Corrected shaders for WinUAE

[Retro-Nerd]

Well i guess you could also try to lower the beam_min value with crt-guest-glow until you still get the desired results (and increase brightboost a bit). It's a good compromise i guess.

Couldn't find a decent compromise.

I borrowed some stuff just to try it out, looks decent to me.

Hopefully the vertical scrolling issue is gone...scanlines look different but still much sharper than with crt-guest.

Sadly not. Why is it always looking properly in 4x multiplier but not in 2x?

[guest.r]

I guess that any harder scanlines will do the same here with 2x or 3x, since i borrowed the best "hard" formula available.

Calculating the scanlines at higher internal y resolution makes them more even, here is the catch.

Toni could help i think by adding seperate internal resolutions options for horizontal and vertical resolutions. Increasing the horizontal resolution doesn't help at all here but makes the shaders much slower.

Using 1xhorizontal and 4xvertical should run at same speed like 2xmultiplier now - but with top notch scanlines.

I hope he has some time left for us since beamracing really slows shaders down and that seperate horizontal and vertical scaling could help a lot here.

[Retro-Nerd]

Your probably right. I know he isn't directly interested in shaders. But maybe for the sake of a better peformance he is willing to do it (some day). I'll stick with the older "CRT-Guest-Glow-Fast-Lo-Res.fx" for now.

[21stcentury]

I'm actually working on a new shader and you can find the result here :

https://nsm09.casimages.com/img/2019...5816113334.png

Don't forget to zoom it on maximum. The final result result is brighter than the picture.

I just have to resolve one problem : it's not working with lagless beamracing (PAL 50hz), there's some vertical stripes.

[Toni Wilen]

What is exactly needed and still missing? Include enough details. And as usual, I don't support any ugly hacks, it needs to be clean

[21stcentury]

I know you don't like scanline and other pictures effects .

I'm just going crazy because I don't understand why I have these vertical stripes in PAL mode and not in NTSC and of course It's too fast in NTSC mode.

I tried many things but nothing works

It's horrible because this "lagless BR" is absolutely fantastic, congrats for this hard work.

[guest.r]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

What is exactly needed and still missing? Include enough details. And as usual, I don't support any ugly hacks, it needs to be clean

Thanks Toni for stopping by.

Having much experience with WinUAE and crt shaders i couldn't not to notice that scaling multiplier increases the quality of scanlines, but here comes a trade-off, it's gets slower by square (regarding the scaling multiplier) and sometimes as much as 4x scale is required to introduce a proper effect, especially with trinitron like / harder scanlines. The catch is that it's vertical scaling that actually increases the quality while horizontal influences filtering a bit, but like 2x does the job very well.

So introducing seperate buttons in gui for horizontal and vertical scaling multipliers would allow the crt effect to be of highest quality while doubling the framerate. (i.e. 2xhorizontal, 4xvertical in comparison with 4x as it is now).

This would allow many good things, like quality crt shader usage with beamracing, intel gpu's, usage of heavier crt shaders etc...

Looking at the scaling multiplier button, it's quite large and could take a split. (attachment below).

In other words, if a user uses 1920x1080 resolution, using the scaling factor of 4x creates a 7680x4320 texture.

Using (2x, 4x) multiplier would create a 3840x4320 texture (2x faster processing - same quality of most shaders).

I know there could be some/much work involved, compatibility with older configs maintained, there is D3D9, DX11, masks, overlays...so it's ok to think it trough a bit.

I must also say that scaling alone provides a nice quality boost even as it is, so this would be a welcome bonus.

Keep up the good work...

[nobody]

That bubble bobble screen looks a lot like my Trinitron, possibly a bit more defined. The Amiga connected to that monitor produces more subtle scanlines that you barely notice. On the contrary devices that output less vertical lines like e.g NES produce that kind of scanlines.

[Toni Wilen]

Multiplier is now split to horizontal and vertical multiplier.

Anything else?

I probably get more interested when good and large enough 100Hz+ 1000nits HDR support (so basically has at least same specs as G-Sync HDR) monitors are available. Without crazy price..

[mcbpete]

Originally Posted by 21stcentury

I'm actually working on a new shader and you can find the result here :

https://nsm09.casimages.com/img/2019...5816113334.png

You might want to adjust the aperture grill resolution - In that example picture you have some pixels that are different colours within a single picture element (see the red colour on the mushroom against the blue sky for example)

[Retro-Nerd]

Multiplier is now split to horizontal and vertical multiplier.

Many thanks, Toni. It works, but somehow the vertical resolution isn't saved in a config (tried also from scratch). It always stays at "-" = disabled.

In other words, if a user uses 1920x1080 resolution, using the scaling factor of 4x creates a 7680x4320 texture.

Using (2x, 4x) multiplier would create a 3840x4320 texture (2x faster processing - same quality of most shaders).

2x, 4x is still way too slow. But 1x, 4x looks good enough to me.

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

Many thanks, Toni. It works, but somehow the vertical resolution isn't saved in a config (tried also from scratch). It always stays at "-" = disabled.

Should be fixed now.

[Retro-Nerd]

Yep!

[guest.r]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

Multiplier is now split to horizontal and vertical multiplier.

Anything else?

I probably get more interested when good and large enough 100Hz+ 1000nits HDR support (so basically has at least same specs as G-Sync HDR) monitors are available. Without crazy price..

Thanks Toni , i have tested it and it works very well.

I guess that's it for now since it can solve some major performance issues.

Thanks again...

For anyone interested, the "beta" can be downloaded here:
http://www.winuae.net/files/b/winuae.7z

@Nobody

That bubble bobble screen looks a lot like my Trinitron, possibly a bit more defined. The Amiga connected to that monitor produces more subtle scanlines that you barely notice. On the contrary devices that output less vertical lines like e.g NES produce that kind of scanlines.

The #defines in the shaders can be altered a bit to produce subtler scanlines, but the effect is deliberately a bit stronger to be more interesting. Don't forget that there are 2 versions of the shader, so you can have you fauvorite one altered...

@Retro-Nerd

2x, 4x is still way too slow. But 1x, 4x looks good enough to me.

Yeah, the 1x, 4x is my new option too. It's about the same speed as 2x before.

[Retro-Nerd]

And the scanlines looks great now in vertical scrolling.

[nobody]

With 1x, 2x looks fine on my PC. 3x works fine but looks the same.

[21stcentury]

Originally Posted by mcbpete

You might want to adjust the aperture grill resolution - In that example picture you have some pixels that are different colours within a single picture element (see the red colour on the mushroom against the blue sky for example)

I tried to take off colours for to replace them by a light grey but it give me the same result. I cannot publish a screenshot because the vertical stripes don't appears on it ?!?

[Dr.Venom]

Originally Posted by guest.r

As suggested by Retro-Nerd, i ported the "Trinitron" version to WinUAE format.

It doesn't need the extra stuff like the original, so i made it lightweight instead.

Thanks for this, it's a welcome addition

Personally I find it not as good as the glsl version, but that was to be expected I guess.

Originally Posted by guest.r

The #defines in the shaders can be altered a bit to produce subtler scanlines, but the effect is deliberately a bit stronger to be more interesting.

"Bad comments" were welcome too wasn't it Why o why are most shaders out there defaulting to these very unrealistic settings? Ugh

Personally I think it would be better to default to realistic settings and let it to the user to exaggerate effects if they find that more interesting. Before you know it people may think CRT's were really about that exaggerated look . Anyway...

If I compare it with real trinitron these values give a bit more realistic result:

#define beam_min     0.5     // (default 1.4) dark area beam min - narrow
#define beam_max     1.1     // (default 0.9) bright area beam max - wide

Originally Posted by guest.r

The catch is, the x-resolution must be edited (see the #defines) within the shader, now it's 1920.0 by default, should do for most folks.

After I've been using Retroarch for some time now I more and more realise the shader thing in WinUAE is too complex for an average user.

I wouldn't be surprised if at least 50% of users trying this stuff out get the wrong output and give up because they don't like what they see.

It's just too easy to go wrong:

- Have a different resolution than the 1920 "hardcoded" in the shader = wrong output
- Have "resolution" in display panel set to "Hires" (which is WinUAE default) = wrong output
- Have vertical supersampling set to something different than 4x (which is not default) = wrong output
- Don't have Bilinear filtering enabled = wrong output
- Don't have D3D9 enabled and a custom "_winuae.fx" loaded (which both are not default) = wrong output
- Do have D3D9 enabled and the custom _winuae.fx loaded but not some random PNG mask selected = wrong output

Given this I think many users never get to see what a proper output really looks like. You have to been following this thread meticulously to know every little step to take to get it to look as it was intended, which I'm sure 50% of users are not. They jump in, possibly don't like what they see (because it's wrong output) and move along.

Toni knows I have huge respect for his work on this project, and yes I'm very aware he's only interested in seeing all pixels in their unalterated "beauty", so I can only hope there'll be some interest from him to revamp the shader system in WinUAE somewhere down the line. Maybe as he said when 4K and HDR comes around for affordable prices. Who doesn't dream of perfect pixel accurate Trinitron Amiga output on 4K HDR screen somewhere down the road?!? With guest.r on board things can only get more interesting.


Anyway my 2cents ramble..

Originally Posted by guest.r

Yeah, strange things can happen with "harder" scanlines...
The screenshot you posted flickers on my display.
https://abload.de/image.php?img=newa...nd_crxjkzd.png

Ha! I've been experiencing very strange things on my side too with my LCD creating all kinds of beam ghosting for some extreme settings, that at first I thought you had added a very cool new CRT effect! . Then I took a snap but looking at it on another monitor the effects weren't there, really weird.

[Toni Wilen]

I already asked if something more needs to be done. This means explaining what and why. Like if some extra parameters are needed.

Not "Do it like xyz does", result is instant ignore. Also modifying winuae.fx is unsupported.

[nobody]

Shader is fine and looks gorgeous, just is not accurate about how it would look if you plugged an Amiga to Trinitron but looks like if you plugged a NES to Trinitron (drawing less pixels->more thick dark scanlines). Not a bad thing, I actually like that look more. And looks better than my previous favourite crt-hyllian.
Well you need more tweaking to get it work on winuae than retroarch because in retroarch there is a PRESET file that takes care of all steps you need to do in winuae.