CRT shaders for 1440p monitor

[deezdrama]

So I recently got rid of my 27"crt PC emulation setup due to needing the room that it once occupied for my slim 4 player arcade cab since the ol lady didnt want it in the living room anymore.

Ive overhauled the cab with a new pc, new wiring/buttons, and a new 32" LG 600B 1440p ips monitor.

Before in this machine I had a 32" samsung led tv and input lag was so bad that certain games were unplayable without using retroarchs runahead.
My test games for apparent input lag are bonk on tg16 where double jumping on a trampoline flower needs precise timing and mike tysons punch out where if you got any input lag your not going to make it far and it will be obvious.
With the old tv i had to use 2 frames of run ahead...
With the new LG monitor i havnt had to enable run ahead at all which is great.
The problem is i have the monitor on vivid mode with brightness at max and because im using crt shaders and have a 15% tint tempered glass on my cab the image seems a tad dim.

Im not super informed on the different shaders available or best settings for them pertaining to a 1440p display like Im running. I know increasing gamma in shader settings is possible but havent felt informed enough to start messing with settings.

Basically in mame I just turned HLSL on and used these settings....
https://forums.launchbox-app.com/topic/ ... ent=332403

In retroarch ive tried all the presets and prefer the "aperature grill" crt filter. I havnt tried tweeking any settings.

Is there any tricks or suggestions for running crt filters with a 1440p monitor?

Thanks!

[Guspaz]

600B isn't an LG monitor model number, so I'm assuming it's the 32QN600-B? The QN600 is the important part, the letters are the generation and the 600 is where it's placed in the lineup. The -B is just the plastic colour.

It has a peak brightness of 350 nits, not very well suited for your current use case considering that you'll lose a lot of overall brightness from a CRT shader and the tinted glass. It's also not an ideal colourspace, because sRGB is a much smaller colourspace than either the original or newer versions of the NTSC colourspace. DCI-P3, the most common colourspace for wide-gamut computer monitors, is much closer to covering NTSC. You may want to look for a monitor with at least an HDR600 rating. HDR600 is complete shit as far as HDR is concerned, but it does mean that the monitor must support at least 600 nits, which is a lot more than the ~350 that LG likes to target.

[deezdrama]

600B isn't an LG monitor model number, so I'm assuming it's the 32QN600-B? The QN600 is the important part, the letters are the generation and the 600 is where it's placed in the lineup. The -B is just the plastic colour.

It has a peak brightness of 350 nits, not very well suited for your current use case considering that you'll lose a lot of overall brightness from a CRT shader and the tinted glass. It's also not an ideal colourspace, because sRGB is a much smaller colourspace than either the original or newer versions of the NTSC colourspace. DCI-P3, the most common colourspace for wide-gamut computer monitors, is much closer to covering NTSC. You may want to look for a monitor with at least an HDR600 rating. HDR600 is complete shit as far as HDR is concerned, but it does mean that the monitor must support at least 600 nits, which is a lot more than the ~350 that LG likes to target.

Damnit lol.... Why didnt I ask here before buying a monitor

Oh well.... Maybe ill treat myself to an oled and mirror the cabs image to it

[Guspaz]

You can still pump up the gamma a bit, perhaps, but there's a limit, ultimately there's only so much light coming out of the screen, and gamma changes will only distort the colours farther from what they're supposed to be.

[deezdrama]

You can still pump up the gamma a bit, perhaps, but there's a limit, ultimately there's only so much light coming out of the screen, and gamma changes will only distort the colours farther from what they're supposed to be.

Ive never really messed with hdr either... Is it worth enabling for emulation?

[Guspaz]

Do any emulators actually support HDR? Most monitors don't do HDR worth a damn, unless they support FALD with a decent number of zones, or are per-pixel like OLED. Anything less than DisplayHDR 600 is going to probably look worse than SDR. DisplayHDR 600 is where it might look slightly better. DisplayHDR 1000 is where you start getting a good HDR experience. The "DisplayHDR True Black" standards are even better (they're meant for OLED and similar).

[PearlJammzz]

My experience with HDR monitors:

HDR400- This is a complete worthless spec and only created so manufacturers could sell you crap monitors with a HDR logo on the box. You get a drastically worse image with HDR enabled. If you have HDR400, just turn HDR off.
HDR600- This is bottom of the barrel HDR and depending on the monitor it could look good, it could not. You need great blacks for HDR600 to work. That usually means a VA-style panel. IPS typically doesn't have good enough blacks for HDR600 to work effectively with HDR on. Likely, you'll still want to leave it off.
HDR1000- This is where you will actually get a decent HDR picture. This, IMO, should be a requirement to call something HDR in monitor land (or true black for OLED). If you can snag a HDR1000 rated monitor then you should be getting a pretty solid HDR experience on PC. Implementations depending of course.
HDR True Black- I have zero experience with this, but I do have a CX OLED so I assume it'll be similar. This is the current bees knees of displays. Luckily JOLED and LG are ramping up production of monitor-sized panels this year. We should see a LOT more options for OLED monitors in 2022 and beyond.

Also, don't discount pixel response times (or other components of the image). This, IMO, makes a massive difference with classic gaming. From slowest to fastest (typical): VA, IPS, TN, OLED. Contrast (worst to best): TN, IPS, VA, OLED. Colors (worst to best): TN, VA, IPS, OLED. Viewing angles (worst to best): TN, VA, IPS, OLED.

As to your question specifically, I don't use software emulation at all so I have very limited experience. A good friend of mine does and does it with a 55" OLED. He uses CRTRoyal I believe but heavily tweaked. Even with OLED you'll get some image persistence with fast moving stuff (say, Sonic) but with the CRT shaders that's mitigated somewhat. With BFI set to high on current OLEDs it looks...amazing. It's way too dark, however, once you add any sort of scanlines or filters. This is in a pitch black room too BTW. There are a few options out there and ones to mimic the different popular CRT tubes out there. Even some I think that simulate composite bleed/fuzziness. Typically, the higher the resolution the better you can get the look. At 4k on the OLED (true blacks) it almost looks like its simulating the individual phosphors. My friend has his setup to simulate a high-end consumer Trinitron (so not quite PVM). It looks really, really great. Good luck!

PS, I hope someday we get a nice little box we can put in-line with our real hardware (or perhaps the OSSC Pro is powerful enough?) to add these awesome filters to original hardware. It really helps the experience when paired with an OLED TV (and likely microLED in 5-10 years).

[BONKERS]

Control the lighting conditions where you are playing? And add a bias light?
Lighting conditions play a gigantic role in how light from a monitor is perceived. There's a reason why every special feature from the making of a movie where the are a monitors used for grading/etc are dimly lit and lighting controlled.
If you have huge bright overhead lights hitting the entire environment you are going be fighting an uphill battle. I use all my devices calibrated to 120 cd/2 (Even my phone with an HDR capable OLED screen I have calibrated to 120 nits. I don't emulate anything with it however. So no experience with CRT shaders) with bias lighting and brightness perception even with CRT shaders is never an issue.
Here's a picture showing my desk set up with the exposure quickly matched by eye roughly to show what I see with my eyes. (With a CRT shader running)
https://u.cubeupload.com/MrBonk/IMG20210220214537.jpg This is a 1080p IPS LCD

I recently just scored a great deal on a 25" PVM 1080p OLED medical monitor that apparently has some kind of rolling scan to get CRT like motion blur performance. I can't wait to test that out once it arrives. and see if targeting 120 nits on a 100% white screen is possible as well if it has the range and doesn't dim too much. Under the right lighting conditions I assume it will look fantastic.

[orange808]

Yeah. I saw those. The seller isn't sharing photos of them turned on and the screens are scratched up. Surgeries usually have a stationary clock and time in the corner--along with some HUD information. I worried about burn in and hours. Depending on the camera they used, it might also have uneven burn in--if the fiber optic cam didn't output 16:9. (Hard to know when the seller isn't taking photos of the display turned on.)

The seller admits they sell for thousands. I couldn't figure out why the seller didn't want to get thousands. Seems odd.

[Fudoh]

I recently just scored a great deal on a 25" PVM 1080p OLED medical monitor

congrats! Which one did you get ? A 2541 ? I really enjoy mine (two 25" PVMs, a 25" BVM and a 7" PVM).

[fernan1234]

I looked into those medical OLED PVMs a while ago and they really seem great. They seem to have almost all of the advantages of functionalities of the broadcast monitors. They even have the advantage of including analogue component/RGB input built into it, which for the broadcast monitors an impossible to find revision of an input card is required. They only lack stuff like interlaced picture mode, oh and the native scan mode only works for 720p. There could be a bunch of other smaller features missing, but nothing major. Of course the panel quality is also lower grade than those used on the top end broadcast monitors.

But specifically in regard to those currently up on ebay, I agree with orange808 that there's a lot of concerns. Even without verifying if it has burn in or dead pixel issues, all those scratches will be way too distracting. They will definitely be noticeable when in use.

You can buy one new for a small fraction of what the OLED BVMs sell for though, while getting about 95% of the benefits. Definitely worth considering if you have the budget for it.

edit: on second thought, if you can get the seller to give them up for a couple hundred bucks, it's probably worth it just to experience these and better decide if you'd want to invest in a new or lightly used one.