I've been posting on Reddit to seek more opinions and also to promote this forum.

I got a reply from a post on /r/optometry, presumably from a working professional.

I've yet to find any compelling evidence LED is any worse for people's eyes than any other light source. Just anecdotes that don't hold up to even mild testing.

The more likely culprit is improvement in visual Fidelity with technology. Video games and movies are viewed on larger higher resolution screens, with high refresh rate. Modern video games are capable of reproducing visual cues like lighting and fog that make them more realistic and immersive than ever. Even cartoon style games are buttery smooth and immersive. Even the modern UI has elements of depth and realism to them. Smart phone screens use AMOLED displays which create more immersive and true colors, especially with darker tones in images.

This is great and the desired effect, but for some individuals the virtual reality of the device crashes with the reality of what going on around you and suddenly your brain is processing conflicting information about it's place in the world. This is disturbing enough for some individuals to cause nausea.

What I will agree with, and know anecdotally, is that I do get motion sickness with certain video games (but never get travel sick). For those of you old enough to remember the original Wolfenstein 3D, that game made me go crazy after 2 minutes, and that is a 30 year old DOS game. So it would be trivial nowadays for that type of effect to be baked into a UI to make it appear more 3D - maybe we're all getting 'motion-sickness lite' as a result of the new stereoscopic effects?

    diop For those of you old enough to remember the original Wolfenstein 3D, that game made me go crazy after 2 minutes, and that is a 30 year old DOS game. So it would be trivial nowadays for that type of effect to be baked into a UI to make it appear more 3D - maybe we're all getting 'motion-sickness lite' as a result of the new stereoscopic effects?

    As I remember, I got nausea like symptoms after playing Quake (II or III) game. But seems I got them after an hour of game.

      kammerer Interesting article, and still relevant.

      I never really got into FPS games after Goldeneye due to the ill-effects I had. The last time I tried a CoD game was 2008 I believe, and couldn't get past the training mission (less than 30 minutes). Fifa, Mario Kart are fine, it's just FPS games that I can't play.

      So can anybody on this forum play FPS games such as CoD for extended periods without issues?

      I would say the symptoms I get now from modern tech is either heavy eyes or similar to a very mild form of motion sickness. (Suggesting there is extra motion on the screens to process e.g. dithering).

        I use to get motion sick from most FPS games including the first DOOM, but I can play the recently released Call of Duty Mobile (MP Mode) all day long without any issues.
        In general, the narrower the tunnels in a game and the faster I move, the more motion sick I get.
        Racing games are less of a problem, I guess due to the wide area and less harsh camera movements.

        I have filed a bug on Ubuntu Launchpad to try and disable dithering, it's not been assigned to anybody yet but I will keep checking back for updates.

        I've also been posting on some subreddits (/r/strabismus, r/optometry) to try and get advice from others, unfortunately there has not been a big response.

        I'm not giving up, but (part rant) I'm fed up of this BS. I haven't been employed for quite some time now, why would I want to work on a computer all day if I'm 'stuck' on my good machine which is over a decade old? My lovely new NUC is sitting here which would be a real aid to my personal life (music production/graphic design) and also as a media player/games console. Even on good devices, it seems that app by app or update by update, things are breaking and becoming unusable fast.

        I'm not trying to sound pessimistic, but we can't live on years old software and hardware forever. I understand that everybody has their own lives but how do you all work right now? Don't you get really bad symptoms?

        If I went to a doctor today and said "I can't work in an office anymore because of XYZ causing me eye strain" - as it's not even a medically recognised condition, I get no support from the state (I'm based in the UK). I could get a job away from technology (a cleaner, teacher, shop assisstant) however I shouldn't have to resort to this much of a change, just because of a software update.

        I may be a part of a minority, and I'm very grateful that we can share our experiences, but these companies have so much to answer for if updates are causing individuals like myself to have these sort of reactions.

          diop The issue here is that we are a minority that has severe symptoms. I know now that more people are impacted however their symptoms are less severe so they don't look into it.

          I am discussing with legal in the company i work for of actions we could take and one of them proposed that if 500-1000 people can come together we could complain to the EU. There is a formal process for this, however all my legal contacts were not optimistic that something immediate could result given the EU's red tape, however we could give it s shot. This site could assist gathering a significant number of people residing in the EU. It would be a good practice to become noticed. If there is a person(s) in this forum with legal background he/she could assist in forming such a complaint in a more formal way.

          Regarding the option of building a legal case, all my legal contacts (UK and Greece) told me that it seems difficult due to the uniqueness of the symptoms to each person. Oled displays seem to be the worst for me, others in this forum can use them. The subject matter seems vague from a legal perspective. Then it is a matter of jurisdiction, which will be the legal framework? An EU country, UK, USA?

          • diop replied to this.

              Peter In the UK there is what is known as the 'Small Claims Court' in which an individual can take legal action against a company. However in order for any legal proceedings to be effective, it would have to be categorically proven that the discomfort came from 'exhibit A'. Herein is the issue; almost every tech company are now using these rendering/display techniques. So it's not just 'the people vs Apple' or 'vs Intel', it's the offending output that's the issue.

              Peter Regarding the option of building a legal case, all my legal contacts (UK and Greece) told me that it seems difficult due to the uniqueness of the symptoms to each person.

              This is the problem, and it is frustrating as everybody here must feel as if they're on their own with their unique set of symptoms. One thing we all have in common here is none of us can find anything modern that works. Do all modern devices use dithering/pixel movement that is different to a decade ago? I think so, it's just a matter of proving that with hard evidence. What I hope to gain re: Ubuntu/Linux (if we can get that far) is a proof-of-concept to see what happens when running a dithering-free OS/Driver for extended hours. Do our symptoms go away? Are they 50% better? We don't know for certain until everything from OS>Driver>GPU>Display is accounted for.

                  diop I have filed a bug on Ubuntu Launchpad to try and disable dithering, it's not been assigned to anybody yet but I will keep checking back for updates.

                  Link?

                  • diop replied to this.

                      diop I'm not trying to sound pessimistic, but we can't live on years old software and hardware forever. I understand that everybody has their own lives but how do you all work right now? Don't you get really bad symptoms?

                      If I went to a doctor today and said "I can't work in an office anymore because of XYZ causing me eye strain" - as it's not even a medically recognised condition, I get no support from the state (I'm based in the UK). I could get a job away from technology (a cleaner, teacher, shop assisstant) however I shouldn't have to resort to this much of a change, just because of a software update.

                      I don't have much to add to this thread and I don't have much to offer as I am not very knowledgeable about tech like most of you are but I just wanted to chime in on this comment. Many of you started having issues around 2012 and my issues started only in April 2019...so whatever is wrong with the tech, I was able to tolerate until this year. It's comforting to know I am not alone but also highly distressing knowing that there are other people in the same situation I am in who have not found solutions. I also wonder how each of you get by in life, as you mentioned. I am barely hanging on. I have more specialist/doctor appointments lined up but I am not expecting them to be of much help. At work, my boss is trying to help me as much as he can but there are only so many accommodations that can be made before I have to change my career. My productivity is declining and I leave work in tears sometimes because it hurts so bad. I have to take many breaks and turn my monitor off for a while. I no longer watch TV and I don't communicate with people as much. I have a masters degree and a great deal of student loan debt...it's disheartening to think I may have to completely change my career and worry about how I will make money due to this issue. I would never want to have to claim disability but you're right--this would not even be recognized as a disability if we needed to file and there are very few higher paying jobs out there that don't rely on tech.

                      All that said, I am 100 percent supportive of any calculated action that will inform others of our condition and hopefully aid in SOME kind of help, research, or solution. If there is anything I can do, I will be glad to help.

                        diop how do you all work right now? Don't you get really bad symptoms?

                        It has been awful for the past year and a half. I go home torn and I start in the morning pretty much in the same condition. My productivity has become very low in spite of all my efforts. I thought of changing job, but not understanding what causes my issues, and the sensitivity I developed to modern lighting in addition to electronic devices make me hesitate. I am completely lost. I have not received any real support nor inspiration from any of the medical doctors and practitioners I visited. Recently I have been spending a fortune on massages of various type and acupuncture to release neck and face tension, but if there is any relief it is only temporary. Exposure to a bad device restore the bad symptoms within few minutes. The worst is probably eyelids and facial spasms.
                        I have not been yet to an orthoptics specialist, because here that science is considered "folk remedy". I will try my luck in Europe during the Christmas break. That is my last option.

                        My problems date before 2012. I used my ThinkPad T60 on XP from 2010 to 2017 day and night no problem, but from 2007 to 2010 I kept it in a drawer thinking it was unusable. What made the difference was changing the display resolution from native to 1024x768. Same hardware, same software. Not a matter of font size, because I ran that test too. At native resolution my eyes fried, at lower resolution I could work for hours without a break.
                        My eyes or brain are not able to cope with external optical impulses the vast majority of people are fine with. That is my only conclusion.

                        With regard to making our discomfort more public, maybe one option is to support already existing campaigns, e.g., https://lightaware.org/about/individual-stories/.

                        That is what one of the ambassador wrote me months ago: "We are collecting case studies of the way that lighting affects different people to show how many people are affected and how it impacts on their daily lives. The idea is that if we can collect hundreds of similar stories then we can show medics and researchers that this is a problem which is affecting a diverse range of people, and also potentially provide case studies for researchers."

                        In my opinion there are many people affected. We are not just a few hundreds. We should try to have sufferers converge on one or few platforms rather than spreading them out?

                          6 days later

                          Looking at the Intel support forums (Windows), there's lots of reports of incorrect color depth being detected for displays, and users complaining they can't select 10/12 bit color. Also a few requests to disable dithering.

                          Thread - https://forums.intel.com/s/question/0D50P00004VyUR0SAN/10bit-bit-depth-hevc-with-iris-plus-graphics-650?language=en_US

                          Our driver supports Color Depths of 8-bit or 12-bit via HDMI*.
                          Currently, if a 10-bit display is used the driver will default to 8-bit with Dithering or 12-bit if supported.
                          Please refer to Deep Color Support of Intel Graphics White Paper. (Page 11)
                          There is already a request to allow users to manually select desired Color Depth via IGCC (Intel® Graphics Command Center), but this is a work in progress with no ETA however it is in our Top priority list.
                          The above doesn't impact at all the Encoding/Decoding capabilities of the graphics controller. HEVC 10-bit video encoding/decoding via Hardware is supported by the graphics controller.

                          There was another post I saw, and forget the link, but the support answer was that the driver automatically enables dithering for 8Bit and above, and disables for 6bit. Which seems backwards, as a poster pointed out. Is there a way to spoof or rewrite an EDID to be detected as 6bit?

                          Intel Deep Color White Paper - https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/white-papers/deep-color-support-graphics-paper.pdf

                          Most of the traditional laptop panels were internally of 6bpc (=18bpp panels). This naturally means even a normal 24bpp image can show dithering when viewed on an 18bpp panel. To avoid this, a process called “dithering” is applied which is almost like introducing a small noise to adjoining pixel. This will create variations in 18bit representation and results in hiding color banding on such panels. Either the GPU’s display HW or panel itself might do this. When a panel does this, source (GPU display HW) is not aware of the same and panel will advertise itself as a normal 8bpc (24bit) panel

                          So I gather from this that the reason dithering is always enabled is a failsafe to avoid a poor 6bit+frc implementation. Which in a way makes sense because there could be very cheap monitors out there that are advertised as 8bit but are 6bit+frc (as we know), so the dithering at the GPU side is ensuring a consistent 8bit output across all monitors.

                          Windows* OS doesn’t support more than 8 bpc for desktop. This means even if an application has a more than 8 bpc content, it will all be compressed to 8 bpc during desktop window composition process as shown in figure below

                          So perhaps all these applications that are starting to cause strain are designed with HDR in mind, however they are being dithered down to 8bpc?

                          In many respects I can understand why dithering is enabled. It's much easier to just force all displays to 8-bit rather than have the possibility of an incorrectly detected monitor/color combo. However I think that advanced controls should still be available to the consumer as dithering on a true 8-bit monitor will produce extra noise when it isn't needed. So I'm not getting what I pay for as a consumer. So eye strain or not, dithering isn't needed if the monitor is detected correctly and correct color range is selected.

                          I have an mri showing recent tissue damage in my brain. flicker/strobing is being used as a non-lethal weapon by the military. if a good lawyer got on this, I am sure there is or will be a solid case. I think you could possibly just prove dithering is functionally equivalent to the military LED-incapacitator which is known to be harmful. we just need to make sure that it is provable that the video card and monitor manufactures are made aware of this. then it would be wilful disregard for safety rather than negligence.

                            ShivaWind They definately are aware dithering is used, and it's also documented everywhere I look online. Most gamers want it enabled! The fact that Amulet Hotkey has made tools to disable it tells me it must be on everywhere. It never specifically mentions 'flicker' in any definition of dithering I see online, only 'changes the color representation' or 'adjusts nearby pixels to smooth gradients'. Most posts online agree that dithering is a 'down and dirty' method and isn't a perfect solution.

                              ShivaWind I have an mri showing recent tissue damage in my brain.

                              First, sorry about it! Question: could you prove it is due to dithering / flickering of displays? I have been in a nightmare for almost two years, I have never been so unwell because of electronics and lighting. Yet, my MRI, taken 2 months ago, was immaculate. I was told I have a very healthy brain. If you have not followed the post in which I talked about it, basically my ophthalmologist thought the MRI could explain the twitching of my left eye (eyelid and face muscles). It could not, though.

                                  I posted on the Intel forums yesterday. They have a thread to suggest feature requests for Intel Graphics Command Center in Windows. I added a reponse to the thread, agreeing with a previous reply to allow user-selectable colour depth, but also to allow enable/disable dithering. I log in today, and my response has been removed! I double-checked and am sure it appeared immediately after posting yesterday, I don't think posts are approved before they get added.

                                  I'm a little annoyed with this. The Intel devs have an IRC channel (#intel-gfx) which they frequent, however it is for general graphics talk only, not submitting bugs/features. I believe it is Linux only. Also I suppose one could politely ask the question in IRC "is temporal dithering enabled with Intel drivers?".

                                  The thread is here > https://forums.intel.com/s/question/0D50P00004H90FcSAJ/intel-gcc-display-media-feedback

                                  Please have your say and ask for user controllable colour output settings, and dithering checkbox/option.

                                    diop I log in today, and my response has been removed!

                                    Almost like they're hiding something.. 🙁

                                      Seagull Recently tested a couple low end Pentium laptops with 610 and 620 and they strained in minutes. If what you said is true seems dithering ain't the culprit. They were PWM free as well.

                                        dev