flickering headlights - new technology?

[Alkali Ike]

EDIT: I thought HFR was 60 FPS. Apparently it's 48 FPS. I stand corrected.

Most current digital cinema projectors are capable of "HFR", High Frame Rate. There was a lot of pushback when Peter Jackson tried it. I have no idea if it's even remotely as good as Showscan though (I kind of doubt it). Sounds like he hasn't given up on it though.

The Desolation of Smaug shows Peter Jackson still hasn't perfected HFR

Why did nay-sayers dislike HFR on Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey? First off, many felt that the higher frame speed looked too real, revealing production flaws and ruining the suspension of disbelief. Worse, purists compared HFR to a cheap TV effect and called it vastly inferior to time-tested 24 fps. Though Jackson claimed to be unfazed by all the criticism, he did take it into account for Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. What audiences actually disliked about the first film, he felt, was not the HFR but the extra sharpness that resulted from filming digitally in 5K with Red's Epic cameras instead of film. To remedy that, he told Variety that actor-friendly "Pro-Mist" lens filters were used during filming to apply a slight blur and remove any harshness during certain shots. In addition, each scene was carefully color corrected to "take the (video-like) HD quality away" and he deemed the final results to be "reasonably successful."

Then there's this (contains some profanity):

Ang Lee Has Made the Most Realistic-Looking Movie Ever. It's Unwatchable.

 

[Luciferiad]

Pulse Width Modulation or PWM. Basically they're powered by an ON/OFF/ON square wave, not solid DC ON. Reduces power consumption and extends LED life.

Invalid Link Removed

This. I'm glad someone else looked it up. I searched it years ago when I noticed almost imperceptible variations in light output on my wife's Mercury Mariner shortly after we bought it. I couldn't remember what it was called, but thankfully OldDog did the legwork

 

[catcauphonic]

You sure they weren't just flashing their lights on and off as the truckers signal that they're allowing you to move into the lane in front of them?

 

[Killed_by_Death]

A human couldn't have flashed them that quickly. It looked more like emergency strobes, like an ambulance or police vehicle.
I confirmed twice that looking directly at the lights there was no perceived flashing, only in the camera was it apparent.

 

[Killed_by_Death]

Here's something I saw on FB this morning, & probably related to the fact that our eyes are easily tricked:

 

[fretter]

It seems like most new cars that have the strip of LED daytime running lights, at least one side is not working.

 

[devo_stevo]

I've seen the same thing. I've got one of those cameras on my car too (I'm assuming you're driving a Honda?). It's definitely only an issue with the LED lights on modern cars.

 

[fhm555]

I had an old Ford truck with flickering headlights, but it was a bad headlight switch allowing the headlights to off and on at random, especially over a bump in the road and I lived on a dirt road so it was interesting at night. I was not going to pay for a new OEM light switch so I took an old dash mounted ignition switch and drilled the dash for it and made it an on/off switch for all my lights. Dimmer and turn signals worked but no parking lights, but back then it was not that big a deal to not have any parking lights.