Screen Resolution <=> Eyesight Effects (1 Viewer)

Help! If I've been concentrating on a computer screen at a fixed distance all day, I find that my vision's 'depth of perception' (DOF) takes a substantial dive during twilight (or peering into deep, dark shadows), both when using binoculars, and without. In fact it takes a day or two of "nature acclimatisation" before I get any meaningful DOF back. As well as a "darker" view, I would also say I experience a "cruddier" view, in low light. This is in part due to the eye's normal decrease in acuity /increase in distortions, as the pupil dilates, but also I feel, to the residual "noise", of looking at a less than state of the art screen. My vision is prolly fairly sensitive, at times seeing energy fields /life-force, and other wonderous metaphysical visions /spooky-dooky-mudley-ooky type stuff. I normally wear glasses to correct myopia, and so that I don't prang into the car in front while driving!

This acuity (and DOF) deterioration in low light seems particularly worse after staring at aforementioned computer screen. My screen on a hp Compaq Presario C700 laptop is 1280x800 resolution, @60Hz, and 32bit colour. I have the brightness turned down to 60% (the least the crappy AR coatings will allow, without eyestrain inducing reflections taking over), and always used in a well lit room.

In low light environments, aside from general "mush", I'll often see what looks like millions of little fireflies flickering in Red, Gold, and Green-Blue, @60Hz, and in a regular Million pixel matrix. This can be particularly challenging when tackling stairs in the dark at night, where apart from the 'fireflys' and general 'lack of DOF + mush', my eyesight resembles a small-sized-sensor (mobile phone, or compact camera) turned up to about iso half-a-million! :eek!: Not at all satisfactory! I don't really recollect seeing these affects before, and I 'spose thank goodness for civilisation - otherwise I'd have been gobbled up by some predatory beastie long ago! :eat:
Anyone else plagued by this, or have any comments, tips, or solutions?

I'm at 1.5Gig RAM (after shared graphics have taken their slice) with no chance of an upgrade in this painfully slow ol' pile of antiquated electronics , and running the dreaded Vista to boot - so it's days are numbered. Hopefully a nice sleek and shiny Hi-Res Haswell lobs in my world in 12 months or so.

Interested to hear other's thoughts /experiences :news:



Chosun :gh:

Chosun,
first thing would be to be evaluated by an Ophthalmologist.

Second piece of advice is to get a pair of specific screen glasses made, so that your eyes can be as relaxed as at all possible when viewing at the distance you have to your screen. I prefer to have simple glasses for this, meaning that I cannot really read a book or view at long distance with the same glasses, others prefer multifocals where the largest part of the lens fits that distance but with a narrow reading field at the bottom and a narrow distance field at the top.

Third advice is to have plenty of light around the screen, don't save energy by killing all other light in the room.

And final option is to buy a good external screen to connect to your laptop. This would of course only work if you have a workplace where you use it.

Niels

Edit: the advice on doing the Ophthalmologist first is meant very seriously!

Thanks Niels, I'll be going to have my eyes checked shortly. The low light view is like the small sensor-high iso stuff, and the firefly's come out at night in the dark, or when shutting my eyes. It does diminish quite a bit with a coupla days of "nature".

I really only need glasses for distance (well 5ft+) ! and so never need to wear glasses when on the laptop, and I always have wherever I am well lit.

It seems to me, almost like it's screen burn, due to a lack of resolution on the screen. I know for a fact that 60 Hz is just rubbish despite what sales folk would like to tell you. 100 Hz even, is much better.



Chosun :gh:

The reason I am proposing the extra set of glasses is that it sounds to me like you are tiring out some muscles in your eye and therefore, getting the extra glasses might allow those muscles to be more relaxed while you are viewing. Just a hypothesis, but related to the fact that I lived happily without glasses until I was about 28, and 10-15 years later I started needing the dedicated PC glasses. Things happen as we grow older.

If you are right that it is too much/wrong light emitting from the screen, that is where my last piece of advice comes in. Right now I am sitting with a 24-inch screen in front of me -- that is not something you find built into a laptop.

Niels

Niels is probably right in as much too much use. Not sure exactly what your monitor is in size. Mine is 21inches diagonal and is run at 1920x1080, perhaps a bigger monitor could help.

I've spent the last 25 years staring at a screen all day. Apart from finding that my distance vision seems to get sharper after a couple of days birding, I've never noticed the effects you describe. It's reassuring that they seem to go away after not using the laptop for a while, but something's wrong there. Definitely get your eyes checked, just in case, especially if you think you normally see thing like life forces.

I would also definitely try plugging in an external screen. No one should use a laptop screen for a long time - they're too small and you're looking down all the time. Bad for your eyes, bad for your neck.

Sorry folks, should have added that the screen size is 15.6 inch diagonal. Max resolution is 1280x800 @60Hz, and 32bit colour. I've now turned brightnesss down further. Width of screen is approximately 1.6x Height. It sounds like the screen Robert is using has maybe ~20% more dpi.

I really don't think it's an 'eyesight' problem (fatigue or otherwise, apart from the 'screen burn' after long periods) ..... it's like I can 'see' the 'pixels' on the screen.

I think the suggestions of a good external screen (maybe a 4K) is something to look at for the next iteration of laptop, of which I've read of at least 2560x1440 coming up.

As far as seeing lifeforce, or other non-visible /3D spectrum energies, that's pretty rare ..... moreso than a positive ID on a Black Falcon!

I'm a bit surprised more screen users don't experience the 'high iso' pix I described during dark though .....

Keep the tales coming :t:




Chosun :gh:

Chosun Juan said:

I think the suggestions of a good external screen (maybe a 4K) is something to look at for the next iteration of laptop, of which I've read of at least 2560x1440 coming up.

Click to expand...

One of the advantages of this advice is that if you can afford it, it does not need to wait for the next computer iteration

Take care
Niels

Unfortunately it probably does - this poor ol' girl (the hp C700) must be coming down with some sort of electronic dementia - 'cause she seems to spend inordinate amounts of time just looking at me with a blank look on her face |:|| , and a little "I'm busy - rack off" |!| wheel spinning away! ...... the only thing this ol' bucket of electronic bolts can drive in any consistent and reliable manner is ...... me - mad! :storm: :-O


Chosun :gh:

Chosun Juan said:

I really don't think it's an 'eyesight' problem (fatigue or otherwise, apart from the 'screen burn' after long periods) ..... it's like I can 'see' the 'pixels' on the screen.

Click to expand...

I thought you meant you could see "fireflies" *after* you'd been using the screen. Sounded serious.

Have you always been able to see the pixels? Is it possible you've changed the resolution to something not matching the native screen resolution? Not sure if that has the same effect on a laptop screen as an external one. On external screens it blurs the image a bit.

Regarding the speed, have you checked you aren't running out of RAM?

pshute said:

I thought you meant you could see "fireflies" *after* you'd been using the screen. Sounded serious.

Have you always been able to see the pixels? Is it possible you've changed the resolution to something not matching the native screen resolution? Not sure if that has the same effect on a laptop screen as an external one. On external screens it blurs the image a bit.

Regarding the speed, have you checked you aren't running out of RAM?

Click to expand...

Firstly regarding the RAM: yes I am running out. Upon doing a performance evaluation during several routine tasks, I would often hit the rev limiter - so I know that the limited RAM is slowing me down - that's why I don't want to overload the ol' girl and confuse her further! ...... My computer system specs are showing 1.50GB of RAM, and the processor btw is only a Intel(R) Celeron(R) 560 @2.13GHz.

The last time the ol' girl was with the propeller heads down at the local boffin shop for recovery (ya see the optic drive's stuffed too, and Microsoft no longer offers ANY technical support for Vista Nice huh? |=@| .... hp doesn't want to know ya either), they said it already had 2 x 1GB RAM modules, with the shared graphics taking up the 0.5GB balance (2GB total RAM is the max. that these ol' girls can take with a massive roll of the dice and endless problems) - I'm not quite sure if that's right, but this obsolete frequency RAM in such a small size is ridiculously expensive per unit compare to the current stuff, and they have to special order in 1GB sizes as they no longer stock it anyway ..... "I've giv'n her all she's got captain, an' I canna give her no more." |8.|

AFAIK, I've got the resolution at the highest setting (1200x800 @60Hz), which is the native resolution.

As for the "fireflies", they don't actually buzz around like the real ones do! ..... it's just me trying to describe the 'high iso noisy pix' I see in the dark with a million RGB dot matrix that kinda sparkles or shimmers at what I assume corresponds to the 60Hz. And yes, this is what I see *after* viewing. For example, yesterday was a heavy use day, and so the effect was quite pronounced in the dark last night - I was just about as blind as a bat for a while ..... Although, at the time of viewing the screen things look pretty normal, though I can make out the individual pixels on the screen.



Chosun :gh:

Ok, further to this phenomenon try this on for size.....

I just got a new 65" 200Hz 4K UHD TV, which is wall mounted.

I was watching a DVD (The Party - Peter Sellers) on it last night (distance 5ft, no other lights on in room, bog stock factory settings). Due to the DVD having native resolution of 540p, the DVD player (and /or TV I assume) "upscaled" the signal to fit the 4K screen (there was slight =2" letterboxing top and bottom of screen, but picture covered full width). Due to the upscaled image there were quite a few artifacts visible. DVD ran for about 1 and a half hours.

After finishing the movie, I got up went outside and looked into the darkness ....... there was a fog the colour of a "Milky Bar" visible wherever I looked! :eek!:

No flickering, or fireflies like from the computer screen, but a persistent fog which took sometime to disappear and my vision return to normal .......



Chosun :gh:

I have always hated watching TV or any other screen in a dark room

Niels

Niels, as a rule, so do I. This TV is so big however that it pretty much takes up a whole wall. Either side of that are a wall of windows, and a wall of mirrored built in wardrobe. The upshot of all that is that the TV pretty much lights up the room like daylight - I don't feel the need for any other lighting. It will be interesting to watch a few space movies on it.

I watched "The world's fastest Indian" :t: DVD last night (at a more sensible distance of 10ft and the fog disappeared (no fireflies either) ...... so I'm fairly certain that all these effects are related to resolution (pixel density), brightness (or contrast), and exposure (time).

My world it seems will now have to be divided into natural / bino time, computing time (I don't notice any significant effects from my full HD screen Note3 which I am typing this on), and movie time. I will just have to be careful when negotiating dark stairs to take out the trash shortly afterwards !!


Chosun :gh: