I presume that at least for more interactive titles (excluding visual novels and such) the displays' "gaming modes" remain recommended due to their lower input delay. There doesn't appear to be any established guide specifically for the LG's gaming mode and some options remain unclear after years of use:
black optimizer & white optimizer — does the default value (10, ranges between 0 and 20) aim to offer the best image quality or is this some feature which attempts to provide a competitive advantage? Also, is there variation with SDR and HDR content?
Should the Nvidia's Gsync and AMD's Freesync be disabled for console use (likely incompatible)?
UPDATE: the former option is called 'VRR & G-sync' and certainly appears to now be mandatory for PS5's VRR support — after enabling the setting, the difference in the God of War: Ragnarok's 120fps (does not maintain its target frame rate) mode is extremely clear.
Should the optimizer's 'game genre' picture mode (defaults to 'standard') ever be touched, possibly outside of competitive environments?
Is the 'AI game sound relevant' to anyone with at least basic external speakers?
Note that on the LG televisions 'OLED motion pro' refers to the black frame insertion (backlight strobing). The C1 model was seemingly the last line to support BFI at 120hz.
Power saving features (which may not significantly save energy) are considered as destructive and especially motion interpolation is mostly undesired. Refer to e.g. the rtings.com guides for TV model calibration guidance (without dedicated hardware).
As I've understood toggling between VRR and BFI must be done via the console settings, with the PS5 at least — sadly running the both features simultaneously isn't supported. It at least has been necessary to disable the PS5's auto-low-latency mode (ALLM) in order for the BFI to become available on the TV, adding more mandatory menu navigation.
I use the defaults for most of these - Standard, 10 for black and white optimisers. I don't know what the correct values are but they look nice to me! As far as I can tell, you can leave VRR and FreeSync on without issue, though I believe only Xbox officially supports FreeSync.
I don't really use BFI on an LG C3. It's a wonderfully clear image but I notice the strobing in the corners of my eyes at 60FPS and it really kills the brightness, defeating the point of HDR. I imagine we need higher framerates and much brighter screens for it to work better.
The important thing is going into the full settings menu and setting HDR to HGiG before doing the HDR calibrations in the console menus... and then play games which have their own terrible calibrations! It's shame HDR is so complicated.
The important thing is going into the full settings menu and setting HDR to HGiG before doing the HDR calibrations in the console menus... and then play games which have their own terrible calibrations! It's shame HDR is so complicated.
Thank you for mentioning this HDR setting! The LG's support page seems out-of-date… on my C1 the path is:
all settings → picture → advanced settings → brightness → HDR tone mapping → [select] HGiG
I'm afraid that there are other essential-to-change settings I have missed. The LG menus also are quite nested and there's no search function (someone should maintain a text-based settings database, formatted similarly to the output of the Unix program tree).
As far as I can tell, you can leave VRR and FreeSync on without issue, though I believe only Xbox officially supports FreeSync.
The former option is called 'VRR & G-sync' on my LG C1 which certainly appears to now be mandatory for the PS5's VRR — after enabling the setting, the difference in the God of War: Ragnarok's 120fps mode (does not maintain its target frame rate) is extremely clear. Since then the VRR is also on according to the game optimizer interface.
I recall that John replied on social media while he still had the LG CX (and PS5 Pro wasn't announced) that he doesn't think that the PS5 supports neither of the LG's VRR modes. The game optimizer functionality may have been changed since.
Personally I don't use the game optimizer on my G4, there's nothing I find useful there for my PS5 Pro and I don't like the fact that it overrides the base picture presets.
However, I can't say there is anything wrong with making use of it either and some features are useful if you have need of them.
The black and white stabliliser options, as I understand it, are for mitigating VRR issues you might come across in some games. Playing with the values can ease flickering/instability, but results will vary between titles.
The VRR options depends on your setup, but I would imagine it's fine to toggle them all on. The PS5 uses standard HDMI VRR, and I believe the Xbox uses AMD's Freesync - do you need toggles for those? I suspect both would work without Game Optimizer enabled (PS5's VRR doesn't need to be toggled on and HDMI VRR is base Freesync).
As for AI sound, that no doubt only pertains to the internal speakers.
Personally I don't use the game optimizer on my G4, there's nothing I find useful there for my PS5 Pro and I don't like the fact that it overrides the base picture presets.
However, I can't say there is nothing wrong with making use of it either and some features are useful if you have need of them.
The black and white stabliliser options, as I understand it, are for mitigating VRR issues you might come across in some games. Playing with the values can ease flickering/instability, but results will vary between titles.
The VRR options depends on your setup, but I would imagine it's fine to toggle them all on. The PS5 uses standard HDMI VRR, and I believe the Xbox uses AMD's Freesync - do you need toggles for those? I suspect both would work without Game Optimizer enabled (PS5's VRR doesn't need to be toggled on and HDMI VRR is base Freesync).
As for AI sound, that no doubt only pertains to the internal speakers.
Same on my C4 and I wish the thing would stop turning on gaming optimizer on random start ups.
Isn't the input lag much lower on game optimizer than the other modes.
It is, but the Game Optimiser under discussion is an additional layer that can be activated within the Game Optimiser preset. It's a value add that you may or may not find value in.
@Kneecap You can get the input lag benefit without using the optimizer; just use game mode presets.
The Optimizer interface has an option to improve input lag for 60Hz titles by placing the signal within a 120Hz output. There's not much point to it with a VRR capable console.
Game optimizer also limits your HDR brightness and on an OLED they are already hampered.
Hmm, I haven't tested it, but I don't see why the interface would decrease brightness any more than the Optimizer preset does anyway. The bigger thing to watch out for in my view is that it overrides whatever custom picture settings you already have in place.
@Kneecap You can get the input lag benefit without using the optimizer; just use game mode presets.
The Optimizer interface has an option to improve input lag for 60Hz titles by placing the signal with a 120Hz output. There's not much point to it with a VRR capable console.
Game optimizer also limits your HDR brightness and on an OLED they are already hampered.
Hmm, I haven't tested it, but I don't see why the interface would decress brightness any more than the Optimizer preset does anyway. The bigger thing to watch out in my view is that it overrides whatever custom picture settings you already have in place.
I don't know why, but it does. With game optimizer on your ability to edit the peak brightness setting is greyed out. You can use color-control on your PC to get around that by forcing a PC mode but its a lot of work.
There's a lot of games on PS5 that have 60hz mode without VRR or it's gets patched later as far as I know.
You can toggle VRR on for unsupported games. Besides, Boost can cause double images, not recommended in combination with VRR. You can manually toggle on a game to game basis I suppose, but personally I don't consider it worth it for 5ms or so input improvement.
I don't know why, but it does. With game optimizer on your ability to edit the peak brightness setting is greyed out. You can use color-control on your PC to get around that by forcing a PC mode but its a lot of work.
I was pretty sure it doesn't make a difference, but I checked now on my G4 to be sure:
Preset:
Additional Overlay:
As you can see, identical (within margin of error)
The Optimiser preset is less bright than the standard modes, but the overlay doesn't drop it any further. Pehaps this is just with the G4, but I suspect it's true for other models as well.
@KenMasters Like I said I have the C4 and it clearly does drop the brightness. The peak brightness option is greyed out and appears to be locked to its low setting in terms of brightness.
Edit: I think you are talking just about the overlay itself, I was referring to the optimizer being on or off in general.
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Topic: LG's OLED TVs — recommended settings for the 'game optimizer' mode?
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