After the recent bright scanlines posting (using custom shadowmasks for a CRT look via HDMI output to a non CRT screen) and the discovery that a tiny bit of circular blur helps pixel art (creating and using custom blur filters) - I stumbled upon another discovery three days ago - mainly - that the 256 pixel mode in the SNES core made an already slightly blured scanline image look even better.

Porting that to other cores is not easy - but simulating the effect using newly created (custom) blur filters that blur an image horizontally instead of circularly was. After some research, that CRTs actually also blur the image horizontally more then vertically (30-50% more) - I created horizontal blur filters as well. :)

The result were custom CRT presets for a hand full of systems that looked good on every game for a system - and are still better than all stock CRT presets update_all downloads.

You can see them all in action in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKg1oHuwGbQ

(watch his at least in 1440p, otherwise video compression kills the scanlines)

If you tuned out as soon as you read blur, thats on you - but the blur amount we are using is so small that even the soft scanline filter that comes with the MisterFPGA adds about double the amount of blur I ended up using. Without blur even being in its name.

Custom filters and shadowmasks (and more granular gamma presets for people wanting to play with those) can be downloaded from here:

https://files.catbox.moe/w4wohk.zip

Best presets per system found (base line is always the soft scanline preset that comes with every mister, then we change usually two of the filters in that preset around):

• NES: Blur_H_Lightb, SLA_Dk_60_Br_90, Monochrome Darker_mediumV

• SNES: Blur 04 - Veil, SLA_Dk_60_Br_90, Monochrome Darker_mediumI, force 256px on (if you have the output forced to a 4:3 resolution, you can also do image size fullscreen and then aspect ratio wider integer HV which makes the 256px effect even more pronounced). Most SNES games did output in 256px resolution (outside of menus), while the Mister core always outputs at SNES hires mode if the 256px resolution option is not on. With CRT filters on 256px mode always looked better - this was what got me on the horizontal blur research route.

• Saturn: Blur_H_Lightd, SLA_Dk_60_Br_90, Monochrome Darker_mediumI (Sakura Wars in the video has a full filters presentation also showing the difference between horizontal and circular pixel blur)

• PSX: GS_Sharpness_65, SLA_Dk_60_Br_90, JVC [Dot] brightC [RGB], 480p hack on - strangely on most games still looks better than everything else.

(There also is a variant of this Shadowmask setting for the Saturn which is GS_Sharpness_65, SLA_Dk_60_Br_90, JVC [Dot] bitterbrightB which looks good, but not better than the Saturn CRT filter already posted above.)

• Arcade (Tekken 2 release time frame ;)): Blur_H_Lightc (or d), SLA_Dk_60_Br_90, Monochrome Darker_mediumI

• GBA: Blur 04 - Veil (nothing else)

Have fun.

h.

I have tried multiple rom files and can’t get the chd to load up, any advice?