Implementing a very high frame rate (~1Khz) OLED display

Question

I'm interested in developing a very high frame rate OLED display capable of displaying ~1000fps with a resolution of around 1200x800 or so. This obviously has some pretty severe bandwidth requirements, and will likely require the use of an FPGA to implement a custom controller as typical display controllers don't run faster than 60-120Hz. At the risk of really showing my ignorance, with a "raw" OLED display (no controller) should I be able to drive the display at these rates? I'm sure whatever display controller comes with the display will be unhelpful, so I'd be starting from example controller code for the FPGA.

Answer 1

A suggested approach to updating a 1200 x 800 pixel display at 1000 fps, would be to break up the display into a matrix of lower resolution OLED panels, ideally OLEDs with so-called "edge-to-edge active display". For instance, a 2 x 2 matrix of 640 x 480 OLED panels would provide a bit more than the specified resolution. However, these sub- panels selected must themselves allow refresh rates of 1000 frames per second, as well.

Each panel needs to be controlled through a separate signal channel. Depending on the capability versus price of the FPGA chosen, a single FPGA may be used to drive one or more of the panels.

This is similar to the way ultra-large displays are created for stage performance backdrops, for instance, using a matrix of standard large screen HD LCD or LED televisions. Each TV is typically driven off a separate video source. Allowance is made for bezel distances, cropping off an appropriate amount of the image at each edge of each TV.

As the application itself is not described in the question, an assumption is that a somewhat contiguous display is required. Unfortunately, using separate panels will not provide contiguous display area, as the connections to each OLED panel in the matrix have to come out somewhere. Thus, bezel-like gaps will need to exist between panels, similar to the matrix-of-TVs approach mentioned.

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If this is unacceptable, the alternative is to select an OLED panel of the desired resolution, that brings out individual signal rows and columns to a connector and allows these to be driven in definable banks. Typical OLED panels with Chip-on-Glass (COG) controllers will not work this way, raw OLED panels will need to be sourced.

Individual banks of OLED rows / columns would then be controlled via separate channels and conceivably separate controllers, to achieve the desired end-result display.

Answer 2

EDIT 2018:

There is a new definitive article about the confirmed visual benefits of 1000 Hz: Blur Busters Law And The Amazing Journey To Future 1000Hz Displays.

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Older Post Follows:

Actually, 1000fps@1000Hz would have some human eye benefit under certain conditions:

• Michael Abrash of Valve Software: Down the VR rabbit hole: Fixing judder
  http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/down-the-vr-rabbit-hole-fixing-judder/
  
• Why We Need 1000fps @ 1000Hz this century
  http://www.avsforum.com/t/1484182/why-we-need-1000fps-1000hz-this-century-valve-software-michael-abrash-comments
• John Carmack of id Software: QuakeCon keynote talking about motion blur http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93GwwNLEBFg&t=5m35s

Finite-framerate displays have the problem of having either sample-and-hold or stroboscopic/wagonwheel effects (or both). Eye-tracking based motion blur results from sample-and-hold, hold-time, persistence. Lots of scientific papers cover this already (Search science paper sites for "sample-and-hold" or "hold-type" displays).

Mathematically, 1ms of persistence equals 1 pixel of motion blur during 1000 pixels/sec motion. A 1000fps@1000Hz flicker-free display would simultaneously eliminate a lot of stroboscopic effects (wagonwheel artifacts) AND simultaneously eliminate motion blur, without using flicker. This is great for Holodeck situations (e.g. VR goggles). And you wouldn't need to add artificially-generated motion blur. You'd just finally let the human brain add its own natural motion blur, with no motion blur artificially forced upon you by the graphics or by the display. So, 1000fps@1000Hz would be far closer to reality, while eliminating the stroboscopic/wagonwheel artifact problem.

Sample-and-hold motion blur can be viewed in this animation:
www.testufo.com/#test=eyetracking

This animation is an excellent demo of "pick-your-poison" problem of finite-refresh displays. The problem is very clearly visible to the human eye even when viewing on a 120Hz gaming LCD or a 200Hz scientific CRT.

• Animation has motion blur when viewing on LCD's
• Animation has stroboscopic effect when viewing on CRT's

To simultaneously fix both at the same time (important for VR / Holodeck situations), you need to make the refresh rate resemble something infinite. That is not possible. However, a 1000fps@1000Hz display would sufficiently reduce/eliminate both stroboscopic effect / motion blur. Even the Oculus people said this; and the big names in game industry (Michael Abrash of Valve Software, John Carmack of id software) has already confirmed the benefits of ultrashort persistence flicker-free displays like this.

Did you know AMOLED generally has more motion blur than a 120Hz+ gaming LCD?

A high-refresh-rate OLED is extremely challenging, but not impossible. Several OLED's have actually reported to have a motion blur issue -- The big problem is the switching speed of transistors in an AMOLED. You only have a very ultra-brief time (typically under a microsecond) to trigger a transistor in an AMOLED screen, so the transitor switching speed is really slow.

If you plan to subdivide an OLED into multiple segments to refresh different parts of an OLED simultaneously, subdivide your OLED into vertical strips, and scan each segment in sync with each other. Otherwise, you get potential multiscan artifacts that can show up as stationary tearlines (this was common problem in old dual-scan LCD's of the 1990's; they showed a stationary tearline in the middle of the screen during horizontal motion).

Motion tests such as TestUFO will be a big benefit to your testing.

One way to do 1000fps on OLED is to use a PMOLED screen, but you will lose a lot of brightness (you need OLED pixels thousands of times brighter to compensate for the long dark periods between flickers). You will, however get excellent motion resolution.

But if you don't mind a bit of flicker (e.g. non-objectionable 120Hz flicker) what about using strobing to gain equivalent motion resolution of a higher framerate? Strobing is the same principle as black frame insertion. Some displays do this to reduce motion blur (e.g. Sony's Motionflow Impulse, nVidia's LightBoost, etc), much like the principle of CRT or plasma flicker. Doing a 1/1000sec flash at lower refresh rates (e.g. 120Hz) would have the same amount of motion blur as a 1000fps@1000Hz sample-and-hold display. Recently, strobe backlights have been developed. I've done some electronics hacking. See Electronics Hacking: Creating a Strobe Backlight for engineering on massive reductions of motion blur on LCD displays.

The pursuit to a 1000fps @ 1000Hz display is definitely worthwhile.
Ignore the naysayers who say the human eye can't tell.

Answer 3

I'd like to follow up with two new "Ultra High Hz" developments. I now have a peer-reviewed conference paper and presentation on a new display motion blur testing technique.

(1) I have received a prototype 480 Hz LCD display and, the difference is indeed visible to human eye. Here are my test results of 480 Hz (via Blur Busters).

(2) I may have figured out a way to potentially achieve higher refresh rates on an OLED. It is very OLED panel wiring dependent, but the thread is here in the Display Science, Research & Engineering Forum

Some example images include a 2-channel rolling scan OLED that has an "ON" scan pass and "OFF" scan pass -- to intentionally pulse the OLED (like a CRT) to reduce motion blur. This is what Sony Trimasters and Dell U3017Q does.

This could in theory be used with concurrent scan windows for artifact-free ultra high-refresh-rates -- depending on how many channels the OLED has.