I want to share with you my findings in using the Asus ROG Ally with BFI.
As you may know already, this handheld PC competes directly with the Steam Deck. One of the upgraded features is the IPS 120Hz screen. And, as I love perfect motion background scrolls and buttery smooth sprites, I bought it hoping for a Retroarch BFI positive tests.
After tweaking a bit, I found that the IPS screen gets heavy flickering and image retention after some minutes playing with BFI turned on in Retroarch. The image retention issue (see viewtopic.php?t=7539) is something common on all IPS 120hz, and ROG Ally suffer from it.
The curious thing is:
1. Image retention goes away rather easy.
2. After using BFI, even for a couple of minutes, image flickers like hell if I put the screen in 60hz, but not in 120hz.
3. To "remove" the flickering I had to leave the screen on with a cleaning pattern (TV snow) for 10 hours!!
I don't understand why the flickering shows ONLY on 60hz. If I choose 120hz for desktop (or any other app), there is no flickering.
So, BFI looks beautiful, BUT... I don't know if the screen will end up damaged. If I leave the desktop in 120hz, no flickering appears, and image retention goes away easily. But If I change to 60hz, BAM, heavy flickering and I have to "clean" the screen for 10 hours.
What do you think? Should I avoid BFI on the ROG Ally?
ROG Ally Black Frame Insertion
-
- Posts: 125
- Joined: 21 Aug 2022, 14:28
Re: ROG Ally Black Frame Insertion
What did you ultimately do? any update to this story?
Re: ROG Ally Black Frame Insertion
I could not find any information about it and I just disabled BFI on my Ally, I don't want the screen to break or make it flicker without fix. It takes several hours of "cleaning" to remove the flicker, so...
-
- Posts: 125
- Joined: 21 Aug 2022, 14:28
Re: ROG Ally Black Frame Insertion
image retention is a result of the pixel polarity due to BFI
You can solve the issue by running BFI again on a different image instead of waiting 10 hours.
It would have also been removed if you just left the screen off.
There is another way to prevent the image retention and thats with a retrotink 4K device but only really useful if using an LCD monitor.
OLED screens does NOT have this image retention issue, a good programmed software could also prevent this its just that nobody really cares about MPRT except a few niche gamers so nobody really cares about things like strobing or BFI in general the consumer demand just isn't there for manufacturers to care
You can solve the issue by running BFI again on a different image instead of waiting 10 hours.
It would have also been removed if you just left the screen off.
There is another way to prevent the image retention and thats with a retrotink 4K device but only really useful if using an LCD monitor.
OLED screens does NOT have this image retention issue, a good programmed software could also prevent this its just that nobody really cares about MPRT except a few niche gamers so nobody really cares about things like strobing or BFI in general the consumer demand just isn't there for manufacturers to care
Re: ROG Ally Black Frame Insertion
Thank you for your answer. Well, the problem is not image retention, but flickering. Image retention goes away rather easy, but flickering not. The strange thing is flickering only shows when using a 60hz refresh rate after BFI (for example, using retroarch with BFI and then return to desktop at 60hz).