Forum Discussion

BlackKnight6's avatar
7 years ago

OLED burn-in/image retention due to HUD design

Product: Apex Legends
Platform:PC
Please specify your platform model. PC
AMD or Nvidia Model Number Nvidia Geforce 980 Ti
Enter RAM memory size in GB 16GB
What is your gamertag/PSN ID/EA Account name? BlackKnightSix
Please provide your squad mates' gamertag/PSN ID/EA Account name if possible. Irish_Akira
Which Legend were you playing (if applicable)?
Which Legends were your squad mates using (if applicable)?
Where did the issue occur? In a match
Which part of the map or menu were you in? If you don't remember the exact name, please describe the area or what you were trying to do in the menu. Playing a match at any time with the HUD
What were you doing when the issue occurred? E.g. respawning a squad mate at a beacon, using an ability, a squad mate left the game. Playing a match at any time with the HUD
Did your squad mates also experience the issue? Yes
How many matches had you played in a row before the issue occurred? Many matches
When did this happen? (dd.mm.yy hh:mm) 28.2.2019
How often does the bug occur? Every time (100%)
How severe is your issue? Major impacts to gameplay
What happens when the bug occurs? Parts of the HUD that are high contrast, 100% white and next to near or pure black are causing burn-in/image retention on not just my display (TV), but also my friend who plays with me on his TV as well. This is the first game to ever do this to either one of us, and we are big gamers and only use our TVs for PC and gaming. It appears to be purely the design of the HUD is causing the "damage" to our displays. The 100% opaque and full bright white portions of the HUD are the main issue. We need options for HUD customization. Solutions such as a HUD opacity slider or change from pure white for health bars/squads remaining/ammo counter/mini map corners.
What should be happening instead? No burn-in should be happening on new OLED/Plasma TVs.
Steps: How can we find the bug ourselves? The HUD should be designed to either fade inactive HUD elements to a less opaque level, and/or an option to not have pure full-bright white HUD elements, and/or a general/global opacity slider for the HUD.

Those of us with OLED/Plasma displays and playing this game a lot are starting to get burn-in, or more appropriately named, image retention. It is specifically the white "squads left" HUD element on the top right, the white ammo counter on the bottom right, the white health bars on the bottom left, and the white minimap corners on the top left. The design being pure white, and sometimes right next to black (pixels fully white/bright and pixels near black or fully black/off) and those elements being near static 99% of the match is causing the issue. Both myself and my friend (Irish_Akira) have stopped playing purely due to this issue, both of us purchased battle passes and are bummed.

Ideas/possible solutions I came up with

  • You have 2 main opacity sliders, one for "active" elements, say 90-100% default opaqueness, and one for "inactive" elements, say 50% or 75% or so default opaqueness. If an element, say your health or squads left counter, has not changed in the last 5 seconds, it will dim to the value you set for "inactive" elements

  • Also an option to change the pure bright white HUD elements to 50% white (gray)
  • Global opacity slider for the static HUD elements

3 Replies

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  • EA_Barry's avatar
    EA_Barry
    Icon for Community Manager rankCommunity Manager
    7 years ago

    @BlackKnight6 

    Thank you for your feedback regarding static UI elements while using display technology that may be susceptible to image retention.


  • @WahwahUK wrote:

    Can the HUD be made transparent? 


    It definitely could, many games do it. That's what an opacity slider would be, you choose how opaque (opposite of transparent) you want it to be. DOOM Eternal let's you do it as well as disable parts of the HUD. Even the Last of Us Part 2 has a slider to turn down just the brightness of the HUD.

    But with a response from EA stating, "Thank you for your feedback regarding static UI elements while using display technology that may be susceptible to image retention", which comes off as "well duh, that's what happens when you use that kind of display", I don't think any changes are being considered or passed on. I haven't played since my original post and I am fine with that. Posterity of this post matters more to me for other gamers with a similar situation.

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