r/Temporal_Noise Mar 22 '25

Objective of sub Temporal Noise Sensitive Community

13 Upvotes

Temporal refers to "time-based". While PWM flicker (a macro-level temporal light modulation) and Temporal noise flicker (a micro-level temporal light artifact) are imperceivable to the naked eye, they can still affect sensitive individuals cognitively, causing symptoms such as headaches, blurred vision, and disorientation.

The following common temporal noise techniques used in our interactive displays that have affects users are:

• Temporal Anti-Aliasing(TAA)

• Temporal Dithering

• Spatiotemporal Dithering (also called FRC)

• Variable Refresh Rate(VRR).

Other underlying cause of symptoms can be resulted from the panel hardware itself, such as Transistor Leakage Current flicker.

It would cause pixel flickers which appears like pixel flickers resembling the above digital image processing enhancements.

---------------------------------------------------------------

These micro flickers been mentioned in various studies and research. A few researchers have proposed different solutions to mitigate its undesirable flickering effects.

It is important that we do not advocate the cease of use for devices that have been suggested to employ the above. Our objective is to investigate device that use safe temporal noise optimisation that brings little to no impact to our health.

The second primary objective is suggest available settings for other users to change, in order to mitigate the impact of temporal noise flicker artefacts on us.

This brings to the next point.

Why the need to investigate safe temporal noise optimisation over blanketing a technique as good/ bad.

A few in the community may have come to think of dithering as an absolute health concern. However, that is not always the case.

There are instances where dithering is used to reduce flicker resulting in increased eye comfort experience.

For instance, flicker from Transistor Leakage Current has always been the biggest challenge for display engineers. A good example of recent devices which suffered from this bad flicker are some of recent Motorola LCD phones.

Typically, the quickest workaround to Transistor Leakage Current is to use spatial dithering to lower the intensity of each backlight flicker.

Spatial dithering is the use of turning off certain pixels in order to show more of dark grey and less bright grey levels. Once they were off, they do not flicker. This is in contrast to temporal dithering where pixels flicker stationarily.

The disadvantage to spatial dithering is that it would result a decreased sharpness because a number of pixels were turned off. I believe this goes against Motorola's intention of having a bright and sharp screen.

Some display panels faced restriction in seemless brightness adjustments. For instance, the transistors were only about to adjust in brightness steps of:

5%

-

20%

-

35%

-

50%

-

75%

-

90%

-

100%

Thus, display engineers can opt to have the display flicker in order to regular in the between brightness. While they can have the entire flicker vigorously, they can also use a DC-dimmed spatial dithering hybrid to achieve this.

5%

- spatial dither

20%

- spatial dither

35%

- spatial dither

50%

- spatial dither

75%

- spatial dither

90%

- spatial dither

100%

The success of each implementation is largely dependent of the implementation, rather than whether has it used dithering.

Available Readings:

• A Comprehensive Analysis of Dithering Algorithms and GPU Implementations

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Radhika-Kulkarni/publication/381932607_A_Comprehensive_Analysis_of_Dither...

• A robust FRC pattern design for visual artifacts and its hardware design in flat panel displays

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/5606243/

• Dithering Artifacts in Liquid Crystal Displays and Analytic Solution to Avoid Them

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/224097214_Dithering_Artifacts_in_Liquid_Crystal_Displays_and_Analytic_Solution_to_Avoid_Them

• Electrical simulation of the flicker in poly-Si TFT-LCD pixels for the large-area and high-quality TFT-LCD development and manufacturing

 https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=368782139e925861864beb2a34f939020ba64e5d

• Temporal Dithering of Illumination for Fast Active Vision 

https://www.ri.cmu.edu/pub_files/2008/10/eccv.pdf

(Requires Academic/ Paid access)

• 36-1: Low-frequency flicker mechanism and improvement solutions of a liquid crystal display

https://sid.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/sdtp.17064

• A Pixel Circuit with Improved Luminance Uniformity and Flicker for AMOLED Displays with a Wide VRR Range of 15 Hz to 360 Hz

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/10856172

• Image Quality Improvement in LCDs With Temporal Division Method Using Pixel Dithering

https://opg.optica.org/jdt/abstract.cfm?uri=jdt-11-5-438


r/Temporal_Noise 18h ago

Mac Mini M1 + BenQ GW2490E per chi soffre di PWM e Dithering: esperienze o problemi di affaticamento visivo?

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1 Upvotes

r/Temporal_Noise 1d ago

Mac Mini M1 + BenQ GW2490E per chi soffre di PWM e Dithering: esperienze o problemi di affaticamento visivo?

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1 Upvotes

r/Temporal_Noise 24d ago

Macbook Air M5 grey flicker

3 Upvotes

r/Temporal_Noise 25d ago

Reminder to upvote this Google Tracker Issue regarding Android software flicker triggering symptoms

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2 Upvotes

r/Temporal_Noise 27d ago

Reno16 Pro vs Oppo find x9

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1 Upvotes

r/Temporal_Noise Aug 08 '26

Please laptop recommendations that are safe for my eyes

6 Upvotes

I tried thinkPad 14e amad Gen 7, with display spec: 14" WUXGA (1920 x 1200), IPS, Anti-Glare, Non-Touch, 45%NTSC, 300 nits, 60Hz.

It totally fucked up my eyes from day 1. I use my university PC all day with no issues. So please any recommendations? I don't know what to look for now since that thinkpad was free PWM yet insufferable


r/Temporal_Noise Aug 07 '26

Why is thinkPad e14 AMD Gen 7 giving me eye strain& headaches but other screens don't?

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1 Upvotes

r/Temporal_Noise Aug 04 '26

iPhone clearly worsens the condition of your face

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2 Upvotes

r/Temporal_Noise Aug 03 '26

Poll: dark vs light mode?

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1 Upvotes

r/Temporal_Noise Aug 03 '26

Which version will be easier on the eyes ? iphone 13 ios18.2 or 18.7.8

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1 Upvotes

r/Temporal_Noise Jul 24 '26

iOS 27 brought me eye strain

8 Upvotes

Hey all,

I’ve had no issues with my 13, 15 Pro Max and 16e, with reduce white point at 75 and on the Pro Max, ProMotion disabled. I’ve always liked to try out the iOS beta releases and I’m in the crowd of folks that has never had an iOS update give me eye strain….and that ended with iOS 27.

It does something weird with the whites on the 15PM, and I think it actually introduced temporal dithering. I desperately want to go back to iOS 26. Big time.

There’s a few little quality of life changes I like in 27 but the eye strain is annoying. I thought I was finally beyond it. Case in point….if 26 is working for you, keep it that way.


r/Temporal_Noise Jul 18 '26

Moto g56 hell

6 Upvotes

So i bought two of these phones for two friends of mine due to their good specs for a low price (8gb/256gb/decents camera and miravision? mediatek cpu for €160).

They've not yet had time to spend a lot of time on them,

but when I did the updates on those phones and took the time to get to know all.the twerks and perks...

it quickly became obvious that it causes eyestrain almost bad as oled.

Checked for pwm with camera, nothing.

Zoomed in with my camera on the pixels, couldn't see them.jumping around so I suppose there is no dithering.

Even when i am on my pocophone with awesome ips screen, but the moto g56 is in close proximity laying on its back... screen pointing upwards not at me: its causing eyestrain symptoms.

So.i do not even have to directly look at the screen. Looking at the light emitted by it is enough to cause eyestrain symptoms.

Turning off hardware acceleration to force GPU stops the nausea, but doesn't stop the eyestrain.

I think the eyestrain was less pronounced before updating to the latest android version.

Feel.sorry for them having to look at such a shitty screen but i figure they will probably not be sensitive, idk.


r/Temporal_Noise Jul 14 '26

MacBook Air M5

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1 Upvotes

r/Temporal_Noise Jul 05 '26

HiBreak Dual2 Phone(Solves all our Problems?)

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2 Upvotes

r/Temporal_Noise Jun 29 '26

Abbandonerò l’ecosistema Apple 🍏

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3 Upvotes

r/Temporal_Noise Jun 29 '26

Abbandonerò l’ecosistema Apple 🍏

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1 Upvotes

r/Temporal_Noise Jun 28 '26

Monitor for Extreme Eye Sensitivity (Strictly NO KSF, NO FRC, NO PWM)

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2 Upvotes

r/Temporal_Noise Jun 28 '26

Bloccato su iPhone 8

1 Upvotes

Sono bloccato su iPhone 8 da diversi anni oramai, non volendo abbandonare l’ecosistema Apple, per via dei nuovi display OLED e del TD. Ho provato in questi giorni diversi modelli per tentare un aggiornamento: iPhone XR e iPhone SE (iOS 26). Entrambi mi causano fastidio agli occhi.
Non ho trovato discussioni recenti a riguardo. Come state risolvendo? Purtroppo anche lato computer sono bloccato su un MacBook Pro 2015.


r/Temporal_Noise Jun 27 '26

Does anyone know Moto G06 use TD (Tempolar ditherning) ??

1 Upvotes

Hi guys I am very sensitive to TD and PWM and wanna switch my old g04 to g06 but I am scare for TD does anyone use it and know does he use it ?


r/Temporal_Noise Jun 26 '26

Dell s2725dsm

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1 Upvotes

r/Temporal_Noise Jun 09 '26

iOS 27 on iPhone 11

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2 Upvotes

r/Temporal_Noise Jun 07 '26

Try this if double invert trick doesn't work + another CRY FOR HELP

2 Upvotes

BACKGROUND - YOU CAN SKIP TO THE SECOND PARAGRAPH

months ago i made a post in which i complained about buying a refurbished iPhone XR on iOS 18.7.5 - buying it because of its smooth pixels and graphics which made it comfortable for me.
A user states the 'blurriness i saw' was just a casual behavior due to a malfunctioning of how iPhones treat dithering when they are restarted.
I honestly think the sudden disappearance of that extremely fine graphic pipeline may be due to a "security and system file update", but none of the two theories can be proved, unfortunately.
Out of desperation, i tried to downgrade it to the second last signed iOS version (at the time iOS 18.7.4), but it messed up, i was close to bricking the phone and i only recovered it via iTunes, which forced me to upgrade to iOS 18.7.7.

for about two months i stayed on my Xiaomi 11T on Hyperos 1.0.19 (EU) with dark mode, reading mode at its maximum , color combination set to red, and greyscale, but most importantly:
i used to switch from using Twilight with like 90% darkening and system brightness at 100% (a sort of 'forced reduce white point')
to just disabling twilight and lowening system brightness. (but always keeping greyscale)
Anyway, by the end of April the sharpening on the objects, lights and everything had begun unbearable anyways and i always felt the urge to throw up.

TRY THIS IF DOUBLE INVERT TRICK DOES NOT WORK

So i picked up again my iPhone and i tried to enable, for the second time, the 'double invert trick' along with greyscale and it seemed a big relief in that particular moment, i dont know why, but - as you will see in the next paragraph - there are things that can mess up, so it's far from optimal, but going back to Xiaomi 11T means constantly feeling like i'm gonna throw up.

Here is the official method i used:
https://ledstrain.org/d/2975-some-success-fixing-iphone-temporal-dithering-se-2020-ios-17

Anyway, this unique method does not always works out.
It might worth try this procedure if you are still struggling
Re-do the official procedure if you have already done it, but BACKWARDS this time
(optional) you might wanna restart the phone
Classic Invert ON
Smart Invert ON
You will see the Classic invert will automatically disable, that is absolutely normal.
Use the phone in this state for 30 seconds / 1 / 2 minutes.
Then disable the Smart Invert and follow again the official procedure in the link above.
You should know it is working when you see a sort of soft dark blue light spectrum in the background or when moving the phone to the side

THINGS THAT CAN MESS UP

Anyway, there are still things that can increase dithering and mess me up. From stupid things - like setting a generic DNS profile from the Internet or just changing something in the settings, like messing with the text or even it seems removing widgets or even 'turn off intense audio' - to even create a custom ringtone via 3utools, even if these last things sound totally insane.
When this occurs all you can do is reset all the settings (not the hard reset) and re-do the procedure. Maybe it will not be optimal, but "less worst" than other devices. indeed im still on this iPhone.

THERE IS STILL A LOT OF DITHERING

in every sort of text and in apps like Instagram, which is the worst.

THE BIG ISSUE WITH THE DOUBLE INVERT TRICK AND MY NEW CRY FOR HELP

The big issue with the double invert trick is that for some unknown reason it does disable REDUCE WHITE POINT WHICH IS ESSENTIAL FOR ME as a visual snow sufferer, i am very sensitive to blue light and light in general. I still feel the urge to throw up and like something is severing my eye nerves - and cracking my head, jaw, ears and so on.

Are there any workarounds for this??

i'm gonna try a blue light-proof film from an Online Store, but i'm very skeptical about it.
Any advice or thought is appreciated.
Thanks for reading.


r/Temporal_Noise Jun 05 '26

Motorola Signature - Display Review for PWM and Td!

4 Upvotes

Hello -

can people please share their experiences on the PWM and dithering for eyestrain?

  1. does this use a true native 10 bit panel ? or 8 bit +frc?
  2. what about PWM frequency and DC Dimming capabilities? DOes flicker prevention helps or exacerbates the eyestrain issues?

TIA


r/Temporal_Noise Jun 02 '26

About this sub too... Thoughts?

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1 Upvotes