I was reading an article on the new LG display with a refresh rate of 7680Hz and it says:

While a typical refresh rate for a monitor might be 60Hz-240Hz, an outdoor display designed to be viewed from a distance needs to be much higher

The idea that there’s an intrinsic link between refresh rate and viewing distance is new to me and feels unintuitive. I can understand the need for high brighteness for far view distance. I also could understand refresh rate mattering for a non-persistent (CRT) display. But for an Led display surely you can see it far away even if it refreshes once a second?

Refresh rate normally needs to be high enough to avoid pixels “jumping” between refreshes on high resolution displays, so wouldn’t higher view distances allow you to decrease the refresh rate?

Is the article just spouting bullshit? Or is there an actual link between refresh rate and view distance?

  • @cynarEnglish
    6•9 months ago

    It’s likely the frequency of the individual LED drivers. A high frequency gives you more brightness steps available. A screen optimised for bright daylight would benefit significantly, when it’s used at night. E.g. if you run at 1% brightness, you lose 99% of your PWM range. At 1khz, that’s 10 steps of colour brightness resolution. At 7.68khz, it’s 76 steps, a far more usable number.