Best Dithering Shaders - Updated SONKUN RetroArch CRT Presets

[@sonkunhyperspinretroarch4867]

Edit: To everyone, please make sure your output dynamic range is set to full and not limited so that you'll get richer looking colors and your "blacks" won't look prominently gray when using my presets. Also guest.r has released a new shader update the same day this video was published, his new update has a new "rainbow" implementation which looks different (and better) to what's shown in this video. Simply grab his new update which I have linked in my thread to get the new feature. Ok now THIS was a unexpected but a more than pleasant surprise, I didn’t even know you had started putting a video together, you're fast man lol. Yo everyone, long time no new update. I hope you all enjoy some of the new changes, I tried adding a little more saturation to the colors this time around. The flickering in the RF and composite rainbow presets are a necessary evil to get that "rainbow" effect so please everyone try not to be too harsh on them lol. On the flip side I think I produced one of the cleanest looking composite shader signals so I hope you all enjoy that with your favorite games.

[@RetroCrisis]

Haha I was having using those insane rainbow presets. They're unlike anything I've seen anybody make. I've never tried acid, but I imagine that's what it feels like 🤣. I also quite liked the resolution switching effect. Reminded me of when I would degauss my old VGA monitor 🍻

[@sonkunhyperspinretroarch4867]

​@@RetroCrisis It's funny cause right after you put this video up guest.r just released a new shader update with a new ntsc rainbow implementation so the rainbows you see here may already be out of date as they already appear a bit different in his update lol. I'm currently running tests on it as I'm posting this. Also I love that switchres shader, makes the overall experience feel more immersive.

[@tatecheddar]

@@sonkunhyperspinretroarch4867 I was already going to comment after watching, then read your post. I feel like the composite is the gem in this showcase. The blending is just fantastic. Dithering is all but gone and the image still remains sharp enough and looks just amazing. Great work!

[@sonkunhyperspinretroarch4867]

​​​@@tatecheddarThank you I appreciate it, I made that composite preset going off memory from when the cable came prepackeged with the Sega Saturn and PS1 in the mid 90's. Composite on those systems never looked "blurry" on my tv, try playing any of the Tomb Raider games or any PS1 games in general with that preset and that's how I remembered it looking back then.

[@jonathanmalto146]

Ty for your continued support of the community!

[@unknowna1]

FYI that @9:54 RGB and RF are mislabeled (flipped). Thanks for the great comparisons. Bonus: Sub-Z Kang is a great character

[@Hoytehablode]

Composite is perfection!

[@0Raik]

@@Hoytehablode Arcade disagrees

[@Hoytehablode]

@@0Raik as far as I understand we are talking about this shader for this system. What has arcade anything to do with anything?

[@sonkunhyperspinretroarch4867]

Shadow Mask composite has been my favorite lately for the older systems like nes, snes, mega drive etc

[@odysseusanime629]

You inverted RGB and RF for the last comparison. It’s a great video I shared. Many effect like water, color transitions or lights are clearly made for composite.

[@Gamefever_10]

Rf is love , it brings back a lot of childhood memories

[@amekusa.]

Street Fighter EX Chun-Li theme. Good music choice!

[@linuxstreamer8910]

i have been following this shader since v1.0 & making dithering & the sonic waterfall looking great was a battle

[@sonkunhyperspinretroarch4867]

Indeed you've been around since the dark ages watching me struggle with this shader. I'm glad I'm able to get a clean composite image that's what I've always wanted since the beginning.

[@TheRampageTulk]

The return of SONKUN!!! This is gold to the eyes!! Why were raw pixels ever invented? So that retro crisis and SONKUN could make a mockery of them!

[@sonkunhyperspinretroarch4867]

Feels good to be back lol

[@finalboss5545]

Excelente Trabalho

[@TheRampageTulk]

@@sonkunhyperspinretroarch4867 😂😂 I’ve summoned the man hismelf!

[@zlac]

Raw pixels is how the game looks in code. CRTs were imperfect so dithering effects didn't look like ugly pixelated mess, that's why dithering was invented. Transparencies also looked transparent when dithered on CRT, that's why people keep inventing CRT filters for Emulators.

[@kostasvapo69]

composite feels better to my eyes, I cannot stand the flickering of the others!

[@methushael]

Composite cable master race!

[@danilonotsys]

My brain prefers s-video but my heart is with composite

[@DavidPereiraLima123]

I know the feeling!

[@sonkunhyperspinretroarch4867]

Before I released this pack I came up with a composite preset that looked extremely close to having the same look as the s-video presets sharpness and colorwise, I had to tone it down though because I pushed the shader past it's limits to where it started creating a weird halo effect around pixels. You can still try that sample pack in post 1200 in my thread, should still be up

[@TurboXray]

Just compromise and do a low-pass filter on s-video. Slight blending, but none of the color artifacting of composite.

[@net_news]

amazing! After more than 25 years emulators start to look like the real thing!

[@GTXDash]

3:03 I approve of this music choice. ^_^ 5:14 BAM!

[@8ColousBIT]

What is the song that Starts at 3:02 ?

[@GTXDash]

@@8ColousBIT Spinning Bird from Street Fighter EX Plus Alpha for the PS1

[@AuntieAliasing]

The music in this video is ridiculously good, what is it from?

[@RetroCrisis]

They're from Street Fighter EX. Your username is hilarious btw - I love it

[@shaun88R]

I just have to say, I love your newer Arcade Clean shader sooo much. Didn't initially as I think my 4K monitor isn't as bright as your OLED you developed it for. But after messing with a few parameter settings, it's amazing!! 🤩

[@AllardRT]

Man, I wish these shaders weren't exclusive to Retroarch.

[@JMazzell]

Wow I need to learn how to use shaders, this looks amazing! So much better than raw pixels! Thanks for the quick tutorial.

[@deadcaliph6414]

I am watching KZbin through my CRT television. The animated flicker effect occured seeing your video preview image on my feed.

[@slycooper9531]

Man thanks for these videos. They are always enjoyable.

[@gorofujita5767]

I'd like OP to start uploading more videos about getting these shaders (or equivalent) into reshade I'm a retro gamer as well, but often times the "best version" of many of these retro games is in modern iterations with more modernized engines, and as such, getting these CRT shaders working with reshade is very important too

[@sonkunhyperspinretroarch4867]

Reshade would guarantee that my presets would work on any emulator for sure. I still haven't used it myself but for my presets to look 1 for 1 on Reshade a couple other shaders would need to be ported over as well if they're not already such as the sgenpt-mix multipass shader I use for the s video presets and the new switchres shader I use on all of them which makes the screen flicker when the screen switches resolutions. I've also done a little experiment where I mixed the new ntsc adaptive shader with guest's hd shader to help bring out colors a bit more with rf and composite so that set up is now in the mix.

[@Pixel_Crusher]

Thank you for the showcase! Could you list the songs you used during the showcase? They were all certified bangers!

[@redStiv]

Looks awesome! 👌👌👌👌

[@noname-zf1rh]

The BGM is Spinning Bird from Street Fighter EX3.

[@Rod_Zaramella]

SEGA Genesis as I remember!

[@atul1991ful]

while i do prefer the rf output in some cases, the flickering and rainbows just don't do it for me. composite takes the cake because of that. btw, did you ever do a video on why those rainbows happen?

[@sonkunhyperspinretroarch4867]

@@atul1991ful They happen because of a certain ntsc setting I have enabled, that setting is the only way I get the "rainbow" look so it's kind of a necessary evil so to speak.

[@igorgiuseppe1862]

great soundtrack

[@JackGoldWind]

Looks pretty neat, BTW what is the name of the song in the minute 7:54

[@martin-xi6oh]

I love your videos! These shaders are spectacular. A question I always have with CRT shaders is whether the black level of the backgrounds can be made to look completely black. For example, in loading screens or transition scenes where there are black backgrounds, it always looks a little gray. I have tried lowering the levels in the presets but there are so many that I change the levels but I don't see any changes, I just make it worse haha. I hope you can give some information on this. a hug friend and thanks for your videos!

[@sonkunhyperspinretroarch4867]

There's a setting called Base Mask all the way at the bottom of the parameter settings, lower or turn it off for blacker screens. Also make sure your display is set to full RGB mode, you'll get deeper blacks on your screen that way.

[@nifftbatuff676]

Bilinear filtering is dtill the best. 😊

[@kinkias]

I dont understand why some modern pixel art games dont come with crt or scanline filters.... its a night and day difference

[@RyzenComIntel]

@@kinkias I believe it's because nowadays pixel art is no longer designed for CRT screens with scanlines and things like that, current pixel art already uses modern lighting effects designed for LCD screens current

[@RyzenComIntel]

In the past, pixel art had more oval shapes because tube TVs had a curve, so to make circles you had to create the oval effect for the TV. Nowadays, there is no reason to do this.

[@DuoDynamo]

I ask this as a curious enthusiast: What’s the difference between Sonkun’s shaders and yours? Like, what do they have that yours don’t, and vice versa?

[@tatecheddar]

I have no idea how exactly to answer that question, but I can answer one thing. I've been following this channel for a while and one thing I didn't realize until I looked into it is that every shader preset is an amalgamation of simple shaders that come from the "guest" folder. I don't know who originally developed these smaller simple shaders or if there's a group that has different versions, but basically, it's a folder full of hundreds of files. Every one does something to the image. One might saturate the image, one might add a scan line, one might warp the image to make it look like an old tv, one might separate every pixel it sees on screen and move them around, one might change the colors you see on screen, one might make the image jitter around the edges of a pixel. You getting the idea? What you do is load every one of these simple shaders one at a time and tune them all to fit your overall image you're looking for. They all have settings that can be tweaked to adjust how they behave and you can stack them all together into one "preset". That's how these shaders are being cranked out quick. Someone is doing the hard work behind the scenes making the simple shaders and programming, others are using them and tweaking them to make these presets.

[@dannyldd]

looking very good. Thanks for sharing!

[@METALFACEDOOM441]

Awesome!!!

[@alexmena3871]

COMPOSITE is the BEST for me!

[@AndrewSouzaGames555]

Awesome

[@ClosestNearUtopia]

Serious, keep this up and I might stop bidding on this new in box HDMI CRT with 240p support i found recently. Gdam i need that tv or a solution for my native consoles for those filters on the oled..

[@ClosestNearUtopia]

Forgot to mention its 4:3 aspect, and its brand new from about 2006.

[@danilonotsys]

We need a oled tv that supports applying filters and no noticeable lag😅

[@ClosestNearUtopia]

@@danilonotsys that would be the perfect solution in the end.

[@Medachod]

​@@danilonotsys Don't forget no motion blur. Only trouble is that won't be for another couple of decades at least. 1,000hz is needed to obtain true blur free speeds. But a 240hz OLED could certainly bridge the gap with modest scrolling games. Until then, the Sony Trinitron GDM-FW900 will forever remain the best screen for gaming. Heck, color in general and practically nothing looking bad on it in many resolutions below 1080.

[@Ryan.Lohman]

while RGB has the cleanest picture it doesn't really make dithering blend that well when the frames are interchanging between odd and even. S-Video is kind of the sweet spot (unless you have a PVM)

[@tiagomnm]

Really like the SVideo ones. Though, I think somehting is not right with the colors. It is too saturated vs raw, where it normally ia the opposite on older TVs.

[@sonkunhyperspinretroarch4867]

That was a design choice by me this time around, I wanted a more saturated image. The previous shader pack I put out the colors looked washed out so I chose to do a 180 in that area.

[@NativeWarrior081]

Is this better than CyberLab Death To Pixels?

[@leont6813]

What's the music in the filter showcase? Excellent video btw

[@netako]

Chun-li's theme (3:03) and Sakura's theme (6:14) from Street Fighter EX Plus (Alpha).

[@sonijonson283]

I love your videos

in earthworm jim if you look at the sky you can see "glitches" from the filters except composite and s-video. the others are similar. personally i wouldnt use them cause it probably would force my eyes give headaches or something. plus they dont look good either

[@MadsonOnTheWeb]

Composite looks right. Maybe too perfect depending on the CRL you had at time. Still my prefered way to play. I use one that works pretty well for 1080p displays. I wonder if these pressets works fine on 1080p as well as I realized youre using 4k here. Edit: "3 shader preset folders for 3 monitor types: 1080p, 1440p and 4k so whichever monitor you have, you can choose the right shader resolution for your monitor type."

[@MdrnRtrGamr]

Always gon a be raw pixels for me with the easymode shader and upscale as much as possible.

[@institutoolimpico]

esto deja en pañales cualquier scanline lastima que a mi maquina le falta potencia se ve espectacular

[@KATFYR]

What is the song playing during Dithering Sample 1 and 2? Such a banger!

[@tallestflash]

I wanted to know too so I reverse audio searched it, Street Fighter EX3 - Spinning Bird (Chun-Li's Theme)

[@games-danieldantasdesouto483]

Street Fighter EX Plus Alpha

[@KATFYR]

@@tallestflash Thank you so much!

[@KATFYR]

@@games-danieldantasdesouto483 Thank you!

[@ecoterrorist]

these crt shaders are getting alot better but there still far from accurate. In earth worm jim in particulary none of the shaders could get rid of those raw pixels in the background, it just looked slightly fuzzier.

[@DezorianGuy]

Why is the background flickering? Also, I wonder which is actually looking better in today's age: ai upscale or crt filter? Both smudge the picture to make it look smooth.

[@hou_jou]

Would you ask if it is possible to use it with native PC games or to port it to standalone emulators?

[@jomunatvbangladesh]

Zfast LCD is the best shaders of all time. Asides from it are vague.

[@keithinator5874]

Thanks for the video! I’m still on 1080P. Do these shaders work well with a 1080P TV?

[@linuxstreamer8910]

it even has a 1080p preset & a 1440p & 4k one

[@keithinator5874]

@@linuxstreamer8910 That’s amazing…I’m going to give this a try! I have a desktop PC that I use exclusively for Batocera. It should be powerful enough to handle this.

[@FabioSpelta]

How do these compare with koko-aio? Why are the latter included in retroarch while these have to be loaded manually? Thank you!

[@rafaelf.234]

Hey, could you please port your shaders to devices like the RG35XXH? I've tried using them but no luck. Your shaders are the best, and I'd love to use them on my handheld!

[@DerKrazyKrautGaming]

What's the best setting for CRT-Royale on Reshade? I have a 4k OLED TV

[@FortbloxNET]

Earth worm Jim the green background is flickering like hell. Is that an improvement?

[@dbnpoldermans4120]

What is that incredible track playing from 3:03? Wow! It's giving me Virtual On vibes

[@diegocadena2512]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/bn7bfJ9vmqx4p5Ysi=lJmmydZZWTiQiLhv

[@8ColousBIT]

im also wondering, someone please tell us

[@dbnpoldermans4120]

@@8ColousBIT It has to be from a arcade fighting game ported to Saturn, right? Perhaps one of Sega's fighting games. I can almost visualize it

[@Chump_Fighter]

It's Chun Li's Street Fighter EX theme

[@stevenhoule1866]

S-Video is where its at

[@333hronos]

What's the best shader? This "SONKUN" or "Retro Crisis GDV-NTSC"?

[@myownfriend23]

I hate to be that guy but these are dithering shaders. These are CRT/scanline/analog video emulation shaders. Dithering is when you use patterns of colors together in close proximity to make it looks like the image is being created with more colors than it is. These games are already dithered at the art level. The appeal of these shaders is to kind of the exact opposite of dithering. They blur those dithered pixels so they blend together.

[@GodHandplayers]

the song at 9:44 just triggered some deep memory. What game is it from?

[@games-danieldantasdesouto483]

Street Fighter EX Plus Alpha

[@GodHandplayers]

@@games-danieldantasdesouto483 thanks, dude

[@8ColousBIT]

What is the song that Starts at 3:02 ?

[@blackstorm6537]

Song list?

[@games-danieldantasdesouto483]

Street Fighter EX Plus Alpha

[@terrybogard916]

Will you be making a GameBoy shader (The fatboy) :D ?

[@RetroCrisis]

@@terrybogard916 for the moment just this - kzbin.info/www/bejne/gJvGnJJjrJVnfdU

[@shaolinsnake9650]

does ditherning work well on 720p?

[@canalsenhorpe]

cool 😁🇧🇷

[@chewgokugin]

Can we get a guide for 480p composite shaders?

[@ashketchup1093]

Which game is this at 6:00?

[@AIO13101980]

Mm... I don't know, I can't make it work 🤔 but I followed the steps.. maybe I have to reinstall retroarch

[@RetroCrisis]

@@AIO13101980 make sure you've got the latest version of RA and latest shaders updated

[@AIO13101980]

@@RetroCrisis My version of RA was too old, it works fine with the last version! These shaders are really something! ❤

[@RetroCrisis]

@@AIO13101980 awesome! 🍻

[@pam8352]

shaders file cannot be downloaded anymore

[@McFly2015AD]

What is the game shown for Dithering Example 3?

[@sonkunhyperspinretroarch4867]

Eternal Champions. That game has insane dithering all over the place.

[@YaBaDji]

Interlacing??!?!?!?

[@ofmannotmachine3012]

Man I wish I could get these to work. I tried every single one, and my picture turns into an oversaturated blown out mess that's completely unviewable :(

[@sonkunhyperspinretroarch4867]

Are you using the D3D11 driver by chance? There seems to be some bug occurring with that driver which affects all Xbox Series X/S users and pc users that use that driver. Had a few users report this to me.

[@ofmannotmachine3012]

@@sonkunhyperspinretroarch4867 I have Vulkan selected.

[@sonkunhyperspinretroarch4867]

​​@@ofmannotmachine3012You got the latest RetroArch? Did you follow the full installation instructions? Updated your slang shaders?

[@ofmannotmachine3012]

@@sonkunhyperspinretroarch4867 yes. If I remove the last item in the shader chain it's no longer blurry

[@sonkunhyperspinretroarch4867]

​@@ofmannotmachine3012Soneone else in the comments seemed to have had a similar issue like yours, said they reinstalled RetroArch and everything just worked afterwards.

[@doomex3670]

It doesn't work I see everything with a big blurry effect

[@sonkunhyperspinretroarch4867]

You updated your slang shaders within RetroArch?

[@doomex3670]

@@sonkunhyperspinretroarch4867 my retroarch Is a Steam version...cyberlab shader work well but this don't work for me....😔

[@doomex3670]

​@@sonkunhyperspinretroarch4867my retroarch Is a Steam version. Cyberlab shader work well but this shader don't work for me.

[@kamilpotato3764]

@@sonkunhyperspinretroarch4867 Whole process isn't right. Copying shaders and updating doesn't do anything. When I do this, those new shaders have reversed colours. For example Sony logo is purple.

[@disasterincarnate]

strange i prefer the raw images mostly, i thought this would help "improve" existing old dithering from low color palette games and might give them more colors by naturally "filling in" the old/ugly dithering with modern improvements via more colors, instead it seems almost the opposite? altering existing dithering but also adding it in places its probably not always needed?

[@TurboXray]

What's describe as "composite" here is just s-video with some low pass filtering. That's not what composite is. ALL composite signals have luma-chroma cross talk.. i.e. what's being described here as "composite rainbow". But more importantly, the luma-chroma cross talk does NOT alternate on every other frame like what is shown in this video.. on the Genesis/MD NTSC consoles (RF or composite). That ONLY happens in motion (scrolling). That's what makes it distinct from other composite output of other consoles (which are ALL different.. and have different types of artifacts). For instance, a SNES style composite displayed on a Genesis is entirely NOT correct. It's great that the amount of work that was put into this, but also baffling at the same time as to not understand that each system has its own type of composite video output (including the playstation); nes, sms, md, snes, pce , playstation, etc. And PAL composite is completely different as well (it doesn't have horizontal color artifacting, but it does have vertical line artifacting). Though I doubt anyone is purposely playing PAL games in PAL composite video.

[@RundbarkKonark]

Are these better than the Mega Bezel ones?

[@kamilpotato3764]

Copying shaders simply doesn't work. Shaders loads but colours all reversed. Absolutely wacky.

[@sonkunhyperspinretroarch4867]

Are you by chance using RetroArch on XBox Series S/X with the D3D11 driver or on PC using that driver? I've seen reports of people getting wacky colors when using that driver.

[@kamilpotato3764]

@@sonkunhyperspinretroarch4867 Pc. Vulcan.

[@kamilpotato3764]

@@sonkunhyperspinretroarch4867 And now getting message "failed to load shader"

[@sonkunhyperspinretroarch4867]

@@kamilpotato3764 Make sure you updated your shaders from within RetroArch and have followed the guide in this video to place everything where it needs to be.

[@kamilpotato3764]

@@sonkunhyperspinretroarch4867 I went nuclear option. Full reinstall and everything works now.

[@TheHardStyleLife]

Was sold until the backgrounds started flickering

[@sonkunhyperspinretroarch4867]

That's only on the RF and Composite rainbow presets. The plain Composite presets are cleaner than a whistle, no flickering or anything.

[@bitterbuffalo8997]

Do these work on Android? Ty.

[@sonkunhyperspinretroarch4867]

​@@bitterbuffalo8997 Yes. Fun fact that a lot of people probably don't even know, these presets were literally made and put together on a Shield TV so they pretty much were birthed on a Android.

[@bitterbuffalo8997]

@@sonkunhyperspinretroarch4867 Oh nice! If my phone has a non standard resolution of 1080 x 2440 and I run with integer scaling - what resolution of shader do I select? Thanks so much! Going to check these out today.

[@sonkunhyperspinretroarch4867]

​@@bitterbuffalo8997Try the 1080p presets.

[@mehmetkus1562]

wonderfull