Ensuring a flicker free gaming experience

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lexlazootin
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Re: Ensuring a flicker free gaming experience

Post by lexlazootin » 15 Oct 2017, 02:09

Kind of, Not really.

It's not as simple as you're trying to make out to be.

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Re: Ensuring a flicker free gaming experience

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 15 Oct 2017, 13:51

link wrote:So guys let's say you have true 8 bit panel and you feed it a source that's say it's 6 bit... Does that cause dithering i.e temporal dithering or thee flashing of colors back and forth that may cause flicker?
lexlazootin wrote:Kind of, Not really.

It's not as simple as you're trying to make out to be.
Correct, it's not that simple.

Also, feeding 8-bit sources to 8-bit sources can still cause dithering due to math rounding errors of digital conversions. You really want to feed as many bits as possible (10-bit, 12-bit) to minimize the rounding errors.

There are worse causes of display health. Excess blue light is a bigger cause of problems than faint temporal dither which is 1000 times fainter than plasma flicker. Sometimes it's barking up the wrong tree.

Flicker health Importance:
99% - PWM dimming
1% - Ultra-faint flicker sources such as FRC temporal dither.

PWM dimming is flicker from full 100% brightness to 0% total blackness. Very abrupt and nasty for flicker-sensitive people! But FRC temporal dither is simple faint flicker of few-percent modulations, like pixels hopping between 50% -> 52% -> 50% -> 52% in a very shallow flicker (and inversion flicker is often slightly worse than FRC flicker, a few percent bigger hops). That's 100 times fainter than plasma flicker. PWM is full hopping 0% -> 100% -> 0% -> 100%. Much nastier flicker than FRC flicker! If you don't get eye pain from plasma, DLP or CRTs, then worrying about FRC flicker is simply hypochondriac: Focus on the bigger flicker health issue instead: PWM flicker [the big flicker elephant in the room]. Many people who claim they get bothered by FRC flicker, are actually reacting to a different type of flicker other than FRC that is also often happening in the same monitor.

Things like low blue light are more important for health than that 1%. However, if a person is unusually sensitive to seeing flicker from FRC versus inversion (Also: inversion flicker is sometimes worse than FRC dither flicker, see image).

The FRC algorithms on most of the newer monitors is fainter than inversion flicker (not FRC/dither), which is all two orders of magnitude fainter than PWM flicker. Are YOU sure you know what FRC flicker looks like versus INVERSION artifact flicker or PWM flicker? They're different sources of monitor flicker that looks very different. PWM flicker is generally 100x more visible than FRC flicker in current modern monitors. This leads me to ask; are we chasing a wild goose? Do YOU know /exactly/ what the flicker problem is being caused by? Maybe not, but let's consider this for a moment:

Generally, I feel I have a good understanding of this -- I have a peer reviewed conference paper on display testing techniques, and sometimes readers/end-users focus on many things that the haven't fully confirmed the cause of themselves. So please allow me to say, I do know what I am talking about here.

While I am not a doctors, but sometimes it's so obvious, like staring at a bent femur - and saying "that leg is broken" -- from my reading of this thread, it appears FRC may not be the flicker problem to worry about here.

While flicker is definitely a problem, PWM is the bigger cause, and even so, I've also seen people get eye strain from a different monitor cause than flicker, so it's important to troubleshoot the cause of your eyestrain/headaches, and we've found 50% of the time, it wasn't even remotely related to flicker. Certainly, flicker is a major cause, but it apparently turned out that it isn't the only cause, and it's best to understand the "red-herring" and "wild-goose-chasing" of perceived health causes, all the way to less important eystrain-items.

When you go to the movie theater to watch a movie (Star Wars), you are getting MORE flicker than FRC flicker. Laboratory equipment confirms that. There's either the 48Hz flicker, or the high-frequency pixel temporal dithering that all DLP projecters do (electronic cinema). If you don't get eyestrain when you go to the movie theaters, then FRC is the wrong tree to bark up.

There ARE a (small) subset of people bothered by FRC, but many people don't know the difference between FRC flicker and inversion flicker -- which is the catch. We have to consider the forest for the trees; it's hard to figure out which tree is causing problems for the rest of the forest -- it's easy to bark up the wrong tree -- and very understandably; health is VERY important but display eyestrain is often also very easily misdiagnosed especially when we also have people here who also get more strain from motion blur than from flicker -- it's very human dependant.

There are people ultra-sensitive to flicker. This is totally true. If you're a person that gets eye pain from every source of flicker (streetlamps, fluorescent lights, CRTs, plasmas, half of LCDs, etc) then I have to question the decision to go to TN instead of IPS; the most flicker-free LCDs on the market (no FRC flicker, no inversion flicker, no PWM flicker, no other sources of flicker) are generally IPS LCD even at 60Hz[u/]. The same type of LCDs that Apple iPad/iPhones uses. (I only mention Apple because they're the most common flicker-free IPS LCDs on the market, I can tell when a human never gets eyestrain from Apple displays; but gets eyestrain from CRT/plasma/many fluorescent lights -- THEN the prescription is so easy that a doctor is not needed to give it: Modern PWM-free IPS LCD display). Sure, you'll get nasty motion blurring, and it might lag a lot more, but if your eyes get pain from *all* flicker, and you don't get pain from motion blur....

If you're choosing to go TN instead of IPS, you're also downgrading viewing angles (Another common cause of eyestrain) and sometimes colors (Another common cause of eyestrain). If you're choosing TN because you find it reduces motion blur eyestrain (high Hz) then you want a display that gives you many options (GSYNC mode, ULMB mode, PWM-free mode, Low-Blue-Light mode, wide brightnest adjust range, etc) to give you the widest range of eye-health-saving choices.

But if you ARE sensitive to TN problems and your only other problem is flicker, then a 60Hz IPS display or a 165Hz IPS display will have far less FRC/inversion related flicker. A High-Hz display does not always have less flicker than a 60Hz display when it comes to "sample-and-hold" technologies such as LCD panels.

The refresh rate of LCDs is unrelated to its flicker; you have to be more worried about panel type (faster LCDs such as TN will usually have more FRC/inversion flicker). If you never get eyestrain from Apple displays (they're usually 60Hz PWM-free IPS displays) then your favourite PC monitor would probably be an IPS display instead of TN. So, why are you going TN? TN is good for fast motion, but are you going TN because someone thinks higher Hz is better for flicker? (That's not applicble to "sample-and-hold" LCDs with PWM-free backlights). Or are you going TN because the reduced motion blur is reducing your eyestrain too?

Make sure you're understanding why you're choosing a specific panel type -- TN can reduce eyestrain for some people (blur/response), while IPS reduce eyestrain for different people (color/angles/lack of inversion artifacts/etc) -- there is no "jack-of-all-trades" perfect panel technology because it has not been invented yet, so a specific panel can only address certain sets of eyestrain-inducing factors.
--> There are brightness-sensitive people (people who get more strain from bright displays than you)
--> There are blur sensitive people (people who get more strain from motion blur than you)
--> There are color blind people (people who are less sensitive to color than you)
--> There are focus sensitive people (people who are more far sighted or near sighted than you)
Etc, etc, etc.

Vision problems vary.
No two humans are the same.
Sometimes, one display will reduce eyestrain for one person, but increase eyestrain for a different person.

Common Example #1: Nearsighted people versus farsighted people on same display. One person will get more eyestrain than other!
Common Example #2: Brightness-sensitive person versus Brightness-insensitive person (e.g. specific kind of semi-blindness), on a display that does not have a wide brightness-adjustment range. One person needs it really bright to improve health, the other person needs it really dim to improve health!

So one display can reduce strain for one person, but can worsen strain for a different person!

Be careful of blindly listening to puppetted advice; some of it is really GOOD advice but sometimes it's not THAT simple! :(

Ergonomically if you don't get eyestrain from Apple iPads or iPhones, then you can get the same Apple experience with any ordinary PWM-free IPS 60Hz display. Focus on PWM-free dimming and you've solved 99% of your flicker problem. 60Hz is bad for motion blur but if your eyes are not sensitive to motion blur, and you're playing with a Nintendo Switch, then why not a PWM-free IPS 60Hz display if your eyes feels pampered when staring at most Apple displays?

On the other hand if you get lots of eye pain when staring at ordinary 60Hz LCDs (even the 100% flicker-free Apple 60Hz displays) and your eye pain disappears at 144Hz, then I can definitely tell you that your eye pain is not being caused by flicker. You might even be motion-blur-sensitive instead of flicker-sensitive. Something else is causing it; and your health troubleshooting tree should begin to follow a different path (excess brightness, excess blue light, focussing problems, etc) to try and attempt to rule out your cause of eye pains.

Are there displays that your eyes feel pampered by?
Are there any 60Hz displays that does not give you eyestrain?
What methods of console playing have you done before, that does not give you eyestrain?
What methods of computer playing have you done before, that does not give you eyestrain?
Do you know which displays really hurt your eyes/headaches?
If you can name example displays, I am familiar with certain aspects of them (e.g. their refresh rate, resolution, PWM-freeness of the dimming, etc), and perhaps I can steer you more approximately in the correct direction (no guarantees).

We have users who buy a monitor trying to solve a specific problem, only to create a much bigger eyestrain problem from something else. You've fixed a health cause, but created a different and bigger eye strain problem from a different monitor characteristic. Are we sure we FRC is not chasing a pyrrhic victory? The original poster mention the Nintendo Switch. That's a 60Hz display. Why not just simply get a good PWM-free IPS 1080p 60Hz? That reduces a lot of eyestrain for console players. Also, high-Hz TN monitors will have more flicker from FRC/inversion than a good PWM-free IPS (whether it's 60Hz or 165Hz).

It, just, alas, FRC flicker is almost certainly likely not the bigger health-related questions that should be asked for this specific situation, especially if one is making a decision to go TN instead of IPS, we're trading some aspects (TN is more prone to inversion/FRC flicker than IPS) in exchange for improving other aspects (motion blur/response/lag/etc). That will reduce strain for some, and increase strain for others. It's important to understand that "Monitor X" can make things better for one person, but worse for a different person!

All with good intentions of course; we all have good intentions when we're trying to protect our health!

Disclaimer: You're reading a forum. A more reputable forum for sure, with an owner of good credentials. But it's still a forum. Make your own monitor purchase decisions accordingly. ;)
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Re: Ensuring a flicker free gaming experience

Post by link » 17 Oct 2017, 22:38

[Chief Blur Buster's Note: I've added QUOTE wrappers where needed]
Chief Blur Buster wrote:Also, feeding 8-bit sources to 8-bit sources can still cause dithering due to math rounding errors of digital conversions. You really want to feed as many bits as possible (10-bit, 12-bit) to minimize the rounding errors.
But this kind of dithering wouldn't be temporal dithering aka frame rate control which I understand is flashing of pixels from one color to another fast.
Chief Blur Buster wrote:There are worse causes of display health. Excess blue light is a bigger cause of problems than faint temporal dither which is 1000 times fainter than plasma flicker. Sometimes it's barking up the wrong tree.
Blue light is another topic and I'm not sure if blue light really can be a cause for concern since wouldn't one get exposed to alot more blue light on a sunny day than ever from a whole day even of using screens? Sure at night it's something to be aware of.
Chief Blur Buster wrote:Flicker health Importance:
99% - PWM dimming
1% - Ultra-faint flicker sources such as FRC temporal dither.
I understand what you're saying but say someone is sensitive to it... Is there a way to cut out temporal dither for good?
Chief Blur Buster wrote:There are people ultra-sensitive to flicker. This is totally true. If you're a person that gets eye pain from every source of flicker (streetlamps, fluorescent lights, CRTs, plasmas, half of LCDs, etc) then I have to question the decision to go to TN instead of IPS; the most flicker-free LCDs on the market (no FRC flicker, no inversion flicker, no PWM flicker, no other sources of flicker) are generally IPS LCD
I heard IPS being frc flicker free is very rare. The ones that truly are I hear are the extremely expensive ones and that these so called 8bit ips are fake 8bit. I hear the Samsung cfg70 is true 8bit VA panel inversion free and pwm free. It's also quantum dot so might have less blue light issues. I'm leaning torwards that display.

As far as my experience in the past I can't say one tech has been better than the other. The main 2 techs I've used are plasma and lcd and they've both been fine. I'm a console gamer and motion blur lower fps and refresh rates are something I'm accustomed to. I've been having some eye symptoms but they could be completely unrelated to the screen. I have a friend who says he's very sensitive to temporal dithering and says these newer consoles such as ps4 and Xbox one use Radeon chips that have temporal dithering on by default. That the hardware is the issue not the screen. Though he finds the way plasma shows dithering is alot more gentle on eyes than the way a lcd will flash rapidly between 2 colors creating a flicker. He says he can spot frc flicker instantly. He spots it on amd chips on pc as well as Intel chips. Nvidia use to according to him have temporal dithering off by default and never caused him issues but now with newer cards they seem to be having it on.

I have the other stuff figured out im just trying to achieve a temporal dithering free console gaming experience. If I understand correctly a true 8bit source being fed to a true 8bit monitor shouldn't dither. Atleast not frc flicker dither. Now my only hangup is the fact that my friend says he literally sees temporal dithering flicker regardless on consoles because of Radeon chips having dithering on by default. He has no issues on ps3 or Xbox 360 with the same display.

Thanks for your input!

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Re: Ensuring a flicker free gaming experience

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 18 Oct 2017, 14:52

You're welcome!
However, FRC is still a wild goose chase (more than 90% of the time).
link wrote:But this kind of dithering wouldn't be temporal dithering
FRC is temporal dithering.
Even Wikipedia agrees with me & monitor manufacturers.
Wikipedia: "FRC is a form of temporal dithering..."
link wrote:aka frame rate control which I understand is flashing of pixels from one color to another fast.
That's exactly what temporal dithering is. Flashing between two colors.
But it's a faint flashing between one color and a very faintly different shade color (1% different).

Like flashing between light blue and light blue (Almost identical shades of colors, only 1% difference in brightness)
That's what FRC is.

Plasma pixels flickers bigger than LCD FRC. (Between fullblack & fullcolor)
DLP pixels flickers bigger than LCD FRC. (Between fullblack & fullcolor)

Flashing between two nearly-identical shades of color, is much more harmless than flashing to full dark black and back? That's what high speed videos show. Look at a high speed video of a plasma dispay. It's totally crazy how much a plasma flashes in your face. Even so, flashing isn't that harmful if done correctly. And yet, you're concerned about FRC which is fainter than plasma flicker?

Being annoyed by FRC artifacts (graininess) is totally different from being annoyed by flicker; these are two completely different side-effects; maybe people are telling you about FRC artifacts. Most people who write in other forums don't even know the difference between PWM vs FRC vs BFI -- they see a problem and they just call it "FRC" when it's really "PWM". It's easy to mix things up, and easy to get incorrect advice "I hate that display because it has FRC" when it's actually a different problem they actually saw (but they labelled it differently). You have to trust your eyes more -- do you look at an iPhone or Android screen -- and do you get eye pain from staring at any LCD monitors, for example?

The problem arises in annoyance by artifacts or discomfort from FRC artifacts -- but the inversion artifacts are much bigger than FRC artifacts when it comes to TN panel.
link wrote:Blue light is another topic and I'm not sure if blue light really can be a cause for concern since wouldn't one get exposed to alot more blue light on a sunny day than ever from a whole day even of using screens? Sure at night it's something to be aware of.
LED blue light is slightly closer to ultraviolet sometimes, and that can create cataracts.
Lots of LED varies in blue light emissions; they are fixing on it.

You still need to use sunglasses outdoors, people get cataracts after being outdoors for 40 years (ultraviolet light damage to cornea), imagine how too much blue light can do to your eyes after 40 years. The deep blue color behind white LED phosphor sometimes leaks through, and shows up as a sharp blue spike in spectrograph measurements. Flicker is usually more harmless than deep blue light, when given this perspective.

Put neon green or neon orange under a deep blue LED. The neon green and neon orange glows! That same light is the same type of light that sometime creates cataracts in human eyes after decades of exposure. Monitors are getting better and better on this, but it's not perfect -- scientifically, excess blue light is damaging -- not nearly as damaging as ultraviolet -- but LED is often blue-light-heavy -- and white LEDs use blue LED chips with a phosphor -- that's why there's so many EyeCare monitors, to try to tamp down and reduce a lot of blue light. The monitor manufacturers have added low-blue-light modes.

That said, I'm not a bubble-wrap guy. I love the full sunny colorfulness of my screen, but I do use Low Blue Light (to improve cicadian rhythm) if I am using a screen late at night.

My point being is....FRC gentle-flicker (it's just flicker between two near-identical colors, adjacent color shades to simulate a new color shade) is two orders of magnitude dimmer than plasma flicker. And also much more harmless than blue light (which is only a minor harm as you said anyway -- basically accumulated exposure and disrupted sleep). Why fixate on FRC, an even-more-minor harm of a gentle modulation between two adjacent near-identical color shades?

FRC is not BFI. LCDs with both BFI and FRC, most of the flicker is coming from FRC. FRC can bother some people, but it's an artifact-annoyance rather than a flicker-annoyance, and many people see inversion artifacts and then confuse that with FRC artifacts.
link wrote:I understand what you're saying but say someone is sensitive to it... Is there a way to cut out temporal dither for good?
FRC is not gone on IPS panels, however FRC on IPS is much dimmer. Basically, it's like this.

Plasma = harshness factor 1 -- harsh because it's a modulated flicker between full bright colors all the way to black.
TN FRC = Harshness factor 0.01 -- about 100x gentler flicker because it's a flicker between adjacent color shades (faint)
IPS FRC = Harshness factor 0.001 -- about 1000x gentler flicker, slower IPS response cause flicker to go even softer (fainter)

And

True 6-bit FRC into 8-bit = Harshness factor "X" (e.g. 0.001)
True 8-bit FRC into 10-bit = Harshness factor one-quarter "X" (e.g. 0.00025)
The color shade differences at 8-bit is one-quarter at 6-bit

1-bit difference is a difference of 2x
2-bit difference is a difference of 4x
3-bit difference is a difference of 8x
4-bit difference is a difference of 16x
The difference between true 6-bit FRC and true 8-bit FRC is thus a difference of 2-bits, which means true 8-bit FRC is 4x fainter than true 6-bit FRC. FRC is sometimes a problem, but you're making it out to be a much bigger problem than it really is. No display is necessarily 100% FRC free, but it's far below human-noticeable levels on many LCDs -- inversion artifacts are often more noticeable.

Please, think in relative terms. It is useless to think in polar "yes FRC versus no FRC" terms.
Also, most people who are annoyed by FRC is annoyed by FRC artifacts (grainy patterns). But even that grainy patterns is fainter than those christmas-lights-pixel-noise found in dark shades on plasma displays.
link wrote:I heard IPS being frc flicker free is very rare. The ones that truly are I hear are the extremely expensive ones and that these so called 8bit ips are fake 8bit. I hear the Samsung cfg70 is true 8bit VA panel inversion free and pwm free. It's also quantum dot so might have less blue light issues. I'm leaning torwards that display.
Virtually all LCD panels have inversion (electronic feature).
You're talking about inversion artifacts (visible side effects of inversion)
link wrote:As far as my experience in the past I can't say one tech has been better than the other. The main 2 techs I've used are plasma and lcd and they've both been fine. I'm a console gamer and motion blur lower fps and refresh rates are something I'm accustomed to. I've been having some eye symptoms but they could be completely unrelated to the screen. I have a friend who says he's very sensitive to temporal dithering and says these newer consoles such as ps4 and Xbox one use Radeon chips that have temporal dithering on by default. That the hardware is the issue not the screen. Though he finds the way plasma shows dithering is alot more gentle on eyes than the way a lcd will flash rapidly between 2 colors creating a flicker. He says he can spot frc flicker instantly. He spots it on amd chips on pc as well as Intel chips. Nvidia use to according to him have temporal dithering off by default and never caused him issues but now with newer cards they seem to be having it on.

I have the other stuff figured out im just trying to achieve a temporal dithering free console gaming experience. If I understand correctly a true 8bit source being fed to a true 8bit monitor shouldn't dither.
Short answers:
(A) Not always true;
(B) 8-bit FRC is still better than 6-bit FRC

(A) You are true only when there's a 1:1 perfect mapping of 8-bit color space.
When you picture-adjust (e.g. gamma curves, etc) an 8-bit table, it doesn't map exactly 1:1 from one 8-bit colorspace to another 8-bit colorspace. When you have two different 8-bit colorspaces or curves, a lot of values are rounded-off. You've got things like blocky artifacts (like bad compressed videos -- banding artifacts). Gentle FRC fixes that by being the lesser of evil by creating more colors to remove the blockiness.

(B) 8-bit FRC is still better than 6-bit FRC
8-bit FRC is a flicker between two even-fainter-different shades than 6-bit FRC.
Imagine a big color palette containing all possible 6-bit colors (64x64x64 = 262,144 colors) and a separate color palette containing all 8-bit colors (256x256x256 = 16,777,216 colors). FRC is simply flicker between ONLY adjacent color shades. The bigger color palette will have fainter differences between adjacent shades. FRC on a bigger colorspace is always correspondingly fainter as a result.
link wrote:Atleast not frc flicker dither. Now my only hangup is the fact that my friend says he literally sees temporal dithering flicker regardless on consoles because of Radeon chips having dithering on by default. He has no issues on ps3 or Xbox 360 with the same display.
He's definitely seeing flicker. But are you sure it is FRC?

Every time I had to diagnose a FRC annoyance, more than 90% of the time it was something totally different from what the user claimed. The flicker problem was genuine, but the user's diagnosis of blaming FRC was misguided. It's important to make a distinction between temporal dithering caused by FRC versus temporal dithering caused by Radeon versus temporal antialiasing aritfacts etc. There's many different temporal behaviours, and some of them are more intense than others.
link wrote:I've been having some eye symptoms but they could be completely unrelated to the screen
Eye problems is real.

Eye discomfort from displays is real.

Diagnosing why, however, is tough. But I can confirm with certainity, there's bigger eye-health issues to worry about than 8-bit FRC (fainter than 6-bit FRC, which is correspondingly much, much fainter than plasma flicker). Consult your doctor for eye diagnosis; there could be other issues. We aren't doctors on here.

General common guidelines for "catchall" monitor pain
-- Get a monitor with PWM free dimming
-- Get a monitor with optional low-blue-light modes (for night use / dark room use)
-- Have a wide brightness dimming range (some monitors are too bright)
-- Adjust your monitor brightness to your environment
-- Use lighting behind monitor if dim
-- If PC gaming, use a VRR monitor to reduce discomfort of stuttering.
-- Don't sit too close to the monitor. Use a bigger DPI if text is too small.
-- Take breaks every hour. Stand up every hour for 5 minutes, minimum.
And that solves 99% of people's eye discomfort problems.
If your game habits have changed to faster-action games, your eyestrain may go up correspondingly. Compensate accordingly, and take extra breaks. Add features such as motion blur reduction or VRR if part of your "fast action game strain" is caused by stutter or blur, etc..

Displays can contribute to vision problems but I can literally guarantee you that FRC isn't the cause if you say you've been okay with plasmas and most LCDs. Even streetlamps and light bulbs (Even incandescent bulbs!) often have deeper flicker cycle curves from the AC power, than the flicker FRC modulation on modern LCD panels. Again, plasma flickering pixels is 100x harsher (deeper cycle flicker) than FRC Flickering pixels (flicker between two adjacent color shades; FRC always only uses adjacent shades). And edge-flicker of stutter (low frame rates) is always a bigger cause of eyestrain; people have complained of eyestrain when they changed a video game to a faster-action game and the game motion becomes uncomfortable to follow after hours of gaming. Take breaks if your gaming habit changed to faster eye movements or bigger desktop displays (that forces bigger eye-tracking at same viewing distance). Habit changes and display changes can amplify strain.

Apologies I haven't made display shopping simpler, but the earlier advice stands as a generic catchall for general purpose eye-pleasing PC gaming, as gaming comfort for eyes.

For the most pleasantly calm flicker free LCD experience, while also getting high Hz, then get an IPS 165Hz GSYNC monitor (all GSYNC monitors have PWM-free dimming backlights). Very visually pleasing motion for PC games.
- No pain from flicker, no pain from stutter, no pain from color
And practically as flickerfree as LCD monitors can get (in ANY source of flicker). You will get more motion blur than a 240Hz TN monitor, but if you're paranoid of all sources of LCD flickers (combined) and need a wide-berth of eye-pampering, a stutter-free 165Hz IPS GSYNC monitor is practically a pillow for your eyes if you do any PC gaming for pleasure. If you get any minor discomfort from motion blur, then recommendation does change to 240Hz TN GSYNC.

So, cream of the crop is either 165Hz IPS VRR or 240Hz TN VRR. All displays that contains 165Hz+ all are all PWM-free, so once you're at this number or higher ("165Hz" or up) it is no longer necessary to doublecheck if it's an older PWM-free displays, since true 165Hz and true 240Hz did not yet exist at the time.

Official List of Best Gaming Monitors

If you only do console gaming (or if you're still paranoid about even super-faint FRC) then you can just get a good-rated IPS 60Hz LCD with PWM-free dimming, and a wide brightness adjust range.

Disclaimer: We're not doctors. We just know a lot of stuff very well around here about display flaws.
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Re: Ensuring a flicker free gaming experience

Post by link » 18 Oct 2017, 16:54

Wow, first of all thank you so much for so eloquently explaining all of this. It makes a million times more sense now. Thank you. Yea ive been reading a lot of demonizing about FRC on the net lately so I was concerned. Plus my friend says he's sensitive to FRC on any lcd but when it comes to temporal dithering on plasma he's completely okay with it. He has it opposite as you do and says dithering on lcd is much harsher than plasma. He says even though it is flashing from full bright colors to black the phospors are persistent and leave a steady image. So much so that if you turn off a plasma you can sometimes see an afterglow of the image that was displayed. That pwm doesn't apply to plasma in the sense it does to lcd and that temporal dithering is imperceptible at a distance on plasma. On lcd however he's highly sensitive to dithering according to him. He is aware of inversion and pwm and bfi etc but blames dithering on lcd has being a harsh flicker back and forth. I dont know doesn't add up at times how he's fine with plasma.

So a few questions, you hold IPS in high regard in terms of FRC inversion and flicker overall as being even more minimal when compared to TN. Would the same apply to VA? Specifically the Samsung c24fg70? Or am I better off with a 165hz IPS to minimize frc and inversion? The reason I was leaning torwards the cfg70 is because it is a quantom dot display and I was thinking lower blue light emissions. Plus it seems like true 8bit. But if I can get even less frc and inversion from 165hz IPS I'd go with that. I only game on consoles never on PC.

As far as the different type of temporal dithering
temporal dithering caused by FRC, temporal dithering caused by Radeon and temporal antialiasing aritfacts. Do you think dithering caused by Radeon chips in xbox one and ps4 could be an issue for some even with a true 8bit monitor? Do all these forms of dithering cause a flicker or just artifacts or noise? Since you say some are more intense than others, can they be a concern to watch out for? The reason I ask is because my friend that's comfortable with plasma and annoyed by temporal dithering finds xbox 360 and Playstation 3 comfortable when compared to ps4 and Xbox one. So I don't know of Radeon chips are to blame.

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Re: Ensuring a flicker free gaming experience

Post by RealNC » 18 Oct 2017, 22:46

link wrote:I only game on consoles never on PC.
Get a 60Hz flicker-free display and be done with it, dude.
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Re: Ensuring a flicker free gaming experience

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 19 Oct 2017, 13:05

Glad I was able to explain FRC better!

Even if FRC bothers you, and FRC flicker is still noticeable to some people -- there are so many problems with a display technology for specific people. 90% of the time when someone complains about FRC on the LCD, there is definitely a problem with the LCD but the problem ended up being another LCD flicker other than FRC (Multiple major things can cause an LCD to flicker at varying amounts - FRC, BFI, PWM, inversion, etc.)
link wrote:I only game on consoles never on PC.
If you don't game on PC, then the extra Hertz won't really help.
60Hz on 165Hz IPS looks exactly like 60Hz on 60Hz IPS.

Although, computer scrolling and web surfing can be more comfortable at high-Hz, so you might still find a benefit for non-game-use of >60Hz. And you might consider gaming on a PC within a few years, so having high-Hz monitor may make sense if the monitor also doubles as an excellent "60Hz monitor" (Which is effectively what it'll be running as with consoles).

The extra Hz is wasted on consoles when it comes to flickerfree displays (and you don't want 60Hz strobing, if you are trying to avoid flicker!)

Yes, I currently hold IPS in high regard for "sensitive-to-everything-that-flickers" people (eye strain from everything that flickers, CRT, BFI, plasma, etc). VA is a pretty close second. The newest IPS and VA panels will generally do a really good job, as long as it's not driven by laggy processing. And Samsung usually does a really good job with thier screens. As far as VA panels go, Samsung's VA is one of the best VA. Minor complaints about purple ghosting on some earlier Samsungs (they fixed it in newer firmwares for CFG70) so if you buy a monitor afresh with a recent manufacture date, you're OK. There are still VA quirks but I don't think they will be a problem for the flicker concerns.

TN is certainly the great go-to when you need fast response, less motion blur, lowest lag (including GtG pixel response lag, but not just that alone), and as close as possible to CRT motion clarity). Though they have generally been more prone to flicker artifacts of all sorts (not necessarily FRC). But if you're sticking with 60Hz consoles, TN has extremely little advantage over a really good (reduced-lag) IPS or VA.

If you decide to get the Samsung C24FG70 despite mainly using 60Hz, this is the one on Amazon:
Samsung C24FG70 Monitor - 144Hz VA gaming monitor
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Re: Ensuring a flicker free gaming experience

Post by link » 21 Oct 2017, 19:41

Can someone please explain this: https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1272249

Also I'm hearing due to the way lcd inherently work by the screen door effect of letting light through that we essentially have a million strobe lights flashing at our face lol.

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Re: Ensuring a flicker free gaming experience

Post by RealNC » 22 Oct 2017, 01:37

That site lacked proof of this. They don't appear to have done measurements. Or at lest a video demonstrating the flicker; no sign of that either.

So, yeah. Don't believe their claims without proof.
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Re: Ensuring a flicker free gaming experience

Post by link » 22 Oct 2017, 13:27

Does the Samsung cfg70 have issues with slow color transitions. I know some VA panels suffer from some color transition times creating a sort of flicker.

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