A downloadable tool for Windows

ShaderGlass

Overlay applying retro shaders on top of Windows desktop

Features

  • applies shader effects on top of any window on the desktop in realtime
  • includes 300+ shaders from RetroArch library covering:
    • CRT monitor simulation
    • image upscaling
    • TV / VHS simulation
    • softening, denoising, blur and sharpen
  • works with most emulators and retro platforms (in windowed/borderless modes) including DOSBox FS-UAE Altirra ScummVM AGS any many more
  • you can even use it on top of YouTube or Twitch, albeit with some option tuning necessary to clean up video scaling
  • works with OBS (in Game Capture mode)


See GitHub page for more details:

https://github.com/mausimus/ShaderGlass


New in v0.9 (10 Aug 2023):

  • refresh of RetroArch shader library
  • new Shader Browser window
  • bug fixes
StatusReleased
CategoryTool
PlatformsWindows
Rating
Rated 4.9 out of 5 stars
(57 total ratings)
Authormausimus
TagsEmulator, Retro, Shaders
Code licenseGNU General Public License v3.0 (GPL)
LinksSource code

Download

Download
ShaderGlass-0.9-win-x64.zip 13 MB

Development log

Comments

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Viewing most recent comments 1 to 40 of 47 · Next page · Last page

Sugerencias:.1.En vez de pulsar tabulador para activar o desactivar el filtro,poder definir una tecla del teclado,pues interfiere con ciertas aplicaciones y es muy practico ver el filtro activo y desactivo.2 Poder concatenar varios filtros a la vez de forma sencilla.Por ejemplo aplico el filtro blur y luego  el resultado aplicarle el filtro crt.

Tips:.1.Instead of pressing Tab to activate or deactivate the filter, you can define a key on the keyboard, as it interferes with certain applications and it is very practical to see the filter active and deactivated.2 To be able to concatenate several filters at the same time in a simple way. For example, I apply the blur filter and then the result apply the crt filter to it.

no le tenia tanta fe, pero la verdad es que se ve muy bien

(+2)

Would love to see this on Mac!

(2 edits) (+3)

I really wish this was available for macOS.

You could sell it on the (macOS) App Store and make a killing

Wow... Handheld Shader has been dissappeared.... was my favorite....

(+1)

For people having issue with the yellow bar and who want to full screen, try to run things in a window then use "Borderless gaming" I had good results, even managed to watch old shows with VLCs using this.

I love this! For some reason though, every time I try to use it in full screen mode (no mater if it's on a game or by itself like when using google), if my mouse goes either to the left or superior edge the click through stops working and it goes back to the app itself, any help anyone can give?

This is one of my favorite. Incredible work!

Can you fix simplitex lcd shader? Because it is not working as intended.

And can you add Gameboy shader in handheld section?

its very niceeeeeeeeeee work!But how to reduce input lag?Even i play fullscreen still input lag.

Hello! This software is incredible, but for some reason if I don't set my computer DPI for both monitors to 100% (which is too small for me to read anything), I'm only able to capture a portion of the screen with the rest showing as black, even if I change the DPI settings in ShaderGlass. I would send a screenshot if it weren't for the strange issue of the program not showing up in screenshots.

Hello

That's a very impressive application, I'm stunned by the variety of options and possibilities.

One question: I tried to start a rather ancient 3Dfx-game (Myth: The Fallen Lords).  It's one of those games that looked much better on a blurry CRT-screen. Now while I can start the game in software mode and use ShaderGlass, that's not possible if I start the 3Dfx version (emulated by nglide's .dlls): The glide wrapper overrides ShaderGlass. Is there a way to prevent this?

Thank you for your work.

(1 edit)

Is there any way to have shaderglass work in a full screen game like how RTSS crosshair does? It works great but on modern titles playing on borderless fullscreen through glass mode causes lack in performance.  Maybe there is a way already and I just don’t know how to do it? Id say it’s definitely possible tho either with another third party program or the right coding.

Edit: I’m using reshade on shaderglass which is why it’s more intensive and has more input delay. I’ve noticed that hovering over shaderglass while in a fullscreen game fixes input delay like a screen filter. But I don’t know how to have shaderglass stay in a fullscreen game. Clicking on shaderglass while in full screen just shows the yellow border lines which makes me more convinced it could work. 

I am looking to use this for the Fix it Felix Jr game to make it look like crt. all is working amazing but what I want to do is turn on the PC and it would auto load this exe, and also the saved settings (rotated, crt geom) and load the game exe as well using a script).


When i load this up, just normally, i have to click load profile and run it in fullscreen manually then. Is it possible just to load and attach itself to the running exe game and load the saved profile automatically?

its just so that i can just power up the pc and this will autoboot and load everything in without having to click other options etc

thank you

Hey, yes you can pass profile file name on command line as well as auto-enable full-screen, please check the README on GitHub page.

Thank you for your reply. I just spent literally 2 hours trying to get the cmd script to work but what is happening is that I have written a basic script to launch shaderglass.exe with the profile and fullscreen and fifj.exe but shaderglass loads, and cannot see the game running. I believe that running the two exe's at the same time, its not enough time for shaderglass to see the game running to load it, so its just an empty screen.

So then i thought.. lets try this script -

"@echo off

cd "C:\Users\USERNAME\Desktop\Fix It Felix Jr" 

start ShaderGlass.exe -f fix it felix.sgp

timeout /t 5 /nobreak > nul

start FIFJ.exe

exit"

I thought, put in a delay where the exe for the game would load 5 seconds later (not ideal as id miss seeing the rom check load screen) but the script just ends at timeout /t 5 /nobreak > nul... (even tried without > nul)

The game exe wont load after this. So just totally stuck to try and get it to boot with the game at the same time. Any help would be very much appreciated!! thank you

I really appreciate you making this - I've been wanting to find a decent CRT filter for my screen for some time, for retro gaming and such! You rock!

The option to remove the yellowboarder is grayed out. Any suggestions?

(+1)

Did you manage to figure it out?

Sadly I did not. Apparently it is required by Windows to have a yellow border when you're recording/taking a picture

In Windows 10, all research points to the yellow border being a built-in security feature when screen capturing, and it is not possible to disable it. In Windows 11, it is apparently possible. Here's a link with instructions (Look for the snipping tool info, not the Narrator info): https://techyorker.com/how-to-remove-yellow-border-around-screen-in-windows-11/

This is wonderful work, thank you for making it open source with the GPLv3!

Any thoughts on how this can be made to work on other operating systems?

(+1)

This is pretty fantastic. I'm promoting it on twitter! Thank you!

If you're still taking requests, it would be nice to have a custom input where you just set the window size manually, and also get to hide the border/buttons/etc and have just the shader if possible.

(+1)

Hello https://itch.io/profile/mausimus ! Could you make this program works for windows 7 too?. I can pay for your work.

Anyone know of a Linux alternative?

(+1)

replicating the look of my childhood TV added a new level of authenticity to my emulation journey. godspeed mausimus

(1 edit)

This was fantastic! But I had a problem. I turned on Capture Cursor, How can I hide the actual cursor?

This is absolutely phenomenal. Thank you for this! Amazing work ♥

thank you a million times for this

This is the first crt filter that actually looks like a crt Ive seen

Fantastic job, but any chance you could fix the HDR issues? If you play a game borderless fullscreen on windows 11 with AutoHDR active, using shaderglass over that game will cause shaderglass' output to be extremely bright and over-exposed, almost as if it is not accounting for AutoHDR.

Hi, Great app!! Is there a chance to make it run on Windows 8?

Hi, I'm using it with Duckstation specifically to make Silent Hill grimier and some of the VHS shaders as well CRT scanlines are what I'm looking for but I wish it was possible to layer the effects (as in CRT on top of VHS).  Also, I cannot seem to be able to remove the yellow border for some reason. Other than that this is fantastic.

Hello, this is exactly what i needed but is there a way for it to automaticaly start up on a saved setting when i start the pc?

This is wonderful. The only thing that's missing are some nice palette quantization shaders to downscale colours to simulate EGA, CGA, C64, Amiga, etc, or even custom palettes. I haven't found any, but is there any way to do this out of the box? Or is the only way at this point to compile a new version with converted .h shaders?

(+3)

Thanks very much! Yes shaders are compiled-in so that the app is small and fast. Having just finished with Enclosure 3-D, I am planning to refresh the shader library from RetroArch in the near future and perhaps add some external/hand-made ones. A generic palette-quantization shader with swappable LUTs at runtime would sure be nice.

Nice. What I'm thinking specifically is something like ReShade's Nostalgia.fx shader.

Just brilliant! Thank you for this.

Hello mausimus. Let me just say that your work is brilliant. I was hoping for someone to make something like this. I really hope you won't abandon this child as it's already very good and may become a serious CRT simulation with some more work.

I have two questions:

- Output Scale - why Free option is always blocked? For my usage (playing Windows 98 games), I use 150% scaling but the scaled display it's too big so some part of the game is not visible. I guess something around 125% would be perfect though I cannot select it.

- Capture Cursor - is it possible to hide the main Windows cursor in this mode somehow? Currently I have two cursors on the screen when I use ShaderGlass with this option enabled. You could bring back the cursor with some keys combination.

Thank you and good luck.

(+2)

Been loving this a lot. I do have a question tho. Is there any way to a 4:3 aspect ratio when you go fullscreen without having the original window be fullscreen? Free stretches the image while the percentages while it keeps the ratio and the selected size just sticks to the top left corner without going fullscreen.  Side note, is there any way to have shader parameters save? I use NewPixie a lot but I always have to go in and turn off the curvature.

(+2)

Thanks, I'm considering adding a black-bars mode which will retain aspect ratio of the original.

For saving shader parameters if you File -> Save profile they should also be saved.

Hi just wanna say a big thks it is a perfect work!! I've been trying to record my gameplay with shaderglass by OBS. However, it seems OBS cannot capture the shaderglass window. Shader is alway on top of OBS. any ideas on how I might could record my gameplay with shadergalss effect? really appreciated!!!

Hey, thanks, in OBS try "Game Capture" source with "Capture specific window", that should work with Glass mode. Otherwise you'll need to use Clone mode in ShaderGlass.

Thks a lot!!! Will have a try and keep u updated;))

Hi just wanna come back and thks again, game capture is working good, see this: youtu.be/-vf2V9isP34, I used it for my Mozilla Hubs game, also credit you:)) really appreciated it and will share ShaderGlass to my friends!!!! thks!!!

Great! Pretty interesting stuff you got there...

(1 edit)

Hey Sir, passing just to say thanks and, yet again with all the other comments here, let you know how useful and good this is. You're awesome, and this is really wonderful, thanks!!

Many thanks for the kind words, enjoy the app!

Hello. Your program is really cool. However, the "remove yellow border" function does not work. What should I do?

(+1)

Hey, this is only possible on Windows 11 (it's out of my control on Windows 10 unfortunately).

Hello!
This is an amazing program and does exactly what I've wanted to do for awhile -- use retroarch shaders on non-retroarch core supported applications.

My only question is whether or not It's possible to add our own slangp shaders to the program on our computers? For example I love the crt options already available, but my favorite crt shader, crt-royale xm29plus, is not included.

Hey, thanks for the kind words, yes I'd love to include various crt-royale and HSM shaders but they are much more complex and ShaderGlass is not capable of running them correctly (yet!); they are on my list however. In general for supporting external .slangp shaders I'm not planning the ability to load them on the fly,  all shaders are compiled-in for ShaderGlass to stay small and fast (you'll need to recompile ShaderGlass to add your own shaders, something possible already).

I've been looking for something like this for days! Is there any way to set it up so that once windows is turned on ShaderGlass will automatically launch with it?

This is an inherent Windows feature! It's a bit more complicated than it used to be, but you can set it up yourself.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/add-an-app-to-run-automatically-at-s...

(+1)(-1)

how do i get this to work it only display's black :(

please i want to play some game with this filter and i cant because it wont work

(+1)

Are you on Windows 10 version 1909 or earlier? If so, you cannot use "glass mode" but you should be able to use "clone mode". Go to Input -> Window and choose your game window.

(+2)(-1)

Hi!! I am having this problem on starting the software, under Windows 7. Any hint to solve it??

(+2)

Hey, unfortunately you need Windows 10 (ideally 2004, minimum 1903), those are the earliest versions where the tech ShaderGlass uses is available.

(+2)

Ok! Thank you for the answer!!

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