Temporal Dithering - is not the only one software eyestrain trigger

Vividblu99

Also, it's worth noting.. That it might not have anything to do with the display at all.

You might just be EMF sensitive. There are hundreds and thousands of people/forum/posts out there of people sharing their stories. There are also some books available, and online articles.

The symptoms of EMF sensitivity also resemble the symptoms of digital screen fatigue - so it's difficult to pinpoint the exact cause.

The more radiation/EMF that's emitted from monitors/laptops/smartphones, the more a sensitive individual may react and experience symptoms.

Laptops are notoriously known to emit very high levels of EMF's. You can purchase EMF measuring devices quite cheaply. I have one. You'd be shocked at the measurements obtained from just a pair of standard Bluetooth wireless earpods.

Though Laptops, printers and routers seem to be the highest readings I've measured.

Vividblu99

Keep in mind - before the wireless era, I could comfortably sit and use a computer and stare at a monitor for hours on end with ease.

Somethings definitely changed, and has triggered these symptoms in me and this general overall feeling of malaise.

Vividblu99

Here are some interesting studies on EMF, if you're interested in reading about it.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26372109/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32289567/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21793784/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27012122/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27454111/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17178584/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2557071/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6250044/

KM

I also think there's more to it than just temporal dithering. It must have to do with the way the UI surface is drawn and updated. A difference in synchronization between partial screen updates and the global refresh rate perhaps. In some scenarios those two might overlap in a way that triggers symptoms. What's baffling is that the eye strain happens on apparently static screen content. The flicker causing the symptoms must be incredibly small. Which it already is when we think of temporal dithering specifically, but if temporal dithering is out of the equation the remaining flicker should be even smaller.

arturpanteleev

KM Do you have any methods to change this behaviour? I mean partial screen updates and the global refresh rate, and their sync?

ensete

I've been saying this on this forum for ages. There is no single identified trigger for everyones symptoms. Not dithering, not PWM, not refresh rate, FPS, color rendering, polarization, etc.

KM

This thread seems to be misunderstood. It believe it talks about pixel eye strain specifically. The one you get on a known-good screen when changing the OS or using a specific application.

arturpanteleev

Vividblu99 Sorry, it was interesting to read your messages, but why do you wrote about this problem in this topic? In that case with me, it is absolutely defenetly SOFTWARE problem. Cause i have good(without eyestrain and other problem) configuration(laptop+old windows) that is getting worse after updates. So in this case problem is - thew way how newest windows draw image(pixels) for the screen.

Of cause i know, that we have a lot of others triggers, and some of them hardware. But here i just wanted to say that temporal dithering is not the only reason of software problem. Cause i see a lot of conversation here how people try to turn it off(on mac. on linux) and think that this will resolve their problem. Unfortunatelly, it will not.

Deepdeep

arturpanteleev I think it's not accurate to say turning off temporal dithering "won't" resolve the problem. Imo it can resolve the problem in some people and some devices, based on my experience with a Thinkpad Yoga 12 on which eliminating PWM didn't eliminate my discomfort but using ditherig software did - there was clear banding indicating that it was working. But there do seem to be other problematic software-based triggers too.

KM

arturpanteleev I don't use Windows anymore. Some users seem to have success with booting into a special mode that doesn't use hardware acceleration. I can't recall the name, but it was discussed in our forum.

On Linux with my current graphics card, MSI Nvidia GT 710 (1st gen), I have noticed that enabling software compositors, which usually use kinds of hardware acceleration, makes things worse on Linux. The official Nvidia driver has the option "Force Full Composition Pipeline", which I was told is a hardware compositor (the GPU itself does it), also seems to make it worse. The whole Linux graphics stack is very complicated nowadays. I fear without having an engineer or graphics expert in our forum, all we can do is trial and error. Another idea is to drastically reduce the refresh rate, to say 30 Hz, and see how it goes. I am using my setup since several months now, in the hopes of achieving a training effect. There is small eye strain, but sometimes I can use the setup for hours without noticing it. Somehow all Linux distros I ever tried have this small "Linux eye strain", so perhaps it is inherent to the way Linux draws the screen. There are differences with different GPUs, but in my experience there's at least small eye strain on Linux. I made sure to disable temporal dithering, which the Nvidia driver allows.

arturpanteleev

Deepdeep of course, you are right. Maybe i was misunderstood. I mean that for me in this case - temporal dithering is not the reason of pain, and people should know, that if they could turn it off, it will not be 100% guarantey of success

Zodios

Maybe the issue is fully neurological?

One day you have bad sleep, a lot of caffeine, stress, and bad vision muscle work another day - good. Bad flickering monitors just empower it?

arturpanteleev

Zodios i would be happy if it was, but no 🙁 Cause now i have two different environment. and i feel different when I switch between them

Donux

arturpanteleev Folks this is hardware / metal thing, software will not do anything. I have strong belief we need to treat it as frequencies and noise that cause issues to health. I like this specification to mention about acoustic effects of pwm or dithering that can even enter the audible range, https://patents.google.com/patent/US20170181238A1/en

Someone really needs to take good frequencies meter and measure everything around new batch of macbooks, because during shortages of components it is likely suppliers cut corners here and there. Only way forward is go back in time and get older machine or really research it well into nitty and gritty details.

mirza

Donux - Ok, how to you explain people having problems with external display when connected to MacBook, but not having issues when connected to windows pc?

arturpanteleev

Donux Please read my post again. I have the SAME laptop, absolutely same device, now i have only one. But different versions of windows on them. Right now i have two different windows on different logical disk. When i launch first windows, without internet and possibility to updates - it is fine to me. But when i launch version with wifi connection OS getting some updates from the internet(I don't know which ones) that change some work with graphics - i start to feel pain.

I agree that hardware problem exist, nobody argue. But in this keys - it is ONLY SOFTWARE problem, cause i have OS. that do not bother me on this laptop.

yesanton

mirza the only thing that actually works is PC with Nvidia graphics card and a monitor connected directly to the card (which is only possible in PC not Laptop.

Donux

arturpanteleev I did this in regedit.exe, i.e. setting every key to 1:

arturpanteleev

Donux it looks very interesting. Does the effect of this settings have any difference with turning dithering off wit this program? https://kawamoto.no-ip.org/henteko/myapp_en.html.

anyway, i am gonna try to check it by myself. and i will tell you about result. Thank you for the advice!

arturpanteleev

Unfortunatelly, i don't have suche settings in registy. I think that you AMD processor and graphics?

But i have these ones

Donux

Yes my is AMD, but I have realised, this is different type of dithering, not temporal dithering. These keys are more about how GPU is varying its performance based on heat and other stuff. Generally disregard.