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.