@@diydylana3151 That's a problem that is correcting itself. The latest flagship OLED and MicroLED TVs have incredible contrast and brightness, and TCL and Hisense have some really good TVs at budget-friendly prices. I've got an early 2017 OLED that ain't every bright and has a little bit of burn-in, but I'm happy knowing that my next TV will play retro games masterfully with these new shaders.
@@nottyseel949 I use ReShade for modern pixel art games and there are a couple of CRT shaders that I tweak to get it to look ok but I feel like @RetroCrisis would be able to create a better preset with those shaders than I could.
The waterfall effect is so convincing when muddied! 1:48 I'm so impressed this is how i remember the CRT looking in the 90s. I dont wanna go back but it's cool people have the option!
Yeah, the Genesis didn't have any way to make alpha-transparent layered textures, so SEGA and other 3rd party devs used dithering effects and relied on the low-resolution of CRTs to blur the pixels together to make a convincing, but fake, transparency effect. It's really effective using RF and Composite video! The effect was also used to make games look like they had far more color than the Genesis was capable of. That's why most CRT filters in official retro collections look so bad; devs don't care enough about the tiny details of how a CRT renders the picture. They just throw some horizontal black lines over the picture and call it a day! Of course, to have an absolutely 100% convincing CRT filter, you need to have a 4k filter with a 4k TV or computer monitor just to render all the little phosphors!
@@BrigadoonZyphoon The raw pixels appear as vertical white lines alternating with blue. The RF blurs the vertical lines together creating the illusion of transparent water.
nah i remember it being MUCH worse than this. this perfectly lined shadow mask, perfectly uniform focus, perfectly alined geometry, flat screen, zero noise on the image... yep it was much worse than this. this feels like what i could get in like 1998... and probably still better because the flatscreen back then had focus issues around the corners and it wasn't progressive scan (which means it was interlaced). this looks like the IDEAL crt image we wish we had, not what we actually had.
@@GraveUypoBy the time 98 came I had a nice vivid 27 (I think it was really 32) inch Toshiba tv that I was playing all my Saturn imports on. I remember feeling like I finally "had the arcade at home" playing all those Capcom fighters that came out before Dreamcast dropped. I replaced my old 19 inch tv I used in the early 90's with that Toshiba. What he's showing me reminds me of that old 19 inch I had, rf connection wasn't THAT bad looking besides some jittering here or there and geometry being off.
@@GraveUypo on older TVs it definitely was as you described. On my Trinitron however, which was late 90s, the image is significantly better, even with RF. But I totally agree with what you're saying - my old GEC is as you described
@@sonkunhyperspinretroarch4867 true, the later 90s screens and early 2000s RF was significantly improved. I'm assuming the RF units within were probably superior
Honestly, we all have different tastes and stuff, and after I start emulating my favorite video games from childhood on PC I went for the crystal clear image with no pixels and I was right. It was the thing that I always wanted. Because, back in the days playing on CRT screen was heavy on my eyes personally. So I had to sit like five meters away from the TV as a kid to make the image look clearer. My brother even experimented with different video settings on our old TV, to make image sharper and clearer. That is why, when I got in to PC gaming and started emulating those 8 and 16 bit games, I went for the clear image instead of using any filters. Because that is what we were chasing all the time. The perfect clean image. But again, that is for everyone's personal tastes. And this is mine.
This is so surreal, seeing two opposing camps. You have one camp, who wants to get the cleanest picture possible out of their retro consoles with RGB and digital video-out mods, and you have another camp who collectively tries to recreate the original experience as much as possible, right down to things like NTSC artifacting and CRT phosphor glows. And I can actually see the merits of both approaches. Some of these games look a lot better on a clean RGB signal (especially if they have a lot of text and fine detail), but other games depend on the artifacting in order to create the appearance of more colors, smoother gradients, and transparent background layers. I wish it were possible to get the best of both worlds.
I feel many of the Retro Crisis filter manage to get some middle ground. For example, 1:34 show this shader doesn't have the infamous "SOMIC" most TVs displayed in the bottom left corner when using CRT with the RF connector. The GDV-NTSC (clean variant) presented earlier this year is probably an even better middle ground. Of course, meeting in the middle means losing something of the two extremes.
@@parrata What about a smart shader with some logic to selectively apply itself to different elements at different strengths? If it were integrated directly with an emulator, then you could apply it on a per-sprite or per-layer basis…
"I wish it were possible to get the best of both worlds." You want a trap filter. A good trap filter can make composite look nearly as sharp as RGB while preserving most of the NTSC blending effects. The Wii has this built in, and the MiSTer FPGA apparently has an external decoder from a Reddit post I saw.
Just downloaded and installed this; thank you so much for bringing back my childhood, this is one of the best CRT filters I've ever seen. Blessed by the RU-vid algorithm once more!
this is how 98% of people played on those retro consoles, it has almost the same exact look. There are no harsh color transitions that are visible and also the pixels arent as sharp and in your face as emulating those older games on an LCD screen with integer upscaling or using Mister FPGA on a modern LCD/OLED Screen. This is why I can not relate to people who claim "well.. I prefer playing the old consoles with the old pixelated look, rather than using emulators with upscaled textures". Here's the thing- on CRT TVs games didn't look pixelated. At least not in 98% of cases where people used the RF cable (no RGB connector etc.). So there was no "pixelated look" back in the day on the CRT TVs. Seeing this obsession of some retro gamers with getting RGB cables and mods and whatnot- it only makes the games worse looking imo, because they start looking blocky, pixelated with sharp unpleasant color transitions. Whereas on CRT TVs games looks very soft and smooth, without pixelation. At least when using the RF or composite cables. In my oppinion the smoothed picture looks significantly better than blocky, pixelated image with sharp color transitions using rgb cables. These shaders do indeed create the look how most of us have experienced those games. They smooth out the limited color bit depth + blocky pixels and make the games look better.
The modern CRT gaming community is a complete joke. It's nothing but a bunch of dweebs throwing hundreds (if not thousands) away just to make retro games look about as bad as on a modern display with a cheap scanline filter and BFI. Meanwhile, perfectly fine CRTs are being hauled off from estate sales and curbs into landfills just because they don't have the Sony logo on them or only top out at S-Video.
You're based in the US, right? That's why you're used to RF / Composite. In Europe / Japan, TVs had RGB connectors since the early 80's, so we're just used to a high quality picture from consoles and computers. The US obsession with crap picture quality seems equally bizarre from our perspective. A CRT over RGB looks nothing like the sort of 'razor-sharp square pixels on LCD' look you're thinking of. Instead, remember what CRT arcade games looked like - they've always been 100% RGB.
@@axi0matic most people in europe used the composite -> Scart adapter, which was included with some older consoles. Some retro consoles didn't even have RGB support without hardware mods, so no- your statement is absolutely incorrect. Maybe 1% back in the day even were aware that they can have a better picture quality with proper RGB cables and then went out and bought a separate RGB cable. The rest just used the included Composite -> Scart adapter, which had exactly the same image quality as the Composite signal or the RF cable. I am in Europe in fact and I have old cables for SNES and Sega Mega Drive that were included with the consoles and those cables are RF cables with an option to connect a TV coaxial cable to a small box and then switch between the console and the TV cable. Almost nobody in europe played with RGB, because TVs didnt have the required inputs (only PC Monitors) and later when RGB over Scart was supported, the majority of people just used the Composite-> Scart adapter, not knowing that they can purchase a separate expensive proper RGB Scart cable that offers better image quality.
@@Altered.Frequency "Almost nobody in europe played with RGB, because TVs didnt have the required inputs (only PC Monitors)" - nonsense. Any semi-decent TV had a SCART socket, and these all supported RGB. "and later when RGB over Scart was supported" - Later? SCART was common by the mid-80's... "the majority of people just used the Composite-> Scart adapter" - those sorts of people aren't interested in tweaking shaders in RetroArch. If interested in retro gaming at all, they probably use a SNES mini. "not knowing that they can purchase a separate expensive proper RGB Scart cable that offers better image quality." RGB cables weren't expensive, they were like a tenner. The guy in the shop probably offered to sell you one when you bought your PlayStation. Manufacturers sell these things as extras - like memory cards, or extra controllers. They supply a lowest common denominator cable that will work on 100% of TVs, but it was common knowledge you could buy better ones. Anyone into import consoles would have _had_ to use SCART, as Japanese RF / Composite wouldn't even work on a PAL TV (at least in colour).
For the longest time, I've been very sceptical about these silly filters. To me it always felt like young players - who never even owned a CRT-TV - tried to emulate something that they weren't familiar with... it was like the blind leading the blind. But this filter actually makes it look close to how I remember playing games, back in the day! Good job.
My friend, I am going to have to insist you share what you did to the sound. That sounds so much more like my real Sega Genesis than anything I've done in years. I'm blown away by that even more than the preset (which is amazing and is going to get downloaded and setup RIGHT NOW)
@@retropulse03 haha bro I'm sorry to have to destroy your hopes and dreams but sadly the sound is all edited and faked just to create the retro vibes 😭. BUT retro sound presets are in the works. It's a long term project lol
Great job. Shaders like this one make a difference because programmers designed games with lottes in mind, and it clearly shows, because the raw image doesn't have normal shadows and other nuances. I enjoy old games more than new ones because I do not have time for all these open-world timewasters. The last one that I beat was Flashback Quest For Identity, and it was an amazing experience.
I have never noticed before just how gorgeous the shimmers on the Green Hill Zone water are/were on a CRT... as the pure white pixels get replaced by the deep blue, there's a slow fade through purple that looks like the afterimages you see when you look at shimmering water in real life. Even crazier is that I first noticed this on a shader recorded from a modern display. Fan-freaking-tastic job
I could be wrong here but I think the reason this seems better is because it's upscaled before the CRT filter is applied. If the CRT filter was applied before upscaling, it would be more faithful to the real thing. That being said, this is a great way to get that nostalgic feel while also increasing the quality.
The image is integer scaled as close as possible to 4k first, with the shader preset applied after. The more resolution you can get initially, the better the effect will be
As someone who also grew up playing 8 bit and 16 bit console games, this actually looks very close to the real deal! Reshade has come a long way man. 😎👍
OMG I’m dead while writing this comment. This has killed me and sent me to heaven!!! This is the most realistic CRT shader you’ve ever done. You should be extremely proud 📺💎
its crazy how back in the day we didnt care how the systems quality looked. Now we want the old games to look the very best using upscalers, and Sony Crt's/PVM's. some people like the sharp pixels that emulators provide, some people like scanlines, some like the composite/RF look. I like the lightly blurred scanline look myself. this RF shader is cool that even the sound is muffled and probably mono sound too? The look makes the games look more cartoon/animated like.
Personally I'm not a fan of the sharp pixels. I'd take the blurriness all day. Here's how you can get the sound - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-zZuUoRsKu2I.html
Very nice. I've been using a weird combination of CRT-Lottes and a VHS shader in an attempt to capture this same effect, but this looks more accurate than my attempts.
This is actually the first time I want to try a shader instead of standard clean pixels. Everything that I saw before looked too fake and not even close to real CRT, but this one looks good.
This is the best shader I've seen for the Mega Drive/Genesis. It doesn't match the TV I had back in the day since the CRT in my set was a Toshiba Blackstripe, but I always liked Trinitrons. The audio on this video threw me a bit, though, because very shortly after getting a Genesis I hooked it to a receiver for better sound.
This is the main reason games looked much better than new pixel art retro indie games which think just giant pixels are enough for nostalgia when it only looks hideous without this.
Great video. I got a CRT TV because I prefer the way the games look. When I searched something like 'Ideal filters for console x in Retroarch / MISTER FPGA' I kept getting suggestions making the games looking too crisp and sharp. I have even debated asking them to check certain locations in games but I seem out numbered in that view. I'm glad this video made my preference not seem crazy.
As a russian child who played video ames since 94 or 95 I didnt had such tvs as Trinitron. I started with huge old wooden tvs that would show image from my famiclone in black and white amd in the end of 90s beginning of the 00s I had Funai tv for my sega. And for famiclone we had to use RF/Composite adapter just so console can get a signal to old wooden tv. Funai one had bulit in Composite ports for cables. Image was often garbagy and garbly.
И тем не менее картинка на ЭЛТ самая правильная и именно для таких телевизоров делались игры вплоть до выхода PS2. И если 3Д игры на современных эмуляторах выглядят на голову выше, чем на оригинальном железе, то 2Д игры, особенно 80х-90х, современные РГБ моды и телевизоры просто уничтожают, превращая их в пиксельную кашу. Поэтому эмуляторам и нужны подобные шейдеры, возвращающие старым играм задуманный разработчиками вид.
@@M0e8ius @justavivi3386 давай я немного поправлю. Не просто "задуманный разработчиками игр вид" и не столько "пиксельная каша". Разработчики ЗНАЯ об особенностях вывода картинки на телевизор использовали это для получения вполне себе важных эффектов. Например самы частый Dithering - для полу-прозрачности: тень под героем в ComixZone, прозрачные трубы на уровне с хомяками в EathwormJim, полупрозрачные водопады в Sonic. Без шейдеров это будет странными верткальными черными линиями. То что сейчас выглядит странным пиксельным узором - было плавным градиентным переходом цветов на заднем плане и т.п.
amazing.. seeing sonic also triggers an old memory of mine, walking around YongSan electronics market in Seoul and seeing the genesis everywhere with this horrendous ring pick up sound and the most horrific soundtrack.
Excellent work, but RF could look different from TV to TV, especially if you look at a Trinitron from the 2000s, which already has a mask on the CRT, compared to an old TV from the early 80s. I clearly remember there being a Huge difference between RF and component on several TVs I used at the time. But one thing that I've been looking forward to for many years and that I haven't seen anyone worry about is sound emulation. The current emulation is terrible, it's practically a simple equalizer that muffles the sound. The reality is that (especially in the RF cable) there is interference, and this creates a slow oscillation and clearly audible noise, especially in a white image. Seeing the copyright information and the Sega logo without hearing that noise completely breaks the immersion for me. No, I'm not referring to the distortion of the mega drive 1 due to bad filtering (overdrive), I'm referring to the typical analog noise of a CRT TV (it's clearly and indistinguishable on old TVs, even using just the Antenna). The correct CRT filter is not a unified thing because not even TVs at that time had a unified image. I had a 20-inch Sharp SoftVision TV, and it had a dedicated button to improve the image quality (it improved the purity or something like that, the difference was clear), to develop a perfect crt filter, it would be necessary to develop a shader for each specific TV model, exactly as you did, something that is artisanal and artistic, as well as laborious, so I really respect the work you did here. 10 years ago, at the beginning of the wave of modern arcades and emulation, I worked on a shader capable of reflecting the content displayed on the "Virtual" CRT on the edges of this CRT, creating that reflection effect on the plastic of the edge of the tube, but my Attempts to create sound effects went down the drain due to the lack of an API for direct sound manipulation in most emulators. The 100% effective and correct solution would be to write the entire logic circuit of an old TV, in software, this would make the emulation very demanding on hardware, but 100% accurate.
You're right about the sound: the so-called "filters" included with RA, for example, just muffle the sound, and that's not what I remember about playing my Sega Genesis Model 1 for hours and hours on our 19" Sony TV (I didn't use the included RF Adapter, by the way: I used the composite A/V cable, through a Sanyo VHS; the TV's A/V input was reserved for the CATV receiver). But, anyway, here's the tip about audio: nowadays I run a 3.5mm-to-RCA cable from the computer through a tape deck (I disconnnected the motors internally so they don't wear out), put it on "record", and get the audio from its headphone jack into a set of small portable speakers uisng an adapter. It sounds great and you can control the level of "saturation" using the tape deck's sliders and switches (dolby, CrO, Bias).
Almost perfection! The only thing that is off, is the sound. They applied a filter that makes the sound feels like a VHS recording. I understand most media we have left from this era have this "VHS" recording sound, but we didn't play those games on VHS recordings. The sound wasn't like that at all.
Oh wow! It gives the impression that back then, the game developers took in consideration the limitations of the console and video signal when making games! And none of them ever though about the idea of "razor sharp pixels"! Thanks for the video mate, it's a great show case of how WRONG is the modern retro gaming scene :P Cheers!
What a good job, its identical but in the sound can differ, all depends on the actual CRTV, i use a Samsung Tantus to play my Sega Genesis Games. Thanks for your video!! God bless you.
I don't understand why people are so hellbent on replicating the look of the Trinitron. Most people didn't own a Trinitron but rather some unremarkable midrange brand. Approximating what most people remember their games looking like is to me the Holy Grail of CRT shaders.
Trust me dude, based on the comments I get, you can't please everyone, as folks have differing memories of what they think a CRT looks like. BUT that being said, I'm chasing Trinitron, because that's literally the set I use. I have one on my desk, right next to my PC monitor.
@@noahheninger no disrespect taken at all my dude. I love reading opinions that differ from my own. I'm 100% always open to feedback - good, bad and ugly
Looks awesome! Whenever I see those generic scanline filters, it makes me cringe. That's not what playing on a retro screen felt like. This guy, however, hit the nail on the head. Nice!
Looking great, my friend, as do all your presets! ..but I must add.. it's not RF unless you have to jiggle the cord 24 or 25 times to make the fuzzy specks go away! 😂 Well done! Now onto the faithful reproduction of Rainbow banding AKA: JAILBARS 😮
@@retroprojections haha I did try to recreate the jailbars but I'll pretend this is emulating a console that's had a full capacitor replacement 🤣 - shockingly my Trinitron has zero rainbowing via RF. I wonder which specific screen types had it
@@RetroCrisis yeah, I don't have jailbars on either of my model 2s, they're both 3/4 board revisions, so probably wouldn't of had them ever.. though they have both been recapped. It's my older Model 1s that have it, very significantly.. but I actually LOVE the way they look. Each console has its own visual and auditory charm.
@@retroprojections yeah I totally get you - my model 2 has jailbars with RF, but in all honesty I love them lol. Do you connect via RGB? I'm guessing the bars don't appear with RGB?
your shader looks amazing, very good job!, one question i have, why are you recommending to play on a 4k "HDR" Screen, what is HDR adding into the mix?
I'm have a 70kg Sony Trinitron TV and using it with emulators. That TV make old games to look very cool. Also it can be switched to PAL and NTSC modes. PAL is more fidelity than NTSC. But NTSC have enjoyable blur or smthng similar. I like it. When playing Famicom, SNES and SEGA i'm using NTSC mode. When playing PS1 and PS2 games then switching TV to PAL mode. U know, kind of that playing, causes strong vibes from my childhood!
If I'm not mistaken, the vertical lines are supposed to be an artifact from the internal conversion of a luma/chroma signal to YPbPr within a television.
Going be nuts when we can just play a game with A.I. overlaying what ever on top in real time. Pretty much making it appear how ever we want but with the game mechanic being the same.
My honest opinion: While it looks okay, like with most of the filters apart from Blargg's I feel like the colors look way too washed away and unsaturated, almost like they have a whitish tint over it. Back in the early 90's my family had a Sony Trinitron XBR TV and even as a kid I used to be pretty good at adjusting the color (saturation), contrast and brightness controls. And let me tell you, the colors looked good and vibrant in person back then. In fact it took a lot of years for modern flat TV screens to compete with the saturation and contrast that TV's had back then. The colors were so vibrant that they kind of bled. What I mean is, just like audio cassettes sounded better than we remember, early 90's TV's looked better and more vibrant than we remember.
@@Fred_PJ you're right, the colours on a Trinitron did look great back then (and even today), especially after tweaking the colours. Every user would have had a different colour setting to match their personal preferences. The colour profile that I've matched this preset to is the stock out of the box factory Trinitron settings. And the reason they look a bit more washed out is because this is emulating RF rather than composite or RGB. It's a beautiful thing that everybody has a different memory and colour preferences. 🍻
@@RetroCrisis Well then I suggest an alternate version with more saturated and vibrant colors that match the original colors of the unfiltered image more. What I mean is, even when using RF it was always possible to adjust the color and contrast since the default settings on a TV are almost always crap anyway, haha. Thank you for your kind reply. Keep up the good work!
So the theory for my suggestion for an alternate version would be starting by adjusting the colors and contrast on your real CRT first to try to match the colors on the unfiltered image on a modern display as closely as possible, and then try to replicate that adjusted image of the CRT. Cheers!
I apologize if this is redundant, but do you have versions of these without the convex bend? I love good, accurate CRT filters and all of the ones you upload are top tier, but I dislike the curve. Something about it just feels a little *too* fake to me in a way that the rest of the filter doesn't. If you there are curveless versions, that would be amazing, and if not, fantastic work all the same. The waterfall especially is amazing and I'd love to use all of the filters for all of the systems you've uploaded so far.
The CRT filter looks drastically better it actually leaves you more to imagination than pure LCD display, pixels are more shaded and are less defined with bloom this effect makes your brain to fill the gaps. The LCD needs much higher resolution far more than 8bit graphic is capable of. I think going in pure sharpness is a wrong way because 8bit greaphic needs a smooth transition between pixels
I also tested the waterfall effect in Green Hill zone, and the pixel blur effect whether it was composite, RF, or both plugged in and shown on video 2, the blur effect was in between the two screens you showed. Also, the music was a little clearer. Lastly in the orange and brown checkered pattern, the orange is a bit brighter, and the brown is just a bit redder.
Ah nice. Thanks for sharing. I'd love to know more about your TV you used. My preset doesn't actually affect sound at all, only the picture; I manually edited the sound to make it sound retro. Also I imagine colours and brightness would differ from user to user as most would manually set their own preferences
@@RetroCrisis Only thing I know is that it is a 22 inch JVC brand crt tv. Any kind of technical specifications I don't have a clue. And if there is a manual for it, I don't have it. As for the settings, I have the color hue setting to the center, and the brightness of the screen is set to brightest.
@@vintagegamer695 ah I see. I imagine your JVC and my Sony have different mask characteristics which would explain why they look different on certain sections. Most CRTs produce a slightly different image depending on their masks and other factors
@@RetroCrisis There is a correction I'd like to make on the size of my tv screen. It is actually a 27 inch tv. I just barely learned the right way that tv screens are measured, diagonally from the top corner to the lower corner. I didn't know that until a few days ago.
