Comparison: Lottes CRT filter vs Raw character sprites.

[Khronikos]

Download full images for proper comparisons. Made for 1080p on Desktop. You will probably get vastly different results on a 4K TV.

Phantom Brave is known for its GIGANTIC character sprites during cutscenes. They are in your face and large, which is completely at odds with the high-res background art. The only way to alleviate this issue is with shaders.


Cutscene Raw: https://ibb.co/k8xmN0L

Cutscene Lottes Filter 1: https://ibb.co/4Px04m1

For the above image only I redid the Lottes settings with a slight boost in exposure via Tonemap to create a more faithful image to the original here. It looks really close now. Filter 1 from in game can be turned off for a lot more sharpness. But the blended look I think works for the game overall.

Cutscene Raw Filter 1: https://ibb.co/MR8rDQR

Cutscene Raw Filter 2: https://ibb.co/hBN1pFL


Character Filter 1 from game options is a softer look that takes away the harsh lines of the sprites. It's basically a blur filter. By itself it does not look very good, as the sprites stand out quite easily, but when combined with Lottes it produces about the best look I have seen for the game overall. Character Filter 2 looks a bit worse. It oversharpens the same filter used for 1. I might try some Gaussian instead of the character filter when I get time.

Lottes comes in because it blends the image with an aperture grille CRT mask, much like most people would have originally played Phantom Brave on in 2004. In general a good mask will blend detail, create depth, and provide in this instance immersion and coherency with the background art.

The Lottes shader is very easy to set up via Reshade. All options are accounted for in the cutscene comparison, which compares all in-game looks with and without Reshade. Lottes can be tweaked for more or less brightness via exposure in the Tonemap shader, but the white color spectrum tends to get oversaturated with any less scanline thickness in Lottes itself. You have to be careful with this one in blending.

This is the best that can be currently done to fix the characters and battlefields properly without full HD sprites, other than if you prefer Royale via Reshade here: https://github.com/akgunter/crt-royale-reshade

[Khronikos]

Origineel geplaatst door Shadicluigi:

Origineel geplaatst door Khronikos:

The dude is an incoherent mess. Probably not on his meds lol. At any rate, the game looks massively better if you ask me. I know of no other game with such large pixels up that close, so for me unless they redo the sprites themselves, nothing else is going to work.

It is a bit jarring with the HD backgrounds with blocky sprites on top of them, pretty sure anyone can agree. On Wii for example the backgrounds were lower res.

Yeah definitely, the backgrounds are really in your face sharp and beautiful now. Softening them ever so slightly works for me anyway, and although Lottes combined with their Filter 1 is not perfect, it does the job wonderfully for me in most places. I retuned it slightly for a ever so slightly sharper look.

And people can adjust it for less scanline density and more brightness if they prefer. I usually just put my TV near 100 for backlight and contrast to use its full potential with heavier scanlines. This was as good as I could get it for 1080p. Anything else and you start messing with brightness and gamma of the graphics too much. I'm actually surprised it turned out as well as it did. I think it looks stunning personally.

I'm also not sure how anybody could come to the conclusion it looks worse, but hey people have different preferences.

[Fatih]

it looks worse

[Valsung]

is there any way to get crt-royale working for PB? the one you utilized looks great, but I vastly prefer royale.

[Khronikos]

Origineel geplaatst door Valsung:

is there any way to get crt-royale working for PB? the one you utilized looks great, but I vastly prefer royale.

Yes, you can download the Royale filter for Reshade on Git.

I think here: https://github.com/akgunter/crt-royale-reshade

Feel free to take a photo and upload it here. I'll put it in the post. I'd like to see a good Royale version. I use 1080p currently though. I know many like Royale with 4K.

[Valsung]

Origineel geplaatst door Khronikos:

Yes, you can download the Royale filter for Reshade on Git.

I think here: https://github.com/akgunter/crt-royale-reshade

Feel free to take a photo and upload it here. I'll put it in the post. I'd like to see a good Royale version. I use 1080p currently though. I know many like Royale with 4K.

Thanks, found it almost immediately with some google searching. I'm curious though, is there any way to play Phantom Brave at 4K? I assume the game wouldn't natively support such a resolution. I tried it with Disgaea 1/2 PC and it looks pretty great. Unfortunately, there is what I assume to be an interlacing simulation on this github version that is a bit overbearing. The retroarch version of the shader is still the best, as I recently played SaGa 2 on DS in 4K, and it looked absolutely wonderful; too bad you can't get that working with Steam games tho. Also, it seems like ReShade takes much more resources to manage than Retroarch. My games still run just fine, but seems a bit odd I guess.

[Khronikos]

Origineel geplaatst door Valsung:

Origineel geplaatst door Khronikos:

Yes, you can download the Royale filter for Reshade on Git.

I think here: https://github.com/akgunter/crt-royale-reshade

Feel free to take a photo and upload it here. I'll put it in the post. I'd like to see a good Royale version. I use 1080p currently though. I know many like Royale with 4K.

Thanks, found it almost immediately with some google searching. I'm curious though, is there any way to play Phantom Brave at 4K? I assume the game wouldn't natively support such a resolution. I tried it with Disgaea 1/2 PC and it looks pretty great. Unfortunately, there is what I assume to be an interlacing simulation on this github version that is a bit overbearing. The retroarch version of the shader is still the best, as I recently played SaGa 2 on DS in 4K, and it looked absolutely wonderful; too bad you can't get that working with Steam games tho. Also, it seems like ReShade takes much more resources to manage than Retroarch. My games still run just fine, but seems a bit odd I guess.

Indeed, RA is always going to be better in this case. Simply way more options to tweak. Which is why I prefer Lottes in this case. On RA I use CRT Easy Mode or Royale for 4K. If you can handle it I would try Lottes out here, or continue to tweak Royale if you can. As far as 4K I am not sure in this case. It has very few options. 4K definitely needs way different settings for Lottes though.

[Valsung]

Origineel geplaatst door Khronikos:

Indeed, RA is always going to be better in this case. Simply way more options to tweak. Which is why I prefer Lottes in this case. On RA I use CRT Easy Mode or Royale for 4K. If you can handle it I would try Lottes out here, or continue to tweak Royale if you can. As far as 4K I am not sure in this case. It has very few options. 4K definitely needs way different settings for Lottes though.

Appreciate the thorough response! I'm not entirely sure how to utilize the options available in retroarch, as I don't understand even when it comes to the basics what exactly a shader is; all I know is that it makes these older games look phenomenal. Prior to discovering Royale, I was more privy to the crt-hylian series. I'll check out Lottes for sure.

[Khronikos]

Origineel geplaatst door Valsung:

Origineel geplaatst door Khronikos:

Indeed, RA is always going to be better in this case. Simply way more options to tweak. Which is why I prefer Lottes in this case. On RA I use CRT Easy Mode or Royale for 4K. If you can handle it I would try Lottes out here, or continue to tweak Royale if you can. As far as 4K I am not sure in this case. It has very few options. 4K definitely needs way different settings for Lottes though.

Appreciate the thorough response! I'm not entirely sure how to utilize the options available in retroarch, as I don't understand even when it comes to the basics what exactly a shader is; all I know is that it makes these older games look phenomenal. Prior to discovering Royale, I was more privy to the crt-hylian series. I'll check out Lottes for sure.

RA is pretty easy when you dive into the options even for a half hour. Literally, shaders are just in the quick menu, which you access when you have a ROM loaded. In the quick menu you just go down to the shaders and and activate them. Pick what you want from the massive list, and then you have parameters that you can tune for the shader. It's the best system out there for CRT filters and options to tune them. You can save per game or per core or whatever you want.

[Valsung]

Origineel geplaatst door Khronikos:

RA is pretty easy when you dive into the options even for a half hour. Literally, shaders are just in the quick menu, which you access when you have a ROM loaded. In the quick menu you just go down to the shaders and and activate them. Pick what you want from the massive list, and then you have parameters that you can tune for the shader. It's the best system out there for CRT filters and options to tune them. You can save per game or per core or whatever you want.

I'm aware of most of that. My biggest issues is not knowing what any particular paramater change does, as I don't know what shaders are to begin with. For instance, while I love Royale, I am very partial to the glow effect that Hylian has. So, I tried to analyze what aspect of Hylian gave it that glow, and apply it to Royale; or any other shader for that matter. It ended with me getting no closer to the intended effect than if I just had did nothing to begin with. Otherwise, I completely agree with the superiority of RA, and its very handy settings per game features. A lovely application, that is only a slight pain in the ass -- RA has a tendency to 'lose' the location of a given wrong pretty frequently, and I don't know what I'm doing to cause that.

[Khronikos]

I updated the cutscene comparison with finalized Lottes settings and increased exposure slightly via Tonemap to bring back the bright image of the native selection. It looks REALLY close now as far as giving it a faithful look.

I tried Gaussian in Reshade, but it doesn't blur properly like the in-game Filter 1. So this is about as good as it can look if you ask me. Super faithful to the original while blending the older 3D models and sprites very well. Edited the original post.

[lekayrnthon]

I read the post.

I.... don't see the issue?

Or how the filters in anyway improve things?

[Khronikos]

Origineel geplaatst door Fourmoyle:

I read the post.

I.... don't see the issue?

Or how the filters in anyway improve things?

You don't see the difference between Raw and Lottes 1? One has large pixels, the other one is blended completely. It blends pixels and characters.

Some people do not like large pixels as the art for characters. CRT filters create depth and detail for immersion. Some people do not need this.

But there are many cutscenes in the game. It looks pretty jarring having beautiful high-res art and then huge pixel humans to me at least lol.

[MrArkansas]

the crt filter makes the sprites look better but the backgrounds look worse.

[Khronikos]

Origineel geplaatst door Mwdagger:

the crt filter makes the sprites look better but the backgrounds look worse.

Slightly yeah, that is the price to pay for horrendously large sprites being blended. And in-game you barely notice plus you can balance the settings out yourself if you want less filter.