Screens keep getting faster. Can you even tell? | CES saw the launch of several 360Hz and even 480Hz OLED monitors. Are manufacturers stuck in a questionable spec war, or are we one day going to wo…::CES saw the launch of several 360Hz and even 480Hz OLED monitors. Are manufacturers stuck in a questionable spec war, or are we one day going to wonder how we ever put up with ‘only’ 240Hz displays?
Screen tearing more
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They did spend the money. On G Sync.
A closed source alternative that died, as it should. Freesync ftw.
You must be trolling
Yes, they are. This is a meme, sir.
It checks out
I was just going to upvote them.
No, this is Patrick.
Where’s r/woosh when you need it lol
You don’t say.
On one hand, 360hz seems imperceptibly faster than 240hz for human eyes.
On the other hand, if you get enough frames in, you don’t have to worry about simulating motion blur.
I never worry about motion blur, because I turn it off. The stupidest effect ever. If I walk around I don’t see motion blur. Cameras see motion blur because of shutter speed, not the human eye.
Umm, well, there is something like motion blur experienced by humans, in fact, your brain creates the time bending effect based on picture 1 and picture 2
https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/12/05/3647276.htm
There is a trick where you watch a clock that counts seconds and turn your head fastly away and back there (or something like that) and you will see, that the rate of seconds seem to be inconsistent
See “1. CHRONOSTASIS” https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/time-illusions/
Alright. I didn’t know, thanks. Though the human motion blur is vastly different to camera blur in my experience. And games that have motion blur look really unnatural.
I don’t know if there is scientific proof that every human experiences “motion bur” the same way. I would bet not.
More realistic blur smudges things based on how the object is moving rather than how the camera is moving. For example, Doom Eternal applies some blur to the spinning barrels and the ejected shells on the chaingun while it’s firing, but doesn’t blur the world while you’re sprinting.
Yup this is called per-object motion blur and is more common in modern games. I’m still not that big of a fan but I’ve heard good things about it from other high framerate enjoyers
On the other hand, humans don’t see in defined frames. The signals aren’t synchronized. So a big part of perceived blurring is that the succession of signals isn’t forming a single focused image. There isn’t really a picture 1 and 2 for your brain to process discreetly. And different regions in your vision are more sensitive to small changes than others.
A faster refresh rate is always “better” for the human eye, but you’ll need higher and higher panel brightness to have a measurable reaction time difference.
But hitting really high refresh rates requires too many other compromises on image quality, so I won’t personally be paying a large premium for anything more than a 120hz display for the time being.
I agree, human eyes register only change in light in an analog style way (no framerate more something like waves as I understood) compared to cameras, which register all light on every frame. I simplified that part with the “pictures” because I thought it was more understandable like that I guess better would have been something like „your eyes kinda shut down during fast movements of the head and your brain makes up for that by generating a nice transition“
Motion blur in games gives me bad motion sickness and garbles what I’m seeing. I already have a hard enough time processing information fast enough in any kind of fast paced game I don’t need things to be visually ambiguous on top of that
Wave your hand in front of your face and tell me it’s not blurry
That also depends on the person. Save for really fast moving things I can barely tell the difference between 30 and 60fps, and I cap out at 75 before I can’t notice a difference in any situation. One of my friend’s anything less than 75 gives them headaches from the choppiness.
Yeah, personally playing games at 30fps feels disruptively laggy at least for the first few minutes. 60 is good, but the jump to 120 is night and day. I was shocked that going from 120 to 240 was just as noticeable an improvement as the last to me, especially when so many people say they don’t notice it much. Hard to find newer games that give me that much fps though.
I’d much rather they invest efforts into supporting customisable phones. Instead of just releasing a few flavours of the same hardware each year, give us a dozen features we can opt into or not. Pick a base size, then pick your specs. Want a headphone jack, SD card, FM radio, upgraded graphics performance? No problems, that’ll cost a bit extra. Phones are boring now - at least find a way to meet the needs of all consumers.
Not exactly what you are talking about, but slightly related: the company Fairphone makes phones with parts that can easily be replaced. The philosophy is that you will not have to buy a new phone every 3 years. They do have some customized options aswell (i.e. ram, storage, models) but its limited.
But going full on optimization with phones, laptops and tablets, similar as a desktop, is just incredibly hard due to the lack of space in the device for the components. As such it makes more sense to offer a wide variety of models, with some customizable options, and then have the user pick something.
On Fairphone, they flat out refuse to even discuss adding a headphone jack (check the posts in their forums - it’s a “hands over ears” no) so I’m sticking with Sony/ASUS (the latter atm as they’ve been slightly less anticompetitive recently but I’d much rather go to a decent company) until they do… It’s not like you notice a phone being 1mm thicker when you have a 3mm case on it anyway
It seems we all have our dealbreakers. I love the Zenfone but the lack of software updates is a hard no from me.
Damned asus. Refusing to have a microsd card slot on a single rog phone, ever.
Their answer is buying the usb-c to 3mm adapter. If you keep that connecter in you bag, ot connected to your headphones, you should be fine most of the time. Unless you would like to charge and listen to audio at the same time.
To me, that feels like a solid design choice, but yes we all have our dealbreakers.
Solid in the same way the designers heads are solid bone I guess…
A 3.5mm adapter is not an answer as it causes wear on the USB C port in ways it’s not designed for (but 3.5mm is as it’s circular so the cable rotates and breaks before the port), and it’s hard to get a good dac that isolates the power noise when using a multiple charging/listening adapter that’s also that small
My problem with fair phone is that they use old hardware.
I never replaced any parts on my old phone and only replaced the phone with a new one because it was getting really slow. I replaced the xr with an iPhone 15.
So my concern with the fair phone is that I’ll replace it with faster hardware more frequently than I would have replaced a no repairable phone that’s faster.
I wish a company would build 4.5"-5.5" and 5.5"-6.5" flagship phones, put as many features that make sense in each.
Then when you release a new flagship the last flagship devices become your ‘mid range’ and you drop the price accordingly, with your mid range dropping to budget the year after.
When Nokia had 15 different phones out at a time it made sense because they would be wildly different (size, shape, button layout, etc…).
These days everyone wants as large a screen as possible on a device that is comfortable to hold, we really don’t need 15 different models with slightly different screen ratios.
These days everyone wants as large a screen as possible
iPhone mini gang rise up!
Yay I’m part of something! :-)
I updated to the latest mini iPhone after rumours it would be the last. I hope not, but the trend seems to be bigger and more ridiculous “phone” form factors.
RIP Project Ara
Here’s the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
Project Ara was a modular smartphone project under development by Google. The project was originally headed by the Advanced Technology and Projects team within Motorola Mobility while it was a Google subsidiary. Google retained the ATAP group when selling Motorola Mobility to Lenovo, and it was placed under the stewardship of the Android development staff; Ara was later split off as an independent operation. Google stated that Project Ara was being designed to be utilized by "6 billion people": 1 billion current smartphone users, and 5 billion feature phone users.Under its original design, Project Ara was intended to consist of hardware modules providing common smartphone parts, such as processors, displays, batteries, and cameras, as well as modules providing more specialized components, and "frames" that these modules were to be attached to. This design would allow a device to be upgraded over time with new capabilities and upgraded without requiring the purchase of an entire new device, providing a longer lifecycle for the device and potentially reducing electronic waste. However, by 2016, the concept had been revised, resulting in a base phone with non-upgradable core components, and modules providing supplemental features. Google planned to launch a new developer version of Ara in the fourth quarter of 2016, with a target bill of materials cost of $50 for a basic phone, leading into a planned consumer launch in 2017. However, on September 2, 2016, Reuters reported that two non-disclosed sources leaked that Alphabet's manufacture of frames had been canceled, with possible future licensing to third parties. Later that day, Google confirmed that Project Ara had been shelved.
Your talking about project Ara. Google bought it out and killed it roughly ten years ago.
Here’s the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
Project Ara was a modular smartphone project under development by Google. The project was originally headed by the Advanced Technology and Projects team within Motorola Mobility while it was a Google subsidiary. Google retained the ATAP group when selling Motorola Mobility to Lenovo, and it was placed under the stewardship of the Android development staff; Ara was later split off as an independent operation. Google stated that Project Ara was being designed to be utilized by "6 billion people": 1 billion current smartphone users, and 5 billion feature phone users.Under its original design, Project Ara was intended to consist of hardware modules providing common smartphone parts, such as processors, displays, batteries, and cameras, as well as modules providing more specialized components, and "frames" that these modules were to be attached to. This design would allow a device to be upgraded over time with new capabilities and upgraded without requiring the purchase of an entire new device, providing a longer lifecycle for the device and potentially reducing electronic waste. However, by 2016, the concept had been revised, resulting in a base phone with non-upgradable core components, and modules providing supplemental features. Google planned to launch a new developer version of Ara in the fourth quarter of 2016, with a target bill of materials cost of $50 for a basic phone, leading into a planned consumer launch in 2017. However, on September 2, 2016, Reuters reported that two non-disclosed sources leaked that Alphabet's manufacture of frames had been canceled, with possible future licensing to third parties. Later that day, Google confirmed that Project Ara had been shelved.
Reminiscent of the hi-res audio marketing. Why listen at a measly 24bit 48khz when you can have 32/192?!
These have an actual perceivable difference even if subtle. Hires audio, however, is inaudible by humans.
I tend to agree, but the audiophiles always have an answer to rebuttal it with.
I’m into audio and headphones, but since I’ve never been able to reliably discern a difference with hi-res audio, I no longer let it concern me.
I’ve bought pretty expensive equipment, tube amplifier, many fancy headphones, optical DACs. A library full of FLAC files. I even purchased a $500 portable DAP. I’ve never been able to reliably tell a difference between FLAC and 320k MP3 files. At this point, it really doesn’t concern me anymore either, but I at least like to see my fancy tube amp light up.
I will say, though, $300 seems to be the sweet-spot for headphones for me.
I’ve never been able to reliably tell a difference between FLAC and 320k MP3 files
I just keep FLAC around so I can transcode them to new lossy formats as they improve. And so I can transcode aggressively for my mobile when I’m streaming from home, and don’t need full transparency.
Yeah there’s a clear difference between a pair of $25 or $50 headphones and a pair that cost a few hundred. When I first got my Sony WH1000-XM3s I let my coworker try them and he said “Wow, I didn’t know music could sound this good!”. When I upgraded to the XM4s a few years later I let my brother try them and he was similarly impressed.
Beyond a few hundred and the thousand dollar range you hit diminishing returns.
diminishing returnssnake oil
Blackmail – Evon. That’s the one song where I ever heard a difference, though that was ogg, dunno what bitrate I used back then but it was sufficient for everything else. Listening on youtube yep that’s mushy. The noisy goodness that kicks in at 0:30, it’s crisp as fuck on CD.
…just not the kind of thing those codecs are optimised for I’d say. Also it still sounds fine, just a bit disappointing if you ever heard the uncompressed thing. Which is also why you should never try electrostatic headphones.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Imo the biggest bump is from mp3 to lossless. The drums sound more organic on flacs whereas on most mp3s they sound like a computer MIDI sound.
The biggest bump for me was the change in headphones. It made my really old aac 256kbps music sound bad.
320kbps cbr and v0 vbr mp3 are audibly transparent. Most likely, 250kbps and v2 are too.
Tried flac vs 192 vorbis with various headphones. E.g. moondrop starfield, fiio fa1, grado sr80x…
Can’t tell a difference. Kept using vorbis.
Opus is the way these days. Pretty much transparent even at 128kbps (arguably with even lower bitrates in most cases).
Yeah, I’ve heard good things too.
I’d somewhat call myself an audiophile, just one that cares about actual measurements and audibility, and not snake oil. Haven’t heard a good term for that yet, though.
Audiophiles also tend to care about some some sort of audio purity, but I’m willing to go wild with EQ, room correction, and impulse responses, which is pretty much the opposite of purity.
Think of the bits, won’t you?!
(Yeah, totally agree)
They have tests you can take to see if you can hear the difference. A lot of people fail! Lol
Usually percussion is where it’s easiest to notice the difference. But typically people prefer the relatively more compressed sound!
I’d thought I could hear a difference in hires audio, but after reading up on it I’m starting to think it may have been some issue with the tech I was using, whether it be my headphones or something else, that made compressed audio sound veeeery slightly staticky when high notes or loud parts of the track played.
Personally though, even if it wasn’t, the price for the equipment wasn’t worth it for a difference that was only perceptible if I was listening for it. Not to mention it’s near impossible to find hires tracks from most bands. Most claiming to be hires are just converted low res tracks and thus have no actual difference in sound quality, the only difference being the file is way larger for no good reason.
At this point it’s a dick measuring contest.
Always has been.
Big numbers go brrrr.
I mean it also looks visibly smoother from 60 to 230 at least
From 90 to 120 too
Well no, because most people aren’t getting them. It’s nice but it’s difficulty to justify spending hundreds on a lightly better screen
This tech trickles down to mainstream in a few years. That’s always how it is.
Cool, so in a few years we’ll have a screen which isn’t better in any noticeable way?
Don’t be so negative, imagine a phone screen at 480 Hz. It’ll be great for when you have too much charge left in your battery and need to drain some.
Well it’s more like you’ll get the usable parts without a huge premium. The was a time when monitors faster than 60hz were premium but now it’s pretty common to see 120hz and beyond on even basic monitors.
There’s still diminishing returns as you go higher, but there’s definitely a noticeable difference between 60hz and 120hz, as well as a less noticeable but noticeable difference between 120hz and 240hz.240hz is becoming more standard now on regular high end monitors and beginning to trickle down too.
Beyond that in terms of response times, you might not notice a difference between 240hz and 360hz, but image clarity will be better because you’ll get less ghosting just from the virtue of the pixels changing so quickly, so it’s not entirely useless.
Part of the reason you’re seeing this is because they can. The panel technology (OLED in this case) is super fast due to it’s design, so it’s not too costly to add the necessary hardware to drive those speeds. For LCD tech, you do get to drive the panels faster and harder, that’s why older screens required shitty TN panels to get those refresh rates, but everything else has been around for a while.
Yup :)
I can’t wait !
Finally, a screen with the refresh rate that my cat can enjoy! He sure is gonna love that Tom & Jerry like no other cat that ever lived.
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Yeah, I’m aware. My main concern is that the screen flickers for them and not that the animation is smooth. lol
Motion smoothing tech finally has a reason to exist!
I don’t need or want a phone over 90hz, and a pc screen over 180hz. A phone is a waste of battery and a pc screen over that is a waste of money.
Then don’t buy them? With better screens coming out the ones you do want to buy get cheaper.
Back in the day 144hz screens cost a premium, now you can have them for cheap.
I stopped buying tvs from 2000 until like two years ago, when i saw them on sale for like $200. Been living off of projectors & a home server. I skipped so many “innovations” like curve, flat, HD, 4K, trueColor.
Weird that it has a OS and that was a shocker.
I look forward to what TVs bring in 2040.
I mean OLEDs are damn amazing image quality wise, but I’m also not a fan of “smart” TVs. The apps can be useful (like native Netflix, Amazon video and so on), but 90% of the time I use my PC over HDMI.
I use my chromecast dongle for my smart TV. My smart TV will never get to have an internet connection.
You know what’s hot? 3D televisions!!
I’m so glad that hype died out with people understanding it was stupid. Just thinking about all the ones who bought one.
They’re easy to identify, they all have curved screens now.
I didn’t say I wanted them disallowed from being made. Just that it’s dumb to buy them.
I think there’s an argument to make screens faster. Graphics have hit a point where resolution isn’t going to give anything of substance… It’s now more about making lighting work “right” with ray tracing… I think the next thing might be making things as fluid as possible.
So at least in the gaming space, these higher refresh rates make sense. There’s still fluidity that we as humans can notice that we’re not yet getting. e.g. if you shake your mouse like crazy, even on a 144hz the mouse will jump around to different spots it’s not a fluid motion (I’ve never seen a 180hz but I bet the same applies).
You can see it moving a mouse super quick on a static background, but I never notice it happening in games. There’s probably something there a touch noticeable in some fps online games if you really paid attention and could lock your max fps at 120fps with a 240hz monitor, but that would be about it, and I don’t competitively play fps games. I’m perfectly happy with running 60fps at 120hz for myself.
How can you waste a battery? Just charge your phone?
You can’t seriously be that obtuse.
Ok than how is it a waste of money. I wasn’t using the money for anything else. I only buy 120hz phones since it came out
This says “can you tell?” Like I don’t get a new screen once every 10 years maybe and even then the last one I got was used.
one of my two screens is aiming for 20 years of (intensive!) service. It’s even still in 4:3 format. I will probably replace it in the next couple of years, if the magic smoke doesn’t escape first!
You don’t sound like a mindless consumer, unfortunately, that isn’t most people.
All I want is a 27/28 inch oled 4k monitor with good hdr. I don’t care about the refresh rate as long a it’s 60Hz+
Minimum for me would be 120hz, i’ve been using 120hz since 2012 (12 years… man) and anything less feels like a massive step backwards. My old S10+ and my cheapie laptop feel sluggish in any animated / transmission scenario.
I’m sticking out with IPS until MicroLED matures enough for me to afford.
OLED was never designed to be used as a computer monitor and I don’t want a monitor that only lasts a couple years.
Researchers just designed a special two layer (thicker than current OLED) that doubles the lifespan to 10,000hours at 50% brightness without degrading.
I’m totally with you on good HDR though. When it works, it’s as night -and-day as 60 -> 144hz felt for me.
Burn in is a non-issue for regular all-day use. As long as you aren’t displaying a static image at 100% for literally years and actively stopping the screen from running preventative measures, you’ll be fine.
Can desktop computers do those preventative measures? I haven’t seen any desktop interface for the mitigations Samsung puts on it’s phones.
Desktops also display static images 100% of the time, unless you change your usage behavior to use full screen all the time.
Why would oled only last 2 years?
It doesn’t only last for two years, however it begins to degrade after one year of illuminating blue. This would reduce the color accuracy.
However OLEDs are also very bad at color accuracy across it’s brightness range. Typically at lower brightness their accuracy goes out the window.
This isn’t as bad on smart phones ( smart phones also apply additional mitigations such as subpixel rotation) however desktop computers typically display static images for much longer and so not use these mitigations afaik.
360hz no scope
So when are 144hz, 1440p, hdr oleds going to come down in price?
Isn’t the point that you’re not supposed to be able to tell?
It won’t matter until we hit 600. 600 integer scales to every common media framerate so frametimings are always perfect. Really they should be focusing on better and cheaper variable refresh rate but that’s harder to market.
Well, not really, because television broadcast standards do not specify integer framerates. Eg North America uses ~59.94fps. It will take insanely high refresh rates to be able to play all common video formats including TV broadcasts. Variable refresh rate can fix this only for a single fullscreen app.
I mean the 240 I use already does that. So would 360 or 480. No clue why you fixate on 600.
600 also scales to PAL standards
How can screens be fast when our eyes are slow?
Maybe this is what Jaden Smith meant when he famously stated:
How Can Mirrors Be Real If Our Eyes Aren’t Real
Wow, still blown away…
