Any word on spectrum eve VRR Strobe tuning?

Ask about motion blur reduction in gaming monitors. Includes ULMB (Ultra Low Motion Blur), NVIDIA LightBoost, ASUS ELMB, BenQ/Zowie DyAc, Turbo240, ToastyX Strobelight, etc.
liquidshadowfox
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Any word on spectrum eve VRR Strobe tuning?

Post by liquidshadowfox » 05 Dec 2021, 09:33

Hope you had a good thanksgiving chief :) Did you get any progress on the VRR strobing implementation for eve spectrum monitor? Still excited to get my monitor next year, just need the strobing to beat my XG27AQM + VRR (I don't think i'll mind the red phosphor).

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Re: Any word on spectrum eve VRR Strobe tuning?

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 05 Dec 2021, 20:04

liquidshadowfox wrote:
05 Dec 2021, 09:33
Hope you had a good thanksgiving chief :) Did you get any progress on the VRR strobing implementation for eve spectrum monitor? Still excited to get my monitor next year, just need the strobing to beat my XG27AQM + VRR (I don't think i'll mind the red phosphor).
Eve has indeed pre-paid Blur Busters for a pre-paid VRR strobe tuning contract.

However, I am currently waiting for a development firmware from Suzhou Lehui (firmware vendor) to install on my DVT2 prototype (I also have MP unit too). They are the same firmware vendor that many other manufacturers use (including ASUS), as publicly published throughout on the Internet.

Right now, my NDA with Eve is very lightweight so I've been able to make a lot more commentary on Eve's forums about my strobe tuning work specifically on Eve Spectrum monitors. I'm certainly aware of the chequered history regarding Eve, that said, I do strobe tuning for any manufacturers that wants to pay Blur Busters for advanced strobe tuning services.

Although my tuning resulted in making it the best strobed KSF panel now, capable of 48Hz-144Hz strobe range with Eve Strobe Utility found in the Eve Strobe Utility Announcement -- it is not awarded Blur Busters Approved due to KSF phosphor of the NanoIPS 4K 144Hz panel. However it is indeed strobe tuned by Blur Busters, and meets all other strobe pre-requisites with the sole exception of KSF ghosting. It's as good as KSF phosphor gets (less phosphor ghosting than a plasma TV, more phosphor ghosting than a CRT TV)

Image

I plan to update Eve Strobe Utility with VRR strobe tuning interfaces, including retro-friendly VRR strobe ranges (for emulator compatibility). However, it may not be until quite later in to 2022, given the very slow pace.

My most recent update is published in the eve community forums, but will cross-post here (original markdown, not converted to UBB coding)
BlurBusters, post:16, topic:29085 wrote: At least as of June 9th, 2021, services for “simultaneous strobing AND variable refresh” isn’t currently yet retained at this time for any current or future EVE model. I’ll update if this status changes.

Strobed VRR tuning is indeed a new premium-cost service that Blur Busters offers. It is much more complex than fixed-Hz strobe services because of the greatly increased complexity of strobed VRR.

**–EDITS BELOW–**

P.S. Services for tuning simultaneous VRR+strobing ***wasn’t a service yet offered by Blur Busters*** when EVE originally decided to retain full strobe tuning services of Blur Busters (above-and-beyond a volunteer advisory role). However, it is now a service that Blur Busters offers. Theoretically, with a user firmware upgradeable monitor such as this time, it’s probably theoretically possible. Based on this inquiry, I will find out if it is possible. No promises.

P.P.S. This monitor is clearly user firmware upgradeable, so kudos on that. No dongle mandatory, just a USB cable. I’ve been installing release-candidate firmwares and the process appears simple.
# Update About VRR Strobing: Beginning Work On It

EVE and Blur Busters are now starting talks about adding **variable refresh rate motion blur reduction** (aka "VRR strobing") to firmware.

Please note that Blur Busters, as a third party vendor, is currently vetting the backlight hardware for any theoretical hardware limitations preventing reasonable quality variable refresh rate (VRR) strobing. The good news is that the backlight controller seem to be flexible and should meet the needs for VRR strobing.

The biggest challenge is communication between English and Mandarian, but Blur Busters now has years of experience to many scaler/TCON vendors in Asia (China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Korea).

Apparently, this means Eve likely will be the recordholder of the world's first **post-shipment** firmware upgrade to add VRR strobing post-release.

The usual caveats about KSF phosphor still applies, in the "Worse than CRT, but better than plasma" kind of way -- which apparently is far more than good enough for a lot of people.

*...the freedom that EVE gives me to talk about "behind the scenes" information, allows me to tall me some really interesting technical stuff, of the famous Blur Busters flavor. So here's some technical information below. I have vetted the below that they are already public knowledge elsewhere at places like "Society for Information Display", academic papers, and not covered by any NDAs...*

Most just want to turn strobing ON/OFF. But what's done to make "ON" an easy toggle (without seeing bad quality) is a bit complex:

# Behind The Scenes Technicals About Strobe Engineering

**[Technical]**
The common situation for many monitor brand names you love, is that they often work with a supplier that helps with the firmware/scaler/TCON. (such as MSTAR, Skyworth, TPV, Lehui, Samsung, etc). Eve fits this standard Development Life Cycle chain of a monitor vendor, as they are using Lehui

In the panel programing chain, there may be multiple suppliers involved (e.g. MSTAR working with a AUO panel) or the same supplier (e.g. Samsung working with a Samsung panel). In this case, Suzhou Lehui (Eve's supplier) works very closely to LG, the manufacturer of the Eve panel.

Now, the fun begins for strobing.

For many scaler vendors, they don't even (yet) know what they are doing until I've given them exact instructions, and then they are amazed crosstalk dropped 90%. A lot doing simple DELL 60Hz panels, blindly told to add special algorithms to high-Hz backlights that are more precise than 10 microseconds (10 microseconds actually creates human-visible flicker, since 1ms MPRT varying versus 1.01ms MPRT is a 1% brightness difference!).

Overdrive Gain is simply huge numbers of overdrive settings -- sometimes as many as 256 levels -- but may be 32 level, 64 level, 100 level, or 128 level, depending on panel vendor. The LG scaler/TCON standardizes on 64 levels of overdrive internally, even though only 2 or 3 levels are usually exposed in the menus. Mind you, Blur Busters always admonishes making all levels accessible to user, because of temperature reasons and panel lottery reasons, sometimes a 2/64th change makes a big difference in a cold winter room versus hot summer room.

For those who usually don't care about milliseconds, but interested in some easy Popular Science explanations, read the [Milliseconds Matters Thread](viewtopic.php?t=6808) in the Blur Busters Forums. It's shocking how many specific kinds of sub-milliseconds can become human visible.

The complexity is higher for VRR strobing than non-VRR strobing. There's lots of exceedingly exact scientific instructions involved in VRR strobing. This is what Blur Busters is increasingly cable of doing; we are able to successfully communicate instructions for multiple generic high quality strobe algorithms at better-than-NVIDIA-ULMB-quality, for extremely low cost. That's why EVE hired Blur Busters to help them with this work -- because we can do it at only a very tiny fraction of the monitor's development budget.

Now if a hardware limitation is discovered, it has to be discovered in early prototypes, in the [EVT, DVT, PVT prototype sequence](https://www.google.com/search?q=evt+dvt+pvt+meaning).

* **EVT** aka Engineering Validation Test (prototype)
* **DVT** aka Design Validation Test (prototype)
* **PVT** aka Production Validation Test (mass production unit)

So if a firmware bug preventing a specific strobe feature (e.g. lack of 100% strobe phase range capability), it ideally has to be discovered in EVT or early DVT, then the electronics circuit board fixed to prevent a strobe backlight tuning limitation. Thankfully, EVE successfully fixed all hardware limitations before PVT. The only thing I couldn't fix was the KSF phosphor built into LG NanoIPS panels, but it's at least tunable to be better than plasma displays (less phosphor trails than plasma).

While not strictly necessary for FastIPS panels, occasionally, esoteric strobe tuning stuff such as 256x256 Overdrive Lookup Tables replaces the old 17x17 Overdrive Lookup Table, or there's a Y-Axis Overdrive Gain Formula (overdrive increases along the vertical axis of the display, to speed up LCD GtG near bottom edge).

**Mandatory Strobe Engineering by Blur Busters** At Blur Busters, the standard "*minimum-needed-to-beat-NVIDIA-ULMB*" formula Blur Busters commonly works for strobe tuning mainly focuses on these adjustments:

* **Strobe Pulse Phase** (full 100% adjustability of PWM relative to VBI)
* **Strobe Pulse Width** (1% to 25% minimum)
* **Overdrive Gain** (as many clicks as the scaler/TCON lets me have)
* **Strobe-Any-Hz** Support (no fixed strobe presets are allowed at Blur Busters, we usually refuse to work with vendors that only provide fixed strobe refresh rates)

Eve successfully met all the Blur Busters Mandatory Minimum strobe-programmability specifications, and the shipping firmware includes all of this Blur Busters mandated minimum capability.

**Optional Additional Strobe Engineering Enhancements** Now, further possible optional additional strobe-improving algorithms that can widen the crosstalk-free strobe zone taller:

* **256x256 overdrive lookup tables** instead of common 17x17 overdrive lookup tables.
*Right now, we usually work with existing 17x17 OD LUTs. This can lead to certain colors that are suboptimally overdriven for panels with very odd GtG heatmaps at finer granularity than 17x17 OD LUT can solve. Fortunately Fast IPS usually is forgiving of 17x17 OD LUTs, while VA panels more badly need 256x256 OD LUTs for strobe-mode.*
* **Y-Axis overdrive gain formula** (faster GtG for bottom edge of panel)
*This is because not all pixels refresh at the same time, and the bottom edge refreshes late, meaning less time to finish LCD GtG before the global strobe backlight flash*
* **Refresh Rate Headroom / Large Vertical Totals / Internal scan conversion** to create large multi-millisecond blanking intervals between refresh cycles to hide LCD GtG
*The world's first zero-crosstalk IPS LCDs panels successfully achieve it with an approximately ~10ms VBI. A 1/240sec scanout on a 72Hz panel creates a blanking interval of 9.7 milliseconds between refresh cycles -- sufficient enough to hide most of real-world GtG of many LCDs in the total darkness cycle between strobe backlight flashes.*

Most monitors use outdated 17x17 OD LUTs because papers found they were "good enough" for a typical 60Hz panel, coming from this [Outdated paper from year 2012](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs ... /1.3256523). But we're in the 360Hz era with strobe backlights. Blur Busters intuitively know things such as how 17x17 OD LUTs (fine for non-strobe) sometimes to worsen backlight strobing due to a human-visibility-amplifying interaction researchers did not test for, that only happens in strobe-backlight mode, on panels with sharp-cornered GtG heatmaps (especially VA panels at specific temperatures: a real-world 15C bedroom in middle of winter).

Most factories just QA test panels at 20C, but real world rooms are colder/hotter -- like artic or tropics. It's part of why we're huge advocates of exposing the entire OD GAIN range to the end-user onscreen menu (at least as an optional "User Defined" Overdrive option). Very major quality problems of 17x17 begins to appear as the refresh rates *and* strobing a pushed concurrently, simultaneously with real-world temperatures. Just to save a few bytes of scaler RAM, versus a 256x256 OD LUT (64 kilobytes). This ain't year 2012 in Kansas, toto.

These generic cheap strobe-improving techniques are now fairly widespread for many years. It made possible the world's first zero-crosstalk IPS LCD panels (at least for non-KSF panels) when using sufficient refresh rate headroom to hide LCD GtG pixel response completely away from human eyes in humongous VBIs between refresh cycles (Such as 1/240sec scanouts strobed at 60Hz-to-120Hz).

Much of our generic strobe tuning work now out-tunes many patented strobe algorithms. A lot of vendors reverse-engineered techniques that many 3D monitors and 3DTVs used (e.g. Y-Axis Overdrive Formula for increased OD Gain near bottom edge of panel), and Blur Busters have followed suit with new inexpensive tuning methods that formerly cost a lot to do.

Especially with higher-Hz, clearer motion, less motion blur, lifting the fog that formerly hid tiny millisecond-dependant image artifacts. The scientists that say "Humans can't tell apart events 10ms apart" are measuring only 1 item out of 100+ possible effects. Blur Busters, instead casts that massive mile-wide scientific net (which you've seen of our research writings at www.blurbusters.com/area51 already) and know which of those specific milliseconds actually is noticeable to Grandma that can't tell apart DVD-vs-HDTV. We filter the FUD and target the important milliseconds.

The confidence level, currently is pretty high, but I wanted to publish the usual Blur Busters caveats, as Blur Busters is always cautious about predicting capabilities. As most readers of Blur Busters already know, Blur Busters is always carefully more conservative about talking about features until they hare successfully developed. We are not exaggerating when exceedingly exact strobe algorithms can get lost in communication difficulties (e.g. English-Mandarian), and often I am hired to fly out over the Pacific Ocean to [teach a class room at a display vendor [PHOTO]](viewtopic.php?f=10&t=6866&p=51066&hilit ... ass#p51062).

A lot of overseas engineers are very new to motion blur reduction physics, or the more complex variable refresh rate strobing physics.

From end, I can confirm that the strobe-tunable firmware (both the easy preprogrammed tuning & the advanced Strobe Utility tuning capability) made it to the mass production (MP) model.
**[/Technical]**

**[shamless plug...]**
Blur Busters often is ahead of outdated scientific papers ([Google Scholar on 17x17 Overdrive LUTs](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=e ... x17+OD+LUT)), which is why mere Blur Busters [Area 51 Articles](https://www.blurbusters.com/area51) has now become [cited by more than 20 peer reveiwed conference papers](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=e ... o%22&btnG=) -- a lot is far ahead of industry, thanks to our ability to simplify general-purpose display motion blur knowledge. The flagship Blur Busters Area 51 articles are literally elevated to textbook reading status by the display industry.

Blur Busters one of the few companies in the world who can assist firmware vendors in successfully adding **major** strobe features enhancements post-shipment. We are one of the world's best debuggers of strobe bugs, and most firmware vendors save a lot of money hiring Blur Busters services, even as a third-party strobe quality validation laboratory. In many cases, we have successfully prevented a few product recalls with post-shipment firmware fixes, and even fixing fatal frameskipping bugs ([240Hz pluague](viewtopic.php?t=3598)) for multiple vendors before shipment, etc.
**[/shameless plug...]**

Hope this was useful technical reading about behind-the-scenes of strobe quality improvement!
Chief Blur Buster wrote:Update on extensions to the Blur Busters strobe tuning:

# Status Update on Strobed VRR

The Blur Busters contract is now in effect!

As Eve has authorized me to communicate relatively openly on strobe tuning work matters (This is the most "NDA-lightweight" strobe tuning contract Blur Busters has ever done) -- I can say that for me and Suzhou Lehui, I have roadmapped internal project phases to assist basic project management:

- Phase 1: Prerequisite firmware modifications **[CURRENT PHASE]**
- Phase 2: Strobed VRR
- Phase 3: More automatic strobe tuning via quadratic regression formula technique
- Phase 4: Dynamic overdrive

Phase 1 is simply minor firmware changes to prepare my ability to tune; such as adding hidden development-time DDC commands necessary to proceed with Phase 2/3/4 tuning.

Phase 2 will be the most complex once pre-requisites are done, with Phase 3/4 being easier combined than Phase 2.

Phase 3 improves strobe tuning even further, especially for undocumented modes. It will also be QFT-aware (large vertical total aware) automatically tuning improved strobe overdrive and automatic strobe phase based on existing configured pulse width, existing Hz (any Hz), and existing scanrate (any scanrate, including Large VT). Anytime strobing is not set to "Custom", this means reduced strobe crosstalk for nonexistent EDIDs (e.g. custom Hz, custom VTs) without needing to load up Strobe Utility to re-tune. Making instantly improved strobing even easier for the intermediate end users who more randomly play around with NVIDIA Custom Resolution or ToastyX.

In the past, Blur Busters strobe tuning used to tune strobe presets (many more presets, usually in 10-20Hz increments, better than just the 3 NVIDIA presets that does for ULMB). We have adapted a quadratic regression formula based approach for automatic any-Hz strobe tuning, so that Strobe Utility becomes more and more unnecessary (for most users) except fine tuning for temperature and panel variances.

The reason Blur Busters has transitioned to algebra-based strobe tuning is presets-free any Hz strobe tuning -- unlike some brands that can only strobe at only 85Hz, 100Hz or 120Hz. For example, the Overdrive Gain progressively needs to get stronger for higher Hz strobing, and it follows a curve that is easily converted into algebra by doing 10 different Hz measurements with photodiode oscilloscope equipment, and then executing a Quadratic Regression on it to create a "Y = ax^2 + bx + c" result. Where you input Hz into X, and Y represents the perfect strobed Overdrive Gain for a specific custom Hz, for 100% presets-free strobe tunning.

While Blur Busters love to spill tech details, the end users don't need to know the complex deets. This iterative approach to Blur Busters Strobe Tuning is to make it even easier and easier for end users by hiding all the mathematical complexity in the firmware, so that better strobing becomes an easier ON/OFF setting with fewer double-image issues for an even wider range of signals, resolutions, refresh rates, sync technologies (including VRR on/off and QFT).

This is done by executing a quadratic regression formula on the strobe tuning presets, to create as perfect-as-possible strobe tuning curve in an analog continuum from 50Hz to 144Hz with no presets.

The approximate goal is by end of year, but I will do my best -- since multiple independent companies are in back-and-fourth communications to complete this VRR strobing project (as well as dynamic overdrive).

All this firmware work will be recyclable on all LG panels done by the same firmware vendor (Suzhou Lehui), which means once this work is done, it will be fairly easy to port the changes to subsequent panels, as I'm already pre-commissioned to do strobe tuning for the next Eve monitor.

### *Blur Busters Obligatory Disclaimer:*
*This message (and thread) is simply a status update. Blur Busters is one of many strobe tuning services/suppliers for the gaming monitor industry, including Eve. Thus, to protect Blur Busters reputation, this status update is not to be construed as a promise that all phases WILL happen; this is all being done on best-effort basis on my side -- if one party goes incommunicado or one party goes unpaid, then I'm stuck in a waiting-state for development firmwares and such. If a new unforeseen hardware limitation is discovered later, this can impact viability of at least one of the project phases. The good news is Suzhou Lehui is a very well established chinese company that does strobe tuning for multiple big-name monitor vendors, and they did some of the best jobs (versus other panel firmware vendors I have collaborated with before) in following Blur Busters instructions than the average panel firmware vendor. At this time, confidence is very high as long as communications between all vendors keep going -- and I'm pretty excited things are progressing. Another risk factor is communication between English-China is always challenging in the best of times, even more so challenging due to COVID and trade wars. Nearly all displays, monitors, smartphones, televisions, tablets and other screens you buy today has some amount of Asia/China involvement for at least some of chips/firmware/LCD glass/etc. That said, even after deducting punitive-type customs duties, it is still a major reason why 144Hz 1080p monitors don't cost $1500 and smartphones don't cost $5000.*
Head of Blur Busters - BlurBusters.com | TestUFO.com | Follow @BlurBusters on Twitter

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liquidshadowfox
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Re: Any word on spectrum eve VRR Strobe tuning?

Post by liquidshadowfox » 08 Dec 2021, 11:00

Will the VRR implementation have less crosstalk the lower the refresh on the QHD @ 240 hz model? Since I know there's a QFT trick that lets frames show up at faster speed to reduce crosstalk or would this just be inherent due to the nature of VRR?

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Re: Any word on spectrum eve VRR Strobe tuning?

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 08 Dec 2021, 14:34

liquidshadowfox wrote:
08 Dec 2021, 11:00
Will the VRR implementation have less crosstalk the lower the refresh on the QHD @ 240 hz model? Since I know there's a QFT trick that lets frames show up at faster speed to reduce crosstalk or would this just be inherent due to the nature of VRR?
Generally, yes. However, it’s going to be extremely challenging because you have to realtime-slew the strobe phase to symmetrically balance top and bottom crosstalk.

VRR is already defacto QFT, yes. That’s why 60fps at 240Hz VRR is so low latency, and why emulator users love VRR because VRR=QFT. (the QFT hacks in these forums are for non-VRR QFT).

For simplicity, we’re beginning with fixed-time-offset from end-of-VBI. The result is that bottom-edge crosstalk will stay static but the top-edge crosstalk will appear/disappear depending on how much GtG-time there is between refresh cycles. This is still superior to the mess that early ELMB-SYNC implementations do.

Yes, the strobe phase offset will be adjustable, so you can try to balance to strobe compromises around.

Yes, it should be possible to combine QFT+VRR to reduce bottom-edge crosstalk (create the QFT mode and make it FreeSync-enabled). Your VRR range will be lowered somewhat below max Hz (e.g. strobe VRR range 55Hz-120Hz on a 144Hz panel if you wanted).

KSF phosphor will still create some weird crosstalking artifacts that cannot be fixed.

The napkin plan (which may change, depending on panel limitations):
- Backlight flash as a percentage of previous frametime (interval between two refresh cycles)
- Nits during backlight flash will remain constant
- Duty cycle will remain constant (dark and strobe periods will lengthen/shorten proportionally) when above min Hz
- Adjustable min Hz setting (where strobing gets disabled and goes sample-and-hold)
- Undocumented adjustable max Hz (via creating QFT mode)

This will produce much better quality VRR strobing, with adjustable flicker thresholds, because the current flicker-optimization algorithms are just terrible for motion quality (such as devil’s horn algorithms used by ELMB SYNC — I’m just quoting a term used by a reviewer, a few people called it a “Devil’s Horn” algorithm when viewing a photodiode oscilloscope of early versions of ELMB SYNC). The goal is to never activate a multistrobe algorithm until below the user-adjustable min Hz strobe threshold (longest frametime/refreshtime allowed to endure before backlight must turn back on in non-strobe mode).

The sample and hold mode via a high-frequency PWM dimming multistrobe at the same duty cycle (e.g. 1000Hz PWM dimming at the currently configured “backlight flash a a percentage of refresh cycle” becomes “duty cycle of the PWM”). By choosing this, the brightness of non-strobed (high frequency PWM dimmed brightness) is identical to strobed (single-strobe PWM per refresh cycle) — so the transitions between high frame rates and low frame rates don’t have noticeable brightness fluctuations.

PWM dimming will be disabled in nonstrobed operation, but becomes a necessary "simple-to-program" evil to make the transitions between strobed and nonstrobed operations as seamless as possible.

I have to unavoidably turn the backlight on after a few milliseconds elapsed, otherwise things will flicker eye-searingly at low frame rates (like early implementations of GSYNC+ULMB), to blend the sample-and-hold low frame rates, with the impulse-driven high frame rates, as seamlessly as possible, trying to average the same number of photons per fixed time (e.g. any 10ms slice of a monitor’s backlight behavior) through the chaotic framerate fluctuations.

It will be able to accurately emulate fixed-Hz strobing with a constant frame rate cap, so if you cap at 60fps or 75fps, it will behave like 60Hz single strobe or 75Hz single strobe — so you can use a Blur Busters tuned VRR strobe as a low-lag feature for emulators or framerate-capped games.

There will be unavoidable flicker-vs-motionquality tradeoffs, but at least I’m demanding the thresholds must be adjustable — otherwise, it cannot be advertised with “Tuned by Blur Busters” (Eve) or “Blur Busters Approved” (future vendors with Blur Busters Approved VRR strobe).

We know our users, and we know our audience, and we are quite dissapointed at all current strobed VRR implementations on the market.

Because of the such-lightweight NDA between myself and Eve, I am able to reveal more information about my Blur Busters VRR strobing algorithm (which I will use in other monitors too) that should be (on average) superior to current VRR strobing algorithms.

It will still be prone to laws of physics (like variable crosstalk behavior and KSF ghosting weirdness), but will have far better motion handling for advanced strobe connoiseurs. It will flicker slightly more than early implementations of ELMB-SYNC published elsewhere such as ApertureGrille, but in exchange for dramatically better motion handling.

Be noted that this is not the only monitor I will be working on VRR strobing. Blur Busters has a generally open-communications policy about strobe tuning, wherever NDAs permits me to do so — however, I must respect NDAs where possible.

I am looking forward to completing strobe tuning, even in an era where the HDLC (hardware devleopment lifecycle), working on prototypes like EVT-DVT1-DVT2-PVT-MP formerly 1 year long sometimes stretch 3 years because of extra delays like chip shortages and pandemic. Usually I enter the picture on the DVT2 prototype but sometimes I have to deal with early prototypes or later prototypes. I had hoped to do a model with VRR strobe by end of this year, but all of the projects I’m on are progressing fairly glacially (regardless of vendor) because of the weird times we’re in.

Disclaimer: While current Blur Busters VRR strobe contract with EVE is a prepaid contract whereupon Eve already paid monies to Blur Busters for this work — it is possible that vendors may abandon projects (i.e. leaving Blur Busters with prepaid money with no work completed because I’m stuck waiting for the vendor). Other times, I have to do more complicated requests that Blur Busters does not normally specialize in, delaying things further — e.g. creating EDIDs for a nonexistent monitor where I don’t even have a DVT1 prototype, especially during the middle of a move where I have limited access to certain monitors that could aid in testing custom ToastyX-created EDIDs). Another theoretical example is that some financial transactions may still yet need to be completed between Eve and Suzhou Lehui, so Suzhou Lehui can send me development firmware. Hopefully all vendors keep following through, e.g. development firmware finally sent to me, so I can unlock the ability to proceed with VRR strobe tuning. But this would be a waste of an already-prepaid contract. I simply say this because there are just a lot of dominoes behind the scenes, and sometimes Blur Busters is stuck waiting for vendors even during prepaid contracts.
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liquidshadowfox
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Re: Any word on spectrum eve VRR Strobe tuning?

Post by liquidshadowfox » 08 Dec 2021, 15:23

Wow! lots of good information here :)

1. I am happy to hear that there are other vendors that are finally jumping on the VRR + strobe bandwagon and I hope to see those monitors flood the market. I think VRR + strobe is what people (with no technical knowledge) thought they were getting when Gsync first came out (turns out it just reduces latency but doesn't get rid of studder in large FPS spike situations) because all the graphics seem to show low motion blur from back in the day :) really excited to see this come true now.
2. For the QHD @ 240 hz model, would the QFT range be from 55 - 220? or 55 - 200? as an estimate, I know you probably don't have that eve monitor yet as they are awaiting panels until next year.
3. Currently I have the asus XG27AQM and I have to say the monitor is good but not great when it comes to strobing. If I enable elmb sync, yes it does reduce the motion blur considerably at max Hz (270) and reduces motion blur less at lower refreshes (I feel asus dropped the ball not implementing at LEAST QFT on this monitor with VRR considering it has higher hz headroom!). This monitor shines when I enable the fixed hz strobing at max refresh of 270 hz however, it looks MILES better than the VRR implementation (elmb sync) but since I can't use VRR with it, minor dips do show the studder that I hate with a passion of 1000 suns :( I think I would take red phosphor ghosting over this terrible crosstalk throughout the refresh range on this monitor and the fact the overdrive is LOCKED in elmb sync is killing me. Many of the reasons I was excited to see eve contracted blur busters for the tuning of their backlight strobe (I begged and pleaded them to do it! they have a qhd @ 240 hz model with 700 peak brightness that can be used for some good strobing!)

I am VERY excited to see this qhd 240 hz model come to my house to see the great blur buster tuning :) I've seen a couple of videos already on the fixed hz strobe and it looks AMAZING compared to ELMB (without sync) so it's a testament to how good I think the 240 hz model will be vs the 144 hz model because of the added refresh headroom. Over the years I have found that my reaction time is going down so I cannot really make use of high refresh above 200 hz as I would like BUT VRR strobing between 55 - 144 hz to me is WAY more enjoyable. If you can achieve 55 - 200 with QFT + VRR + strobing I think that would be a huge achievement (especially as a firmware update! it's like getting a tesla of monitors where it just gets better with every update XD)

I do know and understand how reliable everything seems with eve, their delivery and maybe even the possibility of another delay or the cancellation of the 240 hz model altogether but I do see the point in showing that people (including myself) is interested in more monitors having VRR strobing built in that has a lot of user configurations as demanded by blur buster approved ( and possibly tuned by blur busters in the case of eve spectrum).

IF there's anything that I can do to help move things along, please let me know. if it's just a matter of waiting, I will patiently wait for the monitor to arrive :)

liquidshadowfox
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Re: Any word on spectrum eve VRR Strobe tuning?

Post by liquidshadowfox » 08 Dec 2021, 15:24

Just to add, I also found it sad that there are no blur buster approved QHD 240+ hz monitors on the market right now, I hope that changes when the new QHD @ 360 hz monitors come out. That would be an INSANE amount of QFT headroom for VRR strobing assuming the g2g times hold up.

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Re: Any word on spectrum eve VRR Strobe tuning?

Post by Discorz » 08 Dec 2021, 17:26

Now we're talking.
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Re: Any word on spectrum eve VRR Strobe tuning?

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 08 Dec 2021, 17:59

Discorz wrote:
08 Dec 2021, 17:26
Now we're talking.
This year we hope to see 5 brand names in our Blur Busters Strobe Utility

Since Blur Busters fully own that codebase, and since Blur Busters standardized the phase-width-overdrive trio of simplified strobe tuning, Blur Busters is able to repackage it for any vendor. Blur Busters provide the utility for free to any vendor who passes Blur Busters Approved 2.0 certification.

Right now we're at 3 vendors, with different skins for our codebase.

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The intent is that the first vendor with additional VRR strobe adjustments will repurpose existing adjustments and add extra adjustments
- Strobe Pulse Width becomes % of frametime (relative instead of fixed)
- Strobe Pulse Phase becomes offset from end-of-VBI
- New "Minimum Strobe Hz" gets added. (This can also be useful for fixed Hz too, for people who do/dont want 60Hz single-strobe)
- Overdrive Gain will be used for strobed VRR too (still TBD if fixed or math formula driven, as a quadratic regression formula on the Excel spreadsheet from test-tuning at multiple framerate caps (50,60,70,80,90,etc)

Long-term I would like to see multiple custom strobe memories stored application-side, which can be recalled via a system tray click. So you can have different custom strobe tunings that automatically loads on a trigger such as (specific Hz + specific VT) or a (launch of a game executable). It's unknown what timeline these extensions will happen. However, long-term, this is the intent, since having profiles stored application-side (instead of monitor firmware side) allows this feature to exist for ALL monitors that Blur Busters releases Strobe Utility for. Launch emulator, it loads 60Hz QFT tuning settings. Launch CS:GO, it loads 240Hz VSYNC OFF strobe tuning settings. Etc.

I may consider merging Strobe Utility with a future upcoming Blur Busters Refresh Rate Tool (QFT Wizard). This all requires programming time, which can be in short supply. I have some additional configuration-utility source code for an abandoned project which I'd like to repurpose into this utility (multimonitor compatible).
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Re: Any word on spectrum eve VRR Strobe tuning?

Post by liquidshadowfox » 08 Dec 2021, 19:21

This all has me really excited. You've ruined me Chief, I used to be happy with just Gsync until I found all these research papers and actually bought a backlight strobe enabled monitor, now I can't go back! This is worse than going from QHD to 4k because there's no perfect implementation on backlight strobe (blur buster approved looks as close as it gets, sadly only limited to 1080p atm). Is there an online course to learn about all this stuff? I wish there was such a course so I could learn how all these timings and frame buffer magic works XD I've tried reading all the research papers on blur busters but my understanding can only go so far without going back and forth looking up terms.

Either way, super excited to hear about all the upcoming changes :) I can't wait to ruin my friend's experience with monitors when I get my hands on a good blur buster approved (or blur buster tuned in terms of eve spectrum) monitor.

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Re: Any word on spectrum eve VRR Strobe tuning?

Post by Discorz » 10 Dec 2021, 06:58

It really is great to see Blur Busters growing. I hope you'll do tuning for more manufacturers like ASUS, LG, Acer... Because who ever does their tuning, I think we would all agree, does a rather poor job. I wonder what those other 2 are.

Interestingly I haven't seen any mention of Blur Busters own variable overdrive without module. Which should be easily doable. It's probably just programmed current refresh rate awareness so it could automatically toggle between different overdrive levels when needed. Something like what Gigabyte's does with their Smart OD. Unfortunately they decided to pop in with aggressive amount in the middle of refresh range which looks bad. That feature is amazing it just needs to be done right. I'm not sure if implementing this adds some stutter to overdrive toggle.
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