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Trying to get past the 500 nits limit of the MacBook Pro (and failing)

alinpanaitiu.com

11–20 of 87 posts

Re: Trying to get past the 500 nits limit of the MacBook Pro (and failing)

#11
post #3

I was amazed by how bright this page could get, on both Macbook and iPhone — https://kidi.ng/wanna-see-a-whiter-white/ — and I want to figure out how to use this superwhite on my interactive tutorials. But as far as I can see, canvas, svg, and webgl can't access it.

This was serious cool to see

Re: Trying to get past the 500 nits limit of the MacBook Pro (and failing)

#12
post #8

It's easy to write an app that displays arbitrary graphics at 1600 nits on the MacBook Pro. You just have to use the Metal API, an "extended" color space, and a Float colorPixelFormat. I'm not sure that this blog post author is trying to accomplish, possibly they are trying to use some other API besides Metal?

I believe the author wanted the entire screen framebuffer to be displayed at 1600 nits. I.e. effectively cranking the brightness up to 11.

I see they finally invented the at home xray

Re: Trying to get past the 500 nits limit of the MacBook Pro (and failing)

#14
post #8

It's easy to write an app that displays arbitrary graphics at 1600 nits on the MacBook Pro. You just have to use the Metal API, an "extended" color space, and a Float colorPixelFormat. I'm not sure that this blog post author is trying to accomplish, possibly they are trying to use some other API besides Metal?

I believe the author wanted the entire screen framebuffer to be displayed at 1600 nits. I.e. effectively cranking the brightness up to 11.

Or, like, 800.

Re: Trying to get past the 500 nits limit of the MacBook Pro (and failing)

#16
post #3

I was amazed by how bright this page could get, on both Macbook and iPhone — https://kidi.ng/wanna-see-a-whiter-white/ — and I want to figure out how to use this superwhite on my interactive tutorials. But as far as I can see, canvas, svg, and webgl can't access it.

Even on 100% brightness, an iPhone Pro 13 shows the "White" text significantly brighter than the background white.

Some other interesting observations:

- If I zoom in, the over-100%-bright text fades until it blends in with the background. This is expected (OLEDs have higher peak brightness for small areas), but what isn't expected is that it seems to do it in discontinuous steps.

- If I go outside into full sunlight, the contrast between the page and text is lower. This is again an iPhone feature in action where "maximum brightness" is actually further boosted in bright conditions.

- The text takes a few seconds to reach maximum brightness. I expected it to start at full brightness and fade, but it seems to do the opposite...

I can understand why the notion programmers have that "color" is an RGB triple of 8-bit integers from 0 to 255 is so attractive. It's a simple mental model with no complexity. But to get the most out of modern displays, we have to abandon such childishly simple models. Each color channel will need to be 10 bit minimum, 16 if using linear light. Peak brightness becomes this complex many-faceted thing with per channel maximums, all-channel maximums, and variations based on both time and area!

Re: Trying to get past the 500 nits limit of the MacBook Pro (and failing)

#17
post #8

It's easy to write an app that displays arbitrary graphics at 1600 nits on the MacBook Pro. You just have to use the Metal API, an "extended" color space, and a Float colorPixelFormat. I'm not sure that this blog post author is trying to accomplish, possibly they are trying to use some other API besides Metal?

The author is the author of lunar - https://lunar.fyi/ - an app for controlling screen brightness on external (and internal) screens on the Mac. He is trying to force the system to brighten the entire screen to the levels it will brighten light spots in an HDR video.

Re: Trying to get past the 500 nits limit of the MacBook Pro (and failing)

#18
Absolutely love that someone's trying to do this. I was scouting around for a way too [1]

I take 5 minutes to ride from home/office to a table in a nearby park to work from there for 1-2 hours. It's so healthy and invigorating, and the change of scenery can inspire creativity.

But it's hard to justify when nuances on the screen become imperceptible under bright sun light. 1-200 more nits would change that. And the 2021 16" MBPs are technically capable of up to 1600 nits!

[1] https://apple.stackexchange.com/q/429798

Re: Trying to get past the 500 nits limit of the MacBook Pro (and failing)

#19
post #3

I was amazed by how bright this page could get, on both Macbook and iPhone — https://kidi.ng/wanna-see-a-whiter-white/ — and I want to figure out how to use this superwhite on my interactive tutorials. But as far as I can see, canvas, svg, and webgl can't access it.

Even on 100% brightness, an iPhone Pro 13 shows the "White" text significantly brighter than the background white. Some other interesting observations: - If I zoom in, the over-100%-bright text fades until it blends in with the background. This is expected (OLEDs have higher peak brightness for small areas), but what isn't expected is that it seems to do it in discontinuous steps. - If I go outside into full sunlight…

The reason why it acts this way is because of oled heat, power and burn in limits. On a microled display such limits wouldn’t occur nearly as much. HDR color in programming will mostly just be a bigger color value. All the other stuff is display by display model specific. We have such variation in sdr displays too, and most programmers never really think about the color profile of the display either.
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