A little warning

[マツェ]

Here is what happened to me:

I just wanted to test the demo about an hour ago and encountered a serious issue. I went straight for the character creator, but almost immediately noticed a slightly unnerving graphics effect. Even though the interface including text and frames was crystal clear, there was a strange sensation with the lighting effects - the yellowish backlight, most prominent behind the player character was kind of flickering in a ultra high frequency. It was barely noticeable, but since I'm pretty easily irritated by effects like those, I tried to get rid of this by disabling effects like DLSS or generation of additional frames. Since it didn't change anything about the lighting effect I decided to try restarting the game. That was when I realized it, the HUD of the game had been 'burnt' into my display. One could clearly see the framework of the interface and even some of the text was visible through my windows background and even after I had unplugged my monitor from the power source I was able to see said interface remnants on my bios prompt after restarting the pc. (I am not sure if the term 'burn-in' is still the correct one because I thought that LCD monitors are pretty resistant to this phenomenon.) I had the game running only for about 2 to 5 minutes before closing it.
I am using a dell gaming monitor of the newest generation (240Hz variant) running in G-sync mode fullscreen. My guess is there is some issue with g-sync at high fps but I cannot think of any way to prove it. There is a happy ending to the story though. I ran an anti burn-in video for about an hour afterwards, which got finally rid of the burn in artifacts.


I am writing this for two reasons, first of all I want to warn people who encounter the same phenomenon with the flashing backlight to immediately close the game, check for a burn in effect, disable g-sync and run an anti burn-in video (just google anti burn-in on Youtube, there are plenty) to prevent any permanent damage. But I also want to point the devs toward this issue to improve the game. I want them to know that I have no ill intend concerning them or their game at all, quite the contrary, I was actually looking forward to playing Dune: Awakening for quite a while now!


TLDR:
If you encounter any strange flashing backlight, close the game for a second and check for any occurring burn-in effect, just to be safe and in case you do report back to the devs to help them get closer to the origin of the problem.


I hope this can help to prevent trouble for both gamers and developers. Enjoy the demo and we will hopefully see each other in the final game!

[Brain Fungus]

I had exactly the same problem. (Lenovo 27 165Hz)

[Groggeth]

I just had the exact same experience with a display I just bought 3 weeks ago and an EVGA 3090 FTW 24GB. Ran the benchmark, got ~140 FPS average. Started the character creation. The character creation screen was flashing quite a bit but I ignored it thinking it was a dumb character creator, who cares. I get through to the cutscene bit and I can see the grid of hair choices overtop the bene gesserit's face the whole time. I close out, and my screen was still flashing on my desktop. I restarted, issue persists. I'm about to be furious, lol.

[(J)]

This is a weakness in certain types of monitors. If it happened to you on this game, it can happen to you in other titles as well.

OLED & AMOLED Are Prone to Burn-In

Self-emissive pixels: Each pixel generates its own light and degrades over time. Static images: Long exposure to static elements (like logos, UI elements, or HUDs in games) can cause uneven wear. Blue pixel degradation: Blue OLED pixels degrade faster than red and green, leading to image retention.

Other Display Types & Burn-In Risk

Mini-LED & MicroLED: Much lower risk due to backlight technology, but not immune. LCD (IPS, TN, VA) are generally not affected by burn-in but can suffer from image persistence (temporary ghosting).

[Groggeth]

Originally posted by (J):

This is a weakness in certain types of monitors. If it happened to you on this game, it can happen to you in other titles as well.

OLED & AMOLED Are Prone to Burn-In

Self-emissive pixels: Each pixel generates its own light and degrades over time. Static images: Long exposure to static elements (like logos, UI elements, or HUDs in games) can cause uneven wear. Blue pixel degradation: Blue OLED pixels degrade faster than red and green, leading to image retention.

Other Display Types & Burn-In Risk

Mini-LED & MicroLED: Much lower risk due to backlight technology, but not immune. LCD (IPS, TN, VA) are generally not affected by burn-in but can suffer from image persistence (temporary ghosting).

The monitor I had the issue occur with is an LCD screen. The flickering/flashing eventually stopped about an hour later. Super bizarre.

[Captain Worthy]

I'm using an Acer XV282KKV 4k 144hz IPS monitor with FSR 3 frame generation and have not encountered this ultra-fast flickering nor the burn-in image issue. I have epileptic sensitivies as well but nothing in the character creator has felt triggering to me.

[Groggeth]

Originally posted by Captain Worthy:

I'm using an Acer XV282KKV 4k 144hz IPS monitor with FSR 3 frame generation and have not encountered this ultra-fast flickering nor the burn-in image issue. I have epileptic sensitivies as well but nothing in the character creator has felt triggering to me.

Well that's good to hear at least! I'm scared to test it again.

[blake]

Edit: Remembered an important detail, I haven't tried it with DLSS off. That could've precisely been the issue but I've since uninstalled.

Glad to know I wasn’t alone on this. 3080ti i7-13700kf here. IPS 165hz 1440p monitor.

This game caused image retention for me too, exactly how described. Although the benchmark caused absolutely 0 problems, the character creator does definitely flicker. Although its a bit difficult to notice, I had the same symptom: burn-in image on my monitor. The game had been closed for 5 minutes by then too. It freaked me out enough to shut down my pc and head to bed. Was gone once I woke up…

The flickering backlight went unnoticed by me for long enough that I could see the sliders on my home screen. But I don't think it caused the traditional “image burn-in”, since I’ve heard how lethal that really was. This burn-in image subsides, but it takes its sweet time. I tried the character creator twice after tweaking the graphics, both times gave me image retention.

My guess is some of us should wait until Nvidia/AMD drop a gpu driver update for Dune.

[Devil]

So the "burn-in" i got was only in the game, as soon as alt-tabbed it wasnt even there. Im on a monitor with no OLED fwiw

[Groggeth]

Originally posted by Devil:

So the "burn-in" i got was only in the game, as soon as alt-tabbed it wasnt even there. Im on a monitor with no OLED fwiw

That's so strange! What kind of graphics card do you have?

[Az]

had the same happening to me.. it was Freesync not working with Framegen. so turn off either

[Martin]

If you have amd, there's some newer drivers released a few days ago. Might resolve issues.

[AdahnGorion]

Remember that playing beta tests like these are your own responsibility and you are not entitled to any compensation if hardware breaks or gets damaged.
In full version, you will be entitled however.