Cool feature for PC users to reduce bullet blur in Retroarch.

[blazinglazers69]

This is probably old news for some of you, but it's new to me and neat so I wanted to share.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnwEJCrFmM

As the title suggests, this reduces blur. Not as big a deal for Cave games with slower bullets, but when I was playing Tatsujin/Truxton today I truly do feel like it helped a bit with the vividness of some of the really fast bullets. I'd be curious to see if any shmup players feel a difference it or if it's purely a placebo.

The effect was more apparent when I booted up Super Mario All Stars The Lost Levels. Whenever I had a lot of room to sprint with Luigi I'd notice blurring the most then on his sprite, and I can confirm that this did fix it.

It also seems to work with other shaders enabled, so if you add a second shader parameter you can still apply another CRT shader to reduce the raw pixel look. I was even able to record with OBS with no issues.

Kind of a cool QoL feature that's yet another step backwards towards CRTs that's possible as technology moves forwards.

Only other caveat is that I've got a 300Hz monitor and a very solid PC, so I'm not sure what a minimum hardware requirement for this might be apart from at least a 120Hz monitor.

[nogden]

Holy shit Batrider looking smooth as ever. Thank you!

[nogden]

After doing some further testing it’s DEFINITELY making a huge difference and it’s not placebo. The biggest game changer here is the shader sub frames setting being turned on. The shader helps too but when I toggle the sub frame setting on/off that’s where I can really tell. I’m able to gauge bullet speed & trajectory so well now, and time so much better. I’m literally micro dodging Batrider right now.

[blazinglazers69]

Hell yeah. Glad it helped dude.

[Lethe]

This is essentially just BFI with a shader that imitates rolling scan and isn't as headache-inducing as flicker.

Advantages over hardware BFI:
- Looks better
Disadvantages:
- Performance overhead
- Requires messing around with display settings
- Requires using Retroarch (ewww)

[tomwhite2004]

- Requires using Retroarch (ewww)

ShaderGlass supports the feature too, not sure if it's still in the beta builds or not tbh.

[blazinglazers69]

This is essentially just BFI with a shader that imitates rolling scan and isn't as headache-inducing as flicker.

Advantages over hardware BFI:
- Looks better
Disadvantages:
- Performance overhead
- Requires messing around with display settings
- Requires using Retroarch (ewww)

Performance overhead may be a factor. I've got a 7800x3d with a 5070 gpu so I'm fine there

I have to concede that RA has made some bizarre and downright stubborn and stupid UI choices. That being said, the level of customization is insane and once you get past the initial learning curve and map a few hotkeys, the practice I get with it is so streamlined an optimized that I love it--warts and all. I do however use PCSX2 and Dolphin for standalone stuff. Anything before that, I'm fine on RA.

Someone on reddit also mentioned display settings, but apart from the Retroarch tutorial steps, all I did was toggle off G Sync in my Nvidia panel and it took like 2 seconds.

- Requires using Retroarch (ewww)

ShaderGlass supports the feature too, not sure if it's still in the beta builds or not tbh.

That would be really sick! I'd love to use it on Raiden IV and Mushi original mode when the bullets get quite fast.

[Starfighter]

Cool!

But...
"Make sure Sync to exact content framerate is off"
That's the setting we just discovered lets, for example, Raiden Fighters Jet run at the correct 54 fps! Perhaps some people can just remember to switch it off and on depending on what game they're currently playing but I'll 100% forget...

Edit: Well, I might not even have the hardware to do this anyway (Ryzen 5 3600, 6700 XT) even if my monitor supports 144hz, hehe.

[blazinglazers69]

Cool!

But...
"Make sure Sync to exact content framerate is off"
That's the setting we just discovered lets, for example, Raiden Fighters Jet run at the correct 54 fps! Perhaps some people can just remember to switch it off and on depending on what game they're currently playing but I'll 100% forget...

Edit: Well, I might not even have the hardware to do this anyway (Ryzen 5 3600, 6700 XT) even if my monitor supports 144hz, hehe.

That’s a pretty decent set up I would think? Like maybe using this on a demanding 3D game would stress it? Tbh I don’t even know if this is dependent more on cpu or gpu.

And yes, excellent and very relevant point about Raiden Fighters and 54Hz games. It’s no silver bullet. I personally don’t mind tinkering with lots of settings myself, but I get why not everyone wants to take the time to do it. My approach is to usually only have 2-3 games going tops at a time across Steam, GOG, and emulation so usually I can find a happy medium for all my stuff.