New upcoming Bolt Zeus graphics card

Clokwork

There is a GPU in the making from Bolt that has the capacity to address some of the issues we have. You can check out their video here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8m-gSSIheno

If we kindly and appropriately ask them to include a way to turn off Temporal Dithering in their drivers or settings, we may just have a solution moving forward. If you do contact them, I just beg that you do so in a kind and well thought out manner. I would hate to turn them off the the idea of helping us. That said, I do believe we at least stand a chance as compared to Nvidia, AMD, and Intel who seem to have no interest helping us.

randomboolean

Clokwork Great find! I'm definitely interested – just wasn’t sure what to say to get the best chance of a reply or even a meeting. I’ve done cold outreach for a few years for various businesses, and rule #1 is to keep it short, clear, and have a solid pitch. In this case, the “pitch” would be something different than in sales. There still must be something for them. Format matters too – if email doesn’t work, maybe LinkedIn or even a YouTube comment could. You never know. With smaller startups like this, there’s a much higher chance of reaching the founder or someone from the top team, unlike trying to get through to Apple or Microsoft. If you’re open to sharing the email you sent, that’d be a great starting point – I’d love to reach out as well.

Clokwork

I honestly thought more people might be interested in this. The said part is that they haven't returned my email asking about possibly being able to disable or dial down the FRC.

K-Moss

Clokwork FRC is more common than not based on my research.

AI says: "While many consumer-grade OLED monitors claim to support 10-bit color, most actually achieve this through 8-bit + Frame Rate Control (FRC), a technique that simulates a wider color range by rapidly switching between colors. True 10-bit OLED panels, which can display a full billion colors without FRC, are typically found in higher-end professional monitors."

"Yes, most LCD monitors, especially those targeting the consumer market, utilize Frame Rate Control (FRC) to simulate a wider color gamut, effectively making 8-bit panels behave like 10-bit panels. FRC achieves this by rapidly alternating between different color shades within a single pixel, giving the illusion of more colors than the panel can natively display."

You can imagine this rapid flickering is problematic for many eyes and brains.

Would we not vastly prefer true 6 bit or true 8 bit or true 10 bit color without any FRC?

Of course, but we aren't given the choice.

simplex

Clokwork dial down the FRC

not only FRC, but grapfic pipeline control in terms of smoothing / sharpening / bit depth control

Clokwork

randomboolean I ended up using the contact us form on their website. No response yet but I’m looking into trying another channel in a few days if I don’t hear back. I like what you said about essentially keeping it short and concise.

1NGIBITOR

Again, I'm not sure if turning off dithering actually helps. I disabled dithering in the NVIDIA driver on Linux and saw terrible banding in dark, uniform areas of the screen. Did it make the screen easier on my eyes? No. There must be something else besides dithering. All I know is that our problem with screen tolerance requires thorough research—and there won't be a one-size-fits-all solution.

Clokwork

1NGIBITOR it’s fine that you can speak for yourself but I’m 99% positive FRC is my main issue. I will never state that this is a one size fits all. Some call it a red herring and that’s fine. I’ve performed enough experimentation to narrow down my issues. I do know that myself and many others do suffer with this specifically. That said, I’d take banding all day over flicker.

randomboolean

1NGIBITOR Yes, that’s true. I’m not badly affected on my good device either, but I think (still digging into what actually happened) I am affected on my bad device – which I somehow made usable. I’m still a big fan of this idea, because every meaningful change starts with one or two people writing in or asking for a small favour.

We have to start somewhere, and going straight in asking for a huge shift probably won’t work. A dithering toggle is a small favour, in my view – and even that one option could already help someone, which is a great starting point. Until now, everything has been hacks and workarounds, even for the basics.

Worst case, they add the feature and leave it at that (should be a simple one to implement). Best case, they’re interested in collaborating, and it opens the door to more accessibility features for flicker sensitivity. Honestly, most of us were fine with the simpler hardware and software from years ago – so the real answer might just be returning to a more basic graphics pipeline.

Sure, there are panel issues, BIOS quirks, and maybe even motherboard quality involved… but making the GPU side tolerable would already fix a major part of the problem. Finding a non-dithering motherboard and a monitor that works is still manageable – many here have done it. But playing the GPU lottery has been far more frustrating and unpredictable in comparison.

Though happy to hear others’ thoughts on what would be the best small step to take if or when we get in contact with the startup founder.