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?

                    Maxx do you have windows ACM turned on? ("Automatically manage color for apps" in advanced display settings) If so, turning it off should fix this.

                    The reason why some Windows 11 machines don't cause as much strain is that not every computer "supports" ACM. The ones that do — which is newer machines — will dither like crazy.

                    https://ledstrain.org/d/1908-update-from-win11-21h2-to-win11-22h2-leads-to-eye-strain/145

                    This "feature" was introduced in the Windows 11 2022 update and introduces Windows's own OS-level temporal dithering that runs on top of whatever your GPU already is doing.

                      photon78s Probably in the case of this monitor it seems like the monitor itself is causing the dither that you see even with Stillcolor, it's most likely a 6bit + FRC panel

                      (or a "10bit capable" panel using 8bit + FRC, which is being activated whenever it receives the 10bit signal that M1 Macs generate.)

                        photon78s Display Specifications reports LG 27GP95R as 8-bit+FRC. So what you're measuring is likely the panel's own FRC. This will remain true as long as the output from your Mac or PC is 10-bits (can you check what Windows is sending?), and as long your display is not true 10-bit.

                            Blooey This confirms my theory that specifically on XDR mini-LED Macs (such as your 16" Pro) there is some additional dithering.

                            I most likely suspect is coming directly from an "8bit + FRC" panel in the Pro that is receiving the Mac's 10bit signal, similar to external monitors that include their own FRC.

                            What seems to be the trend is Stillcolor makes some degree of improvement but doesn't truly "fix" XDR M1 Macs… but on LCD M1 Macs like the M2 Air, Stillcolor has much better results and can significantly improve the display.

                            Remember that all XDR M1 Macs use what is called "hardware reference modes" for colors and try to hide away the standard color profile menu. On the other hand, LCD M1 Macs use standard color profiles just like Intel Macs. There is definitely a significant difference in the color management pipeline between display types.

                            It's actually still possible to force an XDR Mac to load a color profile, but the interesting thing is whatever white point it has will actually be multiplied by the white point of the reference mode. This means that "reference modes" are an entirely different layer of color processing (probably done by the DCP firmware instead of the OS) and not just a simplified "abstraction of color profiles".

                            (Interestingly enough, the Studio Display is the one counterexample — it's a standard LCD, but uses the new "hardware reference modes", unlike the other Mac LCDs. I would avoid the Studio Display.)

                            The M2 Air also claims to have 1 billion colors (10bit), but potentially, the 10bit to 8bit + FRC down-conversion is done via the GPU on the Air instead of on the panel itself. (I've seen a few Windows laptops do 6bit + FRC entirely on the GPU, so it's certainly possible.)

                            This may be why M2 Air users are reporting both better improvements in screen comfort and also more obvious changes in banding.

                            I really wish I had an M2 Air instead of my XDR M1 Pro so I could see the difference myself 🙂

                                Blooey how can you under a microscope determine whether it's dithering or PWM or some other type LED flicker effect? What's the FPS of your recording? From my testing, Apple dithering matches your display's refresh rate.

                                    aiaf This is the best info we have… at least two manufacturers and potentially a third.

                                    https://www.macrumors.com/2022/01/05/apple-mini-led-supplier-hits-quality-hurdle/

                                    Apple currently uses just two suppliers of mini-LED chips, the main one being Taiwan-based Epistar and the other Germany-based Ams Osram. Epistar intends to expand its already fully utilized chip production capacity to Taiwan and China, while Ams Osram began supplying Apple in the second half of 2021.

                                    China-based LED chipmaker Sanan Optoelectronics was thought to be next in line to pick up Apple's business, with Sanan originally expected to become the third supplier of mini-LED chips for Apple as soon as the fourth quarter of last year.

                                    I've witnessed the effects of there being two manufacturers "with my own eyes" so to speak. I have 14" M1 Max MBP, "friend A" has 16" M2 Pro MBP, and "friend B" has 14" M3 Max MBP.

                                    My M1 and "friend B's" M3 look absolutely terrible to my eyes, have a non-uniform-feeling backlight, and a feeling of "glowing text" (yes, glowing against all backgrounds, not just black). The screens have a very subtle greenish tint on white.

                                    On the other hand, "friend A's" M2, which is also an XDR Pro, looks so much better. It's of course still using temporal dithering, but is a lot easier to look at, text doesn't glow, and looks noticeably sharper. The screen instead has a reddish tint on white instead of green. It also has less of that infamous "fade to dark" at the very edges that mini-LED displays usually have.

                                    Friend A could also tell that our screens looked different, even though he isn't screen sensitive. He said mine looked more "plastic", for whatever that's worth…

                                    Also, friend B with the other "bad screen" said he couldn't see the "glowing text" that I was trying to point out, so this aspect of whatever kind of panel his and my laptop are using seems to only be visible to some people's eyes.

                                    (I honestly actually like looking at friend A's laptop more than even some Intel Macs, even though I still get some of the symptoms of dithering.

                                    But I can't stand looking at mine or friend B's… mine has only become remotely "tolerable" for the first time with Stillcolor and still has so much more "glowing text" and blurriness than friend A's at default settings.)

                                    All 3 laptops are running the same Sonoma version and are all set to native Retina resolution and the default Apple Display XDR reference mode. All 3 have Night Shift and True Tone off.

                                    However, I've seen a 16" Pro in the wild at one point that looked just as bad as my M1, so this is not a "14-inch vs. 16-inch" deal.

                                      aiaf

                                      Here's mine. Intel 2015 15" Retina MacBook Pro with AMD graphics on macOS Monterey.

                                      https://drive.google.com/file/d/15yOrZe3ypPX3u6ciOQfHTwmGBUG-xbnO/view?usp=sharing

                                      Search for "dith". There are two interesting keywords that pop up…

                                      "kConnectionControllerDitherControl" and "dith = 1" 🙂

                                      I think this will help:

                                      https://developer.apple.com/documentation/iokit/1505962-anonymous/kiodisplayditherdefault?changes=la___2

                                      Look at the sidebar on the left 👀

                                      kIODisplayDitherAll = 0x000000FF
                                      kIODisplayDitherDefault = 0x00000080
                                      🐚 kIODisplayDitherDisable = 0x00000000 🐚
                                      kIODisplayDitherFrameRateControl = 0x00000004
                                      kIODisplayDitherRGBShift = 0
                                      kIODisplayDitherSpatial = 0x00000001
                                      kIODisplayDitherTemporal = 0x00000002
                                      kIODisplayDitherYCbCr422Shift = 16
                                      kIODisplayDitherYCbCr444Shift = 8

                                      In the dump, kConnectionControllerDitherControl is set to "0x00808080 : RGB Default,444 Default,422 Default", where "default" implies dithering is most likely enabled.

                                      The last 4 bits for 444 and 422 are of course for the YCbCr external monitor modes, RGB matters most for internal display. Getting the whole thing to just be 0x00000000 would be ideal. And also setting whatever "dith" is to 0 instead of 1.

                                      The dump was saved with the Mac in AMD dGPU mode. Another dump I saved when the Mac was in Intel iGPU mode also uses the same keywords, so whatever OS-level dither disable method is found for Intel Macs can probably work for both.

                                      I say OS-level because it seems like this is an additional layer that macOS adds in addition to whatever the GPU's native dithering does. (yes, this is a real thing.) dither=0 boot-args actually does disable "color table dithering" on the 2015 in Intel mode, with banding slightly shifting between color profiles (but still seeming more precise than what the display should be able to show.). I've even figured out a way to disable AMD's GPU dithering (yep.) which I'll talk about soon enough. But even with those changes, there's still obvious text shimmer and dithering symptoms on both GPUs that I think can finally be resolved when we figure out how to change these IOKit parameters.

                                          DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs I'll be interested in reading what you say about AMD later. It's frustrating because in Linux older versions of the driver used aticonfig or amdconfig to set whether dither was on or off for individual output ports, but that program isn't around on my install so I'm not even sure if anything is exposed at all anymore.

                                            DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs thanks for this! These were the first dithering settings I've encountered but of course they were not relevant to silicon Macs. They seem trivial to modify using the same methods used in Stillcolor. Can you also send me the Intel GPU AllRez? Will contain important details for matching with an IOService.

                                                aiaf Alright here's the 2015 in Intel graphics mode.

                                                https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BIhctVrKJsT_KYeltN3M8T8kE7fUuZqE/view?usp=sharing

                                                This dump seems to also include some AMD info too, but now it starts with AppleIntelFramebuffer instead so it should have what you're looking for.

                                                Looks like here we also have kConnectionControllerDitherControl but now "dith" isn't present anymore.

                                                So "dith" might be AMD-specific whereas "dither control" is universal/OS-level

                                                (but I'd love to be able to set dith to 0 as well)

                                                  dev