bulbousbeard Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 I have never messed around with any of this stuff to try to make and lcd look like an arcade monitor, I can easily see on that video the uneven scanlines and patches of scanlines. But in the comparison that was supposed to be good where he goes "woah the blacks are actually blacks", and then goes on to say the scanlines are even,...I still saw a block of no scanlines in between the scanlines at what looked like regular intervals, so it was patchy too. I would only say it was better, but not really as wonderful and amazing as the commentator made it sound. You're right, because like I said, part of the problem is that CRT simulations require a lot of resolution. Youtube converted the video to 1080p, but I was running at 2560x1440. At 2560x1440, GLSL with the Lottes shader does have even scanlines. You need 3840x2160 to get even remotely close to even scanlines with HLSL, and they're still not as good as GLSL at 1440p. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kmoney2315 Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 I think it's nice that Metalzoic is trying to help others, but I completely disagree with him on what looks like a real arcade monitor and HLSL versus GLSL. Whenever I see someone post some HLSL settings that supposedly look like a real arcade monitor, I get excited, plug them in, fire up MAME, and see that it looks like burnt ass. I have NEVER seen any HLSL settings that have looked remotely as good as GLSL looks with the Timothy Lottes shader. Never. The shots Metalzoic posted are washed out, the colors don't pop, they're not as sharp as a real arcade monitor (HLSL's defocus setting is complete crap and is basically worthless as far as approximating a CRT). I've never seen HLSL screenshots that weren't either too sharp or too soft. To top it off, Metalzoic's shots don't even have even scanlines (you can see uneven scanline artifacts all over the place). The thing about HLSL is that you're basically not going to get even scanlines unless you run at incredibly high resolutions (2880x2160+). The Lottes shader is FAR more generous when it comes to lower resolutions. You can squeak by with 1920x1440. 1080p basically isn't enough resolution for any decent shader period... The only shader I've seen that looks arguably better than the Lottes shader with GLSL is CRT Royale in Retroarch. If you want, I can post some screenshots of the Lottes shader and the same scene with Metalzoic's settings. Lottes completely smokes it. I like the lottes shader as well and I was wondering if you use it at stock settings or if you change some of the settings with it and if so,would you mind sharing your settings with us? I would like to try them out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
damageinc86 Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 You're right, because like I said, part of the problem is that CRT simulations require a lot of resolution. Youtube converted the video to 1080p, but I was running at 2560x1440. At 2560x1440, GLSL with the Lottes shader does have even scanlines. You need 3840x2160 to get even remotely close to even scanlines with HLSL, and they're still not as good as GLSL at 1440p. Interesting that you need that much resolution to mimic a monitor that has very low resolution. Technology is weird! lol. So wouldn't the point of posting that video sort of be negated to a degree, given that we couldn't even see the resolution that you were running at? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Metalzoic Posted January 18, 2016 Author Share Posted January 18, 2016 Your settings can't be authentic if they can't even display the color black correctly, right? Blacks should _not_ look like that. It's completely wrong. That combined with the uneven scanlines just kills the effect completely. You're right. Black level was way off. I got so caught up with other settings and trying to match a certain shade of brown that I didn't notice how out of whack it had built up. Took it back to zero and rebuilt the color and then tweaked the other settings to match. Built it to have contrast, gamma and brightness set to 1.00 as the base. Should be far better (But I'm still trying to match that brown with high saturation!). Updated the settings in the first post! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bulbousbeard Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 Interesting that you need that much resolution to mimic a monitor that has very low resolution. Technology is weird! lol. So wouldn't the point of posting that video sort of be negated to a degree, given that we couldn't even see the resolution that you were running at? It seems weird, but it makes a lot of sense when you think about how CRTs actually look. Someone made a great image that makes it obvious why it requires so much resolution. Every "pixel" on a CRT takes 5+ vertical pixels on an LCD to look roughly equivalent, and there's at least two empty vertical pixels worth of space for scanlines (even though you probably need more than that to account for the fact that there are varying sizes of subpixel per scanline; even at 5 vertical pixels, you're losing subtle subpixel details). You effectively need 7+ vertical pixels per pixel MINIMUM to even begin to simulate a CRT pixel with scanlines. Now add in bloom effects and other CRT effects, and you need even more pixels. Say a game is 320x240. Oops. You need at least 1680 vertical pixels to even get close to simulating a CRT. 2560x1440 isn't good enough. What's the next step up? It's even worse if you're trying to do a medium resolution game such as Rampage, because now you're needing a whopping 2,688 vertical pixels to get there. Even 4k doesn't have that much resolution. By the way, one of the things that basically every CRT shader gets wrong is that scanlines are almost never true black spaces between subpixels. They're almost always just alpha blended darker pixels. It's fundamentally wrong. Scanlines are EMPTY SPACE. Most shaders don't accurately represent scanlines because the authors know that most people don't have enough resolution to pump out both the subpixels and the actual gaps between scanlines. Ask any good CRT simulation shader author. They'll tell you that they want 8k resolution to really do the job justice. 4k is adequate but not ideal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
damageinc86 Posted January 19, 2016 Share Posted January 19, 2016 Wow that is crazy! Makes me glad that I don't care enough to even mess with it lol. Looks like a headache. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
solid12345 Posted January 19, 2016 Share Posted January 19, 2016 Ask any good CRT simulation shader author. They'll tell you that they want 8k resolution to really do the job justice. 4k is adequate but not ideal. If you want to get to a true scientific representation of a CRT, yes you need an insane amount of resolution. But I think too much emphasis is put on trying to emulate detail that frankly most people will not see or take notice of even when sitting pretty close to a monitor. Our brain is very good at approximating and "filling in" detail that is not there and when you are in the middle of a gaming session with your eyes paying attention to the motion and concentrating on using the controller, you notice it even less. These are a few screenshots from the analog shader pack I put together for retroarch, it shines even more when you see it in motion and I invite anyone to try it out. I own a Sony PVM and grew up in the CRT era and while I used to decry shaders finding most to be sterile and cold and "too digital looking", I think now i've reached the point to where I am comfortable moving away from big bulky box CRTs and feel the perception you are gaming on one has been reached. http://libretro.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3998 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gigapig Posted January 19, 2016 Share Posted January 19, 2016 I just loaded up that B&W preset and really spat my coffee all over the screen, lol. Was it really that bad? Great effect Solid12345, they must have taken a while to configure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
solid12345 Posted January 19, 2016 Share Posted January 19, 2016 I just loaded up that B&W preset and really spat my coffee all over the screen, lol. Was it really that bad? Great effect Solid12345, they must have taken a while to configure. Image 1.jpg LOL it was if you grew up with a crappy 10 inch B&W TV to play Nintendo on as a kid like I did Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Metalzoic Posted January 20, 2016 Author Share Posted January 20, 2016 LOL it was if you grew up with a crappy 10 inch B&W TV to play Nintendo on as a kid like I did I remember the TV me and my brother played 2600 on was always fuzzing in and out with interference/static. That pic reminds me of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
damageinc86 Posted January 20, 2016 Share Posted January 20, 2016 Yeah hell we even had a small ass 15" t.v. that we played PS1 on when we first got it, twisted metal with 2 player split screen! Thankfully it was color at least, but wow, it was fuzzy, and wow it was small. I can't believe we could even see ourselves playing on it, but I remember having a blast for days on end. Crazy how perception can change over the years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobinis Posted January 21, 2016 Share Posted January 21, 2016 Hello, I have been following this thread for a little while and decided finally to actually ask for help. I recently upgraded to 0.169 and have been able to get Metazoics HLSL settings to work, I cannot seem to go back and use Gigapigs GLSL settings. No matter what I try. I have RL set up to use .ini settings. I can get them to work in Mameuifx, but not Mame running under Hyperspin. Oddly enough, if I put the Mame 0.167 binary back, the GLSL settings work. Any ideas? Any help would be most appreciated. Thanks, Burritodamus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gigapig Posted January 21, 2016 Share Posted January 21, 2016 Hello, I have been following this thread for a little while and decided finally to actually ask for help. I recently upgraded to 0.169 and have been able to get Metazoics HLSL settings to work, I cannot seem to go back and use Gigapigs GLSL settings. No matter what I try. I have RL set up to use .ini settings. I can get them to work in Mameuifx, but not Mame running under Hyperspin. Oddly enough, if I put the Mame 0.167 binary back, the GLSL settings work. Any ideas? Any help would be most appreciated. Thanks, Burritodamus Did you change the video mode to opengl? Without seeing logs and ini files that is all I can think of other than something is wrong with your version of 0.169. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobinis Posted January 22, 2016 Share Posted January 22, 2016 Did you change the video mode to opengl? Without seeing logs and ini files that is all I can think of other than something is wrong with your version of 0.169.Actually, you hit the nail on the head. I downloaded your hyperspin setup and compared the mame.exe to the one I had and the size of the binary was about half. I swapped them out and everything worked as it should.Thanks for taking the time to respond, and for your help to the community. After comparing the HLSL and GLSL settings on my machine (a little older and a 1080P TV), I found the GLSL to be less resource intensive and looked a little more polished. Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daithi1101 Posted February 4, 2016 Share Posted February 4, 2016 UPDATED: 1/18/16 1.Overhauled. Fixed black levels/color. Updated pics to show new version. 2. Bit more fine tuning. These settings were built by comparing my HyperSpin cabinet directly, side-by-side, with my real arcade machines. For direct comparison I used my Mario Bros machine and my Neo-Geo running Samurai Shodown 5 Special, Nightmare in the dark, Metal Slug and Twinkle Star Sprites. I tried to match these settings to look close to the real machines, but with a bit more ideal color and sharpness. These were set with Contrast, Brightness & Gamma at 1.00. However games vary a lot so I tried to set it saturated and bright enough that it displays darker games well, and brighter games can be adjusted by lowering the brightness, contrast and/or gamma. Still tinkering to find the best middle ground. Hopefully some of you find they work on your setup. Gigapig mentions this below, but make sure you're using the latest Artwork & HLSL folders (If you've updated MAME, but not the folders this won't display correctly). This uses the slot-mask.png mask. genjuro.jpg nitd.jpg soccer.jpg slug.jpg bloodu.jpg nitd2.jpg HLSL # # DIRECT3D POST-PROCESSING OPTIONS # hlsl_enable 1 hlslpath hlsl hlsl_prescale_x 6 hlsl_prescale_y 6 hlsl_write 1 hlsl_snap_width 2048 hlsl_snap_height 1536 shadow_mask_tile_mode 0 shadow_mask_alpha 0.14 shadow_mask_texture slot-mask.png shadow_mask_x_count 6 shadow_mask_y_count 4 shadow_mask_usize 0.1875 shadow_mask_vsize 0.1875 shadow_mask_uoffset 0.0 shadow_mask_voffset 0.0 curvature 0.10 round_corner 0.10 smooth_border 0.03 reflection 0.05 vignetting 0.20 scanline_alpha 0.92 scanline_size 1.00 scanline_height 0.95 scanline_bright_scale 1.20 scanline_bright_offset 0.55 scanline_jitter 0.05 defocus 0.50,0.0 converge_x 0.2,0.0,-0.1 converge_y 0.0,0.0,0.0 radial_converge_x 0.2,0.0,-0.2 radial_converge_y 0.0,0.0,0.0 red_ratio 0.80,0.10,0.10 grn_ratio 0.10,0.80,0.10 blu_ratio 0.10,0.10,0.80 saturation 1.40 offset -0.03,-0.01,0.03 scale 0.97,0.99,1.0 power 1.30,1.35,1.30 floor 0.00,0.00,0.00 phosphor_life 0.45,0.35,0.40 BLOOM # # BLOOM POST-PROCESSING OPTIONS # bloom_blend_mode 0 bloom_scale 0.175 bloom_overdrive 1.0,1.0,1.0 bloom_lvl0_weight 1.0 bloom_lvl1_weight 0.21 bloom_lvl2_weight 0.19 bloom_lvl3_weight 0.17 bloom_lvl4_weight 0.15 bloom_lvl5_weight 0.14 bloom_lvl6_weight 0.13 bloom_lvl7_weight 0.12 bloom_lvl8_weight 0.11 bloom_lvl9_weight 0.10 bloom_lvl10_weight 0.09 These look great my friend, I have an original Neo Geo MVS cabinet sat right beside my 55" TV and i can tell you these settings are as close to my crt as I have seen. I did adjust the brightness down a little to get it just right. I also like GLSL but it does not look as accurate IMO. I am fortunate enough to have a completely reconditioned CRT monitor and chassis and over 70 original MVS carts so I'm in a decent position to judge Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ninja2bceen Posted February 4, 2016 Share Posted February 4, 2016 What brightness did you update? Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jcm9800 Posted February 4, 2016 Share Posted February 4, 2016 are the new hlsl settings in mame 169 is worth to update from 165 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daithi1101 Posted February 4, 2016 Share Posted February 4, 2016 What brightness did you update? Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Just screen brightness to 0.85Sent from my HTC_0PJA10 using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
griffin518 Posted February 4, 2016 Share Posted February 4, 2016 Metal: The new settings look fantastic! You've taken them well beyond what you and I did over the summer... great work! Have you noticed if the texture scaling issue still remains for vertical games? I've only tested horizontal so far. Pro tip for those of us with older rigs: If you're experiencing lag with these settings, change hlsl_prescale_x and hlsl_prescale_y to 0. It does reduce the fidelity a little, but will improve processing. Edit: ok so I just tried 1942. At least for me, the scaling issue (really soft, foggy screen) still exists when the display is scaled down by a bezel. Maybe this has to do with my prescale settings, but it's too bad. For now I'll continue in mixed-mode: HLSL for horizontal, GLSL for vertical. Thanks, Metal! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Metalzoic Posted February 4, 2016 Author Share Posted February 4, 2016 These look great my friend, I have an original Neo Geo MVS cabinet sat right beside my 55" TV and i can tell you these settings are as close to my crt as I have seen. I did adjust the brightness down a little to get it just right. I also like GLSL but it does not look as accurate IMO. I am fortunate enough to have a completely reconditioned CRT monitor and chassis and over 70 original MVS carts so I'm in a decent position to judge Metal: The new settings look fantastic! You've taken them well beyond what you and I did over the summer... great work! Have you noticed if the texture scaling issue still remains for vertical games? I've only tested horizontal so far. Pro tip for those of us with older rigs: If you're experiencing lag with these settings, change hlsl_prescale_x and hlsl_prescale_y to 0. It does reduce the fidelity a little, but will improve processing. Edit: ok so I just tried 1942. At least for me, the scaling issue (really soft, foggy screen) still exists when the display is scaled down by a bezel. Maybe this has to do with my prescale settings, but it's too bad. For now I'll continue in mixed-mode: HLSL for horizontal, GLSL for vertical. Thanks, Metal! Glad you guys like it. Matching it to a real Geo is exactly how I built it. You're right that the brightness is high, but I did that so it's easier to adjust for the darker games. It's just seems easier to lower brightness when needed and maintain color than to turn up brightness/gamma without washing it out. Griffin I haven't noticed any issues with vertical games, they look fine to me so maybe it is your pre-scale. However I also don't own a vertical arcade machine to compare it exactly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
griffin518 Posted February 4, 2016 Share Posted February 4, 2016 I also noticed that the developers have improved the HLSL black levels. It's impressive how far it's come in the last couple of releases. Much more "real" of a rendering than GLSL, IMHO. Just wish the scaling worked for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Metalzoic Posted February 4, 2016 Author Share Posted February 4, 2016 are the new hlsl settings in mame 169 is worth to update from 165 If I remember right the big HLSL/GLSL updates happened in 162 and then another big upgrade in 167. At this point I'd say you might as well wait until the 24th of this month when 171 comes out and upgrade then. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jcm9800 Posted February 5, 2016 Share Posted February 5, 2016 thanks for the answer metalzoic then i will wait for this release and then i will be happy to try out your new settings ;-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Metalzoic Posted February 6, 2016 Author Share Posted February 6, 2016 thanks for the answer metalzoic then i will wait for this release and then i will be happy to try out your new settings ;-) Make sure you try out the GLSL stuff too to see which you prefer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RxBrad Posted February 26, 2016 Share Posted February 26, 2016 Just updated to MAMEUIFX 0.171, and am using these settings. They look pretty great. One thing... Does anyone else lose their rounded corners & screen curvature whenever they turn on MAME .lay bezels? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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