So, you got your expensive graphics card, your overclocked octaore CPU, and
more memory than a freaking elephant. But when you're playing the latest AAA
games on your PC, or really anything else, for some reason, things don't seem
quite right. Especially when you're looking at a scene where a lot of things
are moving around at once or the camera's panning. Because even with all
that horsepower under the hood, motion blur is a problem on even the most
powerful rigs. And if you're gaming on a VR headset like the Oculus Rift, it can
be even more distracting. Now, to be clear, we're not talking about the kind
of motion blur that is intentionally added to a game in post-processing. What
we're talking about is unintentional motion blur caused by excessive pixel
persistence. You see, an electronic display, whether it's a computer monitor
or a headset or a phone, is made up of millions of individual pixels that
change their brightness and color to create an image that you see. So,
whenever the image on the screen changes, which is nearly constantly if
you're playing a game that isn't Pong, the pixels cannot respond
instantaneously. With a typical LCD monitor, there's actually delay of a few
milliseconds before the pixels can actually change. Now, while there are
fast response monitors which have a delay or response time of just 1 or two
milliseconds, which helps to cut down on motion blur significantly, even those
don't completely solve the problem. In fact, even if a zero millisecond monitor
existed, there's still an issue with how LCD displays actually show images to us.
Like other pieces of digital hardware, an LCD display works by sampling image
data it gets from the computer many times a second and displaying the
samples as a series of still images.
These still images are then displayed at a rate equal to your screen's refresh
rate, usually 60 Hz, and your brain interprets this as movement. However,
your eye is not a piece of computer hardware, unless of course your name is
Adam Jensen. Human eyes are really good at perceiving differences in fluid
motion. And while high refresh rate displays that operate at 144 hertz or
even higher look great, they still can't
completely fool our brains just by showing us a series of static images.
And as if the problem of motion blur weren't bad enough on computer monitors,
it's much worse if you're using an Oculus Rift or VR headset like I
mentioned before. While motion blur might just be an annoyance if you're
gaming in 2D on a desktop PC, it can actually make you sick on a 3D display
like the Oculus Rift. Because these headsets work by surrounding your field
of vision in immersive 3D environments, motion blur in these situations can make
you feel physically out of balance with
your surroundings and cause a very similar nausea to what you'd feel in a
car or an airplane in the same situation. So, the solution itself is a
pretty simple idea. Well, let's just cut down on how long individual pixels are
displayed so that we don't we're not out of sync. But how are display
manufacturers going to accomplish this? Well, one way is through a technique
called backlight strobing. Typically, modern LCD monitors are illuminated by a
backlight that's always on. However, in a display that uses backlight strobing,
the backlight instead switches on and off rapidly, reducing the amount of time
that you actually see each pixel. This is very similar to the way that CRT
displays, which were, you know, for the kids that weren't alive in the time of
the dinosaurs, which are those old tube things that existed before LCDs came
onto the market, and is the reason that CRTs have historically been better at
displaying scenes with fast motion, at least to our eyes. There are a number of
monitors on the market that feature backlight strobing combined with high
refresh rates to reduce motion blur as much as possible while still maintaining
the picture quality and low energy consumption, not to mention the space
savings of a flat panel LCD. Of course,
it's also possible to ditch the backlight altogether and go a different
route. So, the consumer version of the Oculus Rift features a display based on
organic LEDs or OLEDs. OLEDs can
generate their own light through the use of specialized organic compounds. But
more importantly for gamers, OLEDs have a very quick response time, much faster
than the pixels in a conventional LCD. And not only does this cut down on
motion blur on its own, the low response times allow OLEDs to interpolate frames
easily, meaning that your system can guess missing frames in a given second
to match your display's frame rate. Or if you're just watching a movie recorded
at the usual 24 FPS and you want your experience to be less cinematic, I guess
it could do that, too. So whether you're gaming in 3D using a headset or just a
monitor with 3D glasses, these technologies will help you do your thing
without feeling like you're on some kind of vomit inducing carnival ride.
Speaking of vomitinducing carnival rides, our sponsor today is Fractal
Design. And boy, do we have a treat for you. Instead of telling you guys about
their, you know, Scandinavian designed cases and power supplies and cooling
products, we're having Luke wrap up here. Look, we had this conversation
already. I told you I have to host this because you just can't do a good enough
job of it. So, I'm super done. I'm sick.
This is ridiculous. I've I've been trying to build this company for like 2
years. We don't have to roll the camera on this. Like, okay, look, if you need
to talk about this, then you need to talk to yourself about how you run the
company. No air conditioning. People are like overheating all the time. Um, I'm
working while I'm sick. I have to get my doctor's appointment because I have to tape you up. Look, I think What even is
that? Like I've been sick for like 2 months. I finally get a doctor's
appointment with my family doctor and you don't you make me not go because of
masking tape. Well, I think you're I think Look, okay, but we were supposed
to have you do the spot and you were supposed to do Josh's thing. I get
dragged into the office and I have to film this. It's not like I wanted to
like Okay, you know what? Just I'm done.
We'll talk later. No, I'm just done.
You
um so sorry. I hope that wasn't too awkward. Guys, like the video if you
liked it. Dislike it if you disliked it. Leave a comment. Um, if you have
suggestions for future fastest possibles that I guess won't be hosted by Luke.