XL2720, awful ghosting for 2D games at 60fps

[MisterSeventy1]

I've tried to follow some of the threads and advice but I am still having terrible ghosting when I play 2D games. If I used blur reduction, the screen goes horribly dark and I still get ghosting. The BlurBusters utility helps but again the darkness is horrible it's not fun to play when I can barely see the detail of the game. What should be my "best case" scenario, I would have expected that I can play 2D games on a PC without trading *terrible* ghosting/trails for 10% of usual brightness, is this wrong? Again just clarifying because I am not playing FPS etc, and some of the games I want to run are at 60fps. What can I do? Firmware is V2.

[elexor]

60fps motion is hard. The reason your blur reduction looks shit is your monitor is most likely 120hz strobing which is just horrible for 2d 60fps games, luckily I think that monitor supports single strobe 60hz mode which can be enabled in the service menu, try that. Next step will be tuning the crosstalk with the blurbusters tool and after that it's VT tweaks to try hide any remaining crosstalk. You can get good crt like motion with the right setup and monitor.

[elexor]

Also you don't need to sacrifice a huge amount of brightness turning up the persistence with the blurbusters tool will get your a brighter screen. 2d stuff doesn't really need ultra low persistence to look good in motion. eliminating 99% of the crosstalk is the key to making them look good.

[Chief Blur Buster]

XL2720 is capble of single-strobing, which requires enabling the right setting in Factory Menu or Blur Busters Strobe Utility.

However, it is true that 60fps motion is extremely bottlenecked in motion clarity.

Workaround Note: Few monitors look good with 60Hz strobing, but I have noticed that 8bit 240Hz panels seem to do a good job of software BFI with less degradation when simultaneously combining hardware strobe with software strobe. Using 120Hz IPS hardware strobe + 60Hz software BFI. But that requires games to have built-in software BFI capability -- or a virtual windows desktop video driver layer to do it (thread). For now it's not a project Blur Busters is focussed on, but it's useful if you have software that has built-in software-based black frame insertion for strobing (for true 8-bit panels -- non-FRC -- capable of 120Hz strobing).

[MisterSeventy1]

Thank you for the replies, weirdly I opened the service menu to check if I'd already enabled single strobing (it was enabled) and after that I tried running the game (SNES emulator) and it was a lot better. Acceptable even, though still kind of dark and minor but certainly improved crosstalk. My settings in Blurbuster util are full brightness (anything less is terrible) and 0 strobe phase which I don't fully understand but I get the sense it just shifts the area with most crosstalk. In the context specifically of 60fps, can you recommend VT settings? Mostly I see advice for 120. I know the whole 60fps limitation is not good, but there are a few games where it matters and I am developing games and trying to get my head wrapped around how to best achieve that pristine CRT-like feel and take input/update at 60fps and locking the game to 60fps seems appealing *if* the average user can get the game not to look like garbage. Thanks again for the help.

[elexor]

I have only have 1 display that supports 60hz singlestrobe and still have not been able to completely eliminate crosstalk about 10% at the top of the screen remains I use a VT of 1350 because that's the maximum my display will support. I think you can potentially eliminate the crosstalk if your display supports even higher VT's.

For retro games i use integer scaling which leaves black bars on the top and bottom of the screen effectively hiding the crosstalk.

If you are developing games and targeting 60fps most modern games will use artificial motion blur to make motion smoother on a sample and hold display. If you really want that crt clarity I would suggest you target 120fps alot of monitors coming out now are able to do crosstalk free 120hz strobing like the blurbusters approved xg270.

[Falkentyne]

I've tried to follow some of the threads and advice but I am still having terrible ghosting when I play 2D games. If I used blur reduction, the screen goes horribly dark and I still get ghosting. The BlurBusters utility helps but again the darkness is horrible it's not fun to play when I can barely see the detail of the game. What should be my "best case" scenario, I would have expected that I can play 2D games on a PC without trading *terrible* ghosting/trails for 10% of usual brightness, is this wrong? Again just clarifying because I am not playing FPS etc, and some of the games I want to run are at 60fps. What can I do? Firmware is V2.

Firmware V4 (I don't have V3) and newer is much better for the inverse ghosting problem in the XL2720Z. You can also set the AMA to high AFTER blur reduction is enabled, which will reduce the ghosting even more.

This trick does not work on V2. Trying it on V2 will make the inverse ghosting twice as bad.

This trick can also be used to remove ALL of the ghosting when blur reduction is disabled. However this requires using blur reduction to make it work. It's not hard to do (on V4 and newer).

First, save "Standard Mode" with blur reduction disabled, as a s-switch profile, like #1.
Then save the same mode with blur reduction enabled as profile #2.

Now, activate profile #2. Then go to the AMA setting and set it to high. Even though it's already on high, moving the slider/selecting high and going back will refresh the AMA to the new setting. If you have testUFO open, you will see a noticeable difference in the ghosting pattern.

Finally, activate profile #1. You will see there is *NO* ghosting whatsoever.
This is the only way to get the changed AMA to apply to blur reduction off. If the S-switch is somehow not working, you can manually save the profile to gamer2 and the standard mode/MBR off to gamer 1, then use the display mode option to change from gamer 2 to gamer 1 after toggling the AMA with MBR on on gamer 2 (this is for people with broken or missing S-switches). XL2411 users already have to do this since that unit doesn't come with an s-switch (at least the XL2411Z, I don't know about the XL2411 refresh).

Note that if you change refresh rates you''ll have to do the same thing again.
Again this does NOT work on V2! Trying it on V2 will turn the screen into a huge purpley mess.

I can't help you flash this anymore. You can try the Linux method, which I haven't used in years, because I still own both the Mstar
ISP device chief mentioned on his main page, and the RT809F. When I last used flashrom in linux, I didn't have many problems except having to get the updated URL's and commands and finding the correct device ID. Sorry I cannot help more. Maybe Chief can.

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AkQqWXPLNfg-gVFgbSq ... A?e=gKymxC

[MisterSeventy1]

Thank you both so much for the advice, I had NO idea you could somehow flash the monitor without that piece of hardware that's crazy. I haven't found a tutorial, just some odd mentions, of the flashrom process. Is there any way you could elaborate on the updated URLs and device id? Or if possible let me know where to find detailed instructions? That really makes me more hopeful to get a better experience, I was hoping to avoid buying a device to flash it.

[Falkentyne]

Thank you both so much for the advice, I had NO idea you could somehow flash the monitor without that piece of hardware that's crazy. I haven't found a tutorial, just some odd mentions, of the flashrom process. Is there any way you could elaborate on the updated URLs and device id? Or if possible let me know where to find detailed instructions? That really makes me more hopeful to get a better experience, I was hoping to avoid buying a device to flash it.

As I said before, I cannot help with this. It's been too many years and I haven't kept up with it. Sorry. I use the dongle to flash because the flashrom instructions kept changing (the last time i used flashrom to flash was like 6 years ago).

The thread is here.
viewtopic.php?f=13&t=779

[Jason38]

I have only have 1 display that supports 60hz singlestrobe and still have not been able to completely eliminate crosstalk about 10% at the top of the screen remains I use a VT of 1350 because that's the maximum my display will support. I think you can potentially eliminate the crosstalk if your display supports even higher VT's.

For retro games i use integer scaling which leaves black bars on the top and bottom of the screen effectively hiding the crosstalk.

If you are developing games and targeting 60fps most modern games will use artificial motion blur to make motion smoother on a sample and hold display. If you really want that crt clarity I would suggest you target 120fps alot of monitors coming out now are able to do crosstalk free 120hz strobing like the blurbusters approved xg270.

I was always confused as to why old games just don't look great on modern displays. I found it strange when playing new 2D games like the new Streets Of Rage 4 game and I don't see any motion blur. Then I play some old NES games and it doesn't look good and has tons of motion blur. Will you get better performance with OLED with old games due to the faster pixel response time? I know your still bottle necked with the 60hz refresh time but the pixel response time is far better then a TN panel.