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Light flickering with type lighting(heat map typing)


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Hey, so I just updated my CUE and KB firmware and yes, everything is smoother but I noticed the type lighting if you press multiple keys at once, the lights start flickering on the keyboard... This happens on the 16.8 mil color mode only..

 

Corsair guys: will this be fixed soon?

 

General public: do you experience this issue?

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They know about the flickering. Apparently the hardware isn't up to snuff.

 

Each of us see colors differently so you may or may not perceive a huge difference with 16.8 million color mode enabled. Visit our forums, load up a few profiles and see for yourself. Hopefully you like what you see. Similarly, some users may notice flicker in some combination of effects. While reducing flicker is possible, this would have impacted the keyboard response time. Performance is top priority at Corsair and we made the decision to keep the advance lighting options available despite some side effects. We hope you agree and if you find the flicker objectionable, you can revert to the original color mode for certain lighting profiles.
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Oh yeah, I definitely notice it. Hopefully it's something that can be fixed in the future with software optimizations, but I fear it's something that might not be able to be fixed due to hardware constraints.

 

That is also my fear.... But if you think about it, why would corsair advertise the keyboard as 16.8 million colors if the hardware could not handle it?

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There are going to be some cases where 16.8m color mode isn't optimal for certain lighting profiles due to the byproduct of flicker. This was why the box when checked/unchecked affects the lighting in real time so you all can decide what is best.

 

The flickering can not be fixed without sacrificing performance.

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The flickering can not be fixed without sacrificing performance.

 

Honestly I find this absolutely ridiculous... They claim the keyboard can show 16.8 million colors, and it can only display 512. They make us wait 8 weeks after the statement from the CEO (which is long after the initial release of the keyboard) then finally they release the update claiming 16.8 million colors but it turns out it doesn't have the capability to run it.. Absolutely rediculous and I am sure many people will agree with me here...

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Well it seems the engineers screwed up big when picking out parts for these keyboards. The competition has had the full color spectrum and fluid animation from the start, yet Corsair still hasn't been able to achieve that :/ Oh well.. At least my light blue doesn't look cyan..
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Well it seems the engineers screwed up big when picking out parts for these keyboards. The competition has had the full color spectrum and fluid animation from the start, yet Corsair still hasn't been able to achieve that :/ Oh well.. At least my light blue doesn't look cyan..

 

Yup seems like it... Wow..

 

Honestly I would love to hear something from a corsair employee so we can see what is actually going to happen with our keyboards.

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yeah Im quite depressedly disappointed, I really had high hopes for this. My decision isnt 100% made til i see a video of the flickering but im leaning against this.

 

If I end up decide not to get this my next question is; when is V2 coming out with all the features working as expected (without flicker for example)

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yeah Im quite depressedly disappointed, I really had high hopes for this. My decision isnt 100% made til i see a video of the flickering but im leaning against this.

 

If I end up decide not to get this my next question is; when is V2 coming out with all the features working as expected (without flicker for example)

 

Not noticing this flickering.

 

edit: oh heat map 1 sec...

 

edit: still not seeing this.

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Well it seems the engineers screwed up big when picking out parts for these keyboards. The competition has had the full color spectrum and fluid animation from the start, yet Corsair still hasn't been able to achieve that :/ Oh well.. At least my light blue doesn't look cyan..

 

To be technically accurate, every controller has a limitation of some sort but by restricting what you can and cannot do, you can hide this limitation. In all honesty, we could have done the same too but most people don't mind the limited palette and rather have the full customization options. It isn't the most ideal situation like I've said in a previous post but I still feel we have an amazing product that can do things no one else can.

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So if you are using "per key" lighting and trying to select one of the 16.8 million colors, the flickering does NOT happen, right?

 

It only happens when using custom color effects where the colors change rapidly? (e.g., ripple, wave, marquee, snake, breathing, etc?)

 

If YES, and per key customization gives the full complete palette without flickering (lets say, setting every key on your keyboard to a unique color, e.g, in RGB values, Q=255,128,16, W= 240, 192, 150, E=66, 75, 90 ,etc, all without flickering, if THAT Is the case, I'm willing to cut corsair some slack here.

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So if you are using "per key" lighting and trying to select one of the 16.8 million colors, the flickering does NOT happen, right?

 

It only happens when using custom color effects where the colors change rapidly? (e.g., ripple, wave, marquee, snake, breathing, etc?)

 

If YES, and per key customization gives the full complete palette without flickering (lets say, setting every key on your keyboard to a unique color, e.g, in RGB values, Q=255,128,16, W= 240, 192, 150, E=66, 75, 90 ,etc, all without flickering, if THAT Is the case, I'm willing to cut corsair some slack here.

 

If a key is assigned a color with no animation, there is no flicker. The flicker only occurs during foreground animation.

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I am a bit on the fence on this for now. While the flicker is annoying, the fact is that in general I use per key colors for my profiles. The animations are mostly good for demonstration purpose and not very useful for gaming or productivity apps.
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I wonder if reducing the number of colors from 16.8 million to say 8.4 would reduce the flicker? I seriously doubt if anyone could tell the difference. Or even 4.2 million colors. Heck anything past a few thousand is probably overkill. The difference from a practical standpoint is really just a marketing thing. I know I would be willing to take the hit if it made the flicker imperceptible.
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I wonder if reducing the number of colors from 16.8 million to say 8.4 would reduce the flicker? I seriously doubt if anyone could tell the difference. Or even 4.2 million colors. Heck anything past a few thousand is probably overkill. The difference from a practical standpoint is really just a marketing thing. I know I would be willing to take the hit if it made the flicker imperceptible.

 

That's a good question. I imagine most users would be willing to halve the number of colours to remove or reduce the flickering. If reducing colours would help, perhaps Corsair could add 8.4m and 4.2m tick boxes underneath the 16.8m option in CUE?

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That's a good question. I imagine most users would be willing to halve the number of colours to remove or reduce the flickering. If reducing colours would help, perhaps Corsair could add 8.4m and 4.2m tick boxes underneath the 16.8m option in CUE?

 

Honestly, I think this would reduce / remove the flickering, but two things:

1) They advertised 16.8 million colors and claimed to be able to provide it - although now they have provided it, but barely any profiles work without flickering...

 

2) Our eyes can only see 7,000,000 colors at max, meaning if corsair did reduce the color display range it would have the same ability as 16.8 million colors, and would probably work with the hardware.

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That's a good question. I imagine most users would be willing to halve the number of colours to remove or reduce the flickering. If reducing colours would help, perhaps Corsair could add 8.4m and 4.2m tick boxes underneath the 16.8m option in CUE?

 

You can't just create an arbitrary value like that.

Do you know how binary math works?

 

512 was 8 x 8 x 8.

 

16 million colors is 256x256x256. (16,777,216)

256 by itself is all 8 bits active:

128+64+32+16+8+4+2+1.

That's actually 255 (which gives us 16,581,375)

256 is the next bit over (bit 8)

But its unknown if bits 0-7 are being used (For 255) or bit 8 is being used (For 256). But not to go massively off subject,

 

But you can only have a value of the 3 same numbers x 3

So 128x128x128, is 2,097,152

 

So you can see, reducing the # of individual color channels by half (256 to 128) gives you an almost 80% REDUCTION of # of total colors!

 

So it's NOT so simple, guys.

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I might be wrong, but my understanding is that to implement 16.8m colours, the firmware had to be changed to allow the entire colour palette to be updated when any LED changes colour. I'm not sure of the specific detail, but even if you reduce the colour range from 24 bits to 16 bits (65,536 colours), the load on the CPU might not reduce enough to eliminate the flicker.
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Honestly I find this absolutely ridiculous... They claim the keyboard can show 16.8 million colors, and it can only display 512. They make us wait 8 weeks after the statement from the CEO (which is long after the initial release of the keyboard) then finally they release the update claiming 16.8 million colors but it turns out it doesn't have the capability to run it.. Absolutely rediculous and I am sure many people will agree with me here...

 

Honest question...but do they actually say 'The keyboard can SHOW 16.8mill colors' because on the front of my box it just says '16.8mill colors per key backlighting' which could be read in a way that means yes there are 16.8mill colors which you can CHOOSE from but they can't all be SHOWN per key, or is it also not possible to choose from 16.8mill colors? Maybe i've missed something so please correct me if so.

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You can't just create an arbitrary value like that.

Do you know how binary math works?

 

512 was 8 x 8 x 8.

 

16 million colors is 256x256x256. (16,777,216)

256 by itself is all 8 bits active:

128+64+32+16+8+4+2+1.

That's actually 255 (which gives us 16,581,375)

256 is the next bit over (bit 8)

But its unknown if bits 0-7 are being used (For 255) or bit 8 is being used (For 256). But not to go massively off subject,

 

But you can only have a value of the 3 same numbers x 3

So 128x128x128, is 2,097,152

 

So you can see, reducing the # of individual color channels by half (256 to 128) gives you an almost 80% REDUCTION of # of total colors!

 

So it's NOT so simple, guys.

 

Thanks for the explanation. While a reduction from 16.8m to 2.1m sounds significant, I don't think it would have much of an impact on colour gradients and fluidity of animations. There is a noticeable difference between 512 and 16.8m but 2.1m is still more than 4000 times as many colours as the original number. I'm not an expert but I'm guessing a 2.1m colour range would be indistinguishable from a 16.m range on keyboard LEDs. If this is correct and a lower range would remove flickering, adding a 2.1m option into CUE is a no-brainer.

 

If it was put into CUE as an option alongside the 16.8m check-box, I doubt there'd be any backlash. Corsair's RGB keyboards would still be capable of 16.8m colours and no one would be forced to use the lower range. CUE already allows users to limit the range to 512 colours so including a 2.1m colour is hardly controversial.

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