Simulator Sickness?

sonic · Jun 2006

Does anyone else get motion sickness when playing video games? I've been gaming for almost a decade, and I've never gotten motion sickness (simulator sickness) before, but lately I've found that games like Doom3, HL2, and more cause me to feel nauseous after only 10 minutes of play. When I played Half Life 2, I'd have to play for a little while, go lay down until I didn't feel like I was going to throw up, then come back and play some more. Does anyone know of any possible solutions or ways to help it?

Here's an article on it:
http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.2/feat/index2.php

Ninjas · Jun 2006

Did you change the conditions under which you played? I used to get sick when I played my Virtual Boy, but then, so did everyone else.

I think it's important to sit directly in front of the screen.

I I first got my dual screen set-up, I got ill, but I got over it after a few days.

snemmy · Jun 2006

i used to waaay back when watching other people play Turok on N64. but not anymore. i just got used to it over time.

maybe for you it's how much more realistic the enviroments have gotten. your peripheral(sp?) vison says everything outside the screen is stationary but in the screen there's this realistic world that's moving in all directions.
too much immersion ;p

Mythbusters had an episode where they tried ot get rid of Adam's seasickness. from their spinning chair of sickness tests they found that ginger tablets really help.

swampbug · Jun 2006

Only game that ever effected me was HL2 after playing it for a while.

I would get a swirling headache, just enough for me to not want to play for a while. I dont think it had anyhting to do with being FPS or simulator.

HL2's effect on me was specific, high resolution textures and high detail moving around the screen fast. And the blasted gravity gun lundging the camera back for a split second ever time you blast something off with it. That tends to add up over time. It was the slight but very frequent jerking motion that got me. (like someone hitting me in the back of my head, skewing my vision every 5 seconds)

I can play hours of battlefield 2, flying upsidown and all that. Never felt a thing from BF2.

thomasp · Jun 2006

yup, i get that. it all started maybe two years ago. before that i was an avid player of counter strike, battlefield '42 , UT and the like without encountering any side effects.

i think i first had it on GTA:VC and blamed it on low framerates on the PC. when i bought GTA:SA over one year ago, i wasn't able to play it very long because of this sickness. nowadays i can't even watch some TV footage of quake and the likes or watch others playing it without feeling sick. i've started to avoid hectic 3d games altogether.

no complaints in max/maya btw. i can spin models for hours upon hours when at work, nothing has changed there. it's only games that cause it for me.

oXYnary · Jun 2006

Whats your monitor refresh set at inside the game? Even though you might not notice a lower refresh, it will cause eye fatigue.

Try at least 80hz. Or if you are playing under florescent lights, add some natural regular bulbls as well.

sonic · Jun 2006

My old monitor was 85hz CRT, and now i'm using an 8ms LCD.

I think snemmy is right. It's like the total immersion thing has gotten to me, and whenever the environment is changing around and I don't move at all, I get motion sickness.

oXYnary · Jun 2006

Doesnt matter what your monitor was. Its what its setup to display at inside the game. Did you have these problems before you had the lcd? Are you sitting closeror farther from the screen? Are you using a larger screen or higher resolution?

shadows · Jun 2006

Turok 2 on N64 , 1 level of GoldenEye N64 and Half-Life 2, made me feel sick.
Other than that I can play games for hours on end and the only effect I can feel sometimes, is eye strain, eh.

I dont think it has any anything to do with how realistic and immersive games are becoming. But what is displayed and how it is being displayed on the screen.
For example , I found out that by simply changing the FOV in HL2, I was not feeling sick anymore.
Although feeling sick actually made it more interesting to play.

Joshua Stubbles · Jun 2006

When I watch a child play games...
Other than that, nope!

Their jerky movements really get to me I suppose.

flaagan · Jun 2006

While I can't remember ever getting sick from playing / watching a game, I do know I get a kind of vertigo when my character falls a long distance. Like in GTA when you jump off a building and just fall and fall and fall...... get that kind of "ooooooooooh sh******t" feeling.

Penzer · Jun 2006

I can't believe this many people get sick or get eye strain. I've been gaming for 15 years and I've never actually met anyone who got sick. I guess you could consider certain WoW player friends sick, afflicted with the insatiable disease of mmo addiction, but besides that I've never met anybody who's gotten motion sickness.

I once had this guy visiting one of my friends, he lived on this tiny tiny little island and the fastest he'd ever gone was in a golf cart. I was dropping him and my friend somewhere, just going like 100 on the highway. When we got there, he got out of my car and vomitted all over the ground. It has to have been one of the funniest things i've ever seen, poor guy.

KDR_11k · Jun 2006

I grew up on Descent as my first FPS. No nausea since. Are you one of those people who can't stomach Descent?

LordScottish · Jun 2006

I got sick when playing forsaken because it didn't have a ground like other games. But never again since then. Are you using a CRT monitor?

Spoon_of_death · Jun 2006

I always get sickness when playing tetris... all the perty colors oooh!!!

SHEPEIRO · Jun 2006

KDR- yes i grew up on descent too, that really did cure any motion sickness,the heart palputaions from the escape sections used to make me light headed afterwards.

Steve Schulze · Jun 2006

Going back to GTA2 on a modern computer did it for me. You'd think that these days a the old sprite based games would run smooth as silk, but this was a jerking, flickering mess that I couldn't bare to play for more than a couple of minutes. Tis a shame too, I'd like to revisit the classic GTAs.

Hollowmind · Jun 2006

I never get sick from playing games. But after playing for hours I get this weird bloom affect whenever I look at anything emitting light or reflecting bright light. Just a big glow around any light source that takes an hour or 2 of not being at my computer to go away. Makes driving at night difficult after a long gaming session.

sledgy · Jun 2006

Descent here too. I got over the vertigo/nausea pretty rapidly with that one. Wolfenstein or Doom never really gave me any trouble. The only games that have done that to me are HL1 and HL2. Maybe it's the way they are rendering depth - either too near or too far, I can't tell but I can do about an hour before the headache/nausea force me to stop.

SHEPEIRO · Jun 2006

i think they have a wide FOV which gives it a kind of immersive feel but also motion sickness

sledgy · Jun 2006

That could be it - I'll see if I can futz with it to make it better. I just never think of adjusting it until it's too late and my head is already spinning.

Paul Jaquays · Jun 2006

Generally speaking, watching someone else play an FPS for any length of time would make me ill. I used to get sick during Quake 2 level reviews back at id and would need a strong dose of pepto-bismol to recover. I think it may be related to why some people get sick in the back seat of cars, but are OK if they are driving. When driving, you are able to have a more predictive sense of where the car is going and what is going to happen, but as a back seat passenger, all you can do is react and hang on.

I also react poorly to poor frame rate situations ... which could explain problems with next-gen type games.

Simulator Sickness?

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