f.lux beta (another thread)
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@Tungsten_smooth yes we have more to do here. Wake time corresponds somewhat to circadian time, but not exactly - it is also related to sleep debt and the ability of the body to stay asleep (which varies by age). So if you talk to elderly people who have trouble sleeping through the night, they often need a stronger "amplitude" signal (more light during the day) and not always a "phase shift" in schedule (as do 20 year old students who have to get up early for class).
For f.lux right now, it is a very important time to show "how your body is reacting". This next chapter is "how to help your body do what you want it to" and I hope that can be simple too.
In the UI, the big slider should usually reflect the current-nearest preset, which is not the best way to do it, but better than having an infinite number of control points that are hard to delete! We could do this better but it makes sense at most times of day.
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I'm on 4.21 and it doesn't play nice with Windows 10 (toast) notifications. As there is no option in the program's menus, I switch off the sound or even the notification altogether in WIndows Settings (screenshot attached), but after a system restart, f.lux resets the notifications, creating a new entry in the notifications app list.
As if f.lux is registering a new instance with the notification system each time. Kind of annoying. I'd love in-program options or a fix for playing nice with Windows system.Otherwise I love what you did with per-app options. Been waiting for it for ages.
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I have both f.lux 4.21 on my Windows PC and f.lux 39.94 on my MacBook Air next to each other.
The location is the same and on Windows I have set the transition time to "slow" and on the Mac I have disabled the "fast transitions" option.Unfortunately their timing is not the same. :cry:
f.lux 4.21 on Windows is already at 1900K while Mac with 39.94 is still at 27xxK and still going down.Can you please align the transition times across these platforms? Bonus points if the Android app also does exactly the same. :)
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@hsiktas well they are using the same code, finally. Things to check:
- same wake time
- same location
- same presets
- https://justgetflux.com/timesync.html looks similar?
It turns out my Mac and PC are about 8 kelvin apart (testing during the fastest portion of the bedtime transition), but they are also about 7 seconds apart too.
The next update may shift the wake timing a bit, so there might be some skew until we update the Mac. But right at this minute for you, they should be the same.
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@herf
I had indeed different wake times on both machines and I just adjusted them. This seems to solve my problem. :) -
Pushing 4.25 via auto-update, to get everyone testing the newer code. I definitely have bugs filed for all the things in this thread too!
Thanks everyone.
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@hsiktas and I just shifted the wake transition earlier so "fast transition" people should not wake up to an orange screen. However, at night the Mac and PC should still be the same. Glad to hear you got it. :)
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I'm not sure if I'm too early, but it's not automatically updating for me. I have 4.24.
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@herf Hey I just installed 4.25, thanks for support DisplayLink Monitors! That was a deal breaker for me! (I still used Flux but the DL monitor had a custom color setting to match my primary monitor at 2900K)
Bugs
Only one I found so far: when prompted for UAC in Windows 10 v1607 build 14393.1066) ,flux will instantly show the blue colors on both displays as long as the UAC prompt is up.This also happens at the lockscreen. So there is a little bit of inconsistency when working at night as my lockscreen is at 6500K and when I am prompted for UAC for opening programs or scripts that require Admin rights
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@herf With the new release I just had installed, I very clearly see the future for this program and your other projects: You and Lorna (and probably other people working with color controlled lights) want to make it abundantly clear to avoid or reduce light after / near sunset as much as possible. The "vignette" mode really makes this obvious!
I do appreciate your specific example, and I'm still in school, but I don't have to get up early for that, it's for other reasons and it's not mandatory. I remember you talked about a phase shift versus a stronger light / dark cycle and I'd a bit of education about what you're describing. My understanding of this topic only involves regulating light / dark timing, so bright light during the day, etc. So, what is a phase shift?
Thank you, it's great to see you both on the forums, it does seem you've got a bit more free time not working as much on the beta now that you've got it working. You and Lorna are very helpful and it's just incredible how much you all can help explain some of information about light and sleep, and we keep learning more (and I'm sure your research is non-stop so far). I am just in awe of how much there is to learn about all this, I never thought I'd learn so much about what seemed a very simple topic.
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I did a Performance Test (just noticed the button there) and I got 64 - 70% dropped frames at 60FPS. Is that normal? Feels like a lot. Would you recommend disabling f.lux during gaming then?
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How are you guys getting 4.25? It's not automatically updating for me.
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@Tungsten_smooth said in f.lux beta (another thread for 4.21):
@herf With the new release I just had installed, I very clearly see the future for this program and your other projects: You and Lorna (and probably other people working with color controlled lights) want to make it abundantly clear to avoid or reduce light after / near sunset as much as possible. The "vignette" mode really makes this obvious!
I do appreciate your specific example, and I'm still in school, but I don't have to get up early for that, it's for other reasons and it's not mandatory. I remember you talked about a phase shift versus a stronger light / dark cycle and I'd a bit of education about what you're describing. My understanding of this topic only involves regulating light / dark timing, so bright light during the day, etc. So, what is a phase shift?
Thank you, it's great to see you both on the forums, it does seem you've got a bit more free time not working as much on the beta now that you've got it working. You and Lorna are very helpful and it's just incredible how much you all can help explain some of information about light and sleep, and we keep learning more (and I'm sure your research is non-stop so far). I am just in awe of how much there is to learn about all this, I never thought I'd learn so much about what seemed a very simple topic.
Same here. This beta has opened my eyes to one simple fact: this is an extremely deep rabbit hole.
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@TwoCables said in f.lux beta (another thread for 4.21):
How are you guys getting 4.25? It's not automatically updating for me.
It auto updated here without any problem. I just quitted f.lux and launched it again.
Btw, one bug, that was already present in build 4.24 at least, can't tell about the previous ones. When the screen goes to "sleep mode" aka AFK, when i return to PC and the monitor powers back on, f.lux has daytime temperature. I am forced to click on f.lux icon in the taskbar to bring it to foreground in order to get back the right temperature.
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@caydenly this is a common result now, since GPUs are synchronizing with the backlight. In this version, we have done a lot of optimization to send as few commands as possible, because dropped frames at 60hz are hard to avoid now. (Before the power saving efforts of the past couple years, this stuff was totally free and never dropped frames ever.)
Also, for gaming, you can use our "very fast" transition setting, so the number of times we will touch the GPU is low.
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@disqQ said in f.lux beta (another thread for 4.21):
@TwoCables said in f.lux beta (another thread for 4.21):
How are you guys getting 4.25? It's not automatically updating for me.
It auto updated here without any problem. I just quitted f.lux and launched it again.
Btw, one bug, that was already present in build 4.24 at least, can't tell about the previous ones. When the screen goes to "sleep mode" aka AFK, when i return to PC and the monitor powers back on, f.lux has daytime temperature. I am forced to click on f.lux icon in the taskbar to bring it to foreground in order to get back the right temperature.
Yeah, I exited f.lux 4.24 several times. I right-click the icon and choose "Exit f.lux".
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@Tungsten_smooth Well, we don't know the answers yet -- in particular a lot of people need better ("more") light exposure during the day (which involves screens too, because we work in offices that are too dark to accommodate them). The first part of our job with f.lux is to think up hypotheses and motivate people to test them. The vignette feature is based on some recent research, and I'll write down the idea sometime soon.
But the main work we're doing is to make models and test them in the real world (not just have people believe they're all true).
Regarding your question about phase vs amplitude:
Phase
Most people think of the circadian system ONLY in terms of phase - e.g., we would call a night owl "phase delayed" and an early bird "phase advanced". This means that their internal clock is offset from the solar time by a certain amount.
So when you are a night owl who wants to wake up earlier, you want to "advance" your system by seeing more light in the morning and less at night. And the reverse for an early bird who wants to sleep in. As such, a lot of our users tend to be night owls. But you might think this is the end of the road for circadian topics - is your phase aligned with how you want it to be?
Amplitude
What is clear from experiments on shift workers and the elderly (and many rodent models) is that the overall circadian rhythm in the body can be suppressed. In some cases, it's operating at a lower "amplitude" because light and dark are not clearly defined or not happening at the right times. For instance, people who spend time in natural lighting during the winter have an enormous melatonin amplitude thorughout the night (you can see melatonin in the blood lasting 14 hours), whereas most of us in the modern world are living in a "perpetual summer" and we have a relatively small melatonin duration in comparison to natural conditions.
We think some sleep problems (and some immunity and seasonal effects) depend to some degree on the "strength" of the circadian rhythm, not just whether it's phase aligned. (Of course, a misaligned rhythm, e.g., in shift work, will almost always have a reduced amplitude, so they are somewhat related.)
Also, not all sleep trouble is circadian, so when we can, we look for ways to help people get to bed on time. It is probably true that we could do a lot of good here that's completely unrelated to magic science and more to human behavior.
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@TwoCables You can also get it via link, as usual, at: https://justgetflux.com/flux-setup4-25.exe
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@disqQ said in f.lux beta (another thread for 4.21):
@TwoCables You can also get it via link, as usual, at: https://justgetflux.com/flux-setup4-25.exe
It was still just v4 before.
Mike got the automatic update working for me just now though!
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@TwoCables Rabbit hole is exactly the way we talk about this - once you fall in, you realize there isn't a bottom. But first you have to fall in....
