Thanks to all for their comments, seems that I am finally not alone having the issue with this browser. It is important that if you experience this you star or better even comment on that bug report I linked earlier, a Google account should be enough to log into that system:

https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1157382

This increases our chances of Chromium devs looking into this, so far there's been basically zero activity.

I also opened a Google support case for this pointing them to the bug report, it's been even escalated to higher levels of support (at least they claim so), but no real outcome there so far.

In the meantime I was trying to get accustomed to the problem and see if I can get used to it: played on Stadia for several hours on Dec 23, felt like it could finally be OK at first, but by the end of the day and the next day I paid the price: terrible headache, feelings of nausea etc., partially ruined my Christmas... Chrome is unusable for me if this does not get resolved, that's for sure.

Additionally, I have some news, but it's not looking good. I spent half of my yesterday setting up and compiling my own Chrome from sources on Linux trying to disable both of the dithering options the bugs I linked earlier speak about. And I was successful in the end: my chrome build is showing obvious color banding in various tests (unlike the official build), so I apparently achieved the dithering removal. But the effect of this custom build on my eyes is just the same. Therefore it must be some different form of dithering or it is indeed the color profile handling of Chrome doing this (so @Seagull might have been right, my apologies sir for doubting what you said). I am at a loss. I will follow @Gurm 's advice of trying out Chrome v68 if I can find it somewhere to see if it is OK so that I am able to point Google in the right direction as my original assumption was apparently wrong. There was color management implemented in Chrome some 1-2 years back so that could be it, too. But even at the very beginning of discovering this issue (some 3-4 weeks back) I was testing various options available under the force-color-profile flag to no avail.

@Lauda89 It definitely has nothing to do with fonts as staring at pictures and playing games on Stadia causes the issue as well.

    machala

    Lets take a step back:

    Are you only using chrome for Stadia, how is it for normal web browsing?

    What's your GPU and monitor, or laptop? Do you have a list of hardware you've tried and had problems with?

    @Seagull The truth is I don't use Chrome at all as every minute of using it makes me feel sick. 🙂
    But yes, I need to use it only for Stadia, however, as I write in the initial post (I believe) it's even normal browsing causing exactly the same effect. I can "detect" the problem within seconds of using the browser, right after opening it.

    PC 1: NVidia 660, Acer TN monitor (would need to search the model)
    PC 2: NVidia 1060-6G, iiyama AMVA monitor
    Laptops: various models with i5-5500 Pro, i7-9750H and hybrid graphics - integrated + Nvidia T1000 (the same issue no matter to which graphics I switch), and older laptop with an i5 from 2011. Most of them with both Windows and Linux installed (mostly Ubuntu). All causing exactly the same issue.

    None of the systems above are perfect for me, but they are quite OK, I can use all of them for many hours without any issue whatsoever. And apart from Firefox I'm using dozens of applications and it's only Chrome where I have the problem. That's why I dropped your idea of colors being the issue. Dozens of applications - no problem, and Chrome having such a drastic effect within minutes? Weird indeed.

      I think it makes sense that in the end it's the graphics card causing this. The browsers seem to request a certain display mode or perhaps "color correction" for their windows, and the GPU driver just responds and decides to employ temporal dithering at will. On the video cable only, so not detectable by the running OS (e.g. screenshots). Perhaps influenced by driver color settings and connected monitor, too, in a way that's not easily predictable. Looking at Seagull's findings in his capture card tests, this could be an explanation.
      The Chrome browser's own dithering might be static dithering, so potentially harmless. In their bug report thread they don't say it clearly.

      machala

      Both your 660 and 1060 use temporal dithering. All the external GPUs I have tested used temporal dithering, but I have actually tested several 660s and a 1060 so I am as certain I can be that yours are dithering [it gets more complex than that, but I don't want to overburden you].

      You might want to try using intel integrated if either of your desktops has that. By default, intel integrated uses spatial dithering only (ie it doesn't move or flicker), and this can be reliably turned off using software available here. Also, avoid using VGA cables whilst experimenting as RF noise will affect the signal and what you see on the monitor.

      I would strongly recommend you get your own capture card so you can test these things for yourself. I found that simply relying upon my own experience of pain and discomfort was not sufficient to diagnose things. I once thought that only my 660 did not dither and that all other cards did, as the 660 was generally comfortable and other cards (intel integrated for example) caused immediate pain. I discovered after testing with my capture card that the 660 did dither, and the intel integrated did not. Best explanation I could come up with was that the monitor I using needed dithering to be comfortable, monitors use dithering too, so perhaps the superposition of two dithering algorithms made it work. Now I have since found monitors which are comfortable with intel integrated graphics (and its lack of dithering), and I no longer get random pieces of software giving me eyestrain. With the 660 I found: steam; sharepoint on chrome; office 365; and visual studio 2020, caused pain - all of which I can use fine now.

      If you get the black magic card I can talk you through using it, and send you my analysis software. Be wary of buying any capture card marketed to gamers though, these will use compression and screw up the analysis.

      As for why Chrome, I really couldn't say. All I can do is re-iterate the testing I have done.
      gtx 660 + other external GPUs -> temporal dithering on everything in windows -> temporal dithering on chrome,
      Intel integrated -> no temporal dithering on windows-> no temporal dithering on chrome.

      • JTL replied to this.

        machala

        1) I'm experiencing exactly the same on a otherwise safe system. Firefox is ok.
        2) Unforunately not
        3) WIll do.

        JTL

        That is interesting, both the gaming and professional AMD cards I tested dithered on windows. I wonder if Linux users are trusted to set their own dithering settings.

        • JTL replied to this.

          Seagull I haven't done any Windows development in quite a while, but it might be theoretically possible for a third-party utility to emulate the register changes performed by the Linux driver. There might be some caveats to this, but I'll document that later.

          5 days later

          So some news from my end:

          • Google support is unwilling to do anything with my request and keeps sending me to Chrome support that just does not exist
          • Chromium bug report: no update there. Again, please star the bug or comment there if you see the issue as well:
            https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1157382
          • @Gurm Thanks a lot for your comment, I am able to confirm your findings, Chrome v68 probably still isn't as good as Firefox (but it's really hard to tell), but definitely the issue started with v69.

          So the next course of action is clear: try to figure out what was changed in v69 and see if it's a feature or a setting that can be disabled (either directly within Chrome or by a setting for compiling Chromium - the same thing I did with dithering).

          @Seagull I am not ignoring your advice, but I do not believe the theory with the GPU being the cause is true here, at least this is the last thing I'd check - for me the issue exists on all systems I have. Additonally I am able to completely disable temporal dithering in NVidia linux drivers. On the contrary I am aware that there are differences between GPUs and even drivers in terms of their lightness on one's eyes so I am not entirely dropping this.

          4 months later
          8 months later

          I'm curious if this was ever resolved? I am noticing the same thing on current versions of Chrome (and Chrome based browsers). Also in Firefox versions >88 (with the new UI) I started having the same issue as with Safari >14. Safari 13 is fine and Firefox 78ESR is fine. Is there something that changed in the web rendering world in the past couple years that could have brought this out?

            I have used Firefox for a lot of time mostly because of the way it renders fonts. The fonts in Chrome look too thin for me and that has to do something with ClearType not being used I think. If you open a page in Chrome and Firefox and compare you will most likely see a difference in font rendering. Lately I've switched to Edge because they've enhanced font rendering and seems to use the ClearType from Windows (I've enabled in flags for "Enhance text contrast"). I like features like image of the day, vertical tabs with no caption bar, font rendering… but slowly it seems to get bloated.

            5 months later

            asus389 Hello, yes, I know about the FF and have EXACTLY the same issue. I even opened a bug report with Mozilla, but tracking down what version it started with was rather hard for me. Perhaps we could get in touch and work on this together? The mozilla devs seemed open to tracking the issue down and this may actually be our gateway to understanding what this really is all about!!

            This is all very weird and something is certainly going on here, more and more applications are using the same troubling rendering… MS Teams, RealVNC client, GeforceNow client… it's terrible…

            Sunspark Yes, it helps, I actually use dark themes everywhere I can now, but it's not the real solution…

            dev