aiaf Inspecting the output from AllRez reveals a hundreds of properties which are all cryptic to me, but can be related to your findings. Properties like temperature compensation, brightness compensation, force pixel backlight modulation, etc

Is it possible to capture the output of AllRez and share it with me?

  • aiaf replied to this.

    aiaf of course!! maybe it's just how eink works I'm not sure myself. Just figured to post the vid in case it could help in any way haha.

      Was planning in getting an m3 air and studio display soon. Would the studio display benefit from this too?

      jordan

      Can't wait to see more investigation with a mac mini and external monitors particularly if 6 bit output can be achieved. Some monitors are still 6 bit + FRC.

      jordan his e-ink display is in high speed (not HD) mode, which uses dithering to achieve everything between pure black and white, instead of displaying true grayscale.

      only HD mode on boox truly eliminates dithering. (this is why the "fast" modes look a lot less high resolution too or seem to cause jagged edges around text)

      what you're seeing here is that effect, i get it on my boox device too whenever there's movement, so it's coming from e-ink and not macOS.

      the style of dithering used on e-ink isn't the worst thing to me because the screen still remains entirely still when nothing is happening i.e. when i'm trying to read, and i actually like how it's visibly obvious instead of trying to appear "invisible" as this makes my eyes understand it more.

      but definitely dithering on e-ink is still something to be aware of when getting into e-ink devices lol, not a lot of people talk about it. but when an e-ink screen is still, nothing should be happening, which is the thing that matters most!

        DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs oh wow thanks for clarifying that! I'll let him know. I had no idea!

        When I used a Boox tab ultra and Hisense a7cc it would kill my brain so it must be dithering with eink then..yikes

          aiaf so my friend was testing his Mac internal screen more with still color he says it feels better if he mirrors his eink monitor to internal screen. He said even with stillcolor and not mirroring it feels less comfortable 🤔 still color helps but stillcolor + mirroring makes it a lot more comfortable.

          wonder if this is similar to the people who say better display mirroring helps. Wonder what it could be!

          aiaf I know that its 8bit from the specification on asus and displayspecification.com. Also this panel from 2017-2018 the are when FRC was not that popular haha. I'm getting slight nausea effect and very slight eye strain, I would say the same as I get it before with mac mini or any other macbooks with apple silicon connected to my monitor.

          aiaf I'm waiting for my Carson microscope to arrive to conduct additional testing on the display. I very much doubt an additional layer of dithering, but I won't put it past Apple 🤣

          Hi, very interesting work! I have been experimenting with my MacBook Pro 16" M1 using Stillcolor and a microscope. What's interesting is that I see temporal dithering when Stillcolor is disabled, but unfortunately also when enabled. I haven't found a color shade yet where I can see the difference in temporal noise when enabled. And yet, when viewing the Lagos LCD Gradient, I can clearly see banding appear and disappear. And still temporal dithering always seems to remain under microscope.

          I wonder if on the M1 MacBooks, Stillcolor is removing a spatial (static) dithering layer, but the animated temporal dithering remains. I need to do more testing, and still am looking for where I might have gone wrong. But I just thought I would drop in and share what it seems like I have seen so far. It's hard to argue with the results of your video time-blend.

            Blooey can you try better display and mirror your screen to see if it eliminates temporal dithering?

              Blooey

              I just tested a Mac Mini M2 using my 240fps cam/microscope setup and I can confirm I see flickering even when Stillcolor is enabled. 🙁

              The Mac is connected via a usb-c to displayport cable to a LG monitor (LG 27gp95r-b) running at 144Hz. Color profile is set to sRGB. This monitor shows less flicker but still some after the latest windows update (Win 11 Home Build 22631.3235) when connected to my Legion 7i PC. I think that latest Windows update introduced more flicker but I'm still testing this.

              In addition to screen mirroring, try using the computer via OBS studio on a known true 8-bit panel secondary computer running a older OS/gpu driver with the new computer connected to a cheap USB capture card.

                jordan I had never used BetterDisplay, but I followed the instructions on their GitHub. I think I created a mirrored virtual display, of the main display, mirrored back onto the main display. Which is pretty wild.

                But that combined with, and without Stillcolor, I still have temporal dithering under the microscope. Again, I can't yet say for certain the source of this flicker, but it has all the signs of temporal color dithering, using frame rate control.

                photon78s I just tested a Mac Mini M2 using my 240fps cam/microscope setup and I can confirm I see flickering even when Stillcolor is enabled. 🙁

                This could be PWM or LCD Inversion or something that's not temporal dithering. See @Seagull very insightful post here.

                jordan So my friend tried still color on his MacBook air m1 2020. He has a Boox Mira eink monitor connected to it and you can see how it flickers but then when stillcolor is enabled (dithering off) the flickering stops.. BUT when he moves the cursor the rest of the screen still flickers? Is that some sort of SW flickering or is that the nature of Eink. Check the video below (there's sound too of him explaining it) https://imgur.com/a/r9kT9uq

                Awesome stuff. The mouse cursor effect is also discussed in this old thread about using a Paperlike screen to detect dithering.

                jordan did it feel OK in HD mode? boox devices only dither in the other "fast" modes

                however, it's definitely hard to use a boox device entirely in HD because it runs at only about 3 frames a second in that mode lol

                (and it will switch in and out of HD every time you scroll, which i really wish i could disable)

                another huge factor about e-ink is lighting. the type of lights in your home actually matters even more for naturally lit displays… if your lightbulbs are flickering LEDs, the boox will "basically become PWM too" as it's illuminated by whatever light is in the room. this becomes really important if you're using it in a lot of other places with random lighting conditions. (using it outside in sunlight avoids this issue!)

                another thing to note is that i can totally see why e-ink can cause eye strain if someone is sensitive to "visible" flashes as well… because in all modes, you get that full, obvious flash from white»black»white whenever you press the "full screen refresh" button. (i'm fine with this, since it's not a flash of "illuminated" light, but i can see how it can be annoying)

                and of course, dither is used in all non-HD modes as all shades of gray get turned into super dense patterns of black dots instead.

                however, i'm not actually sure if the "moving" aspect when scrolling etc. is actually temporal dithering… since it seems to occur in only in some "triangle-shaped" areas near something that's moving, and other dithered areas remain still.

                possibly it's a technical necessity to have interference in adjacent pixels etc. for however the screen is able to perform an update so fast. or maybe it is temporal dithering, i'm not really sure tbh

                Clearly there is something else also than just temporal dithering - my x280 is OK without ditherig.exe, but when I enable it, the lagom.nl banding disappears. Also I have not found ditherig to help with any setup that I've tried, thoug it clearly produces the banding.

                So some other form of dithering or flicker exists in most computers - what is it? (not meaning PWM)

                  aiaf yes I think this is the screen.

                  The thing is, I never had a problem with that screen, it started only a year ago, when windows 11 become a problem. Before that I had a lot of Linux distributions and windows versions without a problem, even I had an Intel Mac which was without eye strain for me. I think this is related with something else, a software effect or some rendering which I can’t found what it is

                  Maxx I agree.

                  I feel it also in windows 11, when disabled dithering with colorControl I still have same pain level of eye strain. Also with the MacBook Pro M2 I have some eye strain after disabling dithering with stillColor. There is something in addition to dithering which is not PWM

                    twomee

                    If I'm going to guess (and assuming it is not EMF emissions of different or newer devices), it may be LCD or pixel inversion but that is something you cannot fix with software or can you?

                      photon78s I’m sure it’s fixable because I didnt had a problem in the past from this variety of OS. I’m sure it’s not lcd. I’m not familiar with pixel inversion so I can’t tell about it.

                      So my Lenovo x280 and Surface Pro 2 are both strain free also without ditherig. Also connected to a samsung external display.

                      The same external display is producing terrible eye strain with Lenovo L13 gen2. Even with ditherig.

                      Windows 11 newest version in all.

                      So there is clearly something else than just Temporal Dithering. It is not OS or driver version specific and it is also not panel specific, something the display adapter is doing.

                      What is it?

                        dev