Blur Busters Forums

There is a pair of 2 light bulbs on the ceiling but you can see seven pairs in the photo. Depending on how fast I flick I mouse there could be less, or MANY more multiples of everything making it very difficult to aim. It's like I'm playing D&D and they cast mirror image. Why does my monitor do this?

I had to use a long shutter time to capture the multiples I see with my eyes but this resulted in the image being blurrier than what I see with my eyes.
I am spinning only a few degrees per frame so it is not some weird effect by spinning around 360 degrees per frame.

I tested this in 120hz ULMB frame rate = refresh rate = strobe rate. The effect is just as apparent.

Why does my monitor do this?

If you did the VSYNC ON full framerate lock, then whatever leftover multi-image effect is caused by:

(1) Strobe crosstalk, www.blurbusters.com/crosstalk
This is the "moving-gaze, moving-object" situation.
Much fainter than your photo.

(2) Plain phantom array effect www.testufo.com/mousearrow
This is the "stationary-gaze, moving-object" situation.
There's no way to fix this problem without doing one of the following:
(A) adding intentional GPU motion blur
(B) using still-unbtainium refresh rates.

If I would gander a guess, you're almost definitely seeing the latter.



This happens in games, you fix-gaze at crosshairs while things stroboscopically steps past because of the artificial humankind invention of "frame rate" and "refresh rate". Real life doesn't use a series of static images to emulate moving motion. Fixing stroboscopics requires adding GPU motion blur effect (to blur the whole motion vector between two frames), or trying to add a brand new frame at every pixel aka (1000fps @ 1000Hz for 1000 pixels/sec motion to fill-in all the gaps with a continuous blur).

A good article that explains display limitations is Blur Busters Law And The Amazing Journey To Future 1000Hz Displays

Also, some great animations generating optical illusions of a limited refresh rate:
www.testufo.com/eyetracking
www.testufo.com/persistence
www.testufo.com/mousearrow

As you have realized, by now, we are bigtime advocates of ultra-Hz. It fixes all motion side effects simultaneously. Although it may sounds ridiculously unimaginable today, remember 4K and 8K once were. Tomorrow (aka two decades from now), 1000Hz may be cheap.

The slow Refresh Rate race (120Hz, 144Hz, 240Hz, and) will continue for decades because the diminshing curve of returns includes the stroboscopic problem (mousearrow) you're seeing right now. Which affects all games too, where everything stroboscopically moves around due to the artificial human invention of using a series of static images to represent moving images.

For this reason, some players don't use blur reduction for crosshairs-based games (see HOWTO: Using ULMB Beautifully or Competitively) as it mainly benefits moving-eye situations.

You will always have stroboscopics in any mode (blur reduced or not) with fixed-crosshairs-gaze unless fixed with adding intentional GPU blur effects, or fixed via going ultra-Hz (of the future). Staring at crosshairs, seeing the stepping effect past, is just a fact of life with a finite refresh rate for fully-sharp (non-GPU-preblurred) frames. It doesn't mimic analog motion of real life, and displays won't be able to do that for a while yet (without adding the blur compromise).

Motion blur reduction mainly benefits eye-tracking situations (where you're not staring at a fixed location on the screen), which can be more common in certain games like RTS games, platformer games, Rocket League, or other games that don't have a crosshairs (i.e. no permanent fixed object to stare at).

It's definitely phantom array. 480 has more multiples than 240, which has more than 120, which has more than 60. The solution is to increase the refresh rate until the multiples looks like a "blur" instead of multiples? There has to be a way to reduce amount of multiples/blurring....

ELK wrote:It's definitely phantom array. 480 has more multiples than 240, which has more than 120, which has more than 60. The solution is to increase the refresh rate until the multiples looks like a "blur" instead of multiples?

Correct.

ELK wrote:There has to be a way to reduce amount of multiples/blurring....

I just answered that.
A) Add GPU motion blur effect to fill the gap (the full distance of the frame step)
B) Or keep increasing refresh rate until it looks like a continuous blur
C) Or a combination thereof. The higher the Hz, the less GPU blur effect is required to "fill the gap".

It's law of physics. No other possible way than A/B/C.

That's exactly why, in the future, that 1000 Hz displays will someday be a big help with "having cake and eating it too" -- simultaneously no stroboscopic stepping AND no motion blur. The only way to achieve both simultaneously is ultra-Hz. Law of physics!!