CRT Shaders in RetroArch are VERY Convincing!
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- Опубліковано 21 сер 2024
- I've known about these modern pixel shaders in some emulators for awhile but since I don't play in emulators very often I've never bothered showing or talking about them. But honestly these have gotten so good that I just had to show them off incase some of you have never seen them before. These modern CRT shaders for example emulate not just the scanlines but the bloom, shadow mask or aperture grill and geometry etc to really give you a convincing appearance of a CRT on a modern LCD monitor or TV. Oh and they aren't just for CRT's either! You can use these shaders to emulate the look of an old LCD screen like the one on the GameBoy Color for example! These do require a more powerful computer to run and the higher resolution the display you're playing on (ideally a 4K monitor or TV) the better the effect will look. But I have to say even on my 1440p monitor some of these look incredible!
You're right, they are VERY convincing. I love using them, specifically the Mega Bezel Reflection shader. It's so freaking neat and has tons presets to choose from. Personally I stick with the one labelled "MBZ_0_SMOOTH-ADV_GDV". I'm a big fan of how it looks, because not only is it very nostalgic to me, but it adds a little pixel smoothing effect (ScaleFX) that you don't get on any CRT. I get that no shader can fully replace a CRT due to the blur and input lag that all flat screens have, but honestly, with my 1ms gtg 144hz g-sync display, I'm not bothered one bit. The blur and input lag are at a low enough level that I really can't blame them for me losing at whatever game I'm playing. Unfortunately my display is only 1080p, but I will be upgrading to 4K next year and I greatly look forward to seeing how this shader will look on that. On 1080p it looks convincing enough. Certainly 100x better than just raw pixels or simple scanlines.
Awesome video btw.
CRT Royale and Sony Megatron filters are arguably the most true to CRT, but it requires very bright display and 4k res, you preferably want 500cd/m2 brightness minimum, which very few but the most expensive OLED's can provide right now, but QLED can easily do over 600cd/m2 for sticker price of 700~ dollars, which is not bad at all.
And I do swear, QLED with Sony Megatron filter and HDR1000 enabled, man I got a bit emotional the first time just seeing it in action, its genuinely indistinguishable from a CRT except the motion resolution is still sample and hold, you can enable BFI which I do recommend but still, its damn near perfection, OLED with this brightness, and perfect motion resolution, that would be CRT dream come true.
I love watching anime or old DVD's with the Megatron filter, I prefer the CRT Royale on my OLED because its not HDR bound and has more options to tweak, while Megatron requires HDR600+ at least to be viable, otherwise its so dark.
And I thought using 768p tv screens was the best move 😂
Yes they are very good at replicating all kinds of CRTs. The only problem with those shaders i found that when screen is scrolling, due to LCD blur the imitation kinda falls apart. But on static images it's perfect. Probably will look good in motion on fast OLED panel.
No, OLED also fall apart for motion.
Scanlines on CRT give you perfect motion as well. OLEDs only have BFI (black frame insertion), can improve motion but it doesn't beat scanlines for reducing image persistance.
With a 144hz LCD monitor and backlight strobing + max brightness, the smoothness is very convincing. Just make sure in Retroarch video settings to start in fullscreen mode in Video > Fullscreen, set the refresh rate to 144/120 in Video > Output, turn VSYNC ON in Video > Syncronization along with Swap Interval 2. Then in your Core, turn on Runahead in Quick Menu > Latency to your liking to reduce input lag. Also depending on the Retroarch video driver, turn on Hard GPU Sync (OpenGL) or reduce Max Swapchain Images to 1 or 2 (Vulkan).
On 60hz panels the scrolling will be choppy, and bad monitors will also give you ghosting. But fast, high quality LCD monitors can have pretty smooth scrolling similar to a CRT. I also use an ICC preset for my monitor to get the color balance right. You will need a beefy setup to use all these settings and the shaders with good results. A generic TV or cheapo computer will not do well.
@@CaptainPichu Backlight strobbing doesn't beat scanlines.
@@saricubra2867 Scanlines have ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with motion. You've no idea what you are talking about.
@@rcdarkangel I do know what i'm talking about, they play A HUGE role in motion resolution.
Do you know why black frame insertion exists?
To reduce image persistance by the human retina.
Fun fact, that technique doesn't beat a CRT drawing in scanlines, because a scanline basically takes image persistance to 0. For this technique, you need a lot of brightness on a single point, no modern tech can do that, only CRTs can do.
I just discovered these shaders and I love them. I always hated scanline filters and just assumed that’s what these were.
you have a good sense of humor and personality, should cover gaming news, new or retro, the laid back personality is refreshing
This will look even better on an OLED which can provide the black levels, pixel response time and colour gamut of CRTs
I love using the DMG green shader for gameboy and CRT GDV for SnES, Genesis, Neo Geo and other older consoles 👍
My 42 inch LG C2 oled was sticker price $1500 canadian, free amazon shipping , however I got black friday deal 13% off, so free tax basically. Holy hell it is amazing! Forgot if I said earlier, just at my main pc/gaming desk. I do all gaming at my pc desk, pc games, and a bunch of consoles all hooked up too. Gamecube with the gc video hdmi thing, gameboy player, WiiU modded, ps3, Snes coming soon to the tv becuasse I bit bullet and ordered Retrotink 5X PRO! Super exicted for that as i have all original systems and all HD retrovission component cablkes for it all. It took me about 10 years now to colect all these consoles and cables and all with flash carts and ISo loaders, but finally complete. Every system I ever wanted I now have, all with sd loaders, with every possible game.
mega bezels in the slang folder is now top dog
These look great. Though the results for Genesis will probably be a bit better with the 320px royale settings since that’s more representative of the genesis resolution. 256 will be better for snes and nes.
Oh I thought the lower res was for NTSC and the other one for PAL!
@@MN12BIRD standard resolution is 320x224. Doubt it’s gonna make any major difference really though.
@@MN12BIRD NES/SNES/PcEngine 256 pixels horizontal
Megadrive/NeoGeo 320 pixels horizontal
The difference between PAL and NTSC is the vertical size. PAL systems have higher vertical resolution than NTSC...
How much math is going on to do something so simple in the natural world? You turn on a CRT. The image is produced is a result of its hardware, though I know there are boards doing digital to analog conversions (that's some math). I remember watching Randy Pitchford talk about Brother in Arms: Hell's Highway where he pointed out the NPCs were passing objects back and forth between each other. I can breakdown the actions needed to produce the result, but even so there's still some finegling I bet they did to make things look natural (like locking in the way an object is oriented once the other NPC grabs it).
Either way, it still costs a lot to produce something so simple. I think the only thing this is missing is the curvature of the screen as you shift perspective and the glow it gives off the air particles in front. That you would need to be in VR. I think that would be the ultimate way to replicate visuals and sound. The touch of things being kachunked into other things wouldn't be there and even smell of a particular room wouldn't be there. NEAT!
I don't typically use PC emulators but on things like the NES Classic and Switch onlineI prefer to use a CRT filter for authenticity
It makes NES games look more like a cartoon as to visible squares
but most Importantly for water effects It brings back that transparency effect where as unfiltered It looks like squares
I used shaders on almost all my display and they look great but not on slow displays. My tv at 60hz looks awful when the picture starts scrolling but my 260hz gaming display looks great even when scrolling
Idea: Nintendo Switch should have a crt filter option
Most of these look pretty good, although that gbc one doesn't look much like I remember at all.
Yeah I'm not a big fan of that GBC shader there's probably better ones out there
Hello, I had this game on my Game Boy Color and with this filter it is working exactly as I remember, almost perfectly for an emulation. Colors on the GBC had less contrast, were less vivid, and generally less colorful, compared to the N64. I liked GBC's graphics, they had their own palette. Take the two versions of Mario Tennis for example.
It looks pretty cool in static pictures, when it starts moving, it all goes back to digital displays hideousness.
The fact that I found your channel while looking for videos on the MN12 thunderbird
RetroCrisis has the best crt shader atm imo.
You should try what the mega-bezel does with reflections.... you can find it in -> \shaders\shaders_slang\bezel\Mega_Bezel\Presets
but set video driver to vulkan in retroarch settings!
8K phosphor emulation will be the beginning standard for close comparison.
Good 😄🇧🇷
Did you check out the Sega Genesis dithering effects with those shaders?
Yeah the waterfall in Sonic 1 with the Composite shader at least looks totally transparent
Please do a direct comparison of a crt and this!
Bruh. I got my new 4K LG OLED in my game dungeon. I wanna try this out. Question, do I need to also set a higher internal resolution in addition to these shaders? Or will just saetting the high output res and sdhader and it wil magically kow how to scale it? in fct, does retroarch even have an internalm resolution setting or it mirrors the output resolution automatically?>
I'm sure as long as your native Windows resolution is 4k you'll be good and yeah, these will look best on a 4K OLED with the fast pixel response times and contrast! I wish I bought an OLED when I bought my TV but I cheeped out. But looking back it's like why? I'll use the TV for movies and stuff for many years it's worth it to spend more up front. Wish I did.
You have to use BFI to reduce image persistance, that also make these Sonic games playable.
@@saricubra2867 I would love to use BFI, but stupid LG, they removed BFI fromt he new C2 even though the C1 has it.
maybe, someday, who knows when..... we will have new CRTs with new tech and way lighter xD
I really don't think so. Retro gaming is a very limited niche...
@@Guilherme1Lelis also CRT's are SUPER expensive to produce in limited quantities and also wouldn't be seen as environmentally friendly. Maybe some small company could refurbish tubes with all new shell and electronics but again will be very expensive.
I wish, but the sad reality is Expensive Used ones will likely be the only option.
How to install?
I never liked the emulation (for lack of a better word) of the CRT screen curvature. Because that's not really what it looked like. Depending on where you were sitting, or how much the TV was above or below your eye line, it looked different. Even when you were moving your head. You never saw a perfectly curved screen on every side. That's not how that worked. One corner was almost always even, like on your flatscreen, while the other corners bent around. Again, depending on where you were sitting in relation to the TV. It also was only curved, because the cathode canon to produce the image had to swivel from a fixed point, so the screen hat to be semicircular. It was not a "stylistic choice". The image was still flat, but it was projected on a curved screen. That's why I never use this in emulation. It looks fake af.
The default one I used here was way too aggressive on the curving and looked fake but I think you can adjust that or find other presets that aren't as curved
Is there a way to use these filters in something like VLC for video?
I've seen people use similar open gl shaders with almost anything so I think it's possible but I wouldn't know how
Nice video
If I have a 4k tv should I run my retro games at 4k in retro arch with shaders or native resolution with shaders.
4k definitely the higher the resolution the better the shaders work.
@@MN12BIRD thank you, should I set the 4k setting in the main retro arch menu or in the individual core settings.
I'm using a program called "ShaderGlass". Basically it's all the shaders that RetroArch has. To me, out of thousand shaders. "CRTSIM" seems to be the best one I stick with for old games. I modified it a bit and made the screen have curves on the corners. If you play fightcade 2 emulator. You get the best picture possible. Right off the bat all the games already got scanlines on them. Apply "CRTSIM" amazing. I can't play Fightcade 2 without it. Once you see how it looks, there's no going back. Note, you might have to mess around with the pixel size. For instance if I played fightcade in full 4k. I get the best picture with the pixel size on x3. If my display is that at 720p. I get the best picture on x1. Another filter second to CRTSIM is VHS. You will get a lot of NTSC. CRTSIM is number 1 for me. It's what I remember the games looking like when I had a tube tv.
could you try it on a video?
Great video! Tkz
Some of those CRT shaders ain't half bad. At least it's better than nothing. At least on my PC and TV, input lag still sucks. There ought to be a CRT shader that CRT shades and also plays a faint 15KHz whine and a 60Hz buzz sound to round off the experience, make it a little more complete.
are any of the crt shaders doing black frame insertion...like original crt's did?
Yes it's an option in retroarch somewhere I haven't tried it though on my high refresh rate monitor it should help with motion blur I hear it's good on 120hz oled TVs too
super
I use the efect for my phone emu and after i done playing the home screen had the efect and i was panicing i delet the crt on my phone and the efect was gone i said phew did that happend to you? You
do any of these work to make the waterfall look correct on Sonic? i hate the LCD method that makes hte waterfalls look weird, loved my old crt look
Just increase convergence on crt-consumer until it does look correct.
Yes, a lot of them do. You can also mix crt shaders with dithering shaders.
Shame you cant replicate the clean look of 3d polygon games with just the shaders
color bleed its called
What is the software name?
RetroArch. It's right there in the title.
Yes need to be harsh. This is the first major issue with them and I have been using their services for 10yrs straight.
CRT bem bonitos off PASS perfeito gosto verdadeiro quero TV RGB Luz limpar assim ❤✅🎮 AV
LED HDR UHD LCD SDR feios pior não gosto froca só porblemo TVS Composite rium AV ou HDMI jogos difícil 👎
LED HDR UHD LCD SDR feios saber viu difícil AV ou HDMI ON cego 👎 Ruim composite
Super Nintendo
Sega Genesis
Ploystation Nes
Nintendo 64
Wii ou WiiU
PS2 ou PS3
Gamecube
CRT RGB Luz limpar assim PASS saber perfeito AV ganhar rápido importante sempre gosto viu certo jogos TVS bonitos OFF RGB limpar
Super Nintendo ✅
Sega Genesis ✅
Ploystation Nes ✅
Nintendo 64 ✅
Wii ou WiiU ✅
PS2 ou PS3 ✅
Gamecube ✅