CRT Scanlines

[John Pillow]

Hello Gents,
first of all congrats Frode for the excellent FS-UAE, best Amiga emulator ever.

Truly enjoying some good old games lately, and trying to find the "perfect" config file.

With "shader = crt" i get really good looking scanlines, better than with the "scanlines = 1" argument.

As recommended i also added:

low_resolution = 1
line_doubling = 0

But unfortunately on my MacBook Pro (resolution 1440x900) the crt curvature emulation is just too much (top left and right corners are really curved, a lot).

Also tried with the theme.lua: http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=867711&postcount=22

But no success. Is there any way to get the "shader = crt" scanlines without the crt curvature?

Tried all other bundled Shanders but i can't seem to find the right one.

Also, any tips for the best aspect ratio and resolution?

"zoom = 640x512" seems to be the best option with my setup.

Thank you!

[jbl007]

Is there any way to get the "shader = crt" scanlines without the crt curvature?

Locate the file crt.shader (under Linux it is usually in /usr/share/fs-uae/shaders) and change

        // Enable screen curvature.
        #define CURVATURE

to

        // Enable screen curvature.
        // #define CURVATURE

But if you just want to have scanlines you should check out the following shaders:
scanline-3x.shader
scanline-4x.shader
scanlines-classic.shader
scanlines-nonlinear-blur.shader
scanlines-nonlinear.shader

For scanlines only it is IMHO not necessary to use low_resolution = 1 because this makes hires screens look really bad.

[FrodeSolheim]

Yes, jbl007's advice are all good

And as pointed out, low_resolution = 1 and line_doubling = 0 is useful with pixel-enhancing shaders (e.g. hq2x), but not with scanline shaders.

[John Pillow]

Thank you so much jbl007 and Frode!

On OSX i modified the crt.shader file located at:

/FS-UAE.app/Contents/Resources/fs-uae/shaders

And here are the results:

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/713/51939596.jpg/

And with "low_resolution = 1" and "line_doubling = 0"

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/819/27130046.jpg/

What do you think it's the best looking?

Will also try the other suggested shaders.

Cheers!

[John Pillow]

Hello again! For the following shaders:

scanlines-classic.shader
scanlines-nonlinear-blur.shader
scanlines-nonlinear.shader

I get the following errors:

"failed to compile fragment shader
no shader passes loaded"

Am running FS-UAE 2.2.0 under OSX, is there something else that needs to be installed?

Cheers!

[John Pillow]

Forgot to mention my laptop has both an AMD Radeon HD 6750M 1024 MB and an Intel HD Graphics 3000, maybe these shaders are not compatible at all with these gx cards?

[FrodeSolheim]

Hi, you should post the file FS-UAE.log.txt. When shader compilation fails, details are logged in the log file

[John Pillow]

Hi Frode, thank you, here in attachment my FS-UAE.log

Cheers!

[jbl007]

I got this error with the scanlines-classic.shader

0:6(23): error: operands of `==' must have the same type

I was able to fix it. At least it works for me... Open it in a text editor and change line 19 from

        if (mod(line, 2) == 0) {

to

        if (mod(line, 2) == 0.0) {

I have no problems with the nonlinear-shaders. Are some drivers are more tolerant then others?

[FrodeSolheim]

Indeed, the "problem" is that some drivers are more tolerant than others, and I unfortunately have a tolerant one. From John Pillow's log:

WARNING: failed to compile fragment shader
ERROR: 0:15: No matching function for call to mod(int, int)

The problem here is that mod expects floats, according to the documentation, and it does not seem to implicitly cast types (probably according to specs). So that should be easily fixable. Hopefully, the nvidia shader compiler can at least output warnings when I don't follow the specs correctly, so I'll look into that first

[FrodeSolheim]

I've made FS-UAE always write shader compilation log to the log file, and I then fixed the warnings issued by the nVidia compiler.

Attached is the fixed shaders. Can you extract these and overwrite the ones you have installed, and then try again?

[John Pillow]

Thank you so much Frode, they indeed work beautifully now:

scanlines-classic.shader: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images...esclassic.jpg/
scanlines-nonlinear.shader: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images...nonlinear.jpg/
scanlines-nonlinear-blur.shader: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images...inearblur.jpg/



Cheers!

[FrodeSolheim]

Thanks for testing! The fixed shaders are included in version 2.2.2 (http://fengestad.no/fs-uae/2013/04/1...2-2-2-released).

[John Pillow]

You Sir are unstoppable,
awesome!

P.S.: Me back playing the hell out of X-Out, must finish that game!

[liveevil]

I've also tried the shader = crt. It looks far too curved especially at the top corners. Is it supposed to be like that ? It's almost a sphere. I've tried it at 1366x768 and 1920x1080 and it looks the same on both. Obviously it looks worse at 4:3 but nearly all CRT's were 4:3. Is there a shader that is less curved (more realistic) but still simulates a CRT/TV ?

[FrodeSolheim]

Originally Posted by liveevil

I've also tried the shader = crt. It looks far too curved especially at the top corners. Is it supposed to be like that ? It's almost a sphere. I've tried it at 1366x768 and 1920x1080 and it looks the same on both. Obviously it looks worse at 4:3 but nearly all CRT's were 4:3. Is there a shader that is less curved (more realistic) but still simulates a CRT/TV ?

I haven't made this shader, and don't plan to modify it. But you can

crt.shader is a text file, and you can modify parameters there. I'll be surprised if the curveness isn't easily modifiable there.

(You can put a copy of the shader file anywhere on your disk, and use shader = full-path-to-crt-shader, so it won't be overwritten by future FS-UAE updates)-

[liveevil]

OK but is it supposed to look like this (see attachments) ? Do you know if there is a shader that's compatible that isn't as curved ? Thanks.

[FrodeSolheim]

Originally Posted by liveevil

OK but is it supposed to look like this (see attachments) ? Do you know if there is a shader that's compatible that isn't as curved ? Thanks.

Yes, I think so.

And, as I said, you do not need to look for a less curved shader. Just take a look at the text file and change it to your liking.

[liveevil]

OK, thanks for the fast response.

Edit: Sorted it, thanks.

[isamu]

Originally Posted by FrodeSolheim

crt.shader is a text file, and you can modify parameters there. I'll be surprised if the curveness isn't easily modifiable there.

Can you tell me the text string we should be looking for that corresponds with the curveness parameters?