I’m gonna get downvoted to oblivion for this…
I just got my new OLED and weirdly enough, upon booting it I saw something that I didn’t even think of till now. With the new OLED, the sub-pixel arrangement is slightly different than the LCD, and it’s causing white edge (specially on text) to have this green/magenta fringing. It’s extremely faint, and it’s not particular to the Steam Deck since I know of other OLED panels that have the same fringing. However I have heard zero mention of this and I have to say that although this matters close to nothing while playing videogames, it’s something I do see with subtitles.
With this out of the way, the screen looks amazing and I’m more than ready to sell and replace my LCD deck now. I hope the technology gets there where this isn’t an issue anymore!
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OLED subpixel layout causing chromatic fringing has been known for years, and needs to be fixed at the OS-level.
It all has to do with how the OS handles anti-aliasing of text. With no AA, text looks blocky and unpleasant to look at, but effective AA makes it smooth and attractive. The process responsible for this AA treatment is called ClearType in Windows, and other OS’s have their own processes. However, it works best with the common LCD subpixel layout as seen above, and is calibrated for this structure. It looks strange on OLEDs. You will need a software fix to address it; maybe Valve will include something similar.
ugh, yes. as an owner of the Alienware AW3423DW i have to set the ClearType to monochrome. i really wish vesa would make a standard so that the os can either get this info from the monitor or it’s just done like a driver.
Valve can control settings for text anti-aliasing in Steam, Steam’s Game Mode UI, and in the KDE that it shows with SteamOS, but subtitles and other text in games typically aren’t drawn by the OS but directly by the game’s own renderer. I don’t know if it would be possible for something like Gamescope to apply some sort of “filter” to games to mitigate poor text rendering in games; such filter would have to apply to the whole screen and might cause strange artifacts elsewhere.
What model OLED do you have? The limited edition models have an OLED panel from BOE while the others have an OLED panel from Samsung. This has resulted in slight differences between those models.
While there are reports from some about dead pixels on the BOE panels and not on the Samsung panels, there seem to be reports of a greenish tint under certain conditions that I believe are from the Samsung panels.
Not sure if that’s related to this or if the BOE panel also suffers from the greenish tint, but it would be neat to see a close-up shot like this comparing the two OLED panels.
Mine is samsung. it does gave a greenish tint but it’s most likely unrelated to this, I’d think. That one doesn’t really bother me at all because it’s only noticeable when compared to the LCD colors, and I still prefer the more vibrant OLED ones. would be nice to have a BOE panel to compare and take another picture, yeah
Text does look bad on this. I assumed it was cause of the low res. Good to know.
Maybe I’m a luddite but can you explain in more detail what I should be noticing? The colors in the second picture look less white but I otherwise don’t understand what’s wrong.
Do you have an example of what you’re seeing that isn’t so zoomed in on individual pixels?
yeah someome in the comments posted a pic of what this looks like on other screens, when it’s more noticeable: https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/s/aCS7wPe7rl
If you look on the microscope pics, the left edges have a greener edge whereas the right edges have a more reddish/magenta fringe
This is very interesting because I thought it was a stripe but apparently not…
If you turn off anti-aliasing, the fringes will go away but then you won’t have “smooth” edges. You could also alternatively use greyscale AA instead of subpixel AA (which would be using the individual RGB subpixels).
for greyscale in the .fonts.conf file for “rgba” have it say “none” as the value instead of “rgb”.
I noticed it immediately upon seeing the boot animation. Noticed colors on the edges of the white parts. Won’t bother me during gameplay though
Do you think applying a matte screen protector could help mitigate the issue ? Since it will blur out a lot of the sharpness of pixel edges or introduce what would be commonly referred to as “free antialiasing”
i hate how we have to tip toe our way for a criticism. we all love the steam deck, but we should be able to voice an opinion without inserting praise in fear of “getting downvoted to oblivion”
This sort of issue is why i sent an Alienware QD-OLED monitor back - it was terrible for productivity (think color fringing) for gaming i don’t tend care or notice.
This can be fixed at OS level, hopefully valve does that.
MS seem to be ignoring the issue on desktop monitors, despite several decades ago windows having settings for different sub pixel layouts
This is actually fascinating.
So much blue, and so little red.
curious to see this kinda shot on the BOE panel just to compare it to Samsung panel since might help explain why ppl are experiencing more Mura effects on samsung screens
I have this on my alienware OLED monitor. bothered me for a week. not anymore
I’m glad your post didn’t get downvoted into oblivion like mine did.
It’s not a dealbreaker by any means and I’m happy with my upgrade, but it absolutely is a drawback to OLED.
https://old.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/182ibx7/steam_deck_oled_looks_great_but_im_reminded_of/
oh wow, sorry to hear that!
I wish i didn’t see it, like others. Don’t know if i have picky eyesight or everyone else doesn’t even know what to look for. Nevertheless happy to hear I’m not the only one that noticed this and I’m not taking crazy pills
I just got my SD OLED and I hate the green and red tint that it has im white at the edges :(