MAME HLSL CRT SCANLINE EMULATION PRESETS

[Fudoh]

From the sample snapshots above, I think we're talking about the actual size of the shadow mask cells or stripes. You can tell that the size is considerably larger for lower resolution like 256x224 and smaller for higher resolutions like 384x224, while the size of the stripes should actually stay the same.

[cools]

Yes, I can see now. It looks like it's applying the mask to the image, rather than applying the image behind the mask.

[cmoses]

This brings up a question I have had as well in regards to scanlines and how they are rendered in MAME with HLSL. Should scanline size be the same on all games? I know there were different resolution monitors produced. Original arcade games were mostly on low res monitors (CGA), then came med res monitors (EGA) which I know were not widely used, then high res (VGA) monitors. Did all of these monitors have similar dot pitches? I thought I had read that most arcade monitors have a dot pitch around .82. If so, would all of the scanlines be similiar in size and number per screen?

The reason I ask is in tweaking HLSL I see a big difference in games that are low res, vs med to high res. Below is an example of scanlines from Metal Slug on the left at 320x224 and Toobin' on the right at 512x384. The images are 100x100 screen captures and are blown up 5x times to show clarity. I have turned off the shadow mask and pincushion in these images to make the scan lines stand out. There are 29 scanlines in the Metal Slug image and 49 scanlines in the Toobin' image. These are both taken from the upper left corner of the screen. All other settings for HLSL are the same.

My question is are these accurate? Are scanlines based more on the resolution or dot pitch? In looking at these images and the way HLSL is rendering them it looks like it is resolution based.

[cools]

Scanlines are resolution based.

[NUeda]

Yes cmoses,
that is correct behavior for scanlines. Those two games should look different from each other.

Just to reiterate what others have already said,
real CRT displays have dark lines on the screen,
which are gaps between the bright lines lit by RGB electron guns.

Scanline count is actually flexible to some degree on most monitors, by using vertical adjustments.

And CRT's that accept multiple scan timings(15, 24, 31 KHz) have very flexible scanlines,
but their behaviors are usually limited to fixed presets.







The total count of dark lines will never deviate from the pixel lines count,
for every 2 bright lines of lit pixels (all the way from left to right for each line),
there will be 1 dark line sandwiched between them.





Ideally, in emulation,
for 224 lines of lit pixels, there should be 223 dark lines,
for 240 lines of lit pixels, 239 dark lines,
for 480 lines of lit pixels, 479 dark lines, and so on.









Aperture grille/shadow mask is a metal netting behind the glass screen.
It can never be adjusted or altered (except for degaussing).







Smaller CRT's tend to have coarser shadow mask,
and larger CRT's generally have finer shadow mask.

[cmoses]

Scanlines are resolution based.

Yes cmoses,
that is correct behavior for scanlines. Those two games should look different from each other.

Thanks Cools and NUeda for confirming this. I thought that was the case but just wanted confirmation.

[luiser2612]

Hello.

Hi I have a question.
So what's the best configuration of hlsl to play games like killer instinct, mortal kombat, the the king of fighter?
And I can give a link to download the filter crt_slot_mask.png.
I appreciate your answers.

thanks

[Mame4Life]

Hello.

Hi I have a question.
So what's the best configuration of hlsl to play games like killer instinct, mortal kombat, the the king of fighter?
And I can give a link to download the filter crt_slot_mask.png.
I appreciate your answers.

thanks

There is no 'best configuration' for everyone, it just depends on the quality of monitor that you have and how you perceive the image with your own eyes.

You just have to experiment with the settings until you find a setting that best pleases you.

[lettuce]

I have been trying out the RetroArch emulator recently and am loving the CRT shader effects this emulator has, since Mame isnt emulated yet (only FinalBurn) i was wondering if these type of CRT shader effects could be replicated with SweetFX.....



Im not talking about the scanline effect (as i know this can be achieved), but the curved look of the display, the fading out at the edges of the screen and the rounded corners. Can this be replicated with SweetFX??

[Fudoh]

I think overlays with alpha-blending (for the semi-transparency on the edges) should be possible.

You should really set a proper aspect ratio though. Or did you have a square tube back in the 90s ? The SNES does output in proper 4:3 with non-square pixels.

[cmoses]

Im not talking about the scanline effect (as i know this can be achieved), but the curved look of the display, the fading out at the edges of the screen and the rounded corners. Can this be replicated with SweetFX??

lettuce,

I am not sure about SweetFX but those features,the curved look of the display, the fading outta the edges of the screen and the rounded corners can all be done with HLSL. Take a look at this page

http://www.aep-emu.de/PNphpBB2-file-vie ... 18991.html

A combination of HLSL settings and a tweaked post.fx file can give you all of those. The rounded corners are a little hard to see in the picture below because they only show at the bottom.


https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/541 ... tion-L.jpg

[lettuce]

Im not talking about the scanline effect (as i know this can be achieved), but the curved look of the display, the fading out at the edges of the screen and the rounded corners. Can this be replicated with SweetFX??

lettuce,

I am not sure about SweetFX but those features,the curved look of the display, the fading outta the edges of the screen and the rounded corners can all be done with HLSL. Take a look at this page

http://www.aep-emu.de/PNphpBB2-file-vie ... 18991.html

A combination of HLSL settings and a tweaked post.fx file can give you all of those. The rounded corners are a little hard to see in the picture below because they only show at the bottom.


https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/541 ... tion-L.jpg

That worked great, but noticed the posted post.fx file has the 'gray signal with reflection' i just want 'gray signal with vignetting'

[cmoses]

That worked great, but noticed the posted post.fx file has the 'gray signal with reflection' i just want 'gray signal with vignetting'

The posted post.fx has gray signal with reflection and vignetting. There is a section in the post.fx that is marked as "// -- Light Reflection --". I bet you can comment out that whole section to remove the reflection you don't want. You would need to try it and test it. Let us know if you do.

[lettuce]

Spot on that worked!!!

But im not seeing the vignetting effect however!!....

[Mame4Life]

The rounded corners are a little hard to see in the picture below because they only show at the bottom.

Those rounded corners are due to a bug with Metal Slug and HLSL when you apply pincushion.

[cmoses]

Spot on that worked!!!

But im not seeing the vignetting effect however!!....

I think it's very light effect. Try it on a all white screen and see if you see it. I know Metal Slug has an all white screen in the opening. Not sure how you would go about tweaking it.

[cmoses]

Those rounded corners are due to a bug with Metal Slug and HLSL when you apply pincushion.

I thought the issue was with Metal Slug and the way it displays. The bottom few lines extend out further than the rest. I see this even if I have HLSL turned off and no pin cushioning. I thought this was just compensated for in the arcades with some horizontal stretching on the monitor.

[luiser2612]

Hello.

Hi I have a question.
So what's the best configuration of hlsl to play games like killer instinct, mortal kombat, the the king of fighter?
And I can give a link to download the filter crt_slot_mask.png.
I appreciate your answers.

thanks

There is no 'best configuration' for everyone, it just depends on the quality of monitor that you have and how you perceive the image with your own eyes.

You just have to experiment with the settings until you find a setting that best pleases you.

friend, I did not like that answer.
Could someone answer objetivamentey not like this sir.
I just want to know where I can download the filter crt_slot_mask.png
and settings which is ideal for playing on a 1080p TV to get the image as real as possible.
Thanks

[Daeymien]

friend, I did not like that answer.
Could someone answer objetivamentey not like this sir.
I just want to know where I can download the filter crt_slot_mask.png
and settings which is ideal for playing on a 1080p TV to get the image as real as possible.
Thanks

#1 https://dl.dropbox.com/u/5414984/mslug- ... t_mask.png

#2 The "ideal" setting for playing on a 1080p TV is not to. Anything beyond that is personal preference. There is no hard-and-fast best setting. A 1080p LCD/Plasma will never replicate an arcade CRT exactly. Period. You can get pretty close, but that measure of closeness is up to the individual's taste as Mame4Life has said.

[luiser2612]

friend, I did not like that answer.
Could someone answer objetivamentey not like this sir.
I just want to know where I can download the filter crt_slot_mask.png
and settings which is ideal for playing on a 1080p TV to get the image as real as possible.
Thanks

#1 https://dl.dropbox.com/u/5414984/mslug- ... t_mask.png

#2 The "ideal" setting for playing on a 1080p TV is not to. Anything beyond that is personal preference. There is no hard-and-fast best setting. A 1080p LCD/Plasma will never replicate an arcade CRT exactly. Period. You can get pretty close, but that measure of closeness is up the the individual's taste as Mame4Life has said.

Thank you very much for the reply.

[lettuce]

Any more updates, NUeda?

[cmoses]

Been going through HLSL withdrawals with nothing new recently. Hope to see some updates soon.

[Overkill]

MAME and MESS 0.150 is out today, need to check if something changed in HLSL

[Mame4Life]

MAME and MESS 0.150 is out today, need to check if something changed in HLSL

Just a few bug fixes, no new features.

[cools]

-HLSL updates: [MooglyGuy]
* Removed hlsl_read and hlsl_write options now that all slider
options are plumbed and have values matching the INI settings
* Added more surface release calls in order to fix device resetting
* Fixed draw order for quads, overlays now appear on top of vectors
in non-HLSL mode
* Moved aperture.png loading into create_resources/delete_resources so
that it is correctly reloaded when HLSL is toggled on and off

The first bit is useful.

[lettuce]

Hmmm seems like NUeda hasn't been about for ages, hopefully he hasn't decided to abandon this project he was doing some truly impressive work

[lettuce]

Im not talking about the scanline effect (as i know this can be achieved), but the curved look of the display, the fading out at the edges of the screen and the rounded corners. Can this be replicated with SweetFX??

lettuce,

I am not sure about SweetFX but those features,the curved look of the display, the fading outta the edges of the screen and the rounded corners can all be done with HLSL. Take a look at this page

http://www.aep-emu.de/PNphpBB2-file-vie ... 18991.html

A combination of HLSL settings and a tweaked post.fx file can give you all of those. The rounded corners are a little hard to see in the picture below because they only show at the bottom.


https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/541 ... tion-L.jpg

Damn this modded post.fx file doesnt work with the latest version of MAME 0.150 anymore!

[Overkill]

But the rest of the ini. files provided by NUeda are still working great in 0.150

[Domino]

But the rest of the ini. files provided by NUeda are still working great in 0.150

Well I'm having problems with his .ini files on .150.

On latest version of ShmupMAME + his .ini files it looks like this:



Might look dark but on my monitor with its adjustments it looks great.


Now this is what it looks on MAMEUI64 .150 + his .ini files:



Colors are too bright, hard to see scanlines, and colors are too much saturated. Changing the settings in MAME doesn't work that much at all!


HELPPPPP!!!!

[Overkill]

Have you tested a few more games? Horizontal games?