Using Shaders on Emulation Station Menu

NightShadowPT

Hi,

I am using RetroPie with EmulationStation in a bartop arcade at home, and have been trying to create a consistent experience throughout.

As I'm emulating mostly Mame and FBA arcade games (the 80's and 90's era), I use a CRT Shader on my games to make it look like they are running on a CRT, but everytime I go back to the menu the contrast in resolution is jarring.

For this reason, I think it would be interesting if we could use shaders on the menu, allowing for a seamless experience from the menu to the games.

I cannot develop if my life depended on it, but would like to put this out here for everyone to discuss (and hopefully have a dev pick interest in it).

What's your take on this? Would you find it useful?

Cheers!

dankcushions

@nightshadowpt i think it's a cool idea and i think it would be possible, since i believe ES's final render is via opengl, and the shaders are opengl compatible. someone like @Koerty maybe might be interested? :)

NightShadowPT

Apologies for my ignorance, but would new shaders need to be developed, or is it just a matter of making the menu compatible with the shaders already available for RetroArch?

Thanks

dankcushions

@nightshadowpt you should be able to re-use the shaders. the language they are written is GLSL, which is a universal GL shader language. you can even load them up in https://www.shadertoy.com/ i think.

hiulit

I love that idea! It would make the Pixel theme look even cooler!

NightShadowPT

Thank you for the support!

And I agree with you... a couple of theme's would be elevated to a new level (like Pixel).

Cheers,

NightShadowPT

@dankcushions said in Using Shaders on Emulation Station Menu:

@nightshadowpt you should be able to re-use the shaders. the language they are written is GLSL, which is a universal GL shader language. you can even load them up in https://www.shadertoy.com/ i think.

I'm digging this topic up to check if there has been any news related to this.

Dankcushions, you mentioned that the shaders could be re-used. Is it just a matter of configuration or development is required?

Thank you.

dankcushions

@NightShadowPT development would need to be done to make ES use the shaders, and also to add the relevant menu items to choose/configure them.

XARAMBIT

I'm doing that now on the jrassa Windows fork of ES. I am interested in this feature on pi as well.
I really like the nostalgic arcade glow that it puts out. We would need a reshade alternative that can run on the pi to achieve it
alt text
Video: https://streamable.com/q4gdp
Alternatively you could use a single-board that can run windows.
https://github.com/XARAMBIT/Emulationstation-Portable-Retro-Mod

hiulit

@XARAMBIT That looks amazing! Great work!