Products to try or avoid? PWM Flicker and Temporal Dithering Testing
You might want to look around on this site or even make a post. These guys should know a lot about it especially the chief blur buster admin. He's very knowledgeable and seems to be close with panel manufactures.
Here is a random post I found.
https://forums.blurbusters.com/viewtopic.php?t=3789
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Thanks for the link. My question would be if certain low quality panels like probably on the T480s flicker more and more over the course of the day due to poor manufacturing tolerances/design and thus contributing to the computer work fatigue over the work day (you feel fine in the morning and later more and more fatigued as the screen silently increases the flicker to add to that fatigue).
Hopefully in your case you don't have to worry about this. I haven't noticed this yet with the 7i just the T480s.
Not exactly my case but interesting:
Display Power: Why TFT LCD Needs Temperature Compensation
However, cold temperatures cause the switch to turn on slower. This steals time (tΔth) to put through the picture
information, see figure below. Less light comes through the filter glass and the contrast gets lower. Visible results
are flickering and/or image sticking of the display.
photon78s that could be it too. There are known better panels that someone I know uses on dell laptops. Maybe even a panel swap on t480s could be a good option. I hope I don't encounter that with the 7i haha. Not sure which is the most safe with the 60hz Microsoft driver or 240hz studio driver. I really need to start testing the 7i and other devices soon. Just feel stuck in this flare up I'm currently in which sucks!
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Have you tried using a cheap lossy video capture card (with chroma subsampling) or hdmi to usb converter and using OBS running on a safe win 1809 computer to view the unsafe computer running whatever bad gpu/driver and OS? The quality might be blurry but it might mask/alter the dithering so that it might be more physiologically tolerable? Perhaps remote in would be the better alternative.
I tried briefly with 1809 7i as the OBS computer connected a known dithering setup and it was blurry but this needs more experimentation as well.
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This doesn't surprise me anymore. I asked UPerfect very respectfully before about 8 bit + FRC on a listed as 10 bit monitor and they told me "they are still testing it".
photon78s I have not but this is something that I have thought about and others too on the telegram group. I think one guy actually created his own box to output basic 8bpc using a Arduino alternative or something. I know some other people say that the old steam link box (not the software but the actual old steam link wireless box) has stopped eye strain for them which might be doing what you are saying with the capture card. Obviously the capture card method would be better instead of wireless. I know elgato has quite a few capture cards. I'm not really sure what the chroma stuff is tbh but maybe some sort of compression can help smooth things out
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Chroma subsampling reduces the color information but that is just an example I gave for being lossy. The key idea is if trying some form of compression or lack of faithfully reproducing the dithering can help physiologically.
UPerfect is generally responsive but I would be really surprised if they can have "true 10 bit" at that relatively low price.
photon78s ohhh that makes sense I didn't know thats what it was. Could be something that could help maybe. I wonder how a 480Hz+ refresh rate monitor would be with dithering.
I agree that's really cheap for true 10bit I bet it's 8+2frc. I mean if ViewSonic can't give us true 10bit (when advertised as true 10bit) then I doubt uperfect can.. but worth a shot I guess
Btw I wonder if this would help remove dithering.
https://gist.github.com/fernvenue/8ea2b6ea2bdbf84feb805886cc50e4d6
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For reference here is what the 7i running 1809 iGPU with MS basic display adapter looks like under the microscope sampling a dark gradient area. All I see is the very high frequency camera noise flicker. Compare this with the other videos showing the slow motion alternating ramping of pixel brightness on the same panel but with latest discrete gpu drivers and newer OS.
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Interesting. Don't understand the direct3d connection...
I am running T480s with latest linux mint connected via hdmi to usb to the 1809 7i (I got tired of the panel intermittent "inversion" flickering as discovered previously). In OBS on the 7i, I turned everything to monochromatic and played around with the brightness (rez is 1920x1080 at 60Hz which is the max this cheap converter can support). Seems promising with the scope so far. Their is a lot of latency but still faster than e-ink.
I can't find the original link to my capture device but it is very similar to this one:
Is the view here that 8 bit + FRC is good enough and that is not going to change soon and we can label it as 10 bit because most will not know the difference?
photon78s ugh that's so frustrating. They are silently hurting us all even those who aren't on this forum. I'm sure so much people are affected and have no clue it's the screen. Probably not going to change until other company's start selling actual true 10bit or until people take legal actions.
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And choosing still not ideal or mature alternatives which I only know of RLCD, E-Ink, and what else (besides finding old tech monitors on used market)? Connecting monitors with older displaylink drivers to disable dithering?
https://www.synaptics.com/products/displaylink-graphics/downloads/windows
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https://safescreens.org/smartphones-and-social-media-harms/
They do mention eye damage and "digital eye strain" but still with myopic focus on blue light issues. Might be useful to know this at a later point.
I also don't think this will remain a "first world" problem for much longer. See adoption trends of smartphones for example. However, I don't know who is collecting rigorous data specific to health and screen technology issues.
Other intiatives:
https://www.change.org/p/apple-add-accessibility-options-to-reduce-eye-strain-and-support-vision-disability-sufferers
Research papers:
A Comparison of Seven Visual Fatigue Assessment Techniques In Three Data-Acquisition VDT Tasks
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1518/001872098779649247
They mention "adaptive displays" in response to flicker sensitivity changes in people over time and "workload".
Digital eye strain: prevalence, measurement and amelioration
Video display terminal use and dry eye: preventive measures and future perspectives
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/aos.15105
"Video display terminal (VDT) use reduces blink rates and increases incomplete blinks, leading to tear film instability and ocular inflammation, promoting DED."
Working in the Metaverse: What Are the Risks? A Rapid Review of the Literature
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4731115
Just showing flicker have effects positive or negative.
Gamma frequency sensory stimulation in mild probable Alzheimer’s dementia patients: Results of feasibility and pilot studies
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0278412
Recently, we discovered that non-invasive entrainment of gamma frequency oscillations using light flickering at 40Hz (Gamma ENtrainment Using Sensory stimuli, GENUS) reduced amyloid load and induced glial response in the visual cortex of AD model mice, effectively attenuating AD-related pathology