Screen retention/burn in on LCD OG switch?

[DrippyB]

I was playing the arcade version of Contra through pFBNeo on my switch in handheld and in the top corner of the screen is a constant flickering “Press Start” prompt for player two. The issue is when I closed the game and went to the homescreen it remained burned in or retained in the top hand screen of my switch. Even after rebooting the switch it remained, and it did not show when i docked my switch on my television screen but remained on the switch screen when i undocked it. It went away after a few minutes but I can recreate it every time I open contra and let it run for about 30 seconds to a minute with the flickering “Press Start” in the corner. I see a lot of post online about image retention in LCDs but not too many about it being an issue on switches. Is my switch screen going bad or is this just a normal result of an image remaining flickering too long on an LCD panel? Kinda worried my switch LCD is going bad but just want to see if this is a recurring/normal issue thats not worth stressing over.

 

[binkinator]

I was playing the arcade version of Contra through pFBNeo on my switch in handheld and in the top corner of the screen is a constant flickering “Press Start” prompt for player two. The issue is when I closed the game and went to the homescreen it remained burned in or retained in the top hand screen of my switch. Even after rebooting the switch it remained, and it did not show when i docked my switch on my television screen but remained on the switch screen when i undocked it. It went away after a few minutes but I can recreate it every time I open contra and let it run for about 30 seconds to a minute with the flickering “Press Start” in the corner. I see a lot of post online about image retention in LCDs but not too many about it being an issue on switches. Is my switch screen going bad or is this just a normal result of an image remaining flickering too long on an LCD panel? Kinda worried my switch LCD is going bad but just want to see if this is a recurring/normal issue thats not worth stressing over. View attachment 331774

There was a fear of burn in for the OLED that was pretty much dispelled.

https://www.eurogamer.net/nintendo-switch-oled-screen-undergoes-3600-hour-burn-in-test

Havent heard it being an issue for the regular switch.

It’s going back to normal so I think you’re probably OK.

Fizeau is a Homebrew that can help tone down your colors a bit. Maybe just a little too much brightness/contrast?

 

[DrippyB]

There was a fear of burn in for the OLED that was pretty much dispelled.

https://www.eurogamer.net/nintendo-switch-oled-screen-undergoes-3600-hour-burn-in-test

Havent heard it being an issue for the regular switch.

It’s going back to normal so I think you’re probably OK.

Fizeau is a Homebrew that can help tone down your colors a bit. Maybe just a little too much brightness/contrast?

I appreciate the reply mate Ill definitely look info Fizeau. I do believe it to be a contrast issue as it is white text flickering very fast on a black background. Im reading online and it appears flickering like that with such great contrast tends to create a retention effect on monitors and i guess its common with arcade games such as Contra that i was playing. I just havent been able to recreate the issue on my TV or my Monitor as Ive been testing them. I guess the switch just uses a rather low quality panel and is sensitive to flickering light.

 

[binkinator]

I appreciate the reply mate Ill definitely look info Fizeau. I do believe it to be a contrast issue as it is white text flickering very fast on a black background. Im reading online and it appears flickering like that with such great contrast tends to create a retention effect on monitors and i guess its common with arcade games such as Contra that i was playing. I just havent been able to recreate the issue on my TV or my Monitor as Ive been testing them. I guess the switch just uses a rather low quality panel and is sensitive to flickering light.

You bet.

I hope it’s as simple as this:

https://en-americas-support.nintend.../a_id/22330/~/how-to-adjust-screen-brightness

 

[CompSciOrBust]

Havent heard it being an issue for the regular switch.

This used to be an issue back when the homebrew loader was first released for the 3.0.0 rohan / nspwn exploit. It was fixed in libnx. It shouldn't affect official software but maybe OP's panel is particularly bad, if it is the same cause.





Edit: Looking at the commit to LibNX it seems to be an issue with vsync / not alternating between framebuffers? I don't really understand how that would cause burn in. I would expect screen tearing at most. The fix actually only applies to homebrew apps that use the text console system. Anything that uses a custom renderer (which is any homebrew with a GUI) may still be susceptible to burn in. I didn't notice until now that OP was using an emulator and not an eshop game. Maybe someone should open a PR on their GitHub repo.

https://github.com/switchbrew/libnx/commit/e25aae5a974a6fc300b217f32bcca2f1f812af85

Edit 2: Looks like it's using Cross2D (which is based on SDL2) for its UI, but it seemingly uses its own copy of SDL2 instead of the one provided by DevkitPro? If it's a custom version it might not have the fix to prevent burn in on Switch. Pinging @cpasjuste since he can shed light on it. I'm not familiar with his code and I'm too tired to try to understand.

 

[RAHelllord]

That's not burn in but ghosting, it's mostly just the pixel getting stuck due to a remaining charge inside the crystals that isn't coming out as it should. You can fix this type of problem by forcing the pixels to switch colors repeatedly, with every switch another bit of the extra charge is generally also discharged until it's back to normal behavior.

If you have the browser unlocked you can speed the process up by using one of the stuck pixel fixer websites that will show a fullscreen color and rapidly switch between colors to speed up the process. If you have a photosensitivity it'd be best to either let someone else do that, or just find some solid image color images and then manually go back and forth between colors until it's gone.

I had this problem repeatedly with an old phone of mine, that would constantly get ghosting like that once temperatures dropped a little, it was annoying but I just made images of rgb colors and flipped through them until it fixed itself. Worked quite well until I could get a better phone.

 

[deathblade200]

since people seem so misinformed LCD can experience "Image persistence" also known as " image retention" which is a temporary effect caused by a static image it will fade away after awhile you don't have to do anything special. no screen is immune to it but it is not permanent unlike burn in

 

[DrippyB]

This used to be an issue back when the homebrew loader was first released for the 3.0.0 rohan / nspwn exploit. It was fixed in libnx. It shouldn't affect official software but maybe OP's panel is particularly bad, if it is the same cause.





Edit: Looking at the commit to LibNX it seems to be an issue with vsync / not alternating between framebuffers? I don't really understand how that would cause burn in. I would expect screen tearing at most. The fix actually only applies to homebrew apps that use the text console system. Anything that uses a custom renderer (which is any homebrew with a GUI) may still be susceptible to burn in. I didn't notice until now that OP was using an emulator and not an eshop game. Maybe someone should open a PR on their GitHub repo.

https://github.com/switchbrew/libnx/commit/e25aae5a974a6fc300b217f32bcca2f1f812af85

Edit 2: Looks like it's using Cross2D (which is based on SDL2) for its UI, but it seemingly uses its own copy of SDL2 instead of the one provided by DevkitPro? If it's a custom version it might not have the fix to prevent burn in on Switch. Pinging @cpasjuste since he can shed light on it. I'm not familiar with his code and I'm too tired to try to understand.

I used an emulator initially, but then I tried an official version that was on the eshop put out by arcade archives and it still appeared albeit a lot less noticeable, much more faint with the official release but still there nonetheless. Im not so certain its a software issue at this point because even after a console reset it sticks around, it just sort of goes away after a couple minutes. I think nintendo just used really crappy LCD panels on the initial switch release.

Post automatically merged: Oct 14, 2022

That's not burn in but ghosting, it's mostly just the pixel getting stuck due to a remaining charge inside the crystals that isn't coming out as it should. You can fix this type of problem by forcing the pixels to switch colors repeatedly, with every switch another bit of the extra charge is generally also discharged until it's back to normal behavior.

If you have the browser unlocked you can speed the process up by using one of the stuck pixel fixer websites that will show a fullscreen color and rapidly switch between colors to speed up the process. If you have a photosensitivity it'd be best to either let someone else do that, or just find some solid image color images and then manually go back and forth between colors until it's gone.

I had this problem repeatedly with an old phone of mine, that would constantly get ghosting like that once temperatures dropped a little, it was annoying but I just made images of rgb colors and flipped through them until it fixed itself. Worked quite well until I could get a better phone.

Do you think this is a result of my LCD going bad or is it possible every switch lcd does this when white text/objects are flashing fastly on a black background for a period of time?

 

[RAHelllord]

Do you think this is a result of my LCD going bad or is it possible every switch lcd does this when white text/objects are flashing fastly on a black background for a period of time?

Every single LCD display on the market is susceptible to this, but higher quality displays have a bunch of engineering under the hood to minimize the effect enough that the excess charges from stuff like rapid flicker or overdrive is never strong enough to actually be able to partially get a pixel stuck in a state.

Your display isn't going bad or anything, it's just that Nintendo didn't pick the best ones to use and rapid flicker from full black to full white need the strongest current bursts to perform, and are thus the most susceptible to giving too much current that can't get dissipated on the next flicker, and that adds up. As long as it goes away after a few minutes, and it only happens on massive changes like black and white flicker like the text you shown, it's perfectly normal. It's not nice, but perfectly normal.

As said if you want it to go away faster you can just find some screens of different colors and flip through them for a bit, otherwise just let it go away on its own if it doesn't bother you.

 

[hippy dave]

I'm surprised if there isn't a "stuck pixel fixer" homebrew already available, but if not there's bound to be YouTube videos for the purpose.

 

[DrippyB]

Every single LCD display on the market is susceptible to this, but higher quality displays have a bunch of engineering under the hood to minimize the effect enough that the excess charges from stuff like rapid flicker or overdrive is never strong enough to actually be able to partially get a pixel stuck in a state.

Your display isn't going bad or anything, it's just that Nintendo didn't pick the best ones to use and rapid flicker from full black to full white need the strongest current bursts to perform, and are thus the most susceptible to giving too much current that can't get dissipated on the next flicker, and that adds up. As long as it goes away after a few minutes, and it only happens on massive changes like black and white flicker like the text you shown, it's perfectly normal. It's not nice, but perfectly normal.

As said if you want it to go away faster you can just find some screens of different colors and flip through them for a bit, otherwise just let it go away on its own if it doesn't bother you.

I appreciate the response mate and thank you for the information. Glad my LCD is just exhibiting normal behavior.

 

[Hayato213]

As far as I know it is possible on OG switch, I had one with burn in around the four corners, I end up selling it.

 

[cucholix]

I had a similar problem with an injected Saturn game, there was an overscan yellow bar in the top of the screen that flicked rapidly, it just took a few seconds and the bar got retained in the screen like a ghost image, it eventually fixed by itself.