In my experience there are a lot of bright 100% whites during normal productivity (such as the background of this forum), but in most games the colors are muted and less luminescent than 100% white.
Try a game with really bright whites like Antichamber, and see if you get any eyestrain.
bkdo leaving the game open in the background doesn't change a thing, unfortunately.
si_edgey tried Edge. Still eye strain (possibly a bit less, but could be placebo). It's almost like there's a glow around the letters, but also everywhere else on the screen that's painful to look at.
Interestingly, within the game the one part that is not easy on the eyes is white text on a black background - e.g. 
BUT white text within cinematics - e.g. 
is perfectly fine. However, when I take a screenshot of the same thing and look at it not within a game, but regularly, through whichever software windows uses to open jpegs - it creates eye strain, even in full screen.
Does this help shed any light on what might be at play here, or not so much?
Also, I have about a week to return the laptop...Do you think buying a different G-SYNC laptop and rolling the dice might help? Unless there are other suggestions of what I can tweak with the current laptop's settings?
Seagull Yes, I do get eye strain from watching full screen videos 
P.S. Would updating windows and/or Nvidia drivers be worth trying? I haven't done any updates since getting this laptop, or updates would potentially make everything even worse?
I possibly suspect temporal dithering, but given how it's a laptop LCD at fault, that's harder to troubleshoot (can't easily use capture card and VideoDiff, etc)
balthazar P.S. Would updating windows and/or Nvidia drivers be worth trying? I haven't done any updates since getting this laptop, or updates would potentially make everything even worse?
At this point it can't hurt to try. I suggest you be mindful of the return period.
UPDATE: returned HP Omen. Bought an Acer Predator with G-SYNC. So far - so good. Doesn't seem like there's eye strain happening. Will update after several days, once I know for sure.
UPDATE: Acer Predator is slightly better. Whereas the HP Omen created eye strain immediately , with Acer - it takes 5-10 minutes for the eye strain to kick in. Additionally, turning off ant-aliasing/font-smoothing improves things a bit further..........BUT ARE THERE ANY OTHER SUGGESTIONS OF WHAT SETTINGS I CAN FIDDLE WITH TO GET RID OF EYE-STRAIN??? Thanks in advance.
bkdo Using discrete mode with both laptops. G-Sync - both laptops. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Super with MAX Q in both laptops.
P.S. Still ZERO eye strain when playing Witcher 3. All eye strain I'm referring to comes up outside the game.
balthazar P.S. Still ZERO eye strain when playing Witcher 3. All eye strain I'm referring to comes up outside the game.
I don't know whether to be discouraged because we still have no idea what the root cause is or be encouraged because there IS some software setting that can fix this issue 
balthazar Speculating here, but one possibility is that if you wear glasses, your prescription isn't the right one for the distance you're sitting at. The new glasses I got, were set for distance only which meant that my right eye is blurry at computer distances (but not the left). Fortunately I still have my old distance glasses that are just fine at computer distances. Easy to test for. If you're looking at a web page and cover one eye and the text is blurry, it's the wrong prescription. A videogame like Witcher uses large objects and so doesn't require finer focusing. Of course there's other factors too, but this is an easy thing to check and is a possibility.
Sunspark don't wear glasses. Having said that, how would I go about testing your theory?
If I look at a full screen youtube video of Witcher gameplay - and that creates eye strain - but the actual game does not - that would mean your theory is wrong. But if a full screen youtube video is as eye strain free as the game - that would prove your theory?
Before I go and experiment with this, can I use any random youtube video of witcher gameplay? Or is it best that I capture my own, eye strain free gameplay, upload it on youtube, and then do the experiment?
P.S. I have tried this with a screen shot already (see balthazar ) and the result was: painful to look at in Windows, painless to look at in game.
P.P.S. @Sunspark in your case, did getting the right kind of glasses fix all brain fog/ eye strain problems for you? Can you use any screen now w/o problems?
balthazar If a game truly engages the full screen mode (and isn’t just a borderless window), then some of Windows 10 mischief may be disabled. So it may be OS related.
If that were the case unfortunately the only solution is to downgrade to Windows 7 or an old version of Windows 10 from 2015, which I’m sure won’t be possible on a brand new laptop. Is the discrete mode something you set in the BIOS or do you need to use an application?
By the way, what is the model number of your Acer.
Might be worth it to try Linux as well.
Is there any kind of activity monitor program for Windows that could tell you what graphics mode you're currently using? I'm a mac user, so I have no experience with that kind of thing. Would be interesting to see what it would say while in full-screen Witcher 3.
degen If a game truly engages the full screen mode (and isn’t just a borderless window), then some of Windows 10 mischief may be disabled. So it may be OS related.
Idea going from here is comparing the pixel data of a "good" screen versus a "bad" screen displaying what should be identical data, but the problem with laptops is grabbing raw frames from the GPU output of a laptop LCD is very nontrivial.
degen Zero problems in the full screen mode AND in the borderless window mode.
The discrete mode is set in-app. E.g. https://www.acer.com/ac/en/CA/content/predatorsense
The model # is PT515-52-73L3.
Bought it here: https://www.amazon.ca/Acer-Predator-PT515-52-73L3-i7-10750H-Dual-Channel/dp/B08CNLPDXV/
I might be lacking the technical skills needed to install linux and figure out how to switch to discrete mode in linux.....but I'm not opposed to trying to figure it out if there's a high chance of success
bkdo I don't know. I've followed @si_edgey 's advice though (see his post si_edgey ), and under Display Adapters it only shows Nvidia RTX 2070. No mention of Intel. So I'm presuming that proves that Intel graphics chip is no-longer active. Is that the case?
JUST double checking. If intel graphics could still be running somehow in the background, but not showing up, and I need to switch it off in-Bios or whatever, please do advise as to what steps I should take.
I'm barely computer literate. But if you tell me where to click and what to do, I'd love to do that and report back on my findings.
balthazar Try this: https://www.avsforum.com/threads/2020-lg-cx%E2%80%93gx-dedicated-gaming-thread-consoles-and-pc.3138274/page-21#post-59699820
When you download NvColorControl and extract it, open notepad and paste the text @glvn posted here: https://ledstrain.org/d/1048-new-graphics-card-rtx-3090-gives-eyestrain/9
Save it as a .cmd in the same folder you extracted the application and run the .cmd file.
See if that helps.
I'm just here to say I know that phenomenon, too. A graphics card (MSI GT710 first rev.), which was not eye-friendly for me even on the Windows 10 LTSB 2015 desktop, was painless when I started a game (AM2R). I think it ran in full-screen OpenGL. LTSB 2015 still has true fullscreen mode.
Something about Chrome & Zoom that's worse than other pieces of software also.
I have tried two laptops now (HP Omen 15 and Lenovo Legion 5) with a MUX switch, allowing me to theoretically switch between the output of the Intel integrated (Hybrid mode) and Nvidia graphics (Discrete mode) on both laptops.
I have found that in this small sample size, Nvidia graphics is worse for me than Intel. I rapidly get migraine symptoms with eye drooping on Discrete mode, which feels distinct to and is significantly worse than my usual OS-related discomfort.
In my case, modern Nvidia notebook adapters are modulating the display output in a way that produces a severe negative reaction.
More subjectively, I find the output of the Nvidia adapter to be cleaner looking and more still, which, based on my symptoms, is the opposite I expected.
degen I’m finding with my Alienware M15 r6 gsync laptop that it’s actually easier on my eyes if I run in nvidia mode only, turn gsync off and reduce refresh rate to 60hz.
Perhaps g-sync is helpful for gaming but is unhelpful/causing issues when not gaming? I find the high refresh rate immediately causes more eye effort if that makes sense. It’s hard to know for sure!
JonnyT Interesting…..I might just have to order another another G-SYNC laptop and fiddle with the settings. THANKS for the heads-up! How much easier are we talking about. btw? Can use for hours with no problem?
I might have to get a g-sync laptop again and do some experimenting.
