Shaders and filters

Shaders and filters can be applied to video games to achive some kind of visual effect. These can be from attempting to replicate aperture grille displays, NTSC cables, or something more exotic.

Types

Main article: List of shaders and filters

crt-geom-flat.cg, a popular CRT shader.

CRT Shaders

Main article: CRT Shaders

These replicate aperture grille CRTs, which have sharp images and strong scanlines. If you find that this doesn't look a damn thing like your old TV, it's probably because you owned a shadow-mask style CRT, which has less noticeable scanlines (the easiest way to tell the difference is to feel the curve of the screen; aperture grilles only curve horizontally if at all). Unfortunately, shadow masks require resolutions of upwards of 3000x4000 to emulate accurately, so all we have for the time being are aperture grille shaders.

NTSC Filters

These replicate the cables used to connect the system to the TV. They vary in quality, with the lowest being RF, then composite, then s-video and RGB (scart) being the highest quality. They are created by blargg. They are in .filter format.

GameBoy Shader

GameBoy Shader

This .cgp shader replicates the dot matrix screen of a Game Boy, complete with the ghosting problems to reproduce certain visual effects. Made by Harlequin. Requires RetroArch.

Emulators

List of emulators and what shaders they use.

Name	Shader file types	Notes
RetroArch	.cg, .cgp, .filter, .shader	.shader only can be used through phoenix, not RGUI Filters from bsnes v82 and below work in RetroArch. .cgp stacks several .cg files on top of one another
DOSBox	.fx	Only on special builds such as SVN Daum
Higan	.filter,	.shader removed in future higan releases, .fiter works in old bsnes  Not current Higan.
MAME	.fx
OpenEMU	.cg,
Snes9x	.cg, .shader
Project64	.fx	Only with a custom Rice Video plugin.
PCSX-R	.slv/.slf, .vp/.fp	Requires Pete's OpenGL2 or gpuBladeSoft
ePSXe	.slv/.slf, .vp/.fp	Requires Pete's OpenGL2 or gpuBladeSoft
PCSX2	.fx	Support added in r5390 (after v1.0.0) Must be named shader.fx and be in the main directory PageUp to activate.

Downloads

.cg shaders

https://github.com/libretro/common-shaders

http://www.emucr.com/2013/04/snes9x-cg-shaders-pack-20130427.html

.cgp shaders

GameBoy Shader

.filter files

Win32 Win64  Linux32  Linux64 MacOS

PS1 shaders

http://www.emucr.com/2013/04/epsxe-shaders-pack-20130427.html

PS2 shaders

http://www.mediafire.com/?icqpvoc65omra75

Further reading

All things shaders and filters

Cg shader spec.