xemu Add Shaders to Xemu Xbox Emulator Tutorial

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Hey, just sharing a quick tutorial because, I spent a few hours making this work.

Basically I'm using Retroarch for most of my emulators and shaders. Especially the koko-aio crt shaders that are in my opinion the most immersive and realistic.

The issue is that some consoles doesn't have a retroarch core yet making it impossible to add shaders.

Fortunately someone called mausimus created an open-source app, ShaderGlass, which overlays any glsl or slang shaders on top of pretty much anything.

Sounds fun, but it doesn't work as simply as you'd want. Here's how I made it work :

1. First you need a working Xemu emulator configurated.

2. Now let's modify some Xemu parameters :

First, under Display tab, you need to disable fullscreen and fullscreen on startup :

A little further down the page you'll want to set the display mode to Stretch and set the aspect ratio on Native :

3. Now you'll want to install the latest stable version of ShaderGlass from their official GitHub :

https://github.com/mausimus/ShaderGlass/releases

You can then import any missing RetroArch shaders like the missing koko-aio that are fullscreen :

Set the input mode to Clone :

Save your setup as a custom profile, call it something like xemu.sgp :

4. Now in Launchbox modify your Xemu emulator and remove the -fullscreen flag in the command-line parameters.

Should be looking like this now :

5. Now, still in LaunchBox's Xemu emulator options, replace the Running Script by (update paths accordingly) :

WinWait, ahk_exe xemu.exe
WinWaitActive, ahk_exe xemu.exe
Run, D:\LaunchBox\ThirdParty\ShaderGlass\ShaderGlass.exe -f D:\LaunchBox\ThirdParty\ShaderGlass\presets\xemu.sgp
Sleep, 1000
WinActivate, ahk_exe xemu.exe
WinWaitActive, ahk_exe xemu.exe
WinWaitClose, ahk_exe xemu.exe
WinClose, ahk_exe ShaderGlass.exe

Basically what it does is simply :

• Wait for Xemu emulator to be ready
• Run ShaderGlass fullscreen with your profile
• Give back the focus to Xemu so that your controller works
• When Xemu end, exit ShaderGlass

You would think it's done but unfortunately you still require borderless gaming to get Xemu fullscreen without being actually fullscreen. Otherwise your shader will clip on both sides and look like this :

6. Install the legacy open source version of Borderless Gaming which is still working great up to this day on Windows 11 :

https://legacy.borderlessgam.ing

7. Add Xemu to your Favorites which means it's going to fullscreen window the app automatically :

8. Check Run on Startup under Options dropdown.

Now everything is automated and working!

You might wonder why I'm not using ResizeRaccoon which does the same thing?

I tested it and it's working if you're not using BigBox as Windows shell instead of explorer.exe. In my case I'm shelling bigbox.exe so Resize Raccoon doesn't work because it's a system tray only app. It would be great if the dev fix this but I don't have time right now to raise an issue on their Github. It would be best in the future because it's open source compared to borderless gaming which is now paid.

By the way this is working perfectly in BigBox.

Enjoy!