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It's easy to write an app that displays arbitrary graphics at 1600 nits on the MacBook Pro. You just have to use the Metal API, an "extended" color space, and a

It's easy to write an app that displays arbitrary graphics at 1600 nits on the MacBook Pro. You just have to use the Metal API, an "extended" color space, and a Float colorPixelFormat. I'm not sure that this blog post author is trying to accomplish, possibly they are trying to use some other API besides Metal?

krackers 5y ago
I believe the author wanted the entire screen framebuffer to be displayed at 1600 nits. I.e. effectively cranking the brightness up to 11.
- imwillofficial 5y ago
  I see they finally invented the at home xray
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  Or, like, 800.
kevingadd 5y ago
Even if they don't want to use Metal, there's stuff like MoltenVK that you can probably use to access the same functionality
roughly 5y ago
The author is the author of lunar - https://lunar.fyi/ https://lunar.fyi/ - an app for controlling screen brightness on external (and internal) screens on the Mac. He is trying to force the system to brighten the entire screen to the levels it will brighten light spots in an HDR video.
alin23 5y ago
I’m not trying to draw HDR content. I want to increase to overall UI brightness (basically, make the brightness of where backlight LEDs go past the software defined limit) I’m testing Apple’s claim of 1000 nits sustained brightness which led many people to believe that they can finally use their laptop in direct sunlight without squinting at the screen. I’m aware of thermal limitations and that even sustained might not mean “whole screen at 1000 nits for 8 hours”. But it would be nice to be able to use 1 hour of my work time to work in the park outside my apartment with a bright enough screen for that time. The system has thermal capping implemented from what I saw in the CoreBrightness framework, so it should be safe as long as the system can detect that LEDs are starting to overheat and lower the brightness automatically.
- tomtom1337 5y ago
  As a suggestion to help you with your quest - try polarised sunglasses. I used them with my M1 mac this summer quite successfully! The macbook screen is polarised so that the screen light goes straight through the sunglasses, while the surrounding sunlight gets dimmed.
  - bujak300 5y ago
    What specific glasses are these? I'd guess that the direction of the polarisation of the glasses makes a big difference
    - wtallis 5y ago
      I think polarized sunglasses are always vertically polarized, to block glare off horizontal surfaces.
      - robocat 5y ago
        Correct. This page explained it nicely: https://nigerianscholars.com/tutorials/wave-optics/polarization-by-reflection/ https://nigerianscholars.com/tutorials/wave-optics/polarizat... "Vertically polarized light is preferentially refracted at the surface, so that the reflected light is left more horizontally polarized" and you use vertically polarised sunglasses to filter out the reflected horizontally polarised light.
  - alin23 5y ago
    Yes, I noticed that sunglasses help, but they still darken the screen a bit because of their tint. This is a video I took last summer on this: https://files.alinpanaitiu.com/ff-polarized-macbook.mp4 https://files.alinpanaitiu.com/ff-polarized-macbook.mp4
- runeks 5y ago
  > I’m testing Apple’s claim of 1000 nits sustained brightness which led many people to believe that they can finally use their laptop in direct sunlight without squinting at the screen. How about increasing the brightness of just the text, and not the background, like https://kidi.ng/wanna-see-a-whiter-white https://kidi.ng/wanna-see-a-whiter-white? No reason to crank up the brightness for the background as far as I can see.
grishka 5y ago
Heh, interesting. When I just got my new macbook, I did try to draw something with a "whiter than white" color to see what the display is capable of. But I didn't think of Metal, I poked around in a custom NSView with various NSColor constructors passing values more than 1, and that didn't work.

krackers 5y ago

I believe the author wanted the entire screen framebuffer to be displayed at 1600 nits. I.e. effectively cranking the brightness up to 11.

imwillofficial 5y ago
I see they finally invented the at home xray
Dylan16807 5y ago
Or, like, 800.

kevingadd 5y ago

Even if they don't want to use Metal, there's stuff like MoltenVK that you can probably use to access the same functionality

roughly 5y ago

The author is the author of lunar - https://lunar.fyi/ https://lunar.fyi/ - an app for controlling screen brightness on external (and internal) screens on the Mac. He is trying to force the system to brighten the entire screen to the levels it will brighten light spots in an HDR video.

alin23 5y ago

I’m not trying to draw HDR content. I want to increase to overall UI brightness (basically, make the brightness of where backlight LEDs go past the software defined limit) I’m testing Apple’s claim of 1000 nits sustained brightness which led many people to believe that they can finally use their laptop in direct sunlight without squinting at the screen. I’m aware of thermal limitations and that even sustained might not mean “whole screen at 1000 nits for 8 hours”. But it would be nice to be able to use 1 hour of my work time to work in the park outside my apartment with a bright enough screen for that time. The system has thermal capping implemented from what I saw in the CoreBrightness framework, so it should be safe as long as the system can detect that LEDs are starting to overheat and lower the brightness automatically.

tomtom1337 5y ago
As a suggestion to help you with your quest - try polarised sunglasses. I used them with my M1 mac this summer quite successfully! The macbook screen is polarised so that the screen light goes straight through the sunglasses, while the surrounding sunlight gets dimmed.
- bujak300 5y ago
  What specific glasses are these? I'd guess that the direction of the polarisation of the glasses makes a big difference
  - wtallis 5y ago
    I think polarized sunglasses are always vertically polarized, to block glare off horizontal surfaces.
    - robocat 5y ago
      Correct. This page explained it nicely: https://nigerianscholars.com/tutorials/wave-optics/polarization-by-reflection/ https://nigerianscholars.com/tutorials/wave-optics/polarizat... "Vertically polarized light is preferentially refracted at the surface, so that the reflected light is left more horizontally polarized" and you use vertically polarised sunglasses to filter out the reflected horizontally polarised light.
- alin23 5y ago
  Yes, I noticed that sunglasses help, but they still darken the screen a bit because of their tint. This is a video I took last summer on this: https://files.alinpanaitiu.com/ff-polarized-macbook.mp4 https://files.alinpanaitiu.com/ff-polarized-macbook.mp4
runeks 5y ago
> I’m testing Apple’s claim of 1000 nits sustained brightness which led many people to believe that they can finally use their laptop in direct sunlight without squinting at the screen. How about increasing the brightness of just the text, and not the background, like https://kidi.ng/wanna-see-a-whiter-white https://kidi.ng/wanna-see-a-whiter-white? No reason to crank up the brightness for the background as far as I can see.

grishka 5y ago

Heh, interesting. When I just got my new macbook, I did try to draw something with a "whiter than white" color to see what the display is capable of. But I didn't think of Metal, I poked around in a custom NSView with various NSColor constructors passing values more than 1, and that didn't work.