f.lux and The Dark Mod are not a good pair

[The Black Arrow]

Have any of you ever heard of f.lux?
It's a great Computer application that makes it so your monitor's brightness and light lowers down during night, so you won't see that "strong blue light" that is detrimental for our "Sleep Hygiene".

I use it as I have issues with sleeping.

 

Thing is...'f'lux' is a terrible pair with The Dark Mod.

Windowed or Fullscreen, f'lux will just change the brightness of my monitor and not let TheDarkMod do it. Thanks to that, I see even "blackish gray" darker than the rest, which I don't want.

 

So I was wondering, do you guys have any idea on how I can use f'lux with The Dark Mod?
Maybe there's actually a way better program than f'lux when it comes to videogames?

The only thing I can do is shut it down, but then I easily forget about it, which is normal as this is (almost) an "Install & Forget" program.

[AluminumHaste]

Isn't there a blacklist/whitelist in flux that disables it for certain apps?

[freyk]

You can change the gamma and brightness in TDM.

Better to create two separate application shortcuts to TDM, one for the daylight and the other for in the night.

and add session-arguments for brightness and gamma to it.

 

For example:

1. Start tdm, go to the screen settings and change gamma and brightness that you want to set for the night.
2. shutdown tdm,
3. open file darkmod.cfg and look & note the values for "seta r_brightness and "seta r_gamma"
4. repeat these steps 1 to 3, for daytime.
5. Create a shortcut to darkmod.exe, for the night,
6. right click on it > settings > tab shortcut.
7. In the target field, add arguments "+r_brightness" and "r_gamma" with the values you desire and save the shortcut.
   for example: "c:\games\thedarkmod.exe" +r_brightness 1.071429 +r_gamma 1.333333
8. repeat 5 - 7 for the daytime.

And my advice is not to play games, before you go to sleep.

Edited August 24, 2016 by freyk

[jaxa]

When I have problems with f.lux, I use the disable until sunrise option. A lot. When I'm done, I just uncheck that option.

 

I don't understand your problem... f.lux works for other applications but doesn't darken the game screen for TDM (a game with low brightness already)?

[The Black Arrow]

f.lux seems to keep on setting the brightness to normal, 1. Not just brightness, gamma.

I don't know why it does that, but then I noticed that, changing my gamma also changes my own monitor's gamma, so apparently it doesn't change for the game but the monitor itself.

[AluminumHaste]

That's possible, because when you have a crash, sometimes the windows gamma is darker or brighter. Same thing happens with Quake 3 and Quake live.

[Spooks]

f.lux behaves a lot better when you keep the Safe Mode options checkbox on. It's meant for gaming and other 3D applications. It still won't behave as you expect it sometimes, but I find it a lot more reliable.

[The Black Arrow]

f.lux behaves a lot better when you keep the Safe Mode options checkbox on. It's meant for gaming and other 3D applications. It still won't behave as you expect it sometimes, but I find it a lot more reliable.

 

I suppose you use f.lux as well?

 

I tried out that option, seems that now the Gamma&Brightness in TDM are affected by the game. Thanks for the suggestion.

[161803398874989]

You can click on the f.lux icon and select "disable for app" while you have TDM running (just hit the windows key to bring up the taskbar). That'll do it.

[jtbalogh]

 

I suppose you use f.lux as well?

 

I tried out that option, seems that now the Gamma&Brightness in TDM are affected by the game. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

Confirmed in their faq.

 

What does Safe Mode do on Windows?

Safe Mode does two things: ... 2. It disables all polling we normally do to ensure that we're the active color profile. Logging in, changing video resolutions, and Administrator (UAC) prompts can all reset f.lux's color changes. With Safe Mode, we do not fix these automatically, in order to minimize the impact we have on the system. If an app resets the colors, you can click on the f.lux icon to have us restore our profile. Transitions (sunrise, sunset) still happen as usual. ...

https://justgetflux.com/faq.html

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Regarding FPS, faq also has safe mode to avoid lag in case you want to test it (fixed my problem at least).

 

What does Safe Mode do on Windows?

Safe Mode does two things: ... 2. It disables all polling we normally do to ensure that we're the active color profile. ... With Safe Mode, we do not fix these automatically, in order to minimize the impact we have on the system. ... Use Safe Mode if you think f.lux slows down your computer.

 

Other discussions about flux and fps.

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/WildStar/comments/26rx2l/no_idea_if_this_will_help_anyone_psa_for_

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/2cgbay/running_flux_turn_on_safe_mode_may_fix_s

Edited August 27, 2016 by jtbalogh

[VanishedOne]

 

Where is "Safe Mode" in f.lux v4?

We built it in! The new build has massively less impact on games and the overall system.

A quick test suggests full screen mode is okay with f.lux running and TDM on its exclusion list, but windowed mode isn't.

[jtbalogh]

Awesome. Upgraded and finally it works.

Flux 3.X in 2016 did not have the fullscreen or exclusion list.

Flux 4.X in 2017 added the fullscreen and exclusion list.

It looks like "safe mode" is called "disable for fullscreen apps" and disables both polling and colors on the monitor that is in fullscreen.

It looks like the whitelist/exclusionlist is called "disable when using ..." if you have a program open and in the foreground.

Edited September 30, 2017 by jtbalogh

[Anderson]

Night mode to reduce white light in Win 10 works perfectly with TDM, just as a FYI.