PS1 best shader/scanline settings

[bobchiba]

A while back I was using the settings for a snes project I did that did the scan line look via an overlay. It worked well and I was wondering what the best option is for PS1 stuff as I know the resolution wasn't the same for all games.

Essentially I just wanted to ease the over sharpness of the raw image and give it an authentic look, but don't want to impact the performance with any resource hungry shaders.

Is there any fool proof settings that give a best overall pic quality for ps1? I'm using an RPI2.

Thanks

[Floob]

At a basic level you could enable video smoothing in the config editor:
https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/Configuration-Editor

Or you could apply a shader, that should run fine on a Pi2, like this one:

[DD-Indeed]

I wanted to bumb up this topic as I've been testing out the shaders available currently to the Retropie via the usual installation methods. So far the results of those have been a bit dissappointing with PS1 games. Some of the shaders do not work at all and most of them are not doing the desired effect. I believe, that most of the shaders available from the setup menu in Retropie are basically designed for 8 and 16-bit games with blocky graphics, to smooth them out. However, on PS1 games with fully rendered 3D world, characters and objects, those shaders do not provide the effect that would be needed (when having double resolution or more). And trouble is also, that all of the 2D-stuff in PS1 (text, menus, backrounds, UI, etc, etc) has somewhat higher resolution than 8/16-bit generations, but the shaders are not accurate enough to smooth them out, or they do not work on that envirovement.

Couple hours ago, I tested multiple different shaders with both, Linear and Nearby-passes. Generally, the true improvements came with Nearby-passes. Linear-passes only just blurred the whole picture, similar kind of effect to the bilinear smoothening, that blurs the entire screen and does not fix the actual issues of rough edged text and details. I only used GT2's main menu, where I examined the change in the text edges. I couldn't find anything that could have fixed those somewhat rough text edges.

What indeed would help is to have this sort of shader, that would only be used with 3D games, that have static 2D layers, text and messages on the screen during the gameplay. Shaders of the true 3D-games should have two separate shaders available: one for 3D-stuff only and one for the 2D-stuff only. Right now, you can only have one, that smooths out everything in the picture, even thou, they are completely different sort of graphics. PS1 especially wouldn't need any smoothening of the 3D-graphics at all (well, perhaps those unstable polygons could be fixed somehow), but the 2D stuff would definitely need some improvements on the emulation. Good example of this are some games with heavy UI, where is a lot of 2D-stuff on screen, some of those things are almost beyond understanding them.

[Darksavior]

@dd-indeed PS1 games look ok with the crt-pi shader. It does nothing more than to give it that crt tv look. PS1 games look like that on the real thing. I think you have shaders mixed up with those 3d wrappers the pc ps1 emulators have.

[edmaul69]

@darksavior i use just the crt-pi shader. You can get it to look decent with the video smooth and crt-pi. But i prefer it to look more like the original system on a crt myself. The double resolution gets weird on games that used an image instead of a true 3d environment since only the character gets better resolution. And the fmv's are still all crappy. But i prefer the old crappy look.

[DD-Indeed]

CRT-shaders only hide the issues, not actually fix them. And if I use any of those screen smoothening to smooth the whole screen, the gameplay doesn't feel good due the blurryness it brings in. Personally, I aim for better gameplay experience, improve the game visuals, rather than play them as they were designed back them. Most of the PS1 games can look really good with modern tricks to improve them, and they're getting there with that PCSX-Reloaded, which has that GTE-accuracy fix and polygon stabilizer to fix the main issue with PS1 games. But we'll see, that when that is going to be ported over to Raspberry-environment. But that alone doesn't fix the blurry 2D-stuff, that would definitely need some new tools and shaders.