Crosshair X vs Magpie

Crosshair X places a custom crosshair over PC games, including games without their own built-in crosshair. Its designer offers lines, dots, outlines, color, opacity, animations, and image uploads. Crosshairs can react to firing with multi-stage or per-button animations. Players can add PNG or animated GIF overlays and layer text, emoji, or status indicators. Display controls let users select a monitor, save positions for different games, and toggle the crosshair with shortcuts or mouse states. For exclusive-fullscreen games, Crosshair X uses Xbox Game Bar; windowed and borderless games use a separate transparent overlay. Its maker says the app does not inject code, change game files, read or write game memory, simulate input, scan gameplay, or communicate with game servers. Steam Workshop users can browse community designs and publish their own, and crosshairs can be shared by code or exported as image files. Crosshair X runs on Windows. The Microsoft Store listing is free at free, with a free trial available. The Steam version costs 3.99 USD once; the Epic Games Store base game costs 9.99 USD once.

Magpie is a free Windows tool for scaling windowed or fullscreen content with built-in algorithms and filters. These include Anime4K, FSR, CRT shaders, and other effects. Effects can be combined, most have adjustable parameters, and users familiar with HLSL can add effects. The WinUI-based interface supports light and dark themes, and the tool supports multiple monitors. Release notes describe a screenshot hotkey that defaults to Alt+Shift+S, with customizable filenames, and SGSR, a lightweight upscaling algorithm designed for 3D content. The FAQ says frame generation is not planned because Magpie focuses on visual quality and post-processing, which can add latency when used for frame generation. Magpie requires Windows 10 version 1903 or later, or Windows 11, and DirectX feature level 11. It is licensed under GPLv3, and downloads are linked from GitHub Releases. The repository says it has no SECURITY.md file and no published security advisories. Magpie is associated with a maker founded in 2021.