[cloudbill]

I never thought I would ever give up ePSXe in favor of PCSX-R. I said the only way I would give up ePSXe was if it was for something on the level of epoch changing. Well I guess PGXP is epoch changing in the world of PSX emulation, at least as far as I am concerned. I have been playing around with PCSX-R and PGXP for about two weeks when I have the time and it is absolutely great. It actually brings out more details in 3d models. Is it buggy in some instances........most definitely, but it is a work-in-progress so it is to be expected. Is it worth using despite the bugs........most definitely. I do wish that ePSXe and iCatButler could find a way for PGXP to play nice with ePSXe. Until that day comes, if ever, I am a PCSX-R convert simply because of PGXP.

Thanks iCatButler for your dedication and hard work. Please keep it up.

P.S. TheDimensioner's YT videos played a huge role in me even trying out PCSX-R with PGXP. I tried PCSX in a lot of it's myriad forms throughout the years and gave up on it. So thanks to TheDimensioner as well.

 

[cloudbill]

Thanks for the hard work ICatButler. PGXP has given me new hope for the PS1 emulation scene. Besides some dedicated shader creation by a few shader authors PS1 had pretty much become stagnant. Now only if the epsxe dev team could work with you to integrate PGXP with into epsxe I personally would be very happy.

 

[cloudbill]

I was wondering if either the OpenGLTweak or PCSX-R itself still are getting updated...

Also, Chrono Cross is running pretty slow with the XBRZ filtering enabled...

Chrono Cross uses a lot of frame buffer effects in the battles. The only way to mitigate the slowdown is to set the FastFBE to true. As far as OpenGLTweak still being updated....I have no clue. PCSX-R got updated as recently as 4/26/17.

 

[cloudbill]

Funfact: It was actually in the overworld.
My PC is pretty much a beast, though...

I have no clue then. There are definitely no FBE on the overworld map. I don't even think there are even any 3D elements in it.

 

[cloudbill]

Hmm, not sure if I worded it correctly...
I am referring to the area maps, instead of the overworld map. My bad. XBRZ filtering, though, especially has a huge effect on 2D graphics.

If there are any 3D elements that have textures on them the xbrz scaling will effect those textures. A prime example of this is the decals on the cars in Ridge Racer Type 4. All the decals are smoothed out on the cars and it is done through xbrz scaling. A lot of 3D models have textures overlayed on top of them for things like clothes because it takes far less computing power to render some elements as textures than polygons. You will notice this on a lot of 3D models in PS games.

 

[cloudbill]

Chrono Cross was really really slow for me on field maps last time I tried it in PCSXR PGXP (which was quite some time ago), and my desktop isn't a slouch, either. It was easily the slowest running game, by a very large margin. It's a lot quicker in Beetle PSX, though, as long as you have Vulkan support.

Unfortunately, PCSX-R PGXP causes slowdowns in most games. Some are more obvious than others. Overclocking PCSX-R only helps so much and can actually cause problems where the slowdowns are only in certain areas. While overclocking will alleviate the slowdowns in these problem areas it speeds up things too much in areas where there weren't any slowdowns.
I think a lot of the slowdowns are due to PCSX-R itself. It hasn't been actively developed for years now. All that's been done is some optimization here and there to integrate things like PGXP into it. There has been no substantial development of PCSX-R for a while. Last official stable release was in August 2013.

 

[cloudbill]

Does PGXP have anti-aliasing?
textures look like garbled crap on Marvin's shirt for instance, too much ringing arifacts

and the ring appron in smackdown is pixelated

there has to be a better way to filter / upscale textures.

No PGXP doesn't have any texture filtering or anti-aliasing. If you use the graphics plug-in PeteOpenGL2Tweak it will use xbrz scaling on textures and you can use shaders via the built-in shader function to perform post-processing anti-aliasing. There are also shaders that can do debanding. There is one particular shader suite called "PsxFX Shader Suite v2.00" that combines a multitude of shaders that do different things into one suite or "super shader".

 

[cloudbill]

You have to use a post-processing to screen filter osd items / text textures?
or does the xbrz filter every texture both 2d and 3d?

The xbrz scaling being done by PeteOpenGL2 tweak filters textures in both 2D and 3D, even text. What makes the scaler so great is it filters the textures on 3D models without filtering the polygons themselves. That can't be done by using xbrz post processing shaders as of yet if ever.

 

[cloudbill]

The funny thing is, a lot of people don't even understand this difference and they think using a post-processing screen filter is the definitive way to go. I use no post processing shader at all because it just distorts the whole image way too much. I just apply a little bit of SMAA from reshade which helps a lot and doesn't make the image blurry as opposed to any AA post processing shader and results in a very clear and crisp image.

I'm not trying to be an ass or anything but SMAA is still a post-processing shader. When you use SMAA it effects everything on the screen that you can see. Saying that, SMAA has some of the best edge detection algorithms I have seen in such a low cost post-processing AA shader. I personally love SMAA myself and have asked the various PS1 emulation shader authors if they could port SMAA over to use with PetesOpenGL2's built in shader function but I never got a response one way or the other.

 

[cloudbill]

@TheDimensioner
http://ngemu.com/members/thedimensioner.577697/
I actually use the the FXAA w/xbrv in PsxFX Shader Suite v2.00 when using PXGP instead of the xbrz scaler in PeteOpenGL2Tweak plugin. I find the combination looks a whole lot better in Chrono Cross particularly. Actually I believe the xbrv shader in PsxFX is at least based on some of the more recent BRZ shaders created by SimonT and guest.r if not completely ported over to PsxFX entirely.

 

[cloudbill]

@TheDimensioner I use handbrake to encode my videos, h.264 at slow, CRF of 14, film tuned (because..... I think that's okay in this circumstance). I don't change or play with resolution and in PCSX-R, I use the keep aspect ratio, stretch on small heights setting, but I keep my resolution 4:3 at all times. Since these games are 4:3 originally, I don't use the widescreen hack or anything like that. For some reason, YouTube didn't want to keep my V-Rally 2 video's in 1080p, of which they're much closer to resolution wise, than 720p, so that sucked.

@cloudbill That's really interesting, I'll have to see how that works in combination with FXAA in some games I play.

The author of the suite, Asmodean combined xbr to work within the FXAA shader coverage itself. It isn't two separate shaders. He actually combined both xbr and bilateral sampling to work all together within FXAA.

 

[cloudbill]

@cloudbill interesting, you're right, it does seem like the intended use is for them to be used together. No idea why I never tried to experiment around with it before.

While I'm playing around with it, what settings/numbers do you tend to use in general for FXAA with xBRv?

This is what I use for Chrono Cross specifically:

//##[FXAA]
#define FxaaSubpixMax 4.00
#define FxaaQuality 4
#define BilateralSampling 0
#define xBRlv2Sampling 1
#define xBRThreshold 0.025 Note: This allows FXAA and xBR to be applied equally.

//##[XBRV]
#define DetectionType 3
#define SampleScale 4.0
#define ScaleFactor 5.0
Note: Surprisingly, this is the highest it will go but it looks exceptionally good on the 2D text in battle as long as the 2D text is not in front of a 3D model.Another downside is that xbrv will not be applied to textures on the 3D models themselves just 2D textures.

Finally, as it says in the notations of the shader suite itself make sure to enable XBR in the .slv file itself.

It's still a matter of taste so my settings aren't written in stone, so to speak.

 

[cloudbill]

@cloudbill interesting, you're right, it does seem like the intended use is for them to be used together. No idea why I never tried to experiment around with it before.

I think they have to be specifically integrated into the FXAA shader itself. If you tried to use say FXAA and XBRV separately they would conflict with each other. I believe Asmodean had to do some optimizations in order for FXAA, XBR and bilateral sampling to all place nice together.

 

[cloudbill]

@TheDimensioner

I pretty much only use any type of 2D filter shader with certain games like Chrono Cross and FFIX and that is only the new 2D/3D scaling-sensitive ones. Otherwise I stick to the Tweak's xBRz scaler and some shaders like FXAA, phong shading, bloom, scene tonemapping, NTCS TV colour emulation, debanding and sub-pixel dithering because I play on my PC.

As far as Chrono Cross goes......it hangs and locks up when entering the status screen. I have a feeling it has to do with the resolution of the 3D models changing when you enter the status screen. I believe the status screen has a different resolution or even a different AR and the combination of PCSX-R and PGXP can't handle it. I just restarted Chrono Cross on PCSX-R so I haven't had to switch discs yet so the disc changing issue hasn't reared it's ugly head yet. It's a good thing to know thought so thanks for the heads up. The real issue is that PCSX-R is no longer being actively developed and it has always had a lot more compatibility issues then epsxe. That is the main reason why I still forgo some of PGXP's improvements and still play some particularly problematic games for PCSX-R on epsxe even now.

 

[cloudbill]

@unreal676 @TheDimensioner To make your videos encode at 1080p, the last number in the resolution must be 1080. So ----x1080. The first number will actually determine the aspect ratio. Dimensioner, according to the internet, 1440x970 is 144:97 aspect. Your new resolution should be 1603x1080.

@cloudbill You should try Retroarch PSX-HW. Your 760 should support Vulkan renderer. You might find PSX-HW more compatible with games.

I have tried Retroarch and it's Bettle PSX-HW Vulkan renderer. While it is good it is a real pain to setup because it crashes way too much during the process unless you close and save it after every single change. It's way too generalized for my taste to be honest. It's a matter of convenience more than anything else when it comes to choosing between epsxe and Retroarch.

 

[cloudbill]

Of course PGXP is going to increase strain on your PC's hardware. Think about what it has to emulate in an already emulated environment. Not to mention factors such as increased resolution and inherent issues with PetesOpenGL2 plug-in itself. It is a rather old plug-in itself as well that is no longer in development and hasn't been since 2009. While PCSXR has issues in spades I don't think it is solely responsible for the slowdowns.

 

[cloudbill]

I Finally got it working however i found PGXP to also work in Libretro as well.

Could you share how you got it working to your satisfaction. It is bound to help out others in the future if you do.

 

[cloudbill]

This is ok for antialiasing?

View attachment 201034

Driver-forced Antialaising does not work with the OpenGL2 plugins so these settings are useless in most cases. Driver-forced antialiasing does work with the really old DirectX plug-ins though.

 

[cloudbill]

Hello, i am new here.
I have uploaded a Gran Turismo 2 - Plus [MOD Version] PAL on youtube.
My question is, does it look good for a PS1 game?

General rule of thumb is that if it could pass for at least an early PS2 game then it looks good.

 

[cloudbill]

What can I do then?

You can use various shaders to perform post-processing anti-aliasing among other improvements and/or effects. Here's a link to a thread that has all kinds of shaders to use with PetesOpenGL2 plug-in that has been built upon for well over a decade : https://www.ngemu.com/threads/links-and-guides-to-custom-shaders-for-petes-opengl2-plugin.76098/