Corrected shaders for WinUAE

[guest.r]

@Retro-Nerd

Looks nice, but is it LoRes only? Because in WinUAE HiRes/Line Mode Double it doesn't look right with mixed resolutions.

CRT-Guest-Hires-SmartRes is a special shader with adapted filtering, so it can look nice in exceptional/WB hires situations. It should still be used for this.

Such filtering cannot be normally implemented in my new shader.

You can use the new shader with hi-res/lo-res/double-line modes without issues in majority of games though.

[Retro-Nerd]

Ah Ok. Good to know.

[guest.r]

Needed to rework the shader to make it Hires-SmartRes. It's really usable in WB and WHDload loading screens etc... The only drawback now are interlaced screens (like with most crt shaders) and worse performance.

A screenie:



Edit: a very naughty bug fixed regarding the beam_min parameter. It isn't noticable unless you try to alter it without success.

[Retro-Nerd]

Great, now it looks awesome in hires and mixed resolutions.

[guest.r]

Thanks for a nice reply, Retro-Nerd!

Well, i decided to resolve the remaining issue too, namely the "interlaced" screens in high vertical resolution.

I didn't use interlacing or something, because it would require a frame-count variable and even then, i don't like the flickering effect too much.

Hope this shader has a good way to make these screens nicer.

[Retro-Nerd]

Sweet! Interlace with CRT shader was always an issue. Fixed now. Thanks again.


https://slow.pics/c/XpmsKFA5

[guest.r]

Just dropping in a nice mask shader. I belive it's much easier and also popular to use it than a (unsupported) _winuae.fx hack.

I tested if ReShade works with WinUAE and it works quite decently with the D3D11 mode.

I have some experience with this shading environment, so i could port the crt-guest-dr-venom masks (including slotmask) without much trouble.

Reshade comes with a nice gui interface, so setting up a mask is quite comfortable.

There are some benefits for using shader masks. Masks can be applied in custom linear (gamma) space, mask multiplier can be greater than 1.0 and mask strength can depend from pixel color.

Yeah, the drawback is ReShade must be installed and some key bindings get used up, but these masks are quite authentic, almost the same as in the shader.

[guest.r]

I prepared a decent crt shader with a funny name.
Hires version is very tricky to do, maybe at a later point...

It's best used with the reshade mask shader for a brighter image.



Edit: Some nice tweaks

[guest.r]

A Hi-Res version wasn't that tricky after all.
It's a tad slower ofc., but setting the multipliers to 1x,3x will let you (instead of 2x,3x for example) have a normal experience.

My motivation for this shader was to move a bit away from the TV look with stronger scanlines towards a decent monitor look.

The shader also has nice tweaking potential for different appearances.

[guest.r]

Finally found the small bug!

It was a color-clamping issue with the bottom scanline.

Looks a bit nicer now.

Update:

Fixed uneven scanlines with bright colors, added come crisp.

[guest.r]

While developing some new shaders i introduced some changes which are beneficial to how brightboost is applied, which also leads to a nicer scanline look.

So i made a rework of most of the shaders and tweaked them acordingly.

Newer released shaders are also included in the shader pack.

The shaders have tweakable parameters, best use something like Notepad++ to access them.

[Retro-Nerd]

Thanks for the updated shader pack. Will try them later.

There is actually one issue that i noticed some month ago. Beam Racing in combination with all of your CRT shader causes tearing in some games, mostly vertically. It's very prominent in Turrican 1 or Lionheart. Without a shader it's smooth (Beam Racing still activated). And with standard vsync your shaders are fine though. Any clue what's going on there?

[guest.r]

Yeah, i can reproduce it with D3D9/11. Shader length doesn't seem to play a great role, neither hi-res/lo-res switching.

I tested it with lores, D50-D65-WarmerColors.fx shader (a simple shader) and both backends, with 1x,1x multipliers and various "slices".



It would be terrific if it's fixable in any way i guess.

Edit: it's mostly OK with 1 slice.

[fxgogo]

Loving your work guest.r. Quick question, I have been playing with reshade and your shaders. Should we be mixing them together? Do they fight each other and is there a real world performance impact?

[Retro-Nerd]

It would be terrific if it's fixable in any way i guess.

For now i'm using Radeon Enhanced Sync. It fixes the tearing completely and doesn't seem to harm the snappy movement of Beam Racing (at least not that much).

[Retroplay]

Just want to "butt in" and say thank you, guest.r.
These shaders are bloody brilliant.

[guest.r]

Thanks for the nice words!

@fxgogo

Quick question, I have been playing with reshade and your shaders. Should we be mixing them together? Do they fight each other and is there a real world performance impact?

Yeah, they can be used together as reshade manages it's own resources. The performance impact is not very big with WinUaeMask shader as ReShade shades at 1x output resolution. I recommend using the latest version though.

@Retro-Nerd

For now i'm using Radeon Enhanced Sync. It fixes the tearing completely and doesn't seem to harm the snappy movement of Beam Racing (at least not that much).

Maybe it's an AMD only issue, fixed by the setting used. I'm missing this option atm. with my old adapter though.

[Retro-Nerd]

I don't think so. Beam Racing without shaders is fine. And your shaders without Beam Racing too (Vsync or Enhanced Sync enabled).

A pity that the combination of BR+CRT shader eats up so much GPU power. My RX 580 works as hard as in modern PC games with high settings enabled.

[guest.r]

In my crude understanding using shaders means extra buffers. Up to 9 in general. In most cases only "0" pass is used.
As i recall D3D9 uses an additional optional working samplers etc.
Long story short, maybe for performance sake shader buffers aren't synced and tearing happens. Can't test it on nVidia HW though.
Most folks could live with 1 shader pass (pass 0) synced though, if this is the case.

[Retro-Nerd]

Happens with one shader (only pass 0 set with a CRT shader) too. If i understand you correctly.

edit: I tested 1x, 1x for the shader multipliers and the tearing is gone on my system. A 1x, 2x setting seems fine too. But this produces uneven scanlines in movement as you already now. I need 1x, 4x for a proper look.