Editing Flicker (screen) (section)

==Software artifacts==

Software can cause flicker effects by directly displaying an unintended intermediate image for a short time. For example, drawing a page of text by blanking the area to white first in the [[frame buffer]], then drawing 'on top' of it, makes it possible for the blank region to appear momentarily onscreen. Usually this is much faster and easier to program than to directly set each pixel to its final value.

When it is not feasible to set each pixel only once, [[double buffering]] can be used. This creates an off-screen drawing surface, drawing to it (with as much flicker as you want), and then copying it all at once to the screen. The result is the visible pixels only change once. While this technique cuts down on software flicker, it can also be very inefficient.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.catch22.net/tuts/flicker.asp |title=Tutorials &#124; Catch22 |access-date=2007-01-25 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140714200804/http://www.catch22.net/tuts/flicker.asp |archive-date=2014-07-14 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

Flicker is used intentionally by developers on low-end systems to create the illusion of more objects or colors/shades than are actually possible on the system, or as a speedy way of simulating transparency. While typically thought of as a mark of older systems like 16-bit game consoles, such flicker techniques continue to be used on new systems, as in the [[temporal dithering]] used to fake [[24-bit color|true color]] on most LCD monitors.

Video hardware outside the monitor can also cause flicker through many different timing and resolution-related artifacts such as [[screen tearing]], [[z-fighting]] and [[aliasing]].