Gurm I agree it's frustrating. We should petition Apple to allow us to do this...if we can't get through via support, maybe we can find engineers at Apple on LinkedIn or similar and try to make them aware of this issue. Most people are under the impression that dithering is not perceptible by humans, but as we know, it can still have an adverse affect on us.

I don't use OS X and I don't know much about Kexts, so one possibility could be to use Rent-A-Coder or something like that, and maybe pay someone that has the experience to make one for us (and make sure we get the source code). I'd be happy to chip in for this for our community. As JTL mentioned in another thread, disabling dithering is a competitive advantage for the Amulet folks, unrelated to eye strain.

The fact that it can be done on OS X is very encouraging. I don't know if iOS is known to dither, but it's very locked down, and I strongly suspect it's not possible to disable or alter without jailbreaking.

  • JTL replied to this.

    ryans I've been working on this for 6 months and have made very good progress. No need for any "Rent-a-Coder" or similar.

    Email me and I'll give you a "brain dump" of all my research so far.

      ryans Doubt it, the issue is the graphics driver, not the actual GPU itself (with exception of possibly GTX 9/10xx)

      JTL I'd love to release an open source program that disabled dithering on OSX just to spite Amulet Hotkey. They know we are suffering and just don't care.

        JTL are you implying that you found a way to disable the temporal and spatial dithering in macOS?

        What is a good way to test eyestrain caused by macbook dithering ? Is the recovery mode option still viable with he latest macos and intel integrated gpu?

        • JTL replied to this.

          Seefree are you implying that you found a way to disable the temporal and spatial dithering in macOS?

          Getting very close. I found a way to make it worse, now to make it better 🙂

          What is a good way to test eyestrain caused by macbook dithering ? Is the recovery mode option still viable with he latest macos and intel integrated gpu?

          Unsure

            5 days later

            ryans I saw that, your point?

            I have the 2015 15" MBP with dedicated graphics, which running Linux always uses the AMD GPU unless using special EFI hacks.

            I haven't tried it with Linux in quite a while but Ubuntu 16.04 (I think that was it) was fine.

            I wonder if a high speed camera (like 1000FPS) that took a video of a laptop or smartphone that caused issues, and we slowed it down, we'd be able to detect dithering or other sources of flicker?

            One of the biggest problems we have on here right now is there's no reliable test for anything but PWM (using a smartphone camera, but even that is not 100%)

              ryans With regards to PWM, get a high quality oscilloscope and photodiode. Both can be purchased for <$1000. Have a look at @TechSensitive's posts.

              With regards to dithering. I want to try a lossless PCIe capture card to check several display outputs in slow motion. Can be purchased for ~$400 at most on eBay.

              There's a company in Vancouver that makes a high speed camera that does up to 21,000 fps. It costs $3000 but I know someone who works there and I might be able to test one at their offices.

              http://www.krontech.ca/

                JTL Lmk and I'd be happy to help out with funds for anything.

                • JTL replied to this.

                  ryans Thanks.

                  I just want to writeup a plan and "parts list" for full transparency. If that makes sense.

                  15 days later

                  @ryans I see your deleted post (since I am a moderator). View my user profile and write me an email and I'll give you a summery of my reverse engineering since not all of it is 100% confirmed yet so I'm not ready to publicly write about it.

                  5 months later

                  Does anyone know wow much it would be (roughly) to get everything needed to use"Amulet Hotkey for KVM over IP"? Has anyone actually tried it to disable themporal dithering?

                  diop I have slight suspiciousness on how their Windows solution could work. I just assumed that they 9xx and 10xx is a lost cause since even under Linux with a 1070 with the nvidia-settings dithering control it still looks "noisy".

                  And to be fair they didn't mention any GPU model numbers.

                  • diop replied to this.

                    JTL Perhaps the fix works on all driver versions - the guide was produced within the last 6 months so presumably they are using W10+10xx GPU's.

                    AHK have quite a lot of re-sellers - I tried contacting Jigsaw24 (UK) but didn't get a response. This is mentioned in one of their blogs.

                    "The usual caveats apply: the fix will only work with Amulet hardware and software, not with that from third parties; the kext itself is not available publicly – in a delightfully cloak-and-dagger scenario, you need to get in touch with our team on the details below, and they'll send you a temporary download link and instructions for how to install it."

                    It's a long shot but maybe it's worth contacting all AHK re-sellers to see if someone will be sympathetic and provide us with a copy.

                    We then just need to find a guru to bypass the hardware check and we could have a working solution.

                    • JTL replied to this.

                      diop We then just need to find a guru to bypass the hardware check and we could have a working solution.

                      a.k.a me.

                      Email me btw 🙂

                      dev