Is there a name for seeing a sea of sparkly motion in a white screen?

dogweather

I see sparkly artifacts moving all around when looking at my 2019 MacBook Air screen. I think it's a little worse than other laptops I've tried.

It looks like those optical illusions, where you focus on a circle, remove it, and then you see a "ghost image"... I see that all the time. (?!) Is there a name for this? :-P

Seagull

dogweather

IPS monitors used to have a 'sparkle' to them. I'm pretty sure your Mac uses an IPS screen, though I think the IPS sparkle was something unique to much older panels. Still, possible its returned.

ShivaWind

dogweather
Did you get this sorted? I may be able to help you find a stack that works. 8 bit monitor + nvidia card with dithering dissabled + no font smoothing + no hw acceleration in the browser + no anti aliasing + no compositing. Visual snow was the sysmptom I had before things got very bad. I am more or less fine now

MagnuM

I believe the term is temporal dithering.

However, if you are seeing that effect when you aren't even staring at a monitor (like a white wall for instance), then it's possible you have https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_snow - a migraine symptom.

dogweather

MagnuM Thank you! Visual Snow describes it very well. Yep, I do see it everywhere, but it's most pronounced on computer screen, and then some screens more than others. I think that a glossy screen might make it worse.

The comorbidity with migraine is very interesting --- I did have very bad headaches ovr the past couple of days, preceding me noticing the visual snow. For sure, though, I think it's not new, me seeing this.

I discovered I was "seeing something" when I asked my girfriend if she saw this too, and she was like, "wooo! you're crazy."