Also, gaming monitor LCDs are usually hand-me-down LCD fabs.theTDC wrote: ↑16 Mar 2021, 17:55So basically if I'm understanding this correctly, the physics of sending the correct voltage down the wires is such that we can only do one pixel at a time for each "channel" we have, with some minor exceptions. However, the number of channels that we can have are theoretically arbitrary as long as we are fine with extremely wide bezels. Maybe some other (minor?) issues such as increased voltage/power consumption per second in setting the pixels.
Currently the scanout speed appears to be limited to a maximum of ~8ms for an entire 4k display when only using a single channel. Assuming this scales linearly, 2 channels would give us 240Hz, 4 channels 480Hz, and 16 channels could give us potentially 1,920 Hz. If that's all true, then what's holding back Ultra High Hz monitors, at least as a niche product, is not the scanout speed. For LCDs it's the GtG speed, and for OLEDs and LCDs it's the monitor cable, plus the arguable lack of content to justify such high Hz displays.
Like those old micrometer-league fabs still in use to fabricate simpler chips like microcontrollers, old LCD fabs that has spent its time in other industries, are handed down to manufacture low-quantity LCD runs.
Unlike television models that sell millions of units, gaming monitors sell in the tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands unit counts for most models. Some short-run or one-off run models only sell single-digit thousand (e.g. probably the house brands such as Computer Upgrade King house brand gaming monitor as well as groupon style deals like Massdrop Vast.
This makes it hard to spend the necessary R&D to create custom LCDs. We have to wait until technology filters down. Blur Busters is playing a very important role in “Popular Science” style point of view for the gaming monitor industry — de-mystifying a lot of the confusing stuff and mythbusting 1000 Hz.
Five years ago, even many researchers were laughing boisteriously about 1000 Hz, but Blur Busters has successfully stopped those people laughing. The old greybeard engineers who grew up in the CRT days — sometimes don’t quite understand sample-and-hold quite as well as Blur Busters does, and how actually simple display motion blur physics actually can be if viewed from a new perspective — and is actually very easy to experimentally verify.
Also, early high-Hz algorithms were very bad (e.g. Sony Motionflow 960) where you combined interpolation and strobing to emulate the motion clarity of a 960 fps 960 Hz display. But there was interpolation artifacts, soap opera effect related defects (unnatually smooth motion without retroactive fixes to source-based motion blur) AND strobe crosstalk. So a lot of engineers have been turned off by the high-Hz bleep. But today, LCD GtG’s and OLED performance is fast enough to make 240 Hz and 360 Hz work pretty well. Even though they push GtG limits — the benefits are pretty clear.
Blur Busters Law is very simple — 1ms of static pixel visibility time translates to 1 pixel of motion blur during 1000 pixels/sec panning motion. Anybody who owns a good 240 Hz display has already noticed how doubling frame rate halves motion blur — 60fps -> 120fps -> 240fps, and it is pretty easy to extrapolate continued benefits. And they are indeed there.
Now, there needs to be a business case for higher-performing display that can sell by the millions, to keep the costs three-figures instead of four-figures. That’s a big challenge.
Change is afoot, however. VR researchers and others finally more papers that the laws of diminishing returns don’t disappear for a while (aka retina refresh rates don’t occur until well beyond kilohertz refresh rates!), as you already read at Blur Busters Law: The Amazing Journey To Future 1000 Hz Displays — the very article that convinced ASUS of their road to 1000 Hz, too (one insider confirmed to me I had a major role in this advocacy). Also, VR has only boomed in recent months with Quest 2 currently selling far faster than many game consoles (Nintendo GameCube, Sega DreamCast, Nintendo Wii U, etc), with Facebook now earning almost $1B per quarter just from VR, and the science of VR headsets is helping advertise to other engineers the need for retina refresh rates (eventually). Regardless of a person’s stance on Facebook, the work on the VR LCD is superlative lately in its motion performance. Quest 2 is the first really-good VR headset easier than an iPad to set up and can be used by any nursing home or non-computer-user, with far more comfortable 3D than polarized cinema glasses, and with many non-dizzying apps such as simply sitting on a virtual beach that is so good during a pandemic, in a way that’s far better than a Viewmaster or Cardboard VR toy. The superlative big-money-engineered performance put into certain VR displays will eventually filter to larger displays. The Quest 2 strobe-crosstalk-free LCD performs far better than the ASUS VG259QN 360 Hz LCD in terms if its perfect 100% GtG-hide with zero strobe crosstalk. Now, understandably it is only 72Hz or 90Hz by default, but well-strobed at 0.3ms MPRT which requires a 3333 fps at 3333 Hz sample-and-hold display to match.
Nontheless, it is taking time. But Blur Busters is doing their goddamndest best to raise high-Hz advocacy and education to speed up the refresh rate race. This is part of why TestUFO was built — a microphone drop one click away. I create new TestUFO tests to prove high-Hz doubters wrong.
Blur Busters’ website layout has been redesigned with a “Research” button, to make all this high-Hz education much easier to access worldwide. Interestingly, TestUFO now get more traffic from the Asia region than the North America region, with a very clear Monday-to-Friday 9am-to-5pm (their time zone) traffic peaks in the Analytics graphs. It’s suggestive of many companies milking TestUFO to test their displays. Rumor has it is that Huawai may beat North American companies to the first 240Hz HDR local-dimming display. I suspect young fresh scientist/engineer trained minds seem to be more straight-to-math-facts than sketpical about high-Hz progress (grown up via old CRT behaviors where high Hz didn’t benefit as much).
The free information on Blur Busters accessible worldwide works to lift all boats, yet some countries seem to be more open minded to better display science — much like newer Einstein thinking versus classical Newtonian thinking.
Fortunately, many Korean and Taiwanese companies have followed suit in understanding this science — like the Samsung television researchers who cited me in their research paper last year.
Give it ten years. 1000 Hz displays will be a reality earlier than some researchers thought they would be. 2030s is a long time to wait, but many thought it would never happen in their lifetimes. ASUS claims ~2025, but to be more conservative, "by the end of this decade" is what I tell people about 1000 Hz gaming monitors.
Currently, I believe 1000 Hz will hit LCDs before they hit OLEDs.