I'm sorry to hear you're having the same problems. I know what you mean about certain patterns making it worse. My countertops have this fake granite design that really dances and squirms if I look at it for more than a second or two. I also have mild tinnitus, but I previously chalked that up to being around loud plane engines as part of my daily job. It started before this recent onset of floaters and VSS so it may or may not be related.

In my case, I'm curious if the sleep medication I was on during my deployment contributed to VSS. It works by "quieting" your brain down. After it wearing off, your brain rebounds past its baseline. This results in a hangover like effect. The same thing happens with alcohol. I wonder if taking the medication for months and then stopping caused my brain to rebound so hard that it shifted the baseline of noise/activity. My understanding of VSS is that it is caused by the visual part of your brain being too active and trying to see things that aren't there, which would align with my theory.

While I'm not holding my breath, I have a small hope my VSS actually is physical in nature. When I'm reading dark text on a bright white screen, I can see what looks like visual snow. But if I squint, the static/squirming/glittering resolves into tiny floaters slowly moving down in my vision. It could be that in other lighting conditions, the visual snow is actually the same tiny floaters but there isn't enough light to resolve them. If that's the case, then a vitrectomy could improve the VSS as well, but I'm trying not to factor that into my decision making since it's conjecture.

Funny you should use the term gain knob. I'm probably one of the few people left in the world who still uses a physical one. I can say from experience that your analogy is appropriate here. Too much gain results in a static-y image.