Out of curiosity, what's the point of the new screen dimming function on PC?

MreeBiPolar · June 26

... Because if it's supposed to be energy saving, it just doesn't work that way on LCD screens, and there are not that many LED ones out there.

The LCD displays work by liquid crystal elements coloring and suppressing the backlight, but the backlight intensity (and therefore, power consumed) does not change just because the image got darker. There *might* *possibly* be a way to decrease its intensity in true full-screen mode, but it is definitely not the way it is implemented, as it dims the game screen even in borderless and windowed modes.

I don't have the power meter-equipped outlet right now, but I suspect that when I grab one to test in a couple weeks, it would show exactly zero power consumption difference on the monitor I play ESO on.

Treeshka · June 26

Well on top of that it puts frame limit to thirty. That for sure helps for power consumption.

MreeBiPolar · June 26

Treeshka wrote: »

Well on top of that it puts frame limit to thirty. That for sure helps for power consumption.

I am curious not about the frame rate limiter, but specifically the dimming part.

I have also just tested whether it dims the backlight in fullscreen mode by activating the mouse pointer and waiting for dimming to trigger, and it definitely does not, the pointer remaining just as bright as it was.

Necrotech_Master · June 26

it only dims the game itself, and reduces the frame rate

honestly the frame rate reduction would be significantly more power saving than the dimming

i personally found both things to be extremely obnoxious while playing so i disabled them lol

Syldras · June 26

Treeshka wrote: »

Well on top of that it puts frame limit to thirty. That for sure helps for power consumption.

It does, but it's such a tiny amount that it barely makes any difference at all. The main profiteer is ZOS/their mother company, because they can advertise themselves as "green" and eco-friendly by highlighting that this function exists.

MreeBiPolar · June 26

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

it only dims the game itself, and reduces the frame rate

honestly the frame rate reduction would be significantly more power saving than the dimming

i personally found both things to be extremely obnoxious while playing so i disabled them lol

That reminded me. I have found the most computationally demanding part of ESO, and it's something you won't ever think of.

I sometimes have to go places for significant time, so grab my laptop along and do dailies, but I might be in places with no power, so switch it to energy saving mode. All of ESO runs fine in it, except a single thing. When you open the map, it takes literally minutes for the icons to draw 🤣

I was initially thinking it might be Harvest Map, but then I checked it without a single add-on enabled, and it is the same way. Each icon takes several seconds to appear, wayshrines always being the last ones.

Toanis · June 26

MreeBiPolar wrote: »

I don't have the power meter-equipped outlet right now, but I suspect that when I grab one to test in a couple weeks, it would show exactly zero power consumption difference on the monitor I play ESO on.

Depending on the display, it could actually be more, because the crystals need power in order to block light.

Here's an article from back when LCDs had gained prevalence over CRTs:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-black-is/

Surely it's not 6% higher power consumption anymore, but it's still the technology most of our gaming monitors use.

Power can be saved on LCD Displays with dimmable LED backlight tiles, but those are rare in monitors. OLED displays only need power for lit pixels, but they exist to make our phones run longer, they'd need to save a lot of power for a very long time to ever be considered environment-friendly.

belial5221_ESO · June 26

You probably save 1$ and like .000001kwh a year,lol.Also,someone in another thread said noone ahould be forcing it,cause they don't pay for our power bill.I jsut edit the usersetting to disable it,though sadly,consoles can't.

JavaRen · June 26

I used to work in environmental compliance for a medical device manufacturer. Roughly 45% of my projects were meant to satisfy a government mandate as cheaply as possible, 45% were hollow shells intended to generate good PR or corporate virtue signalling, and 10% actually improved the company's environmental impact in a significant way, but only because it also saved money.