• Hardware
  • Has anyone gotten used to a straining device pushing through?

My answer is NOPE. I have been in the new office with offending lighting and electronics since January 2018. My symptoms worsened in November 2018, and I have been carrying on since. I feel my eyestrain has turned into chronic. Eyelid twitching comes and goes, so I assume it may depend also on other factors, like stress, lack of sleep. I probably also improved my "resistance", but I am not more tolerant to the offending technology. It is just I have become better at suffering, if it renders the idea. I am more than concerned, also about the long-terms side effects.

Thanks on the link. For the first time I have read the someone benefited from tinted glass while working at his Mac (I had got the consensus on this forum is that they help only against fluorescent lamps).

The only viable solution i found is to use orange-tinted bicycle glasses with UV protection of at least 400. Don’t link any model - there are really a lot of them. I have to always wear these when working on my Mac, but the strain, eyesore, dizziness and accommodation problems are gone.

Unfortunately there are always people proposing the 20-20 rule and have you turned the brightness down, etc etc.

You could get eyestrain from looking at Charlize Theron if you did it for five hours straight.
...
I'd look closely at how you are working. How often you look away. How frequently you take breaks.

Go to explain them how we feel.

My experience is that it can get a little bit better from I hate to use it -> I don't want to use it for longer than 30 minutes πŸ™‚.

I am pretty sure the human organism will try somehow to adapt but if the stimulus is too strong the impact can only be reduced and only temporarily.
For some people just gently yawning every half a hour will provide some relief, however the stimulus is there and continually creates tension. IMO this is caused from the increased effort of the brain through the eyes to catch-up with something that is moving in the screen at sub-sensory level.


vaz I get symptoms in minutes on offensive machines. Super old 15yo stuff is fine as long as I can stay awake so it grates me when people say simply wrong stuff like "all screens cause strain and its CVS etc". That makes no sense when an old screen and old OS is fine with ZERO problems for 16 hours or more. My butt hurts but not my eyes or head or neck.

This is me. I am fine with LED too, but I make sure it's PWM-Free. I'm using the Dell U2419H, had it hooked up for three months now and is absolutely fine. YMMV, of course.

I am convinced it's an issue in the rendering, or rather, a big bug in the rendering, causing extra noise/colour changes where there doesn't need to be. Many articles I am seeing online now support this theory.

I am out of work too, and can't use any PC's made after 2011/2012. Phones are tolerable for say 5 minutes but I can't watch videos etc on Phones now, those days are over for me.

I'm just glad I'm not the only person with these symptoms, otherwise I would seriously start to question myself πŸ™‚.

Ultimately I just want the option (from GPU stage to driver/OS to disable dithering). This is trivial to implement as we're not talking about a new feature, just changing a 1 to 0 in code or something similar. Hopefully we get somewhere re: Linux.

I have been able to adapt to some devices which previously caused me strain. One phone in particular went from mildly/moderately painful to fine in a few weeks when I was left with no other option. In my opinion, my eye strain/migraines are caused by my brain not being able to properly render flickering/dithering/polarised input from my eyes into a coherent image. The brain is able to learn and re-model itself to an extent, it makes some sense that over time I might learn how to render a particular screens output and thus stop experiencing pain. Maybe the visual processing bit of my brain is smaller than it should be or something.

I've been wondering how and why I adapt to some devices and not others. In general the phones I have been able to adapt to all had small screens, and because I am not much of a smartphone user I rarely look at the screen for more than 30seconds to check message etc. Perhaps its the small screen size, perhaps its not looking at the screen for long at a time. Could be that too much pain for too long inhibits the adaption process, could just be that there are limits to what I can adapt too.

I may in the future experiment with a new graphics card and see if I can adapt to it by only looking at for short periods of time. Or by covering most of my monitor with card so I am only looking at a very small area of screen.

    Seagull In my opinion, my eye strain/migraines are caused by my brain not being able to properly render flickering/dithering/polarised input from my eyes into a coherent image. The brain is able to learn and re-model itself to an extent, it makes some sense that over time I might learn how to render a particular screens output and thus stop experiencing pain. Maybe the visual processing bit of my brain is smaller than it should be or something.

    That may all be true, however I would rather see exactly what my screen is capable of at the correct color range, regardless of artifacts or banding. This never used to be an issue until the last decade, with this race for the brightest, most colourful technology. Even if I wasn't affected, I personally don't like the idea of being 'tricked' into perceiving a higher color range due to a flicker technique. I would rather see either a) True 8/10 bit monitors come into the market which negates dithering or b) Let us have the choice to disable it to view the native color range of our current tech.

    Maybe the cones in our eyes are different and we perceive color differently to most, or maybe we have a much lower flicker threshold. Either way flicker of any sort needs to go if possible.

    Hi,
    Finally I have time to post again.
    at the beginning my Galaxy S7 was a real pain or my eyes. Now I can use it quite well in the normal scope. At the weekend, however, I overstated with the game South Park Phone Destroyer and unfortunately still under it.

      vaz

      1. Please try to find an optometrist who can check your binocular vision (BV) for heterophoria. My specialist is preparing a test to do over skype, maybe hell teach me how to use it and then I could diagnose people on this forum

      2. Getting used to a device is possible if your BV disfunction is not off the charts. I think that was the case with people who had initial problems but adjusted - problematic device provided a sort of binocular training.

      3. In that case, less is more. When training for BV, no more than 30 mins a day is advised. That can take a year. Rest is needed for muscle tissue and innervation readjustment. Hard to follow for so long but might do the trick. Also try covering one eye (no light in at all) and only using the other, then switch after 30 mins or so. If thats easier than both eyes (might still not be pain free), its 99% BV disfunction.

        martin It's never a bad idea to get your eyes checked and I'd recommend that everybody gets a check up.

        What I will say is after a lot of time browsing it seems to me the latest PC display drivers are using temporal dithering. This is because it hides banding and can make an 8bit display look almost as good as a 10/12bit. To the majority of users this effect is imperceptible, however there are various dithering algorithms available (Apple is the worst for me, and I suspect it's their own in-house dithering algorithm). The very nature of dithering involves flicker and introduces noise, however obviously the positives outweigh the negatives (no need to put 10/12 bit panels in any new tech, $profit).

        Consumers want the nicest, most vibrant graphics and for this reason banding is a no-no. So we have no choice but to use technology with dithering baked in (perhaps in some cases at the GPU level) to avoid poor image quality.

        I am interested to know what research was done into the effects of temporal dithering, if any. We are seeing movement with PWM-free devices now and DC-driven mobiles, but the very real flicker caused by dithering is not addressed. Intel propose that there will be an option to select colour depth soon, but it's doubtful this will disable dithering.

        I suppose an analogy could be that everybody else is happy with stereo sound, but we need mono. πŸ™‚

          diop Intel propose that there will be an option to select colour depth soon, but it's doubtful this will disable dithering.

          Could you give a link?

          • diop replied to this.

            martin I only have one eye. So unless my glass eye is sentient this isn't my problem. I have the same sort of issues and pains I read about most people having so I really doubt this is their primary problem either and think any "strengthening" of binocular vision is just improving tolerance and not solving anything.

            diop If it's dithering to make 6-bit laptop panels "prettier" why are old computers ok for unlimited time but new ones all hurt even with the same OS on either? I don't understand how an ancient processor and display on the same OS is not painful if dithering is the cause because they would flicker too. I hate all of this as nothing makes sense. I have read and tried everything I have seen everywhere and there seems to be no hope.

            • diop replied to this.

              diop Apple is the worst for me, and I suspect it's their own in-house dithering algorithm)

              They might use some nasty algorithm on macOS indeed. I never had (and still don't have) any issues with other devices, including iOS. Even the same iMac in BootCamp is good to me. The strain goes away in safe mode, so I suspect there is no dithering in safe mode.

              I'm feeling better at iMac now, 1.5 years later, than in the beginning: at that time I could not watch movies or even look at the desktop wallpaper image. Now I have strain only while working with the text, where I need to "stare" at letters. So I believe my brain managed to adapt to some extent. I also did lots of tweaking with settings. However, I immediately feel something is wrong with the graphic rendering on this machine, especially when I switch to a good device. E.g, when I do breaks from iMac and surf the net or play a game on iPad.

              Also, to me the strain is not always the same. If I'm sick or had less sleep, or have sinusitis, I can feel a strain almost immediately. When I'm in a good shape, I can spend some time in front of the screen, before I start feeling a discomfort.

              vaz If it's dithering to make 6-bit laptop panels "prettier" why are old computers ok for unlimited time but new ones all hurt even with the same OS on either? I don't understand how an ancient processor and display on the same OS is not painful if dithering is the cause because they would flicker too.

              Just to be clear, are you using the same driver on both systems? If yes the only logical explanation is something has changed in the actual HDMI output, this is all governed by the motherboard and video card (both have BIOS in ROM) which tells the hardware how to behave. The actual video output of new technology may be set to dither regardless of drivers in use and OS in place. Of course this is all speculation at the moment as we haven't got a way to disable dithering at the driver level. Dithering is the elephant in the room that no support forums mention, but seems to be the secret sauce in all offending technology I've used.

              degen

              Hi. None of them. I've played a little bit with the developer options. However there wasn't much difference. And i guess that this options don't make any difference.

              Moreover I've done lots of eye excercices with the phone. Maybe you remember my mentionend prism flippers?!

              8 days later

              only gets worse and worse for me, and once sensitized everything cuases headaches.

              I think it's a gamble, but my current setup (LG24GL600F, radeon580, win10, DP) was giving me eyestrain/headache and then something kind of popped and now it's pretty good. actually seems to give me energy somehow.

                dev