If you have a friend with a newer iPhone (13 pro or later) can you record a macro/slo-mo of the screen using both drivers? It would need a phone with the macro lens and 240hz slo-mo to see it.
I'm wondering if the new driver is using spatial or temporal dither (or maybe both). It would be really useful to know what it is doing.
We tried to do this on a MBP 16" and mostly didn't find anything. In this case, I bet whatever the Intel driver is doing will be visible.
mherf I have a 14 Pro, slow motion at 240hz nothing detected either with good drivers, or when I recorded before when I had bad drivers on Windows for a bit. This is probably because of the high pixel density, I can't get macro mode to focus clearly at that density and any dithering is probably obscured by the iPhone's typical video camera grain.
Usually I can only successfully record whether an OS is temporal dithering when it's on a "non-retina" display like my old CCFL TN monitor, because the pixels are big enough that camera grain doesn't interfere with them. Not connecting this working setup to any monitors at this point though.
All I know is that this Windows configuration (old drivers, ditherig.exe open) causes me to very obviously feel and see that text and background colors are not moving anymore, this is definitely not a placebo because it's remained so shockingly better for like one and a half weeks now, and is one of the only setups I own where I don't see colors shimmering at all even if I stare at a solid background for a minute.
But if I boot back into macOS (and from what I remember of using Windows with newer drivers) everything is constantly shimmering again. macOS still seems to dither on this Mac even in Safe Mode.
Intel UHD Graphics 617
21.20.16.4475 driver version is NOT suitable for this chip (UHD617)
But it is suitable for integrated graphics of Intel desktop processors 6xxx 7xxx
the configuration is already outdated, but not so rare. It would be interesting to see the results of combining 22h2 + UHD5xx/6xx graphics + this OLD driver version + dithering.exe + external monitor.
DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs Of course, the current 2022 Intel Windows driver also has forced color management and temporal dithering too, even with ditherig.exe.
This could be an interesting research point if this could be validated with a lossless capture card.
ryans However, what the older and newer drivers change for internal laptop displays might not be the same as capture card output, so not sure if this would be as useful compared to e.g. recording the internal display through a microscope.
For example, I have a 2012 Windows laptop that seems to not ever use dithering at all on its HDMI output regardless of any settings, but uses temporal dithering on the internal screen by default which can be disabled via ditherig. It renders to internal and external displays differently.
@DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs Do you still use this setup?
I am happy on Win 10 21H2, but will be soon forced to Win 10 22H2!
ryans Nope, I now use:
M1 Air [Ventura 13.6.6] with Stillcolor app (see my latest post in the Stillcolor thread. WAY better than 2018 Air and one of the only usable Apple Silicon Macs after I tried as many as I could! And the ONLY one that truly looks like a "good Intel" in regards to lower color "intensity" and contrast!)
2012 Lenovo Yoga 13 [Win8.1] with ditherig.exe as my "always reliably comfortable all the time" machine, mostly used to screen share into Macs (ended up being much more comfortable than 2018 Air)
2015 12" MacBook [Mojave 10.14.6] with nvram boot-args="dither=0" (which actually works on this model) as my "reliable and usable old Intel Mac" and "second screen" type device for referencing websites and notes or watching videos "on the side" on my desk.
2018 Air is currently sitting dormant because I wiped Windows to load a full-size Sonoma backup of my 14" mini-LED on it (to more easily retain access to my old data and app settings) since I sold/no longer have my 14"!
I will probably put Windows back on the 2018 Air later though, as it was a decent and generally usable way to use modern Windows apps when I need to. Maybe I'll try an older version like 2004 or 1809 next time to see if it can make things better (because in the end, I still noticed some pretty slight temporal dithering on background colors on the 2018 even with old Intel drivers. Not terrible at all compared to the "absolutely unusable level of dithering" seen while booted into macOS, but not "totally" still either.)
Unfortunately I can't edit titles on this forum (such as this post's title), even though I'm able to edit contents.
DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs Unfortunately I can't edit titles on this forum (such as this post's title), even though I'm able to edit contents.
I can, anything in particular that needs to be revised?
JTL change "best setup ever!" to "much more usable than macOS!"
Would be interesting to record some similar stuff in win and mac here if you do to try to deconstruct exactly what is different. It's time consuming as always tho.
async Copy color profile and timings from Windows to Mac?
Windows 10 on 2018 Air is using no color profile at all at least to my knowledge, I even disabled the "Calibration Loader" service to prevent Windows from doing that thing where it "slightly changes colors right after typing in your password" on a fresh boot.
That's something that can't really be reproduced on macOS (since there's no way to truly use "no color profile" on macOS, the closest you can get is a "NULL ICC Profile" but that doesn't actually disable color management)
I'll check timings the next time I reinstall Windows on the 2018 Air. That will not be for a while, though, because I'm busy at the moment and I have other usable devices — so I currently don't have a reason to use my 2018 Air.
