Quoting: WorMzyStill not sure what advantages this gives over PulseAudio, but it seems to be pretty embedded in the Arch package ecosystem (it's been present on my system as an unconfigured dependency for something else since mid-2018):

$ pactree -rs pipewire | wc -l  
2409
$ pactree -rs pulseaudio | wc -l
105

Guess it's time to take a look and see what all the excitement is about.

The biggest advantage is that it is a unified solution for both low latency music creators and normal desktop + gaming. Since it also uses less advanced functionality of the underlying ALSA drivers there are some hardware that works better in PW than in PA (since the ALSA drivers for that hw is bad).

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Quoting: LoftyThat said, im no expert.. but would a subpixel change layout to accommodate the O(Oddball :P) LED layout for font's, (lets say on Gnome desktop) also improve the chromatic effect on video games running full screen that have nothing to do with Gnome or fonts ? Like when playing FMV for instance.

Do you mean changing the physical subpixel layout, or software like cleartype?

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Quoting: Lofty

Quoting: F.UltraOne is not sharper or softer than the other, it's just that algorithms like ClearType are designed for one of them but not all of them when adding anti aliasing tricks to fake a higher resolution for text than what the screen can produce natively. A single pixel is as sharp on any of these, so this is only down to algos that are trying to increase the sharpness of text.

Now that the dust has settled on the OLED release there is some more detailed content describing what i believe to be the issue some OLED monitor owners have reported across the net.

https://youtu.be/nTRIVZPqUK4?t=509 [External Link]

8.30 - 11.30 timestamp

a few things to note. i do understand most people cannot see this 'chromatic aberration' like effect, especially in these circumstances with the deck and probably not from a few meters whilst sat on a couch watching a TV... but it exists. And im fairly sure given the time taken to select the deck's new screen, valve could have fixed this if possible in software (and idk, maybe they can). Personally having owned a cheapo DLP projector that had a wonky color wheel it looks like the same thing. It's why i mentioned about the 'softness' that others noticed. i imagine it's very minimal but some people really do seem to notice.

Of course response time and black level are perfect vs an LCD (although there are some really quick LCD's now that easily hit their response time window with minimal blur) So this isn't a gripe against OLED tech, anything that improves the visual experience for the end user is welcome. OLED is thirsty on larger screens & has an oddball subpixel layout, other than that it's a great technology and il no doubt own one, one day in the right specifications.

whole video : https://youtu.be/nTRIVZPqUK4 [External Link]

Well calling it oddball is simple "hey I'm accustomed to the layout of LCD:s". Every single subpixel format in use is oddball since the only one that should not be would be to have no subpixel layout and instead a single pixel able to change the color and not having each pixel really be 3 or 4 subpixels.

Chromatic aberration exists on LCD:s as well which is the reason why Cleartype was created in the first place. But yes some people tend to see it more on OLED:s for some reason, Monitors Unboxed being one of the, and I don't doubt any of them, it's just ofc hard for me that doesn't see it to really understand what they talk about since, well I don't see it even though I site closer to my 45" than HUB/MUB does with his 34" so therefore my initial take is that somehow Windows makes it worse (since he is on Windows and I'm not).

Also if cleartype was made to "fix" the subpixel format of LCD:s then it should be possible to create a cleartype algo to make it work with the other formats as well (ofc nothing is guaranteed).

In any case since I don't see it I simply see myself as lucky :)

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: kuhpunktDoes anybody have any idea if Valve is still working on a solution to this problem? All this ffmpeg stuff. It's great that GE-Proton exists, but it would be nice if you could just rely on vanilla Proton.

Isn't their solution basically mechanical, going through games one at a time redoing video files as something usable?

Is this one of those things where it matters if the file format is still patented?

quite sure it's a patent issue yes, Valve would be a nice juicy target for any patent troll.

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Rtings just released an update to their burn in test.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fa7V_OOu6B8 [External Link]

Monitors starting at aprox 09:26

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Quoting: slaapliedjeThe new one that I still need to play through? Yes! Pretty sure that was the demo name too, though it may have been the group that made it... my go to demo is usually State of the Art by Spaceballs... That's not an AGA one though, I'm pretty sure the one I saw with the blue was AGA though. I'll poke around and see if I can find it again.

Hehe, State of the Art brings back memories :), all of us suddenly started to code interference rings when that one came.

Quoting: ShmerlHere is also an interesting read which mentions WRGB and RWBG subpixel layouts (never heard of them before):

https://tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/lg-27gr95qe-oled [External Link]

I wonder if FontConfig even supports that.

UPDATE: I can't find anything here: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/fontconfig/fontconfig/-/issues [External Link]

Given such subpixel layouts aren't even supported, benefits of OLED screens become pretty moot.

UPDATE 2:

Found something related:

* https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/fontconfig/fontconfig/-/issues/328 [External Link]
* https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=472340 [External Link]

UPDATE 3:

What a rabbit hole:

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/freetype/freetype/-/issues/1182 [External Link]

> In fact, GTK4 does not support any subpixel geometry, which is upsetting to some people.

AFAIK gtk4 does subpixel-someting, it just does it in grayscale and not in rgba. In any case IMHO fonts looks perfect in GTK4 apps under Wayland. Google returns lots of posts from people complaining about fuzzy fonts in gtk4 though so not sure what is happening, if they simply have some old/bad config lying around or if I'm just lucky or what it is.

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/3787 [External Link]

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Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: elmapul

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: slaapliedjeIt's kind of amusing to me that CRTs started off as 50/60hz, then higher end monitors started getting really high refresh rates (like the one I have that'll do 1600x1200 at 85hz). Then when we started with LCDs, we were back to having crappy refresh rates, with the added disadvantage of any non-native resolution looking like trash... Many years later, they're finally getting better.

You're forgetting or ignoring the fact that we mostly wanted higher refresh rates for CRTs to reduce the eye destroying flicker, not to make games run smoother or whatever. Whereas an LCD doesn't really have a flicker problem, even with the old fluorescent backlights.

CRTs didn't either, except when you'd try to do foolish things like interlace. Well, or if you were someone not in the 60hz locations... While there are benefits of PAL, a higher refresh rate is not one of them, and there is definitely flicker to most people at 50hz vs 60hz.

There are definitely benefits and disadvantages to each tech. Older stuff though, was designed for a CRT, so on occasion can look like utter trash on an flat screen. Especially when you're looking at 8-16bit stuff.

speaking of it do you (or anyone) know if old games work fine on OLED ? i know they look like crap on CRT, but oled work different so it might look less crapy? i wonder if its harder to make shaders/filters to simulate an CRT on an OLED screen than on an LCD one.

The thing is that those old games where created with the notion that the display was fuzzy and not sharp and detailed as they are now and an OLED is just as sharp and detailed as any LCD. What OLED brings to the table is CRT like (and in some cases like my monitor, better) handling of black and increased color+brightness capabilities.

Also one have to remember that back when we played those 8-bit and 16-bit games a 14" monitor was the default and the viewing distance was the same as it is with our modern 45" monitors so the size difference alone shows imperfections that were not detectable back then.

That said, I find C64 games using VICE looking quite good actually both on my OLED and on my old LCD.

Interestingly, I currently have my A4000 connected to an LCD monitor (via a zz9000, which has an HDMI output, but a pass through for native resolutions), plus a Commodore 1084 monitor (CRT). Watching a demo, I could see a square blue area around the main part of the demo running on the LCD screen, whereas on the CRT, it was very dark and you couldn't see it, making it look much better.

A lot of the old pixel art and such, just looks better with scanlines, which is why most emulators try their damnedest to recreate such things with shaders, etc. Ha, in a lot of ways, the computations to do just the shaders are more powerful than what it the original platforms were...

For the record, my Atari Jaguar does actually look quite amazing on my 77" OLED through an OSSC...

Yes the graphics (just as it is today ofc) was created with the display used at the time so scanlines and other imperfections where used to enhance the image where the GPU of the time couldn't provide the color or resolution needed/wanted. Btw which demo was it on the A4000? I would like to see the blue rectangle to try and make out what it was.

Ha, you would ask me that... Twisted Dreams? I was clicking on some random ones, as I was having some issues with a hard lock when I would try and exit the whdload.

Isn't that the name of the Great Giana Sisters game?

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Quoting: Eike

Quoting: EikeFlickering is not the opposite of VRR, it's screen tearing

Yes, I was using the wrong term here.

Quoting: Eikeand honestly since I moved away from a 60Hz screen and my old GPU I cannot notice screen tearing (the fps is far to high for that).

That's great for you, but many people are having low fps, and if not currently, maybe tomorrow with the next generation of games, you might have to. Your card will stop being high tier - but still have VRR.

(And, as I think you're a technical person as well: CPU and GPU waiting for the monitor is just wrong.)

Quoting: poiuz

Quoting: BrokattI would guess that for the millions of Linux Steam users VRR is somewhat important.

More than 40% use a Steam Deck. Steam Deck doesn't support VRR (even the newest revision won't). It can't be that important if a gaming company omits it (on a device which would very much benefit from it).

Well, I sure don't buy into "The company isn't giving to us, so it's not important." Anybody got some more insight why Valve wouldn't do it? I'd guess it's part of making Steam Deck as affordable as possible?

Full agreement on all parts, I was just commenting on why the devs are not running their legs off in order to implement VRR. And funding like this is obviously aimed at improving the desktop experience and not the gaming experience (too many people are still not seeing gaming as something that is important).

Regarding the CPU+GPU waiting for Vsync I think I wrote before that I'm still perplexed that we in a world where monitors no longer really update with a frequency (like a CRT have to do) the GPU<->Monitor protocol should really just be start-of-image+image+end-of-image and no frequences be used at all, only that the monitor would reply back what the minimum wait period would be between images. VRR as such should both not exist and be the default so to speak.

Quoting: Brokatt

Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: Brokatt

Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: BrokattI don't see "Improve the state of VRR."

Very few people care about VRR, which is also why it have taken so long to get it implemented.

I would guess that for the millions of Linux Steam users VRR is somewhat important. I just thought that after getting some extra funding they would put some of it towards that 3 year old merge request.

It's only important to gamers which already is a small subset of all Linux users and on top of that it is also only important to people that have a system that cannot handle high enough frame rates, if you e.g have 1% lows > 90fps then you will not see screen tearing so VRR will be mostly useless then.

Yes it's very important to gamers. I would go as far as to call it a game changer for PC gaming. The fact that Gnome is not prioritizing it is very sad. But I understand gamers are not the target audience for IBM/Red Hat. Still I was hoping to see some progress with this donation.

Both VRR and HDR is something that we gamers are anxiously awaiting but the unfortunate truth is that desktop is where the focus is, especially for funding like this.

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Quoting: Brokatt

Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: BrokattI don't see "Improve the state of VRR."

Very few people care about VRR, which is also why it have taken so long to get it implemented.

I would guess that for the millions of Linux Steam users VRR is somewhat important. I just thought that after getting some extra funding they would put some of it towards that 3 year old merge request.

It's only important to gamers which already is a small subset of all Linux users and on top of that it is also only important to people that have a system that cannot handle high enough frame rates, if you e.g have 1% lows > 90fps then you will not see screen tearing so VRR will be mostly useless then.

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: F.UltraVery few people care about VRR, which is also why it have taken so long to get it implemented.

I find it very hard to believe that. Without VRR, you get either flickering or might be losing quite a bit of the performance you payed for (plus added input lag, but that probably is something not many people care for). When thinking about it, the monitor displaying the image when it's ready instead of some hundreds of bucks of CPU plus possibly many hundreds of bucks of GPU waiting for the monitor is the world as it's supposed to be.

Important for games yes but how small a subset of users are gamers. Flickering is not the opposite of VRR, it's screen tearing and honestly since I moved away from a 60Hz screen and my old GPU I cannot notice screen tearing (the fps is far to high for that).

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Quoting: Loftywell that's not strictly true. You personally may not perceive a softness to an image (and im sure on a small low res screen like the steam decks it might be even harder to tell) but there are many threads on OLED monitors (perhaps not so much on a large TV as you sit further back) that comment on the sub pixel layout of OLED and how for desktop use it is softer and much better for gaming than desktop productivity. And that this is something that is not likely to be fixed any time soon. Right now LCD is sharper.

I know that there are but lots of those people are confused, you see it's not OLED that have a subpixel layout, every display have a subpixel layout:



One is not sharper or softer than the other, it's just that algorithms like ClearType are designed for one of them but not all of them when adding anti aliasing tricks to fake a higher resolution for text than what the screen can produce natively. A single pixel is as sharp on any of these, so this is only down to algos that are trying to increase the sharpness of text.

Quoting: LoftyGnome does seem to handle font's a bit better im my experience. One of my screens is a 24.5" 1080p screen running Gnome wayland and it looks okay at a suitable distance, but it's the lowest PPI i could possibly handle. I assume you sit further back with it being a giant 45" screen. Also it seems that the 45GR95QE-B does not flicker like the steam deck, seen as i have already looked previously at reviews of the LG and have seen no issues (id actually like a 5k version of that screen)

everyone has their acceptable preferences with regards to clarity,some people have returned OLED because they for some reason don't like it's color presentation. But i wouldn't assume that they are all wrong across the many forums mostly they base their experiences on other OLED's at 27" to 34" with a 109ppi vs your smaller 83ppi. Although, how many people actually own these screens vs theoretically disliking i cannot tell. On balance there is an issue, but not everyone is sensitive to it.

Due to how my setup is at home I sit at the exact same distance at home from my 45" as I did with my 27", the 32" at work is also at roughly the same distance.

Just for fun I made high res photos of text displayed on both the 1440p and the 4k one to show that the sharpness and clarity is identical but the issue is that the curvature of my 45" is visible so I cannot use it as blind tests to people since they will always see which is the 45" and therefore will always be able to just say that that one is less sharp or whatever their bias now is.

Quoting: LoftyI must of missed that bit of the discussion. OLED burn in is still a thing. its one of the reasons i believe the pricing has been so surprisingly competitive with mini-LED panels. Where is the study that shows OLED to last twice the length of an LCD screen ? I have LCD screens from 2012 with 10's of thousands of hours on working just fine like the day i bought it.

LG made a public statement in 2016 that their panels as of then had a lifespan of 100k hours and LCD:s at the time had a max lifespan of roughly 50k hours, that is where 2x the lifespan comes from: https://www.oled-info.com/lgs-latest-oled-tvs-last-100000-hours [External Link] note that is up from only 36k hours in 2013 so lifespan have increased greatly in just a short time frame.

Rtings have showed that burn in is mostly overblown on modern panels (yes they do experience burn in, but they run their displays for 24x7 on the same media just to trigger it as much as possible), what they do show however is that LCD:s experience tons of image uniformity that visually is identically to burn in: https://www.rtings.com/tv/tests/longevity-burn-in-test-updates-and-results [External Link]

Quoting: LoftySo your screen has a fan ? I don't want a monitor that needs a fan TBH.

I actually don't know if it does nor not. It is 100% silent, just that I know that e.g the smaller Alienware does have a fan and they have one model where the fan is noticeable and one where it isn't so I don't know if the LG have a fan or not, just that it is completely silent.

Quoting: LoftyThe power consumption on OLED is higher than LCD. which may or may not bother the end user. But i like to keep my energy bill & heat in room as low as possible. Like i said each technology has its strengths and weaknesses.

[/quote]Yes that is one drawback, roughly 130w vs 60W for an equivalent LCD, though it depends on what you display, if it is mostly dark pixels then the OLED draws close to nothing while the LCD still draws 60W (which is e.g why the switch to OLED have made the power consumption of the Deck to go down and not up). Nothing compare with my old Plasma though :)

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