Shaders - How do they work?

[spacegoathlz]

I have only been trying emulation for a short time. I see references to shaders from time to time, but I have never really seen anything in depth. While this might not be the place for it, can anyone suggest a resource/site to check out for a complete noob to find what might work with what emulator (mostly 16bit & down) that will give me an idea how people are getting near or even true HD quality out of systems that for me look like squares stacked on squares shooting at other squares? I'm running on a 32' 1080p Vizio, and most games earlier than PS2 look horrible.

[SentaiBrad]

So you're approaching this wrong, slightly. It is all emulator based, not an external system. So for the example of RetroArch you get that set up then when you load a core and a game you can edit Shader options in RA. Desmume and PPSSPP have them too for example but they also have scaling options mostly which is not necessarily the same as internal resolution scaling, but close. RetroArch does Internal Resolution scaling based on the core you have loaded, so the DS Core does this. Then there is shader's for various set up's based on the system you are emulating (the Pixellate shader doesn't work great with 3D games for example), and then there really isn't scaling options except for the resolution of the window. So if you are trying to get Shaders for SNES, etc, watch our Tutorial series on YouTube. The link is in my signature. Most tutorials deal with RetroArch but not at all do I talk about shaders, only some.

[Lordmonkus]

Oh shit, where to begin. Short answer, shaders are basically a set of graphical "filters" (for a simple term) to modify the look of a game. Long answer gets far more complicated but for a place to start reading go over to the Retroarch shaders forum and you can read up on them. link Now going by your post you are looking to make 16 bit and under graphics look HD and that simply isn't going to happen but there is some stuff you can do depending on personal taste and keep in mind all shader choices are personal preference. Some people prefer to smoothed out sprites and round them off while other people try and mimic the old look of a CRT TV which is what all the art in these older games was designed to look best on. Personally I go for a good CRT look but that's just me. Here's a thread I started a few weeks ago talking about shaders and what kind people like to use and there's some screen shots to give you some idea of how they look. link Different emulators implement shaders in different ways but Retroarch probably does the best job of it and has the widest variety to suit different tastes. Keep in mind though that shaders do require a decent graphics card, the power to require to run shaders has little to do with CPU power. I hope this gives you a start on what you want to know, feel free to ask anything else and i'm sure myself and others here can help you out.

[spacegoathlz]

That pretty much did it guys. As is obvious now, I only had a rough and warped idea of where shaders come from (I had seen references to downloading them for ePSXe). I understand that they won't actually give HD graphics, the smoothing is what I was looking for. If you've ever played FFVIII with nothing more than upscaling, you know what I mean. It looks damn near like Robotron from the Atari 2600. I just want to smooth the edges where things aren't all minecrafty. Thanks for the help!

[Lordmonkus]

Yeah upscaling isn't the same thing as a shader and generally you shouldn't use shader and upscaling at the same time. Though there is a shader that upscales in Retroarch but I have no experience using it. Use shaders for 2d sprite based games and upscale 3d polygonal games. If you like the look of and you want to smooth out sprite based games look into the xBR shaders in Retroarch.