Hi all!

This is my first post here and i'm very happy - meaning sad actually - that i found this place and maybe, hopefully there will be a solution to all these issues we have. Also let's not forget the many people out there, who have issues as well, but who cannot or didn't narrow these down at all yet. So, thanx a lot for founding such a great surface for us!

Shortly put - as i found, there is some kind of strange technology used causing my issues, what i just call "pop-out rendering", coming from HW and from SW as well, which makes me impossible to use such things at all. I can tell in a second (well, mostly) when a HW or SW uses such technic and it really doesn't matter, whether it is a 3D rendered still screen, or some action im a game, or a LED display, or even a TV. It feels like it pulls my eyes out of my head and i'm also not able to focus properly on text for example in such scenario.

I have the feeling, the problematic technic is everywhere the very same in things i found so far problematic, however i just have simply no idea what it really does, or how it actually works.
Basically such a period at me looks like this; after some days, or even weeks (see below), i begin to feel the eye strain and foggy mind. Then when i stop using that and only that particular thing, on the next day in all cases happens to have the issues still there and after that day these just clear up completely.
Normally, i can use computers for long hours without issues since Commodore 16, but after my first encounter with this whatever "pop-out rendering" somewhere a year ago, i was doing a research in my home; what was changed, what is new, what i began to use in some other way, etc. That was when i found the PC game which caused me all these problems.
It is also interesting, that i don't feel it is something to do with the dithering method, or similar things mentioned on the forum, but actually i don't have an idea anymore. I also have to tell, i don't have any issue with OSes like Linux, Windows 7 or 10(even 1809), whatever refresh rates, or even Raspberry PI, or for example car infotainment systems' displays. Not even graphics cards are meaning a factor here, for example the game i first suffered was on a Radeon R290x card, but nowadays i use an RTX 2080 (not Ti) instead.

I try now to list my problematic HWs and SWs with some details, maybe it can help others as well out there:
- My first encouter, the game: World of Warcraft. The changelog of the game mentioned once something like "switching to a more advanced rendering system" and strangely, the forums began to fill up with health issues without ending. And guess what, there was not a single reply from support, or from the developers there! Not counting the basic stuff, like try to make pauses, sit correctly, etc. which makes me thinking, why do people need these to do just from now on, when it was all ok since years before? Why not just revert the changes, instead of forcing people to go on in some more precautionary way and what nots, or as in my case, forcing people to stop using the thing completely. Conclusion: they know about the problems very well, but since it is just a "minority" of people, they refuse to do anything and (here comes an important thing) in contrast of the minority, the "pop-out rendering" as i think and feel, is something like to have the particular game look more shiny, more blooming and thus more attractive to the eye, which means (for them) hopefully more people to stay playing and maybe even enjoying it more. Basically i think this technic was born to satisfy these, with the fact that some, but only a minority from the people will suffer from it.
- PANASONIC TX-58EXW734 LED TV. I was there cautious already and found the issues quite early, thus i quickly brought it back and switched to an LG OLED55B7D, which i use without problems nowadays too. The Panasonic i think had a similar rendering method and just staying in the black menu with white text was already uncomfortable to look at. Again, it adds up; a LED TV with such a pop-out colors looks more attractive, while the OLED panel needs that not at all, because it is able to produce a nice look out of the box. At least this is what i think.
- There came then increasingly more games, which i needed to stop playing, due to the very same issues: Middle Earth: Shadow of War, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, most probably Diablo III as well, but with this i didn't want to sacrifice my health anymore. As a sidenote regarding Diablo III and also World of Warcraft, i never had any problems before for years. I could then also add, that probably i got older (41 now), but then how is it possible to have only select things making issues? Also is it strange, that somewhere like 2017-ish began to rise this "technic" and somehow in secret, some manufacturers decided to use it, while others didn't. Maybe the others were finding it to "dangerous"? Or is it just my Sunday morning contheo? I doubt that.
- ASUS ROG SWIFT PG278QR. TN panel as far as i know, Display Colors : 16.7M (real 8 bit), Flicker free. It is still here on my desk, sitting powered off, collecting dust. Same problem, same fate, but now i was late to send it back for an exchange, maybe i was just not using it at first so much, or just it has a bit smaller impact which needs more time to develop the issues, but clearly feels like it pops the screen in my eye as it renders no matter what content. From another forum i saw an LG 32GK850G with VA panel, which i'm right now one click away from buying. Interestingly, my old ASUS VG278HE which i now still use, have no issues at all. I was also asking Asus what the hell and they said they cannot tell, but the old display should cause such problems, not the new one. Yes, well, wish you'd know what kind of tech your company uses out there, so you could tell the people, but this does not happen until this "thing" is such a great secret. Smells like fraud to me, this whole thing, but really.

Nowadays, what i can do, is to buy the things and when it turns out unusable, i have to stop using it and consider that as another double failure, because usually the money for it is thrown out as well. I have to stick to my old and working stuff, like my old MSI GE70-0ND notebook, but in contrast to people here as i read 🙁(( ,i can still do at least that.

Ah yes i was once experimenting with an Avermedia GC550 capture device, to try and find out what happens, if i take the rendered screen from World of Warcraft and "beam" it over real time to another display, but interestingly i found that the issue goes through with such a method as well. I also tried to simply record the output from the game and later i just watched it back and as i remember it was again still problematic, but i'm not sure, it was a while ago. What i remember i was just not doing it anymore, because a game is meant to be played real time and made no sense back there to record and watch it back. Maybe i should try this again.
For games i gave a try to Reshade too, which is a post-processing shader extension, meaning one can add custom shaders post to the rendered screen, which was also not making anything better.

What i still believe it could make things better, or even completely issue free, is smoking. When i was quitting smoking for like two months back there, i recognized that my eyes were much more clear somehow, but that time i was still not aware that such issues exist at all i.e. no idea what could it change really, but i keep up the hope. However(!) it is still completely unacceptable, that such issues exist, whether someone is smoking, or not. I have the feeling, "they" clearly know what it goes around, just, oh well, i think money dictates not our way to go, but theirs.

Thank you for reading and all the best for you out there!
tbs

+Forgot to mention the Gunnar glasses and the custom made (accurate) glasses, which both didn't have any improvement at all.
BR,
tbs

5 days later

Well, just here to confirm that LG 32GK850G was not working for me at all. After like some minutes i got some warm eye feeling, so that was a returning within the 14 day period.

I was seeing personally a Benq PD3200U for an hour and found it comfortable. Let's see how that one will go.

Hey, welcome to the forum! I am sorry to hear that LG didn't work out for you, hopefully benq will be ok for you. Please keep us updated. A couple of questions:

  • Do you have issues with print e.g. books, reading, focusing?
  • Any issues with lightning - led's, flourascents?
  • Have you tried eink monitor? Any other eink devices?

Hey and thanx for your questions;

  • yep with books, regarding focusing i have also some unconformity, but actually just minor, i.e. reading for long hours can feel a bit heavy, but then looking away for some minutes solves it
  • Led/fluorascents have no issues
  • eink i didn't try yet

However what i today just found is very interesting. I was imagining the whole thing from some other aspect and thought, what if these strange technics are causing actually some kind of sensory overload. Because mainly what i feel with such HW and also SW, that after some time, i can barely look at literally anything lighty/shiny and usually not only that day, but the whole day after that as well (just like today, because i did some new testing yesterday).
With sensory overload (probably, in my case) i mean they do some "intensity" boost, which they need because the technology today is not able to reproduce such colordepth/intensity/overall-brightness (except maybe OLED, but thats still for TVs), which could suffice their needs. It is enough to look after HDR or similar techs, where the minimum nit level is somewhere like 1000 (if i remember correctly), while monitors (but not OLED TVs) are producing just some fragment of that value (again, if i remember correctly), but anyway without HDR either, these OLEDs are just way superior to normal LED stuff nowadays. That's where this "pop out rendering" comes in (i think, but i'm pretty sure there), with which they can achieve some level of "intensity" boost. Because old monitors, or my OLED TV does no such thing at all and i could use them for whole days if i'd want, just like games for example which don't use this rendering feature.

I remembered times where my pupills were acting somehow differently, mainly when i was quitting smoking for two months and then today i tried to find something what relates to such sympthoms.
Then the closest thing i found is called Mydriasis, which is mainly a dilation of the pupil (at me surely not dramatic at all, but at least the post-light sensitivity still indicates this), or photophobia, as mentioned together with Mydriasis as well. As a cause there is also SSRI mentioned, which adds up the story.

Basically what i think in my case happens, the "intensity" boost impacts my eyes, but the pupils are not closing up correctly(or such) and thus it leads to sensory overload after some hours of use. After this, due to the overload, lighty/shiny situations or light sources are disturbing my eyes, where my pupils are again not able to close enough. The next day is then always the same, i can barely watch or even look around in general and feel the above mentioned photophobia, which is then teaming up with some headache, foggy mind and the loss of like to do anything, just like when one gets a deep cold. The day after, it is then all away, that was it.

Yesterday i tried again the good old stuff-causing-game, World of Warcraft, but now on the OLED TV. Hours long i didn't have much to tell, but somewhere i already felt it will cause problems again. Well it did, as mentioned above.
It doesn't matter what kind of display you use with that game at all, however, when watching TV, or playing some other games, i have no problems on OLED.
I'll still try to contact Blizzard support, but i'm pretty sure it will lead to nowhere.

What just got in mind, is that i'll go to ophthalmologist and try my story, then if i can get an official statement, i'll contact consumer protection, or how they call it in english. It's simply that, because one should be able to use nowadays' displays without issues, just like older displays and should not losing loads of money on unusable equipment and not making harmful tests on self. One should also be able to use new SW without issues, just like the older ones - the money and selftests apply here too.
Most probably i wouldnt' be able to personally affect any manufacturer to alter its technologies, so only that one remains.

BR,
tsb

Wait a second, if anyone knows how to measure a display's light emission, please let me know, it would be a good test. But here, not to measure an accumulated emission value, instead we should be able to measure the harmful emission spikes. That's because the overall screen looks normal, even after altering brightness/contrast/etc, but the emitted spectrum shall contain the spikes somewhere, which then causing the problems.
An oscilloscope i have here, i'd happily do such experiments 🙂

BR,
tsb

tsb I first noticed problems when 7.2 went live during Legion. it was like they upped the white balance on the whole game and it became painful to look at. Haven't played in BFA.

  • tsb replied to this.

      degen yep, i began to see it exactly there too.

      Got the Benq today, well it flashes somehow as well, maybe not so much, but time will tell.
      Maybe there is no display out there anymore without this "trick" at all, so i'll just keep it, i'm tired of testing around pretty much now.
      Wish one could at least just switch to an open-monitor-firmware, like a dd-wrt. That could make things interesting.

        No way, the Benq goes back next week too, consumer protection here i come.

        be our guinea pig and try one of the lightboost/gsync monitors.

        • tsb replied to this.

          reaganry Two of the three i returned were G-sync capable. Screen tearing doesn't matter to me at all, actually nothing is a problem, only the intensity rocket in my face. 🙁

            i like the idea of sensory overload. I have some color blindness, which implies divergent levels of of rods and cones. this maybe leads to 'early clipping' of different (blue) wavelengths, and a 'staring at the sun' feeling. This explains why I get it from looking at a single led

            Just found a little bit of improvement; i'm turning on all the lamps in the room, this way the effect is a little bit less hard. Maybe. I need to play around some more.
            But anyway interesting, as the idea i got; how could i close my pupils somehow, so they don't gather that much intensity? Light makes it so, so then, let there be light.
            From Benq i got an answer about the backlight they use in their monitors, but of course this alone has nothing to do with my problem.
            Anyway, today i just made the contact with consumer protection regarding the issue, let's see how it goes.

            Just contacted nVidia, let's see what they say, however i don't expect anything useful, since the thing is some sort of a great secret, which is probably due to "money dictates". If not, then why all this?
            Doesn't matter, i'll also try maybe Microsoft; maybe it is somewhere deep in DirectX itself, as for SW side.

              tsb it's something about the "composition layer" since it started when that was introduced.

                  Gurm Hi and thanx for the info. Can you elaborate it a bit more? Is it DX or somewhere else?

                    tsb Good luck with a response.

                    In my experience this issue is also happening on other devices and platforms, it's not just a Windows 10 problem (if only).

                    We have a Samsung LED smart TV from 2017 which will display video from our Tivo V6 box just fine - however I've noticed the minute I switch over to a 4K channel with our cable provider, or stream a Netflix video in 4k either from the cable provider's stb or the Samsung Netflix app, I get similar 'dithering' eye strain after a few minutes. It seems OK with SD/HD content.

                    Maybe it's the push for HDR that is causing this? Perhaps new devices switch temporal dithering on when a 4k/HDR source is sent to it?

                      Gurm As I mentioned in another thread, running an Nvidia cloud PC desktop on my known good W7 machine caused the same eye strain within 5mins - just like being in front of a real Nvidia card.

                      At least IMO this is all a software 'glitch'/gimmick that can hopefully be rectified. :\

                        dev