Super CRT Filter for OpenEmu

Super CRT is a blend of my favorite CRT filters online, and the .CG screen filter I use on my installation of the OpenEmu emulator. Pixel graphics on retro gaming consoles and computers were designed to look good on CRT monitors, not the super-sharp LCD screens and plasmas of today. You can read more about the CRT look in this article on Tested.

A lot of modern emulators have filters that get really close to what the original monitors looked like, but the excellent OpenEmu system for OS X has a very basic-looing CRT filter. I wanted something much more realistic looking, so I spent a weekend putting together my ideal pixel shader for the emulator. I found some excellent .CG fiters in the libretro/common-shaders repository on GitHub and combined five of them to make my CRT filter.

Download and installation

Click below to download. Extract the contents into your ~/Library/Application Support/OpenEmu/Filters folder. The filter should then be available from the drop down menu inside OpenEmu.

Comparison

Below is a comparison with the CRT filter that is installed with OpenEmu, and with Super CRT. The Super CRT filter features very subtle glow and sharpening artifacts, in addition to scanlines and a more subtle distortion.