Temporal Dithering Sensitivity - My Solution
Gurm I bought an XPS13 (Intel Core Core i5-7200U, Intel HD Graphics 620) with the matte 1920x1080 screen, and tried to install Ditherig, but without success. I tried version 1.5 (then later 1.4), extracting the files from the downloads folder into the apps folder of the hard drive, and then proceeded to run the ditherig.exe as administrator (the one in the AMD64 folder). The Ditherig icon appears in the bar at the bottom of the screen, so that I can even open it and see all the options, but I can't select any as I get the following error message: 'Dithering Settings for Intel Graphics: Failed to configure the registers.' Am I just doing something stupid, or does this mean that Ditherig isn't compatible with Intel HD Graphics 620? Just to see, I tried to run as administrator the x86 exe from within the Ditherig archive too, and got the error message: Dithering Settings for Intel Graphics: Failed to load a DLL.
If anyone is able to help, I'd be really grateful, as I'm just going to return the XPS 13 otherwise. It's nowhere near as painful as other LCDs I've used. But it's definitely not comfortable for me.
Did you get this sorted @FNP7 or did you return the machine>? Ditherig didn't have any problems installing on my XPS 15 with Intel Graphics 530.
I just wanted to check in now it has been a few monthsand say that this laptop has remained usable for me with Ditherig installed. It's the easiest my eyes have felt with a laptop screen for years! Again, I'm using the Matte 1920x1080 screen, no touch. Intel drivers are version 20.19.15.4483 and Nvidia drivers are version 10.18.13.6881.
Really hope this helps someone else! Did you have any joy @Gurm?
si_edgey Sorry for the delay in responding. I couldn't get Ditherig installed on the XPS13, so had to return that machine. I don't understand why I couldn't get it to work - perhaps it's not compatible with Intel HD Graphics 620? Anyway - am very glad that it's still working for you. :-) It'd be interesting to hear if anyone else can get it to work too.
Ditherig makes my XPS13 - which was already very nice - a real joy. If only it were more powerful (it's last year's model, so a Core i5). My XPS15 gets BETTER with Ditherig, but not perfect. I am going to play with drivers. It's worth noting that the XPS15 has Anniversary edition of Windows 10 on it, which is worse on my eyes than standard Windows 10 (I've refused to upgrade on my primary machines since I have work to get done!)
I am going to try reinstalling the XPS15 with Windows 10 non-anniversary (I assume Windows 7 is not an option) which might make it much friendlier, and then roll back the Intel drivers to last year's drivers (which I use with much success on the XPS13). Adding ditherig on top of this may very well make this the ultimate machine for me... at least until I am forced to go to Anniversary Edition.
Finally got Ditherig installed on my machine, I used the newest version (1.6). Can folks share the settings they used to achieve the best result? Did you need to reboot to see changes?
It should be IMMEDIATELY obvious. It kicks in instantly. If you see it running in the tray area, it's active. Your chip might not be supported, although it ought to be with the latest version.
OK, I will continue to use it and see how it feels. The laptop video card is an Intel HD 5500 which is listed as a supported.
Yeah, so the culprit is likely the latest Intel drivers, which are harsher than the ones from, say, a year ago.
- Edited
Gurm That's where I am learning. I'm going to try the standard VGA drivers, if that eliminates the issue I will try and get older drivers installed, if none of those work I will just have to live with VGA unless I can find a setup that uses a different video card out of the laptop. Apparently there is a whole little cottage industry of external video card setups for laptops, primarily for gaming performance, bt it could be an option for us
Finally I am able to install ditherig on my laptop to test it out. I used the latest v1.7 version, installed the zip file and used the exe under the folder amd64. I tried the exe under x86 folder but it does not work, it gave a missing dll error. For some reason the exe under amd64 works, even though my laptop is not using amd processor or graphics card at all.
Anyway, I right clicked the icon on the system tray, select the "Disable all dithering function". So I will test out for a few days to see if it reduces my eye strain or not.
One thing I noticed that when taking a photo of the screen using my cell phone camera, I can still see the "shimmering" and checked pattern (see photo below). I thought if we disabled dithering, it would eliminate this shimmering effect which we can only see using a cell phone camera?
I thought if we disable dithering, when we took a photo of the screen using a cell phone, it would look like this:
The photo above (CNN website) is from my current cell phone (HTC One M9+ Supreme Camera Edition), which shows nice and clean image, no shimmering and no checked pattern.
Both photos, the desktop with dithering menu and the CNN website were taken using the same cell phone (my old HTC One Max).
So shouldn't disabling dithering would eliminate the shimmering / checked pattern on the screen? I thought that is one of our prime suspect for the cause of eye strain?
Kray https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moir%C3%A9_pattern
Can have other causes too I think.
AMD64 doesn't mean you need an AMD processor. It just means the generic x64 command set.
Hi guys, just wanted to report back in and let people know that the combination of Dell XPS 9550 and Ditherig.exe is still working for me. I rarely get migraines any more and I feel much happier in general without having permanent headaches and nausea. If you're sensitive to temporal dithering then this is a real solution which has worked for me for 8 months now, tried and tested. Good luck everyone!
si_edgey Good to hear. Dell XPS is a great laptop.
Over time I still find the CPU in my Macbook adequate, but it's missing things such as Thunderbolt 3 and uses a proprietary SSD connector, which means I can't upgrade the storage beyond 512GB. Not to mention the GPU is a joke.
Alas I am doing extremely well with recent medical treatment. Will write about that soon.
What operating system are you running with this setup? Windows 7 has only very limited support on this machine. I am going to be installing Windows 10 2015 LTSB so that it doesn't get "anniversary update". What are you running? Also, my 9550 is nowhere near as good on my eyes as my boss's. Same screen, in theory, although I need to verify that using the panel query tool.