Best overall Shader for CRT effect

[johnnyskullhead]

Hi just started using Launchbox

 

have used retropie and liked using shaders

 

not sure which one or how to enable can you set one for all emus or does it have to be individual ?

 

Thanks in advance

[Lordmonkus]

Shaders are setup in the emulators themselves.

[johnnyskullhead]

thanks for that

 

is there a way for all retroarch emus to be configured together like you can in retropie ?

[Charco]

If you save your settings to the main retroarch.cfg file they will carry across all cores.

[Zombeaver]

You can also create per-core and per-game overrides for things including, but not limited to, shaders. Some shaders look good in some scenarios but bad in others depending on the type of content. If you decide you want all PSX games to use X shader, go into the Quick Menu and tell it to save the core override. If you decide that you want a specific PSX game to use a different shader from the rest of them, go into the quick menu and save the game override. It'll prioritize using them as Game Override > Core Override > Base.

[Zombeaver]

As far as "which one is best" it's a matter of personal preference. CRT-Hyllian Multipass is the one I use for pretty much everything. Other noteable ones are CRT-Hyllian Glow, CRT-Easymode Halation, CRT-Royale, and CRT-Royale Kurozumi (this one is in the "cgp" shader folder, not "crt"). Hyllian Multipass and Easymode Halation look good even without integer scaling, the others not as much.

I've got some examples of quite a few of them in the thread below. I recommend downloading the zip I attached in that post and looking at them that way. Some of the image previews don't work right in the post and they have to be viewed full screen anyway otherwise they look weird.

 

[Crush]

I use a slightly different approach with Retroarch shaders:

I setup a main shader per core, then i create small XXX_shader.cfg files containing this line:

video_shader = ":\shaders\<name of shader>.glslp"

Each file has a different shader and if i want to bypass the main shader for specific games i add in the Custom Command Line parameters:

--appendconfig "config\XXX_shader.cfg"

 

[Lordmonkus]

My favourite shader lately is crt-aperture. It's simple, looks good overall, looks good with integer and non integer scalling and even on vertical arcade games.

[Crush]

Also don't forget about ReShade: https://reshade.me/

You can use it to add shaders to emus not supporting them. I use it to add Scanlines to the DX9 backend of PPSSPP and Hoxs64.

 

 

[Zombeaver]

5 minutes ago, Crush said:

I setup a main shader per core, then i create small XXX_shader.cfg files containing this line:

video_shader = ":\shaders\<name of shader>.glslp"

Each file has a different shader and if i want to bypass the main shader for specific games i add in the Custom Command Line parameters:

--appendconfig "config\XXX_shader.cfg"

That's exactly how overrides work though. It just creates a file for the changes that you make (which could be a shader change or anything else). If you open one up it'll only have "video_shader = [whatever]" and or anything else you change. Just takes a second to save and they're loaded automatically.

[Crush]

Older versions of Retroarch had no overrides...

[Zombeaver]

Just now, Crush said:

Older versions of Retroarch had no overrides...

Yep...

Plan on staying on 1.3.6 forever then? You might as well get started. Pre-1.4.1 configs don't work in a lot of cases with 1.4.1+

[Crush]

No, i just moved to 1.4.1 but i already have the .cfg files ready from 1.3.6

 

[Zombeaver]

23 minutes ago, Crush said:

No, i just moved to 1.4.1 but i already have the .cfg files ready from 1.3.6

 

Again, there will be instances where they're not going to work anymore. "Per-core configs" doesn't even exist in the UI anymore. It was deprecated in nightlies a while before even 1.4.0.

https://www.libretro.com/index.php/retroarch-1-4-1-major-changes-detailed/

Quote

 

Configurations

Radius greatly improved and expanded the config override functionality, adding the ability to save overrides directly from the RetroArch menu, rather than having to create them manually with a text editor. He also added the ability to save per-core and per-game shader presets, which is the main thing users wanted to change from core to core (along with retropad mapping, which is already handled via the per-core/per-game remapping function). With all of this added functionality, we decided to completely remove the conflicting and often broken and unpredictable “per-core configs” option, which had already been deprecated but kept around for legacy/transition support.

 

Control remapping is split out as well into core and game remaps. They work much the same way as overrides (change your controls and save a core remap or game remap) but are independent and can be used in conjunction with overrides.

[Crush]

I rarely use Retroarch to change settings. I usually have a few generic configurations already setup, then i change a few settings in a text editor (shader, overlay, save path), i save the config with a new name and i have a new config for a new core.

Specific core settings are saved in a separate file anyway - retroarch-core-options.cfg, so you can use generic configs for everything else without breaking anything.

 

Edited February 16, 2017 by Crush

[Zombeaver]

Alrighty. Rock on bro.

[Charco]

46 minutes ago, Crush said:

Also don't forget about ReShade: https://reshade.me/

You can use it to add shaders to emus not supporting them. I use it to add Scanlines to the DX9 backend of PPSSPP and Hoxs64.

 

 

Interesting. Does this work for Demul?

[Crush]

Yes, if you are using the DX11 plugin select DX10+ when installing ReShade in the Demul directory. The installation is simple: you install ReShade in the emu folder and enable it with Shift+F2. Choose shader, change parameters and you are done. If you want to remove ReShade you simply delete the files it copies in the Demul dir.

 

Edited February 16, 2017 by Crush

[Charco]

Thanks, I might try that!

[Lordmonkus]

My experience with Reshade is that its "crt scanline" preset is not very good and you have to do a lot of manual tweaking to get something looking somewhat decent. I did get it tweaked with SSF after a while of tweaking numbers.