WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.440 RGB lighting has gone from a niche gimmick to, well, it's still a gimmick, but now it's an 00:00:05.440 --> 00:00:10.400 incredibly common way to customize your PC. But even though we're just talking about flashing 00:00:10.400 --> 00:00:16.400 colored lights, they're surprisingly annoying to control. Look at all these different RGB ecosystems, 00:00:16.400 --> 00:00:22.400 each with their own app, and many of them are notoriously buggy and not particularly user-friendly. 00:00:22.400 --> 00:00:27.200 And even if you've become an expert in how to use the five different RGB apps you have installed 00:00:27.200 --> 00:00:32.960 on your one system, it's undoubtedly inconvenient to have to tweak settings in all of them 00:00:32.960 --> 00:00:37.040 whenever you want to change your PC's overall look. Although there have been other attempts 00:00:37.040 --> 00:00:42.560 to deal with this problem, such as Signal RGB, Microsoft is trying to integrate its own solution 00:00:42.560 --> 00:00:47.600 directly into Windows through a feature called Dynamic Lighting, which popped up in Windows 11 00:00:47.600 --> 00:00:54.000 in late 2023. Instead of having separate apps, you can control all of the RGB in your computer 00:00:54.000 --> 00:00:59.120 through Windows settings. Although sticking a bunch of RGB LEDs in gaming peripherals has been 00:00:59.120 --> 00:01:04.320 pretty popular for around a decade now, the technology took time to grow in terms of both 00:01:04.320 --> 00:01:09.680 product offerings and penetrating the market enough to hit the mainstream and not just be a 00:01:09.680 --> 00:01:15.200 niche feature for enthusiasts. But now, a good amount of people, including those without high-end 00:01:15.200 --> 00:01:21.120 setups, have multiple RGB components, so it makes sense that an easier-to-use, unified solution 00:01:21.120 --> 00:01:25.920 is now popping up. Windows is taking these disparate RGB products from different companies 00:01:25.920 --> 00:01:31.920 and putting them under the same proverbial roof, using a standard called HID Lamp Array. 00:01:31.920 --> 00:01:37.840 So at the heart of Dynamic Lighting is an open standard called HID Lamp Array, which is itself 00:01:37.840 --> 00:01:44.080 part of the USB specification. HID Lamp Array provides a variety of options to address each 00:01:44.080 --> 00:01:50.080 LED individually, which should allow similar customizability to the various proprietary apps. 00:01:50.160 --> 00:01:54.720 And indeed, you can see that Dynamic Lighting provides various effects on its page 00:01:54.720 --> 00:01:59.600 in the settings menu. Dynamic Lighting can also respect overrides from other programs on your 00:01:59.600 --> 00:02:04.800 computer, notably games that sync with your RGB lights depending on what exactly is happening 00:02:04.800 --> 00:02:08.800 during gameplay. To enable this, you just have to tick the slider that says, 00:02:08.800 --> 00:02:13.360 Compatible apps in the foreground always control lighting. If it's not working for you, 00:02:13.360 --> 00:02:19.440 however, you might have RGB hardware that doesn't support Lamp Array. To use Dynamic Lighting, 00:02:19.440 --> 00:02:25.760 RGB devices have to either support it in their firmware or throw a special driver called a VHF 00:02:25.760 --> 00:02:30.640 driver. But here's the good news, Microsoft is already working with a good number of RGB device 00:02:30.640 --> 00:02:37.440 manufacturers, including Razer, ASUS, HyperX, SteelSeries, HP, Logitech, MSI, ADATA, and NZXT, 00:02:37.440 --> 00:02:42.320 to promote broad support for the standard. There are already some laptops, keyboards, 00:02:42.320 --> 00:02:47.120 and mice that support Dynamic Lighting, but more products should be following, especially as Dynamic 00:02:47.120 --> 00:02:52.480 Lighting is intended to provide benefits for manufacturers as well as users. Instead of having 00:02:52.480 --> 00:02:57.840 to write software or proprietary firmware on their own, brands can instead just take advantage of the 00:02:57.840 --> 00:03:03.920 Lamp Array standard, leaving them free to instead focus on making the actual hardware better or 00:03:03.920 --> 00:03:08.400 more innovative. And let's face it, it's not like they were doing a great job with their own software 00:03:08.400 --> 00:03:14.160 to begin with. Ooh, sick bird. Dynamic Lighting also makes it much easier to have all the RGB in 00:03:14.160 --> 00:03:18.800 your system sync up in terms of color and effects, even if you've got parts from several different 00:03:18.800 --> 00:03:24.960 brands. Unfortunately, hardware manufacturers still use different kinds of LEDs that reproduce 00:03:24.960 --> 00:03:30.800 colors differently, so it can't alleviate that annoying effect where white looks yellow on your 00:03:30.800 --> 00:03:36.080 fans, but looks purple on your RAM sticks. Here's us crossing our fingers that over time, 00:03:36.080 --> 00:03:41.680 greater mixing and matching of RGB parts from different brands, which Dynamic Lighting incentivizes, 00:03:41.680 --> 00:03:48.640 pushes manufacturers to make their LEDs look the same as well. Please. Please. Hey, that was a tech 00:03:48.640 --> 00:03:52.320 quickie. Thanks for watching. Like the video if you liked it. Dislike it if you dislike it. 00:03:52.320 --> 00:03:55.840 Check out this video on the best Windows 11 settings to tweak for gaming. 00:03:56.640 --> 00:03:59.760 And comment below with video suggestions. Don't forget to subscribe and follow though. 00:04:00.480 --> 00:04:02.320 Gamers, am I right?