Personal computing discussed

Moderators: renee, Dposcorp, SpotTheCat

 
Captain Ned
Global Moderator
Posts: 28704
Joined: Wed Jan 16, 2002 7:00 pm
Location: Vermont, USA

Re: Lightboost Trick - Zero response time LCDs

Thu Feb 07, 2013 7:53 pm

Might I point you in the direction of Forum Rule #10. You haven't traduced it yet, but grammar nits are best left alone. There's a substantial non-native English population here, so roll with the flow and stifle your inner Sheldon.

Thanks for listening.
What we have today is way too much pluribus and not enough unum.
 
auxy
Graphmaster Gerbil
Posts: 1300
Joined: Sat Jan 19, 2013 4:25 pm
Location: the armpit of Texas

Re: Lightboost Trick - Zero response time LCDs

Thu Feb 07, 2013 8:18 pm

Captain Ned wrote:
Might I point you in the direction of Forum Rule #10. You haven't traduced it yet, but grammar nits are best left alone. There's a substantial non-native English population here, so roll with the flow and stifle your inner Sheldon.

Were I a non-native speaker, I would rather someone point out my foibles, rather than leave them be. :) That's no way to learn, after all.

Still, if you find my behavior obnoxious, I'll acquiesce to the standards of the community and avoid nitpicking at other people's grammar, spelling, and word-usage errors. I am new, after all. Admittedly my nitpick could probably have better been left to a PM.

It wouldn't be the first time I got called "obnauxy".
 
Bensam123
Gerbil Elite
Topic Author
Posts: 990
Joined: Wed May 29, 2002 12:19 pm
Contact:

Re: Lightboost Trick - Zero response time LCDs

Fri Feb 08, 2013 5:09 am

Only reason that became a big deal is because of the family guy episode making fun of it... Same with other grammar Nazing online (such as their/there/they're). People give other people crap about it and then they feel the need to give others crap about it because they were given crap about it.

I digress. Given the nature of LCD technology, I believe this still amounts to a trick rather then technology. It may be a very long time before we reach a point where we have fluid technology so to speak or infinite refresh rates (anything exponentially faster), but I would argue that the crystals morphing from one state to another is part of the viewing experience and if they were fast enough you wouldn't need to cover them up. They would give a fluid like experience that naturally and smoothly transitions from one state to another. Using something like LB sets a artificial baseline for what is fast enough, that hopefully manufacturers wont become dependent on. As I mentioned with the theater FPS snippet, that isn't necessarily a good thing.

Having used my new monitor, 120hz or 144hz is a huge improvement over 60hz though. I wont be able to go back now. Even if IPS has the colors, it can't compete with this as far as smoothness goes.
 
auxy
Graphmaster Gerbil
Posts: 1300
Joined: Sat Jan 19, 2013 4:25 pm
Location: the armpit of Texas

Re: Lightboost Trick - Zero response time LCDs

Fri Feb 08, 2013 5:29 am

Bensam123 wrote:
Only reason that became a big deal is because of the family guy episode making fun of it... Same with other grammar Nazing online (such as their/there/they're). People give other people crap about it and then they feel the need to give others crap about it because they were given crap about it.
Yeeeep.
Bensam123 wrote:
Having used my new monitor, 120hz or 144hz is a huge improvement over 60hz though. I wont be able to go back now. Even if IPS has the colors, it can't compete with this as far as smoothness goes.
I wonder about this. I've never used 120hz LCD, but I recall faintly -- I was very young -- using 120hz 1024x768 on my brother's huge Syncmaster monitor back in the day, but those memories are quite faint and I find myself now, quite addicted to the wonderful, vibrant colors of my IPS displays, very curious if I would appreciate more the colors of an IPS panel or the fluidity of a 120hz/144hz display. I don't really have the GPU to run most games at 120hz anyway, so I haven't bothered to buy one and find out, but I think after my GPU upgrade I will look long and hard at 120hz.

I've really been holding out for 120hz IPS, PLS, or VA, if such a thing could happen, but it seems less and less likely as time goes on.
 
Chrispy_
Maximum Gerbil
Posts: 4670
Joined: Fri Apr 09, 2004 3:49 pm
Location: Europe, most frequently London.

Re: Lightboost Trick - Zero response time LCDs

Fri Feb 08, 2013 5:42 am

For gaming, a more serious issue these days than the LCD response is the input lag introduced by poor game coding and graphics options.

I'm finding that the LG-Philips 27" (iMac) IPS panel with no scaler (zero input lag) and a 6ms G2G response is never the limiting factor in how responsive something feels.
I would love to have 120Hz as well, but having upgraded from a 120Hz screen, I wouldn't dream of giving up the 2560x1440 resolution or rich colours for the extra smoothness.

60Hz is enough that it doesn't bother me, or perhaps I should say that "only 60Hz" is a better compromise than the lousy viewing angles and washed-out colours of the 120Hz TN panels. YMMV, of course.
Congratulations, you've noticed that this year's signature is based on outdated internet memes; CLICK HERE NOW to experience this unforgettable phenomenon. This sentence is just filler and as irrelevant as my signature.
 
jihadjoe
Gerbil Elite
Posts: 835
Joined: Mon Dec 06, 2010 11:34 am

Re: Lightboost Trick - Zero response time LCDs

Fri Feb 08, 2013 5:45 am

auxy wrote:
mdrejhon wrote:
(2) Black period between samples. Irregardless of how it's done

Sorry, this is just a mega super pet peeve of mine: "irregardless" is not a word. Use "regardless" or "irrespective". :)

Wonderful post otherwise.


I direct your attention to:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/irregardless

Irregardless originated in dialectal American speech in the early 20th century. Its fairly widespread use in speech called it to the attention of usage commentators as early as 1927. The most frequently repeated remark about it is that “there is no such word.” There is such a word, however. It is still used primarily in speech, although it can be found from time to time in edited prose.
 
Glorious
Gerbilus Supremus
Posts: 12343
Joined: Tue Aug 27, 2002 6:35 pm

Re: Lightboost Trick - Zero response time LCDs

Fri Feb 08, 2013 10:23 am

Bensam123 wrote:
Given the nature of LCD technology, I believe this still amounts to a trick rather then technology.


:o

Did you understand anything that mdrejhon was trying to tell you, or JBI and I before that?

Bensam123 wrote:
It may be a very long time before we reach a point where we have fluid technology so to speak or infinite refresh rates (anything exponentially faster)


Again, that's nonsense. Computers are discrete. Whether they are producing frames or even individual pixels, they are doing so in a non-continuous manner. Thus, no matter how fast, it is a distinct representation in separate time and thus it can't be "infinite" or truly "fluid." The illusion of seamless continuity is, and will always be, a trick. Making it faster just makes that trick more effective, but not any less essential.

Bensam123 wrote:
but I would argue that the crystals morphing from one state to another is part of the viewing experience and if they were fast enough you wouldn't need to cover them up. They would give a fluid like experience that naturally and smoothly transitions from one state to another.


And that argument is retarded, because either way ultimately relies on the same trick: doing it faster than the human eye can perceive. Whether you are flicking the illumination behind the display on and off, flicking the individual pixel from one color to another, or "flickering" an electron beam across the screen, the key is doing it fast enough that the human eye can't notice.

And, as mdrejhon very thoughtfully wrote, it turns out that certain types of things are harder to perceive than others. Hence, your denigration of the Lightboost is entirely unwarranted.

Bensam123 wrote:
Using something like LB sets a artificial baseline for what is fast enough, that hopefully manufacturers wont become dependent on. As I mentioned with the theater FPS snippet, that isn't necessarily a good thing.


But 24 fps isn't really something that filmmakers are dependent on. It's not like they are stuck in a format from like the 20s that we didn't have the technology to escape from until today.

At this point it's an aesthetic thing. Movies at 24p evokes a certain "cinematic" feel that theater-goers have become used too, whereas jumping it up to 48 or 60 provides a completely different feel, like home video or the news. It just looks different.

For a lot of people, myself included, that really breaks the suspension of belief.
 
just brew it!
Administrator
Posts: 54500
Joined: Tue Aug 20, 2002 10:51 pm
Location: Somewhere, having a beer

Re: Lightboost Trick - Zero response time LCDs

Fri Feb 08, 2013 10:35 am

Bensam123 wrote:
Given the nature of LCD technology, I believe this still amounts to a trick rather then technology.

Can you define the difference between a "trick" and "technology"? At some level, all electronic display technology is a "trick" (and always will be).

Heck, even the technology used to display color is a *huge* "trick" -- the wavelengths of the individual red, green, and blue sub-pixels are tuned to the specific wavelengths the color sensing cells in your retina are most sensitive to. The actual spectrum of light emitted by even a high quality color display may bear only a passing resemblance to the spectrum which would be reflected/emitted by the object in real life.

Bensam123 wrote:
It may be a very long time before we reach a point where we have fluid technology so to speak or infinite refresh rates (anything exponentially faster), but I would argue that the crystals morphing from one state to another is part of the viewing experience and if they were fast enough you wouldn't need to cover them up. They would give a fluid like experience that naturally and smoothly transitions from one state to another. Using something like LB sets a artificial baseline for what is fast enough, that hopefully manufacturers wont become dependent on. As I mentioned with the theater FPS snippet, that isn't necessarily a good thing.

I doubt we will get to where you want us to go, at least not for consumer displays in our lifetime. What's the point of having a 5,000 Hz display when all of your content is recorded/generated at a tiny fraction of that, and 99.99% of people either won't be able to tell the difference, or won't care enough to spend the $ to get this new trick technology?

Bensam123 wrote:
Having used my new monitor, 120hz or 144hz is a huge improvement over 60hz though. I wont be able to go back now. Even if IPS has the colors, it can't compete with this as far as smoothness goes.

For some people, color accuracy is more important.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
 
mdrejhon
Gerbil
Posts: 49
Joined: Tue Feb 05, 2013 11:50 am
Location: Toronto, Canada
Contact:

Re: Lightboost Trick - Zero response time LCDs

Fri Feb 08, 2013 4:23 pm

auxy wrote:
Sorry, this is just a mega super pet peeve of mine: "irregardless" is not a word. Use "regardless" or "irrespective". :)
Whoops. Guilty as charged :lol:
auxy wrote:
Wonderful post otherwise.
Thanks!

(Note: I run the hobbyist Blur Busters Blog (http://www.blurbusters.com) that hosts the LightBoost HOWTO and the Scanning Backlight FAQ, one of the very few such sites targeted to non-engineer types.)
Last edited by mdrejhon on Fri Feb 08, 2013 4:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Thanks
Mark Rejhon
 
mdrejhon
Gerbil
Posts: 49
Joined: Tue Feb 05, 2013 11:50 am
Location: Toronto, Canada
Contact:

Re: Lightboost Trick - Zero response time LCDs

Fri Feb 08, 2013 4:35 pm

Chrispy_ wrote:
I would love to have 120Hz as well, but having upgraded from a 120Hz screen, I wouldn't dream of giving up the 2560x1440 resolution or rich colours for the extra smoothness.
It bear worth stating that this is the motion blur comparson scale, that not all "120 Hz" LCD's are equal:

baseline* -- 60 Hz LCD = 10 pixel blur trail in 600 pixels/sec moving objects (MPRT=16.7)
50% less blur (2x)* -- 120 Hz LCD = 5 pixel blur trail in 600 pixels/sec moving objects (MPRT=8.3)
85% less blur (7x)* -- 120 Hz LCD LightBoost at OSD 100% setting = ~1.5 pixels blur trail in 600 pixels/sec moving objects (MPRT=2.2)
92% less blur (11x)* -- 120 Hz LCD LightBoost at OSD 10% setting = <1 pixel blur trail in 600 pixels/sec moving objects (MPRT=1.4)
90-95% less blur -- typical CRT (1ms), depends on how fast the phosphor decays = <1 pixel blur trail in 600 pixels/sec moving objects (MPRT=~1-2)

*Measurements made on BENQ XL2411T and ASUS VG278H (both of which I own) and using two motion test programs, including the publicly available PixPerAn

On modern LCD's, pixel persistence is a tiny factor in motion blur. (2ms is less than 15% of a 1/60sec refresh -- 16.7ms) Most motion blur on modern LCD's come from the sample-and-hold effect (long samples -- frame being displayed continuously) which is successfully bypassable using LCD's fast enough to squeeze pixel persistence into a vertical blanking interval and then using a strobe backlight (high speed video proof & LightBoost PixPerAn image of moving object with no noticeable artifact). As a result, the large further improvement in motion blur elimination needs to be put in perspective, since sample-and-hold LCD 120Hz has far more motion blur than strobed LCD 120Hz displays.

Understandably, some people prefer better colors (that IPS 1440p provides), while others have preferred the reduction of motion blur (competitive advantage in online FPS; faster reaction time due to lack of motion blur). Other people, such as Vega from HardForum now owns a Catleap 2B (1440p @ 130Hz overclock) and an ASUS VG248QE LightBoost; and he sometimes game certain games (e.g. Battlefield 3) on the ASUS instead of the Catleap.

I also read this gem of a report of a person dissapointed in 120Hz monitors, until they tried LightBoost, so apparently, switching to strobe-driven 120Hz (CRT or LightBoost) is a big step up because it turns a 2x improvement in motion blur becomes into a 7x improvement in motion blur. Several of us are very sensitive to LCD motion blur (especially people used to gaming on CRT at fps=Hz). On the other hand, some people are all that sensitive to motion blur.
Last edited by mdrejhon on Fri Feb 08, 2013 4:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Thanks
Mark Rejhon
 
just brew it!
Administrator
Posts: 54500
Joined: Tue Aug 20, 2002 10:51 pm
Location: Somewhere, having a beer

Re: Lightboost Trick - Zero response time LCDs

Fri Feb 08, 2013 4:48 pm

mdrejhon wrote:
On modern LCD's, pixel persistence is a tiny factor in motion blur. (2ms is less than 15% of a 1/60sec refresh -- 16.7ms) Most motion blur on modern LCD's come from the sample-and-hold effect (long samples -- frame being displayed continuously) which can be bypassed by turning off the backlight between pixel refreshes.

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Are you saying that the only factor in blur these days is the mixing of the current and previous frame which occurs when the pixels are actually transitioning?
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
 
mdrejhon
Gerbil
Posts: 49
Joined: Tue Feb 05, 2013 11:50 am
Location: Toronto, Canada
Contact:

Re: Lightboost Trick - Zero response time LCDs

Fri Feb 08, 2013 4:56 pm

just brew it! wrote:
mdrejhon wrote:
On modern LCD's, pixel persistence is a tiny factor in motion blur. (2ms is less than 15% of a 1/60sec refresh -- 16.7ms) Most motion blur on modern LCD's come from the sample-and-hold effect (long samples -- frame being displayed continuously) which can be bypassed by turning off the backlight between pixel refreshes.

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Are you saying that the only factor in blur these days is the mixing of the current and previous frame which occurs when the pixels are actually transitioning?
Actually, pixel persistence motion blur is a separate cause of motion blur than eye-tracking-based motion blur. It's documented in several research papers.

It's a misnomer/myth that pixel persistence is 100% the cause of motion blur on LCD.
Pixel response have been becoming shorter and shorter, and on fast gaming TN panels, is an insignificant part of a refresh. Pixel persistence is currently now the minority cause of motion blur, and most of motion blur you see is eye-tracking-based.

Even if pixel response was instant (0ms) on a sample-and-hold display, you still get lots of motion blur due to the sample-and-hold effect (which leads to eye-tracking-based motion blur), because your eyes are continuously moving when tracking moving objects. Your eyes are at a different position at the beginning of the displayed refresh (sample start) and the end of the displayed refresh (sample end). That's retinal blurring -- just like moving a camera while taking a picture without its flash. The camera movement cause blurring in the photograph taken at a slow shutter speed (e.g. 1/60 sec). But if the whole scene flashes instead briefly (Xenon flash) then shaking the camera doesn't blur anymore (e.g. Xenon flash 1/1000sec). Likewise, the strobe driven nature of CRT, plasma, and LightBoost, shortens the visible sample (very quick start-to-end of a displayed refresh -- whether via higher refresh rate, or via large black period between refreshes) that prevents it from being blurred across your human vision.

More reading -- Science & References (skip first part, scroll halfway down)

For those readers who don't feel like clicking -- one example reference (from 2008; pre-LightBoost era):
IEEE.org (yes, the reputable temple of engineers) -- PDF paper
Abstract—Liquid crystal displays (LCDs) have shown great promise in the consumer market for their use as both computer and television displays. Despite their many advantages, the inherent sample-and-hold nature of LCD image formation results in a phenomenon known as motion blur.
(Many, many, many others. Hundreds of papers, but I don't want to overwhelm readers.)
Last edited by mdrejhon on Fri Feb 08, 2013 5:05 pm, edited 8 times in total.
Thanks
Mark Rejhon
 
auxy
Graphmaster Gerbil
Posts: 1300
Joined: Sat Jan 19, 2013 4:25 pm
Location: the armpit of Texas

Re: Lightboost Trick - Zero response time LCDs

Fri Feb 08, 2013 4:56 pm

jihadjoe wrote:

See my response in PM since it's off-topic for this thread. :)
 
Meadows
Grand Gerbil Poohbah
Posts: 3416
Joined: Mon Oct 08, 2007 1:10 pm
Location: Location: Location

Re: Lightboost Trick - Zero response time LCDs

Fri Feb 08, 2013 5:05 pm

Would everyone please cut the crap about "motion blur" already?

Motion blur is not applicable to computer displays. At all.
It is an effect that actual moving objects leave on a recording device. (Whether the object or the recording device is the one that's moving is irrelevant.) Pixels don't move, they flash and persist, and if the persistence is too lengthy, that becomes a special kind of ghosting. Motion blur, as a term, is applicable to the human eye/vision and digital and analogue cameras, but not displays.


Other than that, this technology is interesting to me and I believe a Lightboost LCD will be considered as a future New Skill (to replace my CRT), once I've levelled up.
 
mdrejhon
Gerbil
Posts: 49
Joined: Tue Feb 05, 2013 11:50 am
Location: Toronto, Canada
Contact:

Re: Lightboost Trick - Zero response time LCDs

Fri Feb 08, 2013 5:06 pm

Meadows wrote:
Motion blur is not applicable to computer displays. At all.
It is an effect that actual moving objects leave on a recording device. (Whether the object or the recording device is the one that's moving is irrelevant.) Pixels don't move, they flash and persist, and if the persistence is too lengthy, that becomes a special kind of ghosting. Motion blur, as a term, is applicable to the human eye/vision and digital and analogue cameras, but not displays.
It's a matter of perspective. You are right, but it's just semantics at this stage. The phrase "motion blur" is the terminology used in science papers and academic papers -- and also includes human-vision-induced motion blur -- and is totally 100% the widely used terminology. Therefore, I continue to use the term.

From the perspective of this science, the human vision is also considered a 'recording device'. There is also a difference between stationary cameras and pursuit camera:

Image ... Image

Stationary camera images are excellent for measuring pixel persistence effects, while tracking camera images are excellent for measuring eye-tracking motion blur. In fact, the latter image also successfully captured the triple-frame effect seen by human eye (caused by CCFL backlight PWM flickering at 180 Hz, which causes a triple-frame effect at 60fps). The second photograph is WYSIWYG motion blur, as seen by the human vision system on LCD.

There are $10,000+ "pursuit camera" systems that television manufacturers use to measure motion blur on displays.
MotionMaster Motino Blur Measurement Kit
These cameras sort of "move like an eye ball" to track the moving object in order to capture WYSIWYG motion blur.

Also, to a display engineer, ghosting is a different artifact than eye-tracking-based motion blur.
Last edited by mdrejhon on Fri Feb 08, 2013 5:21 pm, edited 5 times in total.
Thanks
Mark Rejhon
 
Meadows
Grand Gerbil Poohbah
Posts: 3416
Joined: Mon Oct 08, 2007 1:10 pm
Location: Location: Location

Re: Lightboost Trick - Zero response time LCDs

Fri Feb 08, 2013 5:10 pm

mdrejhon wrote:
totally 100% the widely used terminology.

Being the majority does not equal being right.
 
mdrejhon
Gerbil
Posts: 49
Joined: Tue Feb 05, 2013 11:50 am
Location: Toronto, Canada
Contact:

Re: Lightboost Trick - Zero response time LCDs

Fri Feb 08, 2013 5:14 pm

Meadows wrote:
mdrejhon wrote:
totally 100% the widely used terminology.

Being the majority does not equal being right.
Let's call it what each (science team|community|country|culture|whatever) wishes.
As long as our scientific understanding is consistent, the semantics are secondary here in the mainstream.

One interesting thing to explain is the difference in trailing effects such as ghosting, coronas and "simple" motion blur; all different.
Ghosting -- Artifact caused by asymmetric rise-and-fall of an LCD pixel. Usually a dark trail. (e.g. red object moving on a cyan background)
Coronas -- Artifact caused by aggressive LCD response time acceleration. Usually a bright trail. (e.g. ASUS TraceFree 80/100, BENQ AMA setting)
Motion Blur -- symmetric motion blur (as seen in the photograph above), looks same at both trailing edge and leading edge.

You may have different terminology for each of these, but there are very distinct and different-looking blur-trail effects. Some call coronas as "RTC artifact", other call it "Pixel response overshoot artifact". Some people equate ghosting and simple motion blur equally, but I make a distinction. It's easy to demonstrate in PixPerAn.
Thanks
Mark Rejhon
 
Meadows
Grand Gerbil Poohbah
Posts: 3416
Joined: Mon Oct 08, 2007 1:10 pm
Location: Location: Location

Re: Lightboost Trick - Zero response time LCDs

Fri Feb 08, 2013 5:19 pm

mdrejhon wrote:
Also, to a display engineer, ghosting is a different artifact than eye-tracking-based motion blur.

I know that, which is why I added "a special kind of", like reverberation is a special kind of echo.

Motion blur, by nomenclature, is "blur caused by motion". A recording device can record movement, or it can move itself. A display neither records (hence the name "display"), nor moves. "Motion blur" therefore, however widespread, is a misnomer with regard to displays, regardless of how many whitecoats use it. I'm willing to bet it's just general laziness to avoid having to come up with a new term for the phenomenon.

Edit: you edit your posts a lot.
Last edited by Meadows on Fri Feb 08, 2013 5:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
 
auxy
Graphmaster Gerbil
Posts: 1300
Joined: Sat Jan 19, 2013 4:25 pm
Location: the armpit of Texas

Re: Lightboost Trick - Zero response time LCDs

Fri Feb 08, 2013 5:20 pm

Meadows wrote:
Being the majority does not equal being right.
Not in all cases, for sure, but in the case of language, it absolutely does. Language facilitates communication, and if everyone isn't using the same rules -- i.e. the same language -- then they aren't communicating as effectively as they could. Thus, in the case of language, majority rules.

mdrejhon wrote:
You may have different terminology for each of these, but there are very distinct and different-looking blur-trail effects.

Thanks for the information! Your posts have been very informative. I'm very curious about this stuff, since I'm such a visual person.
 
mdrejhon
Gerbil
Posts: 49
Joined: Tue Feb 05, 2013 11:50 am
Location: Toronto, Canada
Contact:

Re: Lightboost Trick - Zero response time LCDs

Fri Feb 08, 2013 5:22 pm

Meadows wrote:
Motion blur, by nomenclature, is "blur caused by motion".
Exactly. Eye-tracking is motion.
Proven scientifically by commercially available pursuit cameras.
Thanks
Mark Rejhon
 
Meadows
Grand Gerbil Poohbah
Posts: 3416
Joined: Mon Oct 08, 2007 1:10 pm
Location: Location: Location

Re: Lightboost Trick - Zero response time LCDs

Fri Feb 08, 2013 5:23 pm

mdrejhon wrote:
Exactly. Eye-tracking is motion.
Proven scientifically by commercially available pursuit cameras.

Psst, we're talking about LCDs, esteemed gentleman.
 
mdrejhon
Gerbil
Posts: 49
Joined: Tue Feb 05, 2013 11:50 am
Location: Toronto, Canada
Contact:

Re: Lightboost Trick - Zero response time LCDs

Fri Feb 08, 2013 5:25 pm

Meadows wrote:
mdrejhon wrote:
Exactly. Eye-tracking is motion.
Proven scientifically by commercially available pursuit cameras.

Psst, we're talking about LCDs, esteemed gentleman.
Pursuit cameras tracking objects on ANY display, including LCD's, simulating a rotating eyeball.
Motion blur measured by these methods correspond to human perceived motion blur (proof of direct relationship).

References on pursuit cameras used to measure motion blur on LCD's.
http://www.westardisplaytechnologies.com/products/motion-blur-measurement-kit-motionmaster/ (example commercially available kit)
http://oa.upm.es/4239/1/INVE_MEM_2008_59190.pdf (term "pursuit camera method" in section 2)
http://www.sidmembers.org/idonline/article.cfm?year=2007&issue=01&file=art7 ("smooth-pursuit camera system")
http://research.nokia.com/files/bergquist_johan_seminar_sidtw_071219.pdf (slide 43, "linearly moving" camera)

TV and display engineers use these systems. It's one of those nuts-and-bolts stuff everyday users never hear about.
Last edited by mdrejhon on Fri Feb 08, 2013 5:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Thanks
Mark Rejhon
 
Meadows
Grand Gerbil Poohbah
Posts: 3416
Joined: Mon Oct 08, 2007 1:10 pm
Location: Location: Location

Re: Lightboost Trick - Zero response time LCDs

Fri Feb 08, 2013 5:32 pm

mdrejhon wrote:
Pursuit cameras tracking objects on ANY display, including LCD's.

Unless they can show that the leading and trailing edges of the displayed movement are of the same delay (I doubt it), it remains an artificial approximation of motion blur and thus unworthy of the sacred term.

I have spoken, my beloved subjects.
 
mdrejhon
Gerbil
Posts: 49
Joined: Tue Feb 05, 2013 11:50 am
Location: Toronto, Canada
Contact:

Re: Lightboost Trick - Zero response time LCDs

Fri Feb 08, 2013 5:37 pm

Regardless of semantics (so many semantic cops & grammar cops here), a correlation between perceived blur (generated by moving eyeball) and measurable blur (generated by pursuit camera) is already confirmed in several papers.

For the scientifically minded, this is one of the useful papers:
Motion Blur Perception in Various Conditions of Presented Edge

ABSTRACT
In recent years, several methods for evaluation or quantification of video image quality have been studied, such
as MPRT (Moving Picture Response Time) for quantification of motion blur occurred on hold-type displays.
It is required to improve the methods or criteria to consider human visual characteristics, especially anisotropy
and spatio-temporal dependency of contrast sensitivity. In this study, we quantify motion blur of the display by
comparing it with static blur edge. We examine the influence of conditions for edge presentation, such as moving
speed and moving direction of the edges, on perceived blurriness. According to the results of the assessment, we
found that the anisotropy of the display had a significant influence on perception of motion blurs. This result
suggests that multidirectional measurement is required to improve criteria of motion blur.

Keywords: MPRT, human visual characteristic, anisotropy

A good paper is also:
J. Someya, “Correlation between perceived motion blur and MPRT measurement,” in SID’05 Digest, pp. 1018–1021, 2005.
(MPRT = Motion Picture Response Time) (Accessible here with SID.org membership)
Thanks
Mark Rejhon
 
mdrejhon
Gerbil
Posts: 49
Joined: Tue Feb 05, 2013 11:50 am
Location: Toronto, Canada
Contact:

Re: Lightboost Trick - Zero response time LCDs

Fri Feb 08, 2013 6:00 pm

Meadows wrote:
mdrejhon wrote:
Pursuit cameras tracking objects on ANY display, including LCD's.

Unless they can show that the leading and trailing edges of the displayed movement are of the same delay (I doubt it)
They do. It is scientifically confirmed in papers written in the last ten years, including the "Correlation between perceived motion blur and MPRT measurement" paper and others (Google Correlation between perceived motion blur and MPRT measurement for many other papers, many peer-reviewed)

Meadows wrote:
it remains an artificial approximation of motion blur and thus unworthy of the sacred term.
Okay, "perception of motion blur". Perhaps this term is more acceptable, and that's what many papers use too, because "perception" is key (also covers artificial blur).

Regardless, the scientific equivalence between perceived blur (caused by eye tracking) and measurable blur (caused by camera tracking) is already confirmed in many papers. This is regardless of artificial or natural; all results in motion being less sharp.

There are many causes of human-perceived motion blur (it doesn't matter if it's artificial and natural; it makes motion less sharp looking):
-- Source-based (e.g. videos with slow shutter, GPU motion blur effects, excess overcompression, etc)
-- Pixel-persistence (includes ghosting, coronas, or other 'defective-looking' blurring effects)
-- Eye-tracking-based (sample and hold displays)
These are the major ones of relevance for PC videogamers.
Unfortunately, situations arise that all the above simultaneously act in combination with each other on LCD, making LCD terrible for motion clarity.

For the purposes of making motion motion as sharp as possible (desirable for video gaming), we need to eliminate as much weak links to perceived motion blur (artificial, natural, or whatever).
-- Source-based perceived blurring in video games is non-issue (may need to turning off GPU "motion blur" effects.)
-- Pixel-persistence-related degradation to motion sharpness is solved by impulse-driving (i.e. flicker -- via using a CRT, or via using a LightBoost LCD which turns off backlight while waiting for pixel persistence to finish)
-- Degradation to motion sharpness caused by eye-tracking is solved by using short duration of display frames (shorter samples).
Shorter samples = Either via extra frames, or via black periods between frames. Higher fps=Hz is hard to do without interpolation which adds input lag. Adding more black period between frames which is easier to do but has disadvantage of flicker. Using a higher impulse-driven refresh rate is a balanced compromise (e.g. 120Hz CRT)

When all weak links are eliminated, fast motion look very sharp. For example, games 60fps@60Hz on CRT has always looked incredibly sharp during very fast panning motion because it had none of the weak links. This was not possible to reproduce the "CRT-motion" experience on LCD's until recently (e.g. LightBoost strobe backlights). The recent testimonials (in the last few weeks) of competition gamers using LightBoost LCD's speak for themselves (from former CRT users who's been hanging onto CRT's due to hating poor motion quality on LCD).
Thanks
Mark Rejhon
 
auxy
Graphmaster Gerbil
Posts: 1300
Joined: Sat Jan 19, 2013 4:25 pm
Location: the armpit of Texas

Re: Lightboost Trick - Zero response time LCDs

Fri Feb 08, 2013 6:26 pm

mdrejhon wrote:
may need to turning off GPU "motion blur" effects
But what if I really *like* the look of the GPU motion blur effects? In particular the DX11 motion blur effect used in Blacklight: Retribution -- and the fixed-rate-motion-blur in Dark Souls -- look awesome. ¦3c
 
mdrejhon
Gerbil
Posts: 49
Joined: Tue Feb 05, 2013 11:50 am
Location: Toronto, Canada
Contact:

Re: Lightboost Trick - Zero response time LCDs

Fri Feb 08, 2013 6:34 pm

auxy wrote:
mdrejhon wrote:
may need to turning off GPU "motion blur" effects
But what if I really *like* the look of the GPU motion blur effects? In particular the DX11 motion blur effect used in Blacklight: Retribution -- and the fixed-rate-motion-blur in Dark Souls -- look awesome. ¦3c
GPU motion blur effects is beneficial and artistic in many cases. I'm not disputing that.

However, for competitive online FPS gaming, it's an interference. It hurts reaction time for many (not all) people. I've been reading testimonials of situations such as circle-strafing, or 180-degree flicks to shoot somebody far away behind you. You can react faster if your turning is not motion blurred, because you can identify enemies quicker, notice things in corner of your eye faster, etc. Playing Scout (fast moving charcter) in TF2, doing fast flying passes in the helicoptor in BF3, reacting quickly to far-away snipers in the big black-sky arenas in Quake Live, etc. Faster reaction time means you shoot sooner, and frag first. Using LCD 120Hz is only 2x clearer than LCD 60Hz, but using LCD LightBoost 120Hz is 7x to 11x clearer than LCD 60Hz; a massive improvement. Some CRT die-hard competitive gamers have told me that their scores dramatically improved when using a LightBoost LCD, since it's the only LCD that comes close to a CRT for them. (several quotes, from big gaming places like esreality, HardForum, OCN, QuakeLive, and a few others).

So sometimes you want to keep GPU motion blur turned on, other times you want to turn it off.
Last edited by mdrejhon on Fri Feb 08, 2013 6:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Thanks
Mark Rejhon
 
auxy
Graphmaster Gerbil
Posts: 1300
Joined: Sat Jan 19, 2013 4:25 pm
Location: the armpit of Texas

Re: Lightboost Trick - Zero response time LCDs

Fri Feb 08, 2013 6:39 pm

mdrejhon wrote:
However, for competitive online FPS gaming, it's an interference.
Huh. Well, maybe.

I remember, when I was little, my 10-years-elder brother showing me how people played Q3A competitively - r_picmip to insane levels, or even r_vertexlight turned on, and stuff like that. Forced player models to be the same model for every player on a team...

I mean, I guess if you really want to compete, that's fine, but I sure wouldn't play that way; I'm really fixated on the graphics of a game. ¦3c I kinda wish games would lock down visual settings like that so people couldn't choose to do that and have an advantage, but, then, I suppose that would terribly would limit the game's ability to scale to playbility on lower-end hardware.

I guess what I'm saying is that I really should be playing console games. LOL.
If only they supported 1080p, >30hz, and keyboard/mouse input... not to mention mods...
 
mdrejhon
Gerbil
Posts: 49
Joined: Tue Feb 05, 2013 11:50 am
Location: Toronto, Canada
Contact:

Re: Lightboost Trick - Zero response time LCDs

Fri Feb 08, 2013 6:45 pm

auxy wrote:
mdrejhon wrote:
However, for competitive online FPS gaming, it's an interference.
I remember, when I was little, my 10-years-elder brother showing me how people played Q3A competitively - r_picmip to insane levels, or even r_vertexlight turned on, and stuff like that. Forced player models to be the same model for every player on a team...
Unlike these silly settings, turning off GPU motion blur can make things look better especially if you don't want to hide the 7x-to-11x improvement motion clarity in LightBoost LCD displays. It's like high-definition motion, when motion is much clearer than a common 60Hz LCD -- it is like getting the equivalent of getting 10 times the resolution to your eyes during fast-moving images.

When you're talking about just regular LCD 60Hz vs regular LCD 120Hz (only 2x improvement in sharpness), other things such as color quality and AA matters a whole lot more. GPU motion blur can hide low framerates. GPU motion blur can make 30fps look a lot better; hiding the stutters. But if you own a display with ultrashort sample lengths (CRT or a LightBoost LCD), and you have a powerful GPU that runs 120fps@120Hz, then turning on/off GPU motion blur effects makes a much bigger difference, to the point people now start to prefer the image quality of GPU effect turned off rather than on. Seeing 120fps@120Hz on impulse-driven displays looks more beautiful during fast motion -- the perceived motion blur on CRT (and LightBoost LCD) is so small, to the point that ultrafast-motion looks as sharp as stationary images. Your eye-tracking abilities/accuracy now become the limiting factor for any further perceived blur reductions. If you have long been used playing FPS games on CRT 60fps@60Hz and then immediately switched to a traditional LCD, you'll understand what I mean. For _some_ people, the reaction time improvement is so massive, that sometimes the zero motion blur even outweighs a few milliseconds of input lag handicap. It varies on the person, and gameplay styles are different.

People who are very sensitive to the LCD limitations in motion clarity, notice the greatly improved image quality during very fast motion, such as these people, and can react faster as a result:

Matt wrote:
(email to me; permission granted to post online)
Hi Mark,
I got really excited when I saw your update about two of the Samsung 3d monitors being capable of better motion performance without the need for a Geforce card. I just successfully tested my S23a700D and it worked so this one can be added to the list as well. I was able to get up to a tempo of 25 or so on the pixperan readability test and still make out the individual letters.

The only problem is that the screen dims, and I get an added 20-30ms of input lag that makes mouse movements feel a bit “soupy”. I play Quakeworld online (usually at 600 fps to reduce tearing-no vsync) and actually found even with the added input lag, I was able to track other players much easier and pull of twitch shot kills that I normally wouldn’t because of the blur I normally get when spinning 180 degrees quickly. It would be incredible if someone could somehow hack the firmware of these monitors to remove the input lag, with some brightness/color tweaking I’d leave this mode on all the time.

Thanks for you continued research, look forward to this becoming a feature of lcd’s in the future. It really removes that last barrier to crt-like performance.
Matt
(Editor's note -- input lag is a problem only with Samsung strobe backlights. The ASUS/BENQ LightBoost is much better for input lag, especially the BENQ one)

Cat wrote:
(from QuakeLive)
Try it out and see for yourself. Believe me, the difference with Lightboost and without it are friggin nuts. It's been a long time since I was last called an aimbotter in CA (I blame being slightly famous), but it happened just today. I'm hitting accuracies I used to hit back in 2010-2011 after playing 1 weekend with this thing, and that's after 2 years of inactivity.

Skyviper wrote:
(from HardForum)
So I finally got the VG248QE hooked up last night and was able to play around with it for a couple hours. The other monitor that I have is a HP ZR30W which is a 30" 2560x1600 IPS monitor so I will be comparing the VG248QE to that a lot in this review.

Right off the bat, I noticed the color quality seems to be a lot worse than the ZR30W. Everything looks to be washed out, dull and not to mention the monitor suffers from poor viewing angles. On the ZR30W, there is next to no color shifting when I move my head around unlike the VG248QE, but that's a common problem with all TN monitors. I tried calibrating the monitor a little bit using some of the values posted online, but it still doesn't compare to the HP.

Moving on, the first thing I tried was 144 Hz gaming. I loaded up Borderlands 2 just to see how it is and I can definitely say it felt smoother. There is no screen tearing at all on the ASUS, unlike how it is on the HP if i don't turn on Vsync. Although the game felt smoother at 144 Hz and there was less blurring, I found that having to play on a lower res (1920x1080 vs 2560x1600) and poorer color reproduction made the overall gaming experience WORSE. Granted this isn't a competitive, online FPS game so I might have benefited more from having a faster refresh rate, but I would have probably stuck with playing this game on the 30" IPS monitor rather than a 24" TN.

At this point I felt like I may have wasted $300 bucks on a monitor that is full of compromises. The next thing I tried of course was using the Lightboost hack. This was the main reason why I bought the monitor in the first place since there are plenty of other 120 Hz monitors that I could have gotten that I'm sure had better color reproduction.

So I downloaded the hacked INF file and followed Mark's instructions. After turning on Lightboost, I noticed the monitor became a little bit brighter so I loaded up PixPerAn just to verify everything is working. The first thing I noticed was that I can actually read "I need more socks" at full speed! This was cool since I've never been able to read it going so fast before on any LCD monitor.

I then proceeded to load up Borderlands 2 again not having much expectations. The first thing that happened was I noticed the FPS drop down to around 1-2 fps, but then I remembered to hold down "Ctrl-T" for a few seconds to turn off the 3D effect which fixed the FPS problem. So I loaded up a game and the first thing that came to my mind was...

SWEET MOTHER OF GOD!

Am I seeing this correctly? The last time I gamed on a CRT monitor was back in 2006 before I got my first LCD and this ASUS monitor is EXACTLY like how I remembered gaming on a CRT monitor. I was absolutely shocked and amazed at how clear everything was when moving around. After seeing Lightboost in action, I would have gladly paid twice the amount for something that can reproduce the feeling I got when playing on a CRT. Now I really can't see myself going back to my 30" 2560x1600 IPS monitor when gaming. Everything looks so much clearer on the ASUS with Lightboost turned on.

If you do any kind of gaming, you should definitely get this monitor. For everything else however, an IPS monitor would probably be better.

Thankfully I am lucky enough to have both :)


BTW, you can see the complaints about color on 120 Hz TN LCD's. The main problem of 120 Hz TN LCD monitors is their color quality, which has nothing to do with perceived motion blur. The LightBoost's ability to improve motion (eliminate perceived motion blur) was only discovered "en masse" three months ago (beginning on esreality, then TechNGaming), and my blog (Blur Busters) picked up on that trend, and created the popular LightBoost high-speed video. Simultaneously, the fast "1ms" BENQ XL2411T and ASUS VG248QE got released only a few weeks ago; and showed stunning motion improvements when the LightBoost feature was turned on. A few sites have started to pick it up (e.g. TechNGaming, pcgameshardware.de magazine in Germany, 3D Vision Blog articles -- some just a few days ago, etc) because of the testimonials, and I've heard back from other blogs/magazines that will write about it within the next few months, since it is apparently an important 'niche' technology that enthusiast gamers seem interested in, especially ones that used to like CRT but long been dissapointed by poor motion quality on LCD. It is a new trend.
Last edited by mdrejhon on Fri Feb 08, 2013 7:40 pm, edited 8 times in total.
Thanks
Mark Rejhon
 
auxy
Graphmaster Gerbil
Posts: 1300
Joined: Sat Jan 19, 2013 4:25 pm
Location: the armpit of Texas

Re: Lightboost Trick - Zero response time LCDs

Fri Feb 08, 2013 7:26 pm

Well, you've definitely sold me on it. ¦3c I'm very excited about the idea of reducing perceived motion blur. Unfortunately, I don't think my hardware is up to the task of running games at >60FPS to really benefit from Lightboost -- nor do I have an appropriate monitor -- and I think the colors of something like the VG series might bother me. I don't know. Can anyone with experience with good IPS monitors chime in further on that topic?

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest
GZIP: On