Flicker free LED lights

jasonpicard

Might have missed this part:

"What is the hardware driving it? CPU/GPU/cables etc? "

hpst Radeon R7, HDMI, CPU is crap. Not at home right now but probably a quadcore AMD something. I mostly use it for playing emulator games and have consoles hooked up to the other HDMI port.

jasonpicard Hmm, very interesting. Thanks for taking the time to explain. I will certainly have a look at the videos and see if I can find the screen at a local computer shop to try.

deepflame https://youtu.be/kdMzJHLHB9A Check this video it as well. Linus totally proves you need to use different settings for different activities. Some monitors come with over drive automatically set and most of them are terrible and can result in immediate eyestrain. A lot of monitors are usually only good at one thing so it depends what you are looking for with your screens.

hpst Can you go on Blur Busters and post your issues? tell him what screens you can use what your lighting environment is like where you use your computer. I would be super interested to hear the answers. I'm super lucky because I have controlled all my lighting environment even my work as I had multiple meetings with many people. I'm almost always in a flicker free zone no matter where I am.

jasonpicard Don't want to stray OT but I agree with @hpst regarding dithering being the elephant in the room.

Does 'overdrive' on these new monitors truly eliminate the effects of dithering? While that is indeed a very positive idea this technology will be quite expensive. Furthermore I think it would be very hard to convince a company that you need a $1000+ gaming monitor just to work in their office 9-5. So while we can get the exact setup to our liking at home, this still proves a real issue out there in the working world.

So there are two angles as i see it - either find a 'cure-all' monitor which will work with all bad devices, or isolate the root cause at the software level to begin with to eliminate the need for any filters/glasses/or expensive monitors.

jasonpicard Not as expensive as I thought.

One thing we do know is dithering involves the movement of pixels, and that all modern OS/Drivers are probably using a form of it (otherwise there would be no Amulet Hotkey fixes required for PCoIP). As it has been shown with flicker-fusion thresholds, some are more sensitive than others, but regardless the extra 'movement' created by temporal dithering is still present, even if the majority of users cannot perceive it. This is enabled by default on all MacOS installs - so in theory I could test every monitor out in the wild today, but if the Mac driving the monitor always has temporal dithering enabled then the pixel movement will always be there. I still feel that until that very big aspect of modern tech is taken out of the equation we won't know for certain if it was the issue all along.

diop https://youtu.be/brMW6KFue-I sorry I'm a big retro game nut. This is a PS2 video explaining the crazy interlaced mode it used. Which I would say is one of the harshest modes for viewing screen content. Nobody I know complained about this back in the 2000's. It makes alot of the games look like they are Flickering and they have jagged edges. PS2 was alot of people's first DVD players. It was pretty cheap at the time. I don't think anyone has used this interlaced mode since. At least I don't believe it's the norm.

jasonpicard I did use the original iMac in the early 00's and don't remember having any issues.

Thanks for the links - I already sub to My Life in Gaming, great channel (I'm also a big retro gamer). I think the dithering used in those days was a short cut as viewing the dithered images on a CRT smoothed the pixels out, and that's why a lot of people resort to filters in emulation nowadays.

diop Super cool. If you watch My Life In Gaming you know the importance of using the proper screen for the job. PS2 for example best screen Sony Wega with the component cables In 480 Interlaced mode. Now take that awesome setup and hook it up to your flat screen that supports component cables. It's going to look terrible cause eyestrain and most likely the TV won't handle the signal correct or downscale it correctly. I think when it comes to LED screens if you watch the 20 plus videos I have posted around this forum the last couple of days. To just say it is one thing that is causing your problem becomes very hard to prove because LED has a lot of issues related to it. CRT especially last generation was the greatest screen ever In my opinion.
LED ISSUES
Motion Blur - 60HZ LED terrible (OLED still suffers motion blur just has a faster GTG)
Dithering - I don't have this issue but I can tell you when you watch these gaming videos you see we have been dealing with this forever.
PWM - Most gaming monitors have eliminated this but TV's are still bad except LG OLEDS and Sony TV's usually have a very high frequency flicker. Rtings.com checks every screen for this. Phones are pretty bad as well at least DC dimming is coming to I believe it's around 14 different phones now.
True Blacks - This can be a big cause of eye strain especially dark scenes in games and movies. Game Of Thrones final season was proof of this. LED does not handle this well at all
Eye Tracking - I think enough attention doesn't get put into this. Every LED suffers this issue watch the video I posted. If you are following an image across the screen your brain and eyes think it's supposed to be in a certain spot but it's not because LED is too slow. CRT/Plasma no issue in this department. BFI is the way to fix this problem for LED but it does induce a flicker that is different from regular PWM.
Spectrum - Blue light almost impossible to deal with when it comes to LEDs. Best way turn down the brightness and gamma. Try not to play with the contrast too much. Make the screen too dark your dealing with a whole other set of problems. Flux doesn't help in this department because black pixels is just a closed shutter on your screen. Full exposure to the LED back light bleed.
Pixel Inversion - VA/TN/OLED/IPS all handle this differently
Scaling - Running a 4K monitor to run 1080P content or 720P content may not be a good idea. You need to see a reivew of your monitor/TV to see how good the algorithms on your monitor/TV are for this
Playing Movies - Usually a terrible idea on your LED TV/Monitor they are filmed at 24FPS this doesn't fit into the 60HZ formula of an LED. Factor in the sample and hold issues and you have a nightmare for eye strain. Again look up reviews what kind of software do they have to combat this. The new LG OLED I heard can handle movies good now. Why can your CRT/Plasma at 60HZ handle because of the phosphor. DLP is 24HZ,48 HZ and 72 HZ perfect for playing movies.
Refresh Rate - This needs a seperate mention as you can get wild results with your monitor like buying a 240HZ monitor is not always the best solution. The first generation of these are not that great depending on what you are doing. Some new ones are coming out this year that probably will be pretty good finally. Samsung has a new VA 240 HZ the first for VA. There is a few more but we need to wait for tests on them.

There is probably way more things when dealing with LEDs it's just too long a list to get into. Finally I didn't forget that PVM's are the best CRT's

Don't recommend LED lights.

The flickering doesn't matter.

LED lights are always evil and harmful.