Maybe Banding will be better with this

[Jobima1st]

Hi
maybe it's better to add option to add pre-bright fade in this area (see the image below, it should be same as dark fade in upper part) to fix Banding or at least make it less visible

I know this will make it less like CRT, but if it will work then it will be a optional option in case the other solutions didn't work

[mdrejhon]

Yes, some panels like TN (6 bit color) is having difficulty in that region.

This is a band aid for inferior panels but a good hack:

Let's milk da Hz anyway.

So yes. Good suggestion.

Timothy Lottes has an algorithm that does this and I will figure out how to do this, in one of the upcoming revisions of our CRT simulator.

[SixelAlexiS90]

Yes, some panels like TN (6 bit color) is having difficulty in that region.

This is a band aid for inferior panels but a good hack:

Let's milk da Hz anyway.

So yes. Good suggestion.

Timothy Lottes has an algorithm that does this and I will figure out how to do this, in one of the upcoming revisions of our CRT simulator.

Hi! Don't know if you remember but last week we had a brief exchange on the SpecialK discord.
I've tested the CRT Beam Simulator on two IPS monitors at 120 Hz with both the ShaderToy site:
https://www.shadertoy.com/view/X3ccDN

and RetroArch, sadly in both cases (and with both monitors) the banding is really evident.
I've tested with Gsync off like suggested and the time graph test doesn't show issues either:
https://www.testufo.com/animation-time-graph

Via RetroArch I've tried changing the "Brightness vs Clarity" value from 0.01 to 1.00 and it made no difference.
I've changed the "Gamma" and with lower values than the standard "2.40" they are less evident but still there.
I've tried a lot of values but no one make the banding disappear, only make it a bit less evident or much worse, but from 1.00 to 5.00 there is too much range to test it anyway.

I hope there will be more solutions for this without scarifying too much on the result since the idea itself is amazing, thank you!

[mdrejhon]

Check out #4 and try the tips there including black clipping.

The banding is super faint or gone on some 240Hz screens but not others. The band is usually caused by screen limitations including being "only 120Hz" but we can try to compensate (using optional adjustments) -- so many compensations are needed as not everyone has 240Hz OLEDs.

The band is worse at 120Hz and 144Hz than at 240Hz too, so we are pushing limits that are not easy to solve with limited native:simulated ratios.

Over 95% of "Better Than 60Hz" people seem have less than 240Hz... We can only polish 120Hz so much -- so it's a gigantic challenge.

What model screen do you have?

[SixelAlexiS90]

Check out #4 and try the tips there including black clipping.

The banding is super faint or gone on some 240Hz screens but not others. The band is usually caused by screen limitations including being "only 120Hz" but we can try to compensate (using optional adjustments) -- so many compensations are needed as not everyone has 240Hz OLEDs.

The band is worse at 120Hz and 144Hz than at 240Hz too, so we are pushing limits that are not easy to solve with limited native:simulated ratios.

Over 95% of "Better Than 60Hz" people seem have less than 240Hz... We can only polish 120Hz so much -- so it's a gigantic challenge.

What model screen do you have?

I understand, any tweak will be appreciated of course, thank you very much for all the effort 👍
Yes, I've followed the "#4" guide but no luck.

My brother PC runs on Windows 11 and use an ASUS PG279Q (1440p 144 Hz, 165 Hz with OC but he doesn't use that). The monitor doesn't have an "sRGB" mode, he uses the "Racing" mode since it's the most accurate as told by reviewers.

My personal PC runs on Windows 10 with a BenQ EX2510S (1080p 165 Hz) and I always use it in "sRGB" mode, especially since the other profiles are terrible.

For what it counts we tested the ShaderToy site on a Samsung Galaxy S20 FE 5G (OLED 120 Hz) and the banding was just as/more evident.

[Monkee-code]

I am also getting very visible banding on a Samsung G7 VA@240hz (screen is divided by 4 dark lines).
I tried adjusting the SLEW, running on odd native:simulated Hz divisor, all kinds of Brightness versus Blur settings, and all the recommended steps from #4. Could it be that a VA panel is just not capable of handling it, even a fast one like this one?

I tried it on the OLED@120hz panel of the Ayn Odin 2 Portal and the banding is visible there too albeit a bit less obvious.
It also has a regular flicker (as in one very visible flicker every 4 seconds or so) on RA (not on the ShaderToy site) and I was wondering if the issue (also showing when using BF). might be related to the frequency of the panel not being a proper 120hz according to RA's video menu. The screen is fluctuating around 120.8hz and other owners of the handheld seem to have issues with their screen being around 119hz too. Is this something that can be tampered/fixed in software? How close to the "integer" frequency do we have to be for the shader to run at its best?

[mdrejhon]

For VA:
The CRT simulator does not work very well with VA panels because of the GtG asymmetry effect. VA panels are 10x slower for dark colors than bright colors, so banding will be amplified by that.

For very visible flicker:
Some people have configured RetroArch to sync exactly by speeding up / slowing down the emulated machine to be perfect VSYNC. You should ask other Retroarch users for information about these settings