SEMI D86 - Test Method of Flicker Nuisance for Wide-Visual-Field Displays -

Abstract

This Test Method aims to elucidate the measures of flicker nuisance from playing motion pictures on wide-visual-field displays, such as large-size curved displays, near-eye displays or flexible displays etc. The Test Method proposes an objective detection algorithm and presents resultant examples on assessing flickering light from display applications. Finally, the Test Method reveals that the 90th percentile of magnitude spectrum is a proper measure of discomfort flicker for wide-visual-field displays.

The impact of flicker has been shown to induce migraines and headaches, photosensitive epilepsy, and even increased autistic behaviors in certain people. Reduced task performance, stroboscopic, or phantom array motion effects, distraction, and annoyance are other possible consequences .

Frequency, modulation depth, and waveform have been shown to affect visual flicker sensitivity and are known to be dependent upon duration and visual factors or a kind of tasks. Nowadays, there are many metrics for flicker visibility included the contrast method, JEITA flicker value, IDMS flicker visibility, percentage flicker, flicker index, detection of stroboscopic effect, and acceptability of stroboscopic effect, etc. In addition, IEC 61000-4-15:2010 and  V10 are standards well known for evaluation of the severity of voltage flicker. However, all of them only apply for regular waveforms or known fundamental frequency of luminance fluctuation.

On the other hand, the brightness fluctuation from motion pictures typically is depended on video contents consisted of temporal and spatial domain. To the best of our knowledge, very little work has been performed to evaluate such kind of flicker effect in the lighting or display research fields.

The goal is to rank the flicker nuisance on high dynamic range luminance using standard operators designed for playing video on wide-visual-field displays. When doing so, not only temporal incoherence of the minimum, maximum or average scene luminance leads to flicker, but also spatial incoherence of luminance distributions induces the disturbing flicker. This is reported by two experiments .
The first assumption is that flicker is sufficiently well detected by computing the luminance of a pixel and comparing it to the luminance of the previous frames. In this Test Method, it can be considered that there were total of all pixels’ light-emitting individually on and off dependent on the contents of motion pictures frame by frame.
 

The second assumption is that people are more sensitive to flicker in horizontal direction due to binocular vision. Therefore, the Test Method deals with the objective flicker calculation row-by-row along the vertical direction of a frame. The Test Method will demonstrate the flowchart of the flicker detection algorithm.

This Test Method proposes a flicker nuisance model for evaluating the wide-visual-field displays.

Referenced SEMI Standards (purchase separately)
None.

Revision History
SEMI D86-0524 (first published)

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