Gaming on 77" Oled

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Xyga
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Re: Gaming on 77" Oled

Post by Xyga »

Didn't know LG offered that on their OLEDs. And it works in game mode ? (not sneakily switching to a slower processed scaling mode when you touch the sliders I mean)


PS: the sample and hold persistence; it's funny that it's been there on LCD's since flat panel prehistory, but widespread awareness only started when maybe no more than one or two reviewers mentioned that in their early model reviews (probably hdtvtest originally then with echo on blurbusters). Probably just noting for information that it was a bit disappointing when they were used to plasma.
And it stuck, God how it stuck! like 50% mentions of OLEDs on the internet have it when it's about gaming, like its a flaw - some even dare add inherent - of OLED tech.
Forgetting completely that the instant response makes motion superior to any LCD they have seen before anyway.
(the kind of logic that also produced a number of people believing LCDs with PWM dimming, even slow-ass, are better for motion)
I'm still surprised by the power of the internet sometimes.
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Re: Gaming on 77" Oled

Post by Fudoh »

yes, the flexible scaling is available in game mode.
the sample and hold persistence - - -
And it stuck, God how it stuck! like 50% mentions of OLEDs on the internet have it when it's about gaming, like its a flaw
Funny thing about that is, that it hardly applies to any part of the visual experience, except for synthetic tests. I think it's mostly a valid argument for comparing frame interpolation techniques and their effect on motion resolution.

For "us" there's this visual phenomenon with disappearing scanlines when the screen is scrolling into a direction transversely to the scanline direction (e.g. vertically scrolling shooters with horizontal screen layout). Regular OLEDs reach CRT-levels of clarity, but both CRTs and OLEDs will still make you think that the scanlines are disappearing once the screen starts scrolling. OLEDs with rolling scan surpass CRTs. It's really weird to see at first, but the scanlines indeed remain intact even with transverse scrolling.
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Re: Gaming on 77" Oled

Post by Konsolkongen »

It works in game mode and PC mode. But I haven't tested for any increase in lag. Never felt any - not that statements like that are worth much :mrgreen:

I was expecting to play a lot of games with black frame insertion on, to increase motion resolution. But apart from the one or two times I've never bothered. There is a slight adjustment period of a few seconds when playing Sonic, but nothing that I can't live with. It's better than my previous LCDs.
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Re: Gaming on 77" Oled

Post by fernan1234 »

@Xyga: all of that is true, but the one thing that LCDs (at least the best ones today) can have over OLED in terms of motion resolution is that they can more effectively employ BFI. I see BFI as a "good enough" solution for motion persistence as long as brightness can be increased to compensate for it. With OLED right now we can't, because they have much lower peak brightness already and they have ABL.
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Re: Gaming on 77" Oled

Post by Xyga »

Yeah I'm not a fan of BFI or whatever commonly available blur reduction tech, so I'm always watching the basic abilities of displays first before anything artificial because it's mandatory (physics before software).

I think i've mentioned that a couple of times before, but the ideal blur reduction is still far, far away, it demands much higher refreshes, very fast processing with algorithms that combine interpolation and variable refresh, or rolling scan, whatever that in any case still doesn't exist beyond limited devices or prototypes that are far from perfect too either. The parts don't exist and R&D progress is veeeeery slow.
Even if we get micro-leds, as long as those limitations are still there all attempts will remain gimmicky in my eyes.

So when weighing what actually exists and what can be done, I try to stay realistic. OLEDs aren't perfect, but for now objectively there isn't anything better on the pure raw technical performance, including for base motion, than those.
(well yeah, plasmas...but they're not 'available')
That's why I roll eyes when people are all about 'motion persistance this, motion persistance that'. Give me the choice between a flagship LCD and an OLED, I take the latter without a second of hesitation.

One thing that's also a problem making it worse for opinion I believe, is their size, they're huge and on average today we sit way closer to the picture than we used to when CRTs were the norm. Someheow while busy for a decade with LCDs we were distracted by ghosting issues, then PWM artifacts appeared with LED, and then ! ... when OLED arrived solving both ghosting and PWM, people were suddenly put in front of a giant blur-and-artifacts-free picture, on which only the 60Hz motion persistance similar to LCDs remained completely naked/exposed..
And that, is hard not to notice sitting in front of a human-sized display. Note that almost similarily, sticking too close to a large CRT isn't very comfortable motion-wise either, certainly more bearable but not ideal either (one of the reasons I like 25" cabinets more than 29"s)

So, it only took that, and a couple of reviews reminding people of the 'motion persistance' terms, for the 'OLED motion issue' to become a very recurrent theme.

This concerns both LCD and OLED but; on top of those we like to overlay thick fake mask 'scanlines' to simulate a CRT look, but with less realistic contrast distribution and 'bloom smoothing' of course.
Or we slab muddy bi-directional filters that can make motion look worse too.
There's two ways of faking CRTs without suffering from persistance too much: extremely thin, sharp and barely noticeable non-uniform 'scanlines'/mask (super lightweight simulation that deals in shaping rather than coloring), or superheavy lines/mask with extreme brightness to simulate a lower resolution panel output.
Most of what we choose to apply though is always somewhere in-between, and 'created' off still pictures observation rather than challenged directly against motion.

TL;DR better not leave much in the way, or blocking/halving it completely. The former is easier to achieve considering most display's limited brightness output ability. But easier doesn't mean 'easy' (for instance all CRT shaders defaults aim for that 'in-between'), and the faster the panel the better. OLEDs here are best of course.

To end my rant; IMO burn-in and ABL are more real issues on OLEDs, more annoying than motion persistance, which is a bit too inflated topic overshadowing the fact that OLEDs technically actually brought improvement in the area of motion for anyone who only had LCDs before.
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Re: Gaming on 77" Oled

Post by Classicgamer »

fernan1234 wrote:As a sidenote, the alpha 9 processor is there primarily to do a lot more besides the upscaling. Unfortunately, most of the processing that the alpha 9 does is for effects that any purist will want to turn off anyway (and for handling HDR). But for people who like a highly processed picture it's a nice piece of tech. On the scaling side, it's actually rather embarrassing that an old Extron scaler does a better job. But what the manufacturers care about is dazzling buyers with 4k HDR demos, not upscaled SDR content.
That is true (that the Alpha 9 does a bunch of things) but you can't turn off scaling unless you feed it a native 2160p source, even in game mode. This applies to all flat panel displays. If you feed them anything other than their native res, they have to scale the image to fill the extra pixels. If they didn't, the image would be tiny and surrounded by a whole lot of unused space.

The need for a processor is the key reason why flatscreen displays have input lag. On a CRT, the video signal drives the guns directly with no need for a processor. Except, for some reason, Sony put processors in their later HD crts which made them suck. This was dumb as a CRTs key advantage is being able to switch resolutions.

Anyway, the Alpha 9 processor in LG's higher end models is what makes them good for gamers. It delivers relatively low input lag (for a non-dedicated gaming monitor), decent upscaling and noise reduction for a variety of sources.

It's hard to say how much having the Alpha 9 matters to gamers (VS LG's cheaper processors). As far as scaling goes, 720p into 2160p is relatively straightforward. 2160p is an all together more scaling-friendly resolution than 1080p. It's exactly divisible by 240p, 720p and 1080p. And, HD 3d graphics usually scale well even on cheaper monitors.
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Re: Gaming on 77" Oled

Post by Konsolkongen »

Every 2017 OLED used the same processor regardless of price. For 2018 only the B-series had a slightly less capable processor which didn’t really matter much, the rest were all identical too.
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Re: Gaming on 77" Oled

Post by Classicgamer »

Fudoh wrote:yes, the flexible scaling is available in game mode.
the sample and hold persistence - - -
And it stuck, God how it stuck! like 50% mentions of OLEDs on the internet have it when it's about gaming, like its a flaw
Funny thing about that is, that it hardly applies to any part of the visual experience, except for synthetic tests. I think it's mostly a valid argument for comparing frame interpolation techniques and their effect on motion resolution.

For "us" there's this visual phenomenon with disappearing scanlines when the screen is scrolling into a direction transversely to the scanline direction (e.g. vertically scrolling shooters with horizontal screen layout). Regular OLEDs reach CRT-levels of clarity, but both CRTs and OLEDs will still make you think that the scanlines are disappearing once the screen starts scrolling. OLEDs with rolling scan surpass CRTs. It's really weird to see at first, but the scanlines indeed remain intact even with transverse scrolling.
Why would you add scanlines to 720p content and which aspect of the Oled tech do you think makes the difference (you describe above)? Obviously, the things that most effect the perceived resolution (besides resolution) are contrast, the frame rate, pixel response time. But, am I right in assuming that you play old sprite based games at (or close to) 60hz with no frame interpolation?

I sometimes use my Samsung Galaxybook 2 for mame and the first thing that struck me was how "CRT-like" it looked on the Oled screen. At first I assumed that it was due to the smaller (12") screen and / or the more 240p friendly 1600p native res. But, old sprite based games also look better on my 77" and 55" Oled displays.

It's not just the contrast either (although that is amazing an up there with my Ikegami CRT). The image just seems to scale better with less scaling artifacts like jaggies and greater clarity around small details. I remember thinking that my old plasma looked better for old games too when I got my first LCD.

The faster pixel response time is what Oled and Plasma have in common over LCD. Could this really make a noticeable difference for old sprite based games though?
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Re: Gaming on 77" Oled

Post by Fudoh »

I don't see how high contrast (as nice as it is) would affect perceived motion resolution. Pixel response time is key for the consumer sets. In this regard OLEDs are so much better than LCDs, that it's not even a fair comparison.

Frame Rate (as in motion interpolation) interpolation isn't easy to apply. On the 2018 LG models the BFI feature (Motion Pro) wasn't coupled to the actual refresh rate (which was a total fuck up on LG's side), maybe this has changed this year? I don't know. Also ideally you don't want interpolation artefacts AND you might not want visible 60Hz flicker.

Without BFI (as available on some consumer sets) or rolling scan images will remain on screen for the period of a full frame. This is what caps the motion resolution at the 350 or so lines of motion resolution.

LG's OLED panels are 120Hz panels, so BFI is limited to 60Hz. That's a bit of a shame since higher end LCDs have been using 200/240Hz panels for almost a decade now, so you can get 100/120Hz BFI on those.

With a rolling scan (or a rolling scan imitation if you like) only a band of pixels (like 100-200 pixel lines) is illuminated at a time. This gives you motion clarity that's better than a CRT (at least the ones I've used, I'm certain there are many different tubes with way different phosphor decay times). You get a CRT-like 60Hz flicker though, so I wouldn't call this feature mass-compatible.
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Re: Gaming on 77" Oled

Post by Xyga »

How many Hz a panel with how fast a processor would be needed for a low lag full adaptive-to-refresh interpolation with imbedded BFI, or similar scheme for rollscan imitation ?

I get a feeling that the race for resolution somehow gets in the way, I can't even imagine something like that on 4K now, so what will it be when 8K will go mainstream? Ugh...
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Re: Gaming on 77" Oled

Post by Classicgamer »

I think that contrast makes as much (or more) difference to perceived resolution as anything else. There is a reason why every serious home theater reviewer uses contrast as the benchmark for image quality.

Contrast is the reason why, 10 years after they stopped making plasma tv's, people still prefer their Pioneer Elite Kuro over any current LCD. It's because they perceive greater detail on their 1080p kuro than on a 4k lcd. While they use black levels to measure contrast, that isn't the only end goal. More contrast = more detail on screen.

With poor contrast, you start to lose the subtle dark details in the image. It is most noticeable on darker scenes. Night scenes in movies and games can be torture on an LCD screen.

A higher frame rate also makes a huge difference but only if it's native in the source imo. Frame interpolation makes things look clearer but usually with an unpleasant and unnatural look which most of use prefer to turn off. Most of the content I consume is 24, 30 or 60 fps which is annoying as doubling the frame rate would make far more of a difference than the 8k tv's they are already pushing.

The native 120hz (or more) available on high end gaming PC's does look awesome, especially in fast moving scenes. The ideal display would have both high frame rate and high contrast for the highest perceived level of detail.
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Re: Gaming on 77" Oled

Post by vol.2 »

Classicgamer wrote:I think that contrast makes as much (or more) difference to perceived resolution as anything else.
I think the statement was that contrast isn't helping motion blur. I think it's a sample-and-hold issue that lcd and oled share, vs. impulse of plasma/crt. Unless I'm completely misunderstanding you and you're saying that contrast helps that, or you're responding to a different comment and I'm completely lost...
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Re: Gaming on 77" Oled

Post by Fudoh »

of course. Infinite Contrast is what makes OLEDs fantastic for movies, but it doesn't affect the perceived motion resolution.
The native 120hz (or more) available on high end gaming PC's does look awesome, especially in fast moving scenes. The ideal display would have both high frame rate and high contrast for the highest perceived level of detail.
yes, but since I don't play on PCs, my "gaming experience" is limited to 60Hz and a 120Hz panel doesn't help if you don't have the content to drive it.
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Re: Gaming on 77" Oled

Post by Classicgamer »

I think it does.

If all else is equal, more detail will be visible in the display with higher contrast. The detail has to be visible in the individual frames for it to be there in motion.
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Re: Gaming on 77" Oled

Post by orange808 »

I don't think the trade off in image quality is worth the additional frames per second in new games. I can't speak for most PC gamers, but I am always shooting for a solid 60fps.

As for motion resolution, I can't personally see any blur difference (at all) between a DLP projector and a sample and hold OLED--and the OLED blows the projector out of the water with contrast and color.
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Re: Gaming on 77" Oled

Post by Xyga »

@CG: I agree a lot of aspects can contribute, even if each only a little bit, to make general motion perception better, I've made that point for IPS before and it is true for all flat panels anyway.

But Fudoh's definitely right, we play 60Hz games in general and what contributes by far the most in the case of OLED here for motion, is the pixel response.

At best I'd give the other factors like contrast, viewing angles, scaling, coating, panel's native rate, and whatever, all combined, 10 or 15% of what makes the OLED win in a 60Hz motion match VS. a LCD

It's almost exclusively instant pixel response that wins it. No freaking doubt.
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Re: Gaming on 77" Oled

Post by vol.2 »

Konsolkongen wrote: I was expecting to play a lot of games with black frame insertion on, to increase motion resolution.
I'm interested in how the new LGs handle this. Have you played around with the black frame insertion while viewing sports or other challenging materials?
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Re: Gaming on 77" Oled

Post by Konsolkongen »

I haven’t sorry. I don’t watch sport on the TV, and the games I’ve played were Sonic Mania and Doom 2016. In both cases I think it worked well, but definitely darker and the flicker, though not very noticeable did cause slight eye fatigue over time.

LG was working on a solution that only flickers parts of the screen (IIRC) to preserve brightness. Was shown off last year and should have been on 2019 sets but was pulled for unkown reasons. Maybe it will be added for 2020 sets?
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Re: Gaming on 77" Oled

Post by parodius »

Konsolkongen wrote:Panasonics perfect nearest neighbor scaling of 1080p sources is much better scaled that any other brand.
Is it the case in all modes, or only game mode ?
Can they upscale 720p to perfect 3x nearest neighbor as well ?
I'm leaning towards one of the new Panasonics myself.
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Re: Gaming on 77" Oled

Post by Fudoh »

Can they upscale 720p to perfect 3x nearest neighbor as well ?
only 1080p and I read something that they removed the feature in the current models (but don't pin me down on it).
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Re: Gaming on 77" Oled

Post by Lawfer »

Fudoh wrote:my "gaming experience" is limited to 60Hz and a 120Hz panel doesn't help if you don't have the content to drive it.
Really? I was pretty sure it did help, wasn't it the reason why Sony released some TVs that were actually 120Hz even though they did not support frequency higher than 75Hz?

See:
Motionflow 120Hz PRO technology: Motionflow 120Hz PRO technology couples a high 120Hz frame rate with sequential scanning technology, which controls the backlight to horizontally divide frames and reduce visual flickering. The combination of high frame rate and sequential scanning significantly reduces source image blur and judder in film sources, HD content, broadcast movies, and primetime programming, and helps create smoother, more fluid motion for a natural and realistic viewing experience.
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Re: Gaming on 77" Oled

Post by Fudoh »

In order to utilize a 120Hz screen, the panel needs to be fed a 120Hz signal. Not neccessarily by the user though, but then you have to enable motionflow. Motionflow isn't available in gamemode on Sonys and if you disable gamemode for gaming you're looking at 90-100ms of lag.

Hence Sony not mentioning gaming in the sniplet you quoted and my saying "gaming experience".
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Re: Gaming on 77" Oled

Post by Lawfer »

Fudoh wrote:In order to utilize a 120Hz screen, the panel needs to be fed a 120Hz signal.
Oh, so they are not "backward compatible"? As in, can't you use a 120Hz monitor/TV with say 60Hz?
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Re: Gaming on 77" Oled

Post by Xyga »

AFAIK only some of the high-end Samsungs have a reasonably low lag interpolation feature for games, very low even for the Q90 (~20ms)

Haven't seen it in action though so I don't know what it's worth.
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Re: Gaming on 77" Oled

Post by Fudoh »

Oh, so they are not "backward compatible"? As in, can't you use a 120Hz monitor/TV with say 60Hz?
of course you can, but then you don't benefit from the 120Hz.

Samsung's low lag interpolation works alright. For gaming it really depends on the type of game. Anything "into the screen" like racing or 3rd person action like Uncharted works quite good. Scrolling is problematic and what's really bad is fluctuating framerates. You want a solid 30 or 60fps source frame rate. Otherwise the hiccups are only intensified.
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Re: Gaming on 77" Oled

Post by Xyga »

Yeah was afraid so, it's almost unevitable.

20 years into flat panels and - besides the plasma parenthesis - nothing's changed yet.
You are a retrogamer ?
Then basic lag and response should still be your #1 concerns along with compatibility with your retro sources.
Forget about gimmicks and myths, always watch for all the display's elementary specs and performance, like you're getting a simple PC monitor.

And that's what makes LG OLEDs the best choice right now bar the burn in worries.
I just wish they made a smaller and cheaper 9 series *sigh*
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Re: Gaming on 77" Oled

Post by Lawfer »

Fudoh wrote:
Oh, so they are not "backward compatible"? As in, can't you use a 120Hz monitor/TV with say 60Hz?
of course you can, but then you don't benefit from the 120Hz.
So say, you're not going for "gaming mode" and don't care about the input lag, would 120Hz processing on 60Hz content show any improvements over 60Hz content on a 60Hz display?
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Re: Gaming on 77" Oled

Post by Fudoh »

So say, you're not going for "gaming mode" and don't care about the input lag, would 120Hz processing on 60Hz content show any improvements over 60Hz content on a 60Hz display?
"120Hz" processing on 60Hz content means interpolationg the the signal to 120Hz. And yes of course, it's great to look at, it just doesn't play any good due to the lag. But again, it depends on the content. I can't imagine any type of frame interpolation to actually look good on pixel material.
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Re: Gaming on 77" Oled

Post by Lawfer »

Fudoh wrote:
So say, you're not going for "gaming mode" and don't care about the input lag, would 120Hz processing on 60Hz content show any improvements over 60Hz content on a 60Hz display?
"120Hz" processing on 60Hz content means interpolationg the the signal to 120Hz. And yes of course, it's great to look at, it just doesn't play any good due to the lag. But again, it depends on the content. I can't imagine any type of frame interpolation to actually look good on pixel material.
I see, thank you for the explanation.
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Re: Gaming on 77" Oled

Post by Classicgamer »

Fudoh wrote:
So say, you're not going for "gaming mode" and don't care about the input lag, would 120Hz processing on 60Hz content show any improvements over 60Hz content on a 60Hz display?
"120Hz" processing on 60Hz content means interpolationg the the signal to 120Hz. And yes of course, it's great to look at, it just doesn't play any good due to the lag. But again, it depends on the content. I can't imagine any type of frame interpolation to actually look good on pixel material.
Stores use frame interpolation to pretend TV's are better than they really are. When 4k first came out my local Best Buy placed 4k sets with interpolation on next to 1080p ones with no processing to show how much more detail users could expect with 4k....

It's a cheap trick but frame interpolation, as horrible as it looks, is a good way of demonstrating the extra detail you can see by doubling the frame rate. It's approximately equivalent to doubling the resolution.

Once you get above a certain pixel density, increasing the resolution further stops having the same impact for me but going from 60hz to 120hz still makes all the difference in the world.
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