After 4+ years of searing retinas, Google finally agrees that dark modes help battery life (and saves your eyes)

[Mira Yurizaki]

Maybe we can just say people somehow are wired for one more than the other and there's no scientific evidence to suggest one is objectively better than the other on the eyes.

 

People say they get headaches if something's not at 60 FPS. I played games at 10 FPS. So clearly someone's hardwired to need something smooth and I'm hardwired to not be bothered by it.

 

People get fatigued looking at a monitor all day. I don't and I don't wear those special glasses. So maybe I'm hardwired differently than those people.

[Drak3]

8 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Maybe we can just say people somehow are wired for one more than the other

But Ralsei, beating people up is much more fun than being nice.

[bcredeur97]

guys! black, red, and green is the way to go.

Christmas forever

[JoeCoke]

1 hour ago, RorzNZ said:

Said it before but if your eyes hurt on a simple light display, then there may be some underlying issue. Try adding light around your screen or a lamp on your desk. It's not natural to be looking at a screen for hours on end anyway if you do. 

In my case the light does not hurt or even irritate my eyes, I just find it a lot easier to focus and read white text on a dark background than vice versa. Besides, I find black themes more relaxing. If I'm coding for hours straight, dark backgrounds really do help.

[Drak3]

9 minutes ago, bcredeur97 said:

guys! black, red, and green is the way to go.

Christmas forever

I'm more of a fan of blue, green and purple.

 

Or blue and the color of excellence and spaggetti.

[GDRRiley]

will this finally mean more dark themes for websites? 

Please make it so all you web devs. 

[Canada EH]

6 hours ago, tealghost said:

#wanshow

uh huh

 

your first post

 

wanshow is fun

[Sauron]

About time.

 

Skytube is a superior app anyway...

[Shadow Bullet]

I ONLY use dark mode is a application supports it. I don't even know why light mode is even still a thing, I just prefer dark mode on ANYTHING. Unless forced to, it's dark mode for everything over here.

[mr moose]

2 hours ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Maybe we can just say people somehow are wired for one more than the other and there's no scientific evidence to suggest one is objectively better than the other on the eyes.

 

People say they get headaches if something's not at 60 FPS. I played games at 10 FPS. So clearly someone's hardwired to need something smooth and I'm hardwired to not be bothered by it.

 

People get fatigued looking at a monitor all day. I don't and I don't wear those special glasses. So maybe I'm hardwired differently than those people.

Pretty much this, too many tech idiots think they understand biology enough to make absolutes statements.  It's probable much more likely that those claiming they get headaches at a certain FPS are just experiencing a self deluded form of placebo.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, XenosTech said:

Adding more light doesn't exactly help, in some cases that speeds up eye fatigue. For example I can't be in brightly light places at night, my head would hurt and my vision gets blurry and my vision is fine since my last 8 trips to the eye doctor.

 

Dark themed stuff is generally way easier to look at that a white background searing away your retinas

If you're having 8 trips to the doctor that generally translates that you do have an eyesight impairment. Just put the light on in your room, your eyes are slow and need to adjust. Regardless if you're having problems with your eyes and the computer, it's time to switch off for an hour or two. 

[Amazonsucks]

2 hours ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Maybe we can just say people somehow are wired for one more than the other and there's no scientific evidence to suggest one is objectively better than the other on the eyes.

 

People say they get headaches if something's not at 60 FPS. I played games at 10 FPS. So clearly someone's hardwired to need something smooth and I'm hardwired to not be bothered by it.

 

People get fatigued looking at a monitor all day. I don't and I don't wear those special glasses. So maybe I'm hardwired differently than those people.

 

Rhodopsin mediated photo reversal and increased reactive oxygen species production in the retinal pigment epithelium are well studied biological phenomena.

 

Light sources with a strong blue component in their spectral power distribution relative to other wavelengths DOES cause damage by the two modes i just mentioned.

 

This is why "cool white" LED, CFL or a monitor with a high CCT white point, or sitting in a dark room with blue LEDs on are all worse for your eyes than a day in the Sun. Sunlight filtered through Earth's atmosphere has a lot of red, orange, yellow and green wavelengths, which prevents rhodopsin mediated photoreversal which bluish screens or artificial lights cause. 

 

It is not the intensity of the light, but rather the wavelength of light that damages the retina. The retinal pigment epithelium is also the most metabolically active tissue in the human body, so it is quite susceptible to ROS induced damage.

 

People whose dietary intake of the macular pigment carotenoids lutein and zeaxanthin are more susceptible to blue light induced retinal damage as well.

 

The other aspect of blue light is circadian rythm disruption via the intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells, which are triggered by blue light to stop melatonin secretion. Melatonin being a necessary hormone to live and also regulate your sleep cycle is quite important to overall health. 

 

There are a buttload of research papers on google about these subjects for anyone interested in protecting their vision.

 

 

[Mira Yurizaki]

52 minutes ago, Amazonsucks said:

-Snip-

The retinal damage study was done on rats. Any study done on rats doesn't necessarily mean it has the same effects on humans, at least at the scales tested. Not to mention that this is a relatively new field of study, so there's no real conclusive evidence on the long term effects of what we expose ourselves to. We only have a link that blue light may cause damage.

 

Besides that, we're exposed to blue light all the time. What do you think that big ball of fire in the sky is producing?

[Drak3]

3 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

What do you think that big ball of fire in the sky is producing?

Friendship and yummy cake?

[MoonSpot]

12 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

What do you think that big ball of fire in the sky is producing?

Actually the sun is mostly a green star.  The lions share of what the atmo filters out is indeed blue.  Blue does get filtered out(or scattered) more than the other colours by the atmosphere.  Thats way the sky is blue and not white.

 

Quote

Our sun is a green star. That being said, the sun is a “green” star, or more specifically, a green-blue star, whose peak wavelength lies clearly in the transition area on the spectrum between blue and green.  This is not just an idle fact, but is important because the temperature of a star is related to the color of its most predominate wavelength of emission. (Whew!) In the sun’s case, the surface temperature is about 5,800 K, or 500 nanometers, a green-blue. However, as indicated above, when the human eye factors in the other colors around it, the sun’s apparent color comes out a white or even a yellowish white.
 

https://earthsky.org/space/ten-things-you-may-not-know-about-stars#sun

 

http://solar-center.stanford.edu/SID/activities/GreenSun.html

[GoodBytes]

Blue light doesn't cause eye damage... night light is blue... dark blue... and sky is blue. Our eyes are very good at seeing green and blue (probably because the sky is blue and grass is green). What the study suggest is the same as "Carrots will kill you! If you eat carrots and only carrots, and nothing else but carrots for several weeks... you will DIE! Avoid all carrots!". The purpose of the study highlights the obvious: moderation in everything. The little blue light form your phone display, or LED street lights doesn't cause any eye damage. It's nothing new. If you are trying to link wearing glasses and using computer displays/phones all day, then this has NOTHING to do with color. It has to do with you growing up with you looking at things close all the time instead of far or balance (excluding genetics, of course).

 

This is like saying radiation from the sun is bad for you.. well sure, but every leaving thing on the planet has thing called skin, which provide protection against the normal radiation of the sun. The body, like anything living creation on this planet is adaptable due to protection layers it has developed.

[Mira Yurizaki]

9 minutes ago, MoonSpot said:

Actually the sun is mostly a green star.  The lions share of what the atmo filters out is indeed blue.

https://earthsky.org/space/ten-things-you-may-not-know-about-stars#sun

That doesn't mean blue light (if we consider blue light to be between 450nm and 500nm) isn't far behind

 

[Nowak]

9 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

Friendship and yummy cake?

That's Ralsei, not the sun.

[Drak3]

Just now, Nowak said:

That's Ralsei, not the sun.

Ralsei is my sun.

[GoodBytes]

3 hours ago, M.Yurizaki said:

People get fatigued looking at a monitor all day. I don't and I don't wear those special glasses. So maybe I'm hardwired differently than those people.

Actually, for many people that face eye problem, PWM or the flicking of the display (for the case of CRT) is the main cause.

In the old days, most consumers and office bought the cheapest CRT monitor, which could only go to 60Hz, and used horrible phosphor layer creating a lot of flickering. 60Hz flicker is crazy annoying. Today, the issue is monitors using PWM circuit to save money (or power in the case of mobile devices), instead of using a dimming circuit. These flicker are based on the screen brightness. Some people feel a sign a relief when they set their screen brightness to 100% (which turns off the flicking from PWM circuit) despite having their eyes hurt from the strong brightness of the screen.

 

The same problem applies with CFL powered backlit monitors, and even CFL lights in office. The crap one flicker due to the poor layer of phosphor in them, while the more premium ones don't (and that is aside terrible CRI level the cheap one can produce affecting the color of everything... but that is a different topic and not related to this issue)

 

[Mira Yurizaki]

And I should point out that a lot of things with health effects appear to only have a risk factor associated with it depending on how much you're exposed to the situation. Just because something says "may" or "can", doesn't mean it "will." Influenza can cause death, but for a perfectly healthy individual, that doesn't mean it will.

 

Just now, GoodBytes said:

-snip-

Even then, I didn't have a problem with CRTs, CFLs (I also lived in Japan where almost all of their indoor lighting is fluorescent), or PWM based lighting systems. And by "didn't have a problem", I mean I didn't have the physical symptoms people say they're experiencing.

 

But I find it hard to believe I'm some magical unicorn and everyone else has problems.

[Amazonsucks]

16 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

The retinal damage study was done on rats. Any study done on rats doesn't necessarily mean it has the same effects on humans, at least at the scales tested. Not to mention that this is a relatively new field of study, so there's no real conclusive evidence on the long term effects of what we expose ourselves to. We only have a link that blue light may cause damage.

 

Besides that, we're exposed to blue light all the time. What do you think that big ball of fire in the sky is producing?

Well, as I just got done attempting to explain, the damage caused by light with a strong blue component in its spectral power distribution is wavelength dependent not intensity dependent.The fact that the spectral power distribution lacks the longer wavelengths present in sunlight, is precisely the reason that it causes rhodopsin mediated photoreversal and the associated damage.

 

It is not really disputed that the processes of rhodopsin mediated photoreversal and increased reactive oxygen species production take place in humans. What is disputed, is whether or not the exposure levels will cause noticeable damage. If you have a really healthy diet that includes tons of the macular pigment carotenoids, you'd likely be less affected than someone who doesn't. Age plays a factor in reactive oxygen species scavenging capabilities. As you get older your antioxidant response gets depleted, so someone who is older would likely suffer more damage, all other things being equal.

 

But that doesn't change the fact that these processes occur, or why they occur. The conflation of "oh well the Sun has a lot of blue light in its spectrum" with an artificial light source, which has comparatively much more blue relative to other wavelengths is either a profound misunderstanding photometry or intentionally making misleading statements. Sunlight does not produce the same damage because of the very nature of the light in question. Sunlight's SPD has the longer wavelengths that keep the retinal cells photobleached and prevent them from "resetting" and firing over and over, which is the way that rhodopsin mediated photo reversal damages the retina.

 

The sky is also blue, but the overall correlated colour temperature of mid day sunlight is guess what: 5500K, which is a full 1000K lower than the white point of an sRGB calirated monitor or Rec.709, Rec.2020 calibrated TV. Combine that with the fact that most screens are backlit by shitty WLEDs and have white point CCTs of 7000K or higher, and you have a recipe for rhodopsin mediated photo reversal or at the very least increased ROS production in the retinal pigment epithelium.

 

In addition to that, the effects of blue light on the circadian rythm are also well studied. Even a completely blind person can have intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells(not all blind people do) which function and can entrain a circadian rythm. Triggering them with blue light before you're trying to sleep will delay the secretion of melatonin and suppress it until the blue light stimulus is taken away. Once again, that is not disputed by any actual scientist and there is consensus that it happens. What's being disputed is whether or not individual people are more or less affected by it.

 

Most studies are done on animals like that, since it'd be against medical ethics to do them on humans, but by all means, go sit in a dark room with a bunch of blue LEDs on and see how long your eyes last. I look very much forward to hearing from your results.

[Amazonsucks]

37 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

That doesn't mean blue light (if we consider blue light to be between 450nm and 500nm) isn't far behind

 

And this proves why you dont know what youre talking about. Thats the EXTRATERRESTRIAL SOLAR SPECTRUM.

 

As in space, with no atmosphere to filter it.

 

Now try linking the SPD of sunlight at sea level, filtered through the atmosphere. You know, the one that shows how much green, orange, yellow and red are there to prevent rhodopsin mediated photoreversal...

 

Edit:

 

https://goo.gl/images/cfE4BN that one took a few seconds to find. Shows how much of the <450nm light gets filtered out. Plus there is significantly more longer wavelength visible light compared to extraerrestrial solar SPD.

 

[Brooksie359]

3 hours ago, mr moose said:

Pretty much this, too many tech idiots think they understand biology enough to make absolutes statements.  It's probable much more likely that those claiming they get headaches at a certain FPS are just experiencing a self deluded form of placebo.

I would think it might be similar to motion sickness. I mean I know people who get car sickness as well.

[Amazonsucks]

29 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

I would think it might be similar to motion sickness. I mean I know people who get car sickness as well.

Motion sickness and car sickness are real things though. Theyre not just placebo effect.

 

People getting headaches from monitors is often the result of the LED backlight using pulse width modulation dimming, which caused flickering and can cause headaches in susceptible individuals. The longer the cycle time of the PWM the worse the effect tends to be.

 

Thats why high end monitors typically use direct DC dimming. Fluorescent or LEDs with AC flicker can cause the same kind of effect.