
Maybe nostalgia, but even then, you can play GBC games in their color mode with SGB borders in a few different ways so you get the best of both.

>>9714548
>>9714534
so it turns out RA wasnt up to date which is annoying because apparetly the online updater feature will update everything BUT RA itself.

the bad news is that the mega bezel still doesnt load, BUT it doesnt crash anymore, i just get the error log

>>9701646
name?

>>9696514
>and it looked like absolute shit. Why?
because n64 has a blur filter everything on them looks like shit

>>9714687
i dont have a gameboy player

crt-royale-ntsc-svideo
with the adjustments:
quality = "0.000000"
ntsc_phase = "3.000000"
ntsc_scale = "1.250000"
ntsc_sat = "1.100000"
Recommendations welcomed

>>9716548

dunno about you but right looks ass on my wide gamut monitor

>>9716548
>>9716552
Same shader on Beetle HW

>>9716578
Beetle

>>9716548
>>9716552
Looks harsh and agressive here
>>9716578
But great here

nice cope thread guys

>>9716593
>implying many shaders users don't also own CRTs

>>9696258
Super Eagle and done

>>9716698
yes

>>9716807
well that implication is wrong

>>9716548
Nothing beats Mega Bezel Smooth for this game
>>9716578
That looks really good though

>>9696359
This was never something which was consistent across the board, even back in the 90s CRT screens varied widely and you could never, EVER count on things looking exactly the same on every TV, the only full consistency which existed was arcades.

>>9696293
Incredibly based, and the amount of retards coping only helps to strengthen your claim

I don't want to cope anymore, but how am I supposed to afford a CRT and a retro console that both work and don't need repairs that you'd really need to hunt a specialist down for? I could probably get a CRT from a thrift store but I'd be pretty much hopeless if it needed any kind of tune-up.

>>9696359
lmao, even the devs knew the Mega Drive couldn't hold a candle to the PCgine or the SNES. How embarrassing.

>>9719229

Don't go that route, it's not good. Emulation is king if you aren't a complete brainlet.

>>9719229
You're letting the FUD get to you too much.
If you buy a CRT in decent shape it will probably last as long as you care to own it without needing any repairs.

finaly got mega bezel (and the user add ons) to work. not bad

>>9720625

>>9720625
my eyes

>>9720631
on an actual monitor its much smaller

>>9720625
>CRT shader for an LCD system
Brain worms.

>>9720670
can you not see the screen? some presets dont use scanlines, those are lcd pixels.

>>9720674
Is your monitor not already LCD?

>>9720709
my monitor is 1920x1200 pixels. a gameboy is 160×144 pixels.

>>9720713
very small on most monitors

>>9716562
love that purple sky

>>9716562
>>9721378
>Purple sky
lol

>>9721447
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGoDaYjdfSg

Been playing around with the "gtu-050v" shader recently. The light bleed might be a little too much.

>>9723274
Also this game is jank shit but for some reason I can't stop playing it

Is curvature a meme when it comes to shaders, or does it have merits? Does it add anything to the picture, or does it only distort?

>>9724225
imo it only works when there's a tv bezel around it. makes no sense on a black screen

>>9720627

>>9724225
If you like it keep it if not remove it

>>9724225
Personal choice. I grew up with the garbage shown in the picture, and I definitely did not miss it when I got a "flat" screen crt in early 2000's.

>>9696293
Do i need to say more?

>>9696906
He actually said that sharp pixels are better when they could achieve them but they worked with the limitations of the megadrive to produce more colors and effects, which they admit is ruined when you display the raw output.

>>9696514
No. I played PS1 and PS2 on a CRT for the majority of my childhood. I distinctively remember thinking "oh, this looks like shit" when I finally got a LCD TV and played those consoles on it.

>>9701267
Right one is not a CRT.

>>9724558
>squint your eyes
>both look the same.
Play on a couch on your tv to achieve the same effect.

I'd almost like this, if it wasn't for the fucked dithering on the life bars up top. Also don't care much for the curvature.

>>9716593
That looks nice, what shader?

>>9725135
shader? i hardly knower!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

>>9724621
You know nothing, John Snow.

>>9725175
Kekeke

>>9724621
Tried it.
Didn't work.

ROUNDER

>>9696609
>They aren't going to start documenting and emulating CRTs with historical accuracy. It just isn't gonna happen.
You really don't think that's a remotely shortsighted thing to say? Like, it'll NEVER happen? CRT shaders are already a shitload more accurate now than they were 10 years ago, why are you so confident that the autistic commitment to push them even further isn't out there?

>>9696609
>They aren't going to start documenting and emulating CRTs with historical accuracy.
You underestimate the power of autism.

>>9727437
>>9727451
It's already happening, don't know what that anon is on about outside of ignorance. The dudes behind CRT-Guest-Advanced and Sony Megatron have been extremely meticulous in getting their shaders to look like all kinds of CRTs, and they are still at it. Guest's shader can even do that thing CRTs do (particularly older ones) where the whole picture blooms outward the brighter it is, and he's also implementing more accurate phosphor glow, where even phosphors not being hit by the electron beam light up ever so slightly from the light of the active phosphors. There's some aspects that shaders can't do anything about, of course, such as smooth motion, which is dependent on the display itself. Maybe shit like 15KHz coil whine, but I can't imagine anyone is seriously missing that lol. Or that low hum that you would hear out of the speakers on older sets when there's anything on-screen that would temporarily go away on black screen transitions. That last one I remember vividly when playing SMB3.

>>9727473
>Maybe shit like 15KHz coil whine, but I can't imagine anyone is seriously missing that lol
>tfw they always told you you'd stop hearing it once you got old enough
It still hadn't happened. The inaccuracies of shaders are why I mostly play on real hardware, but I'd almost give my firstborn to be able to leave behind that fucking 15khz whine.

virgin nearest neighbor vs chad dither destroying bilinear filtering

>>9727473
>Or that low hum that you would hear out of the speakers on older sets when there's anything on-screen that would temporarily go away on black screen transitions.
That is coil whine from somewhere in the power supply chain. Should be something that can be emulated.

>>9697963
he also said the shit video signal was used to display certain visual effects, learn to read.

>>9696671
>Retro games - all games, really - should be upscaled true integer nearest neighbor when possible.
Enjoy anorexic NES and SNES games.

>>9728041
Did the intensity of the hum vary depending on what was on screen? Like I said, I distinctly remember it on SMB3, like right after you beat a level and get the card, you'd heard the jingle, then the score being tabulated, and then nothing but the low hum, followed by the screen transition, at which point the hum would go away, but immediately come back once you were back in the world map before getting drowned out by the music.

>>9728126
it's not coil whine
the issue you most likely had is a bad capacitor

>>9728147
Whatever it was, I have nostalgia for it, dumb as it may be.

>>9728126
>>9728041
>>9728157
its literally the sound of the CRT tube. go into a tone generator sit and play a 15khz tone then slide it down to 14 then back to 15, boom, its because the CRT changes tone when the screen isnt lit up. same thing when you would change channels and the whine would change

https://szynalski.com/tone#15347,v0.1

>>9728162
no he is talking about a bad capacitor because of power draw on white screens
replacing capacitors will stop the buzz
15khz is not a buzz it is a high pitched tone

>>9728162
I know what 15KHz coil whine is. That's not what I'm referring to. This was a low, buzzing hum.

That said, goddamn, 35 years old and I can still hear that shit.

>>9728168
Yeah I should have said capacitor whine instead of coil whine. Or it could be something to do with the flyback. Just spitballin' here. I'm not an EE.

>>9728172
>>9728168
my bad carry on

>>9728172
>This was a low, buzzing hum.
Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about.
There's also the hum that came with using one of these things.

And there's the hum that comes when you have your TV and console plugged into different electrical sockets.

>>9728182
that ones most likely a grounding issue

>>9728176
>I'm not an EE.
neither am I, but I would think the flyback would cause visual issues instead of just a buzz

>>9696258
It took me years, and I still will end up fucking around with it eventually but I use a couple of the mega bezel ones now.

>>9728229
>I still will end up fucking around with it eventually
this is honestly why I just got a CRT

>>9728246
I've always had a CRT thats the best part

I like fucking around with shaders, and I still end up playing games afterwards. Not sure why people have an issue where they can't play a game unless they're satisfied with the shader they're using.

Getting there, I think.

>>9727437
There are no combination of pixels which can make an LCD look like a CRT, so even a perfect CRT shader cannot capture the true look of a CRT.

>>9728965
Sure they will eventually.
Also note that CRTs are a deadend and any existing ones will degrade over time and eventually just die

>>9729006
Every retro console, and all retro games should be burred in the same hole as the last CRT. Without the CRT they have no reason to continue to exist.

>>9716593
is that bikini girl from golden axe 1?

>>9729065
yep, she's a Storm Collectibles figure. Tyris Flare

>>9696258
For me it's hunterk's interlacing

>>9728965
What fresh bullshit is this? Of course they can.You really think we've reached the apex of screen technology?

>>9729096
Good taste.

>>9729009
I think I hit a nerve there, stop seething and accept that CRTs are a deadend. Real retro consoles and games might also die out eventually but these can now be emulated with (near) perfect accuracy so conservation is there.

>>9697052
tell me about 2 and 3

Alright so fuck CRT accuracy, is there any filter/shader/etc that actually makes games from the era look BETTER than they did originally?

>>9729239
Everything comes to an end, and soon we will all be dead. Emulation is just denial of the inevitable.

>>9709530
no composite wtf is this

>>9711891
>xm29
i despise that
with respect

>>9720272
What are you using there?

>>9696359
So if the original mega drives were really awful, does that mean my mega drive v1 with the HD graphics text written around the port isn't actually the best one?

>>9729457
Why would you want composite artifacts, anyway? I can understand wanting blur, but shit like dot crawl and fringing just shits up the image.

>>9729478
gtuv50 with composite connection enabled

>>9730063
based gtuv50 enjoyer

>>9730083
that looks good too

>>9724621
Your logic is correct however we're still not there yet
Eventually when we get +10000PPI displays(+300K resolution on a 30 inch display) we won't need shaders anymore since the pixels are so small that the upscale becomes perfect

>>9724225
If I use them I put them on a really low curve setting. If it's too curved everything gets warped as it moves across the screen in an unnatural way

>>9732275
Right, but what does it REALLY offer? I would definitely get it if you want to couple it with a bezel shaped like a curved CRT, but without that, it just seems like meaningless distortion.

>>9733995
the curve is the dumbest shit I've seen, only makes sense only if you play in EmuVR

>>9733995
For the record, generally on a real round CRT the corners are cutoff and the entire thing doesn't curve with the bezel like >>9720627 The image isn't wrapped around the outside, it's basically being projected from the back by bending electron beams and the straighter angle it contacts a curved screen reduces the error in where they land, but it's accounted for in making a straight looking image when viewed from the front. Flat CRTs actually have a harder time keeping the image straight and equally sharp because the distance to the corners is much longer so a slight error is amplified.

>>9730083
Settings? Really liking this one

My masterpiece :)

>>9734159
jesus fuck how drunk was I last night

>>9696514
This is true to a certain degree. This whole CRT filter shit people are getting into now has strong zoomer vibes. Like, we only figured this out now after decades? No. Maybe we just didn't care before.