remilton Posted April 26, 2015 Share Posted April 26, 2015 You're right about most products having shortcomings; there's always a trade off unless you're willing to spend a fortune on a product without compromises. The difference with Corsair's RGB keyboards is the severity of the problem and the impact is has on one of their main selling points. This transcends the minor annoyances usually seen in mainstream pc hardware and peripherals. It's a major product feature that's nowhere close to what was promised, without any realistic prospect of a solution. For sure it is a disappointment, but not a product breaker. It is only a small percentage of the overall package. The design and build of the KB is still stellar. And even though there is the problem with the smooth gradients, there are still many stunning combinations that can be achieved. So the bottom line is it is still an excellent KB. The fix is in and all that can be done has been done. If you are unhappy with it on a personal level then you can get a refund from Corsair and or find a KB that is more to your liking or maybe wait for Corsair next product. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slayman Posted April 26, 2015 Share Posted April 26, 2015 Any plans to fix the flickering soon? It's really driving me insane. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
idlikemymoney3 Posted April 26, 2015 Share Posted April 26, 2015 Any plans to fix the flickering soon? It's really driving me insane. There are no plans at all. Return the keyboard to Corsair. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kipz Posted April 26, 2015 Share Posted April 26, 2015 This is just shameful really. I can't believe there are no plans at all to try and fix the flickering. It proves that it is a physical limitation. You can apolagise on Corsairs behalf all you want but as a consumer in a free market I will be voting with my wallet and getting a refund. I refuse to reward Corsair with my loyalty when this "Fix" just isn't good enough at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Proffo Posted April 26, 2015 Share Posted April 26, 2015 This is just shameful really. I can't believe there are no plans at all to try and fix the flickering. It proves that it is a physical limitation. You can apolagise on Corsairs behalf all you want but as a consumer in a free market I will be voting with my wallet and getting a refund. I refuse to reward Corsair with my loyalty when this "Fix" just isn't good enough at all. What's shameful is the way they didn't just admit earlier that they'd got a problem with the design of the electronics in these keyboards. Some of us suspected that they'd have trouble implementing the full colour range. I wasn't sure that they could even get 16.8 million colour animation to work, but they have, albeit with flickering. I mentioned a few times that they were still claiming the full colour range, months after it was discovered that only 512 colours were available. Eventually they changed the info on their website which still avoided mentioning 512, it just states "multi color". The explanation has often been "it will be able to produce 16.8m colours", but it's still misleading to potential customers. Hopefully it'll be a lesson learned for Corsair. The marketing and financial departments need to make sure the technical department have got it right before doing their thing. If you release a product that falls short of expectations, it's not going to please too many customers, no matter how good you claim the product still is. And that's the real disappointing thing, these keyboards look and feel great to type on. The physical hardware is pretty good, but it seems we've paid for something that hasn't been delivered, and doesn't look like it will be. There's obviously a demand for RGB mechanical keyboards, and some people will pay a premium for them. All it needs is for a manufacturer to get the key ingredients right - the physical design, the lighting and the software. They'll then probably gain a large share of the market, even if their keyboards cost a little more than their competitors. I think Corsair have got the physical design sorted, the software is OK, if a little complex for some users. The lighting could be sorted if they start looking at a redesign of the electronics. If it's financially viable, that's what they might well do. It may well be that all that's required is to use a more powerful controller. It might cost a more for the redesign and to purchase the silicon, but if it cures the flickering, I'm sure they'll sell plenty of them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
remilton Posted April 26, 2015 Share Posted April 26, 2015 No one is apologizing. Either this Keyboard suits your needs and expectations or it does not. If you find a better KB take your $$ there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Proffo Posted April 26, 2015 Share Posted April 26, 2015 zheren, were you one of the beta testers for this update ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScarredMecha Posted April 26, 2015 Share Posted April 26, 2015 zheren, were you one of the beta testers for this update ? Yeah, he is/was. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Proffo Posted April 26, 2015 Share Posted April 26, 2015 Yeah, he is/was. I thought so. I'm wondering if he/she had anything to say to Corsair about the flickering, and what he/she thinks they should do now "the cat is out of the bag". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrators Technobeard Posted April 26, 2015 Administrators Share Posted April 26, 2015 I thought so. I'm wondering if he/she had anything to say to Corsair about the flickering, and what he/she thinks they should do now "the cat is out of the bag".Keep in mind that the NDA is still in effect. Beta testers cannot talk about any privileged information. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Proffo Posted April 26, 2015 Share Posted April 26, 2015 Keep in mind that the NDA is still in effect. Beta testers cannot talk about any privileged information. I'll expect no answer then. It's all a bit "Top Secret" isn't it ? I'm sure your competitors don't want to know what went wrong anyway ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
remilton Posted April 26, 2015 Share Posted April 26, 2015 As I have previously said this has not really been a deal breaker for me (the flickering) but I have come to a decision. Seeing that I still have a perfectly good K90 KB sitting around doing nothing, My K95 is being returned tomorrow and I will wait for Corsair to fix their problem which I am sure they will. Every company occasionally makes mistakes and over all Corsair makes superior products. I will anxiously await their KB revision. Edit 5/9/15: Changed my mind. Staying with my K95 RGB. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inheritance Posted April 26, 2015 Share Posted April 26, 2015 End of the day this is wants going to happen. Their going to make more RGB keyboards, duh. Their going to fix the issues with the first one, duh. Their not going to do anything about the lack of colors other then offer a refund, duh. Now the technical side of why things dont work. Im a cat i dont understand complex things meow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wytnyt Posted April 26, 2015 Share Posted April 26, 2015 At the end of the day,its just a keyboard...;): Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Proffo Posted April 26, 2015 Share Posted April 26, 2015 End of the day this is wants going to happen. Their going to make more RGB keyboards, duh. Their going to fix the issues with the first one, duh. Their not going to do anything about the lack of colors other then offer a refund, duh. Now the technical side of why things dont work. Im a cat i dont understand complex things meow. It's "they're", not "their", duh. ;): Oh, and at the end of the day it's time for sleep. Goodnight ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jucko13 Posted April 26, 2015 Share Posted April 26, 2015 Ok, I just found out why (I think) the keyboard is flickering with the new update. What they did to achieve the 16.8m colors is to change the protocol (not that much tho). What they previously did was sending a 64byte packet 5 times with all the RGB codes. When you select the 16.8m color option in the GUI of corsair it will send 12 packets of 64bytes. They use a bulkmessage to send the 12 packets as fast as posible but the hardware cant really handle that much information at the same time. What i did in my own software is add a really small delay (5 milliseconds) between every 4 packets (so 3x a delay) and that removed the flickering for my software. maybe someone from corsair is reading this and can fix it by just a little software update ;) Here is a screenshot of the simple GUI i made (just for programming profiles when im not at home) http://i.imgur.com/BDYba5V.png Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
delslow Posted April 27, 2015 Share Posted April 27, 2015 Ok, I just found out why (I think) the keyboard is flickering with the new update. What they did to achieve the 16.8m colors is to change the protocol (not that much tho). What they previously did was sending a 64byte packet 5 times with all the RGB codes. When you select the 16.8m color option in the GUI of corsair it will send 12 packets of 64bytes. They use a bulkmessage to send the 12 packets as fast as posible but the hardware cant really handle that much information at the same time. What i did in my own software is add a really small delay (5 milliseconds) between every 4 packets (so 3x a delay) and that removed the flickering for my software. maybe someone from corsair is reading this and can fix it by just a little software update ;) Here is a screenshot of the simple GUI i made (just for programming profiles when im not at home) http://i.imgur.com/BDYba5V.png You know if this works, it would make Corsair look really bad. I'm gonna assume, no, it doesn't work for CUE because. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScarredMecha Posted April 27, 2015 Share Posted April 27, 2015 Ok, I just found out why (I think) the keyboard is flickering with the new update. What they did to achieve the 16.8m colors is to change the protocol (not that much tho). What they previously did was sending a 64byte packet 5 times with all the RGB codes. When you select the 16.8m color option in the GUI of corsair it will send 12 packets of 64bytes. They use a bulkmessage to send the 12 packets as fast as posible but the hardware cant really handle that much information at the same time. What i did in my own software is add a really small delay (5 milliseconds) between every 4 packets (so 3x a delay) and that removed the flickering for my software. maybe someone from corsair is reading this and can fix it by just a little software update ;) Here is a screenshot of the simple GUI i made (just for programming profiles when im not at home) http://i.imgur.com/BDYba5V.png You should make this available to everyone, it looks really good! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jucko13 Posted April 27, 2015 Share Posted April 27, 2015 The flickering is sometimes back but it's almost gone. and when its back you almost do not notice it. but after some testing it is really much much much better than the CUE xD Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jucko13 Posted April 27, 2015 Share Posted April 27, 2015 You should make this available to everyone, it looks really good! What the problem with my GUI is, is that it's made in Visual Basic 6.0:D: I want to put this code online but the change of creating problems with the libusb drivers are way too high right now. When im done with some c++ tutorials maybe this will be ported to c++ but for now i will keep working in VB6. oh btw, it looks like all the colors (16.8m) are there but im not that sure yet. Testing an rainbow effect with over 2000 points and its really smooth. Finally :D: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
delslow Posted April 27, 2015 Share Posted April 27, 2015 What the problem with my GUI is, is that it's made in Visual Basic 6.0:D: I want to put this code online but the change of creating problems with the libusb drivers are way too high right now. When im done with some c++ tutorials maybe this will be ported to c++ but for now i will keep working in VB6. oh btw, it looks like all the colors (16.8m) are there but im not that sure yet. Testing an rainbow effect with over 2000 points and its really smooth. Finally :D: Oh Jucko13, you got my hopes up... maybe someone from Corsair will contact you and ask for your advice? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
egret85 Posted April 27, 2015 Share Posted April 27, 2015 Since the flickering is basically tied to what a specific lighting is occurring, corsair should make the 16.8 mil color setting part of the lighting settings for a mode instead of it being a global setting. This would allow us to enable or disable the setting based on the lighting that is being used for a mode and thus we could have it enabled when lighting isn't that complex and does not cause flickering and could disable it with lighting that causes the flickering. Since the setting is already applied live, this should be that hard of a change to make. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jong Posted April 27, 2015 Share Posted April 27, 2015 For the record I'm very happy with 512 colours. - works for me although I understand some will have bought with different expectations and it's good Corsair are offering refunds to those people. But what I don't understand is why the "old" mode seems to be 3x3x3 colors, but the new mode is 8x8x8. If the top bit was not useable I'd expect 7x7x7 or 2M colors. Does this mean there might be the possibility of 4x4x4 at least? Maybe there is a good reason, maybe it's felt a waste of time, because it wouldn't satisfy those demanding 16M. But 8 times as many colors would still be nice for most of us and could (presumably) be the new baseline. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elefantito Posted April 27, 2015 Share Posted April 27, 2015 For the record I'm very happy with 512 colours. - works for me although I understand some will have bought with different expectations and it's good Corsair are offering refunds to those people. But what I don't understand is why the "old" mode seems to be 3x3x3 colors, but the new mode is 8x8x8. If the top bit was not useable I'd expect 7x7x7 or 2M colors. Does this mean there might be the possibility of 4x4x4 at least? Maybe there is a good reason, maybe it's felt a waste of time, because it wouldn't satisfy those demanding 16M. But 8 times as many colors would still be nice for most of us and could (presumably) be the new baseline. A user from the forums said that they looked at that possibility and that it was deemed not possible. Why? I don't know, it makes perfect sense to improve the 512 color range to something less taxing than 16.8M, say 16bit (65k) while keeping the flickering away. At least we have all the cards on the table now, this is as good as this keyboard gets. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jong Posted April 27, 2015 Share Posted April 27, 2015 Yep, I did see that and quite possibly there is a very good reason. Still, I find it odd that the current implementation seems to use 3 bits per channel, yet the 16.8M mode uses 8 bits per channel. 3 bits is a strange number. I wasn't involved in the beta and so had no access to the beta forums, but it could be that they were only looking at numbers close to 16M and 6 or 7 bits per channel WERE impossible and/or wouldn't help with performance. On the other hand 4 bits (which is a more logical "computer friendly" number, normally) might just be possible. On the other, other hand(!) they might just not want to open that can of worms! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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