Simulator sickness

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domesticated om

Stickler for details
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For the past 7 or 8 years, I have been heavily addicted to first person shooter games like Quake, Counter Strike, and Unreal Tournament. Lately however (past couple of years), I've been unable to play as much as I'd like to due to growing amounts of nausea I'm experiencing while playing. The nausea feels similar to car sickness or motion sickness.

Today, I finally became fed up with the nausea, and decided to do a google search to see if anyone else was having the same problem. As it turns out, the phenomena is common, and the official name for it is called "simulator sickness". The term apparently originated from pilots who experienced motion sickness while training in flight simulators.

Here's a wiki on it"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_sickness


...at any rate, the articles I've found have done an excellent job of defining what it is, but have gone into any detail as how to ELIMINATE simulator sickness. Does anyone have any advice for how to get rid of it (excluding "not playing" LOL)?
 
domesticated om said:
For the past 7 or 8 years, I have been heavily addicted to first person shooter games like Quake, Counter Strike, and Unreal Tournament. Lately however (past couple of years), I've been unable to play as much as I'd like to due to growing amounts of nausea I'm experiencing while playing. The nausea feels similar to car sickness or motion sickness.

Today, I finally became fed up with the nausea, and decided to do a google search to see if anyone else was having the same problem. As it turns out, the phenomena is common, and the official name for it is called "simulator sickness". The term apparently originated from pilots who experienced motion sickness while training in flight simulators.

Here's a wiki on it"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_sickness


...at any rate, the articles I've found have done an excellent job of defining what it is, but have gone into any detail as how to ELIMINATE simulator sickness. Does anyone have any advice for how to get rid of it (excluding "not playing" LOL)?
Click to expand...

death solves all problems. But really try using different viewing techniques...alternate between using a monitor and a projector screen.
 
All games you've mentioned are designed to run in claustrofobic environment and narrow maps, like in warehouses, posts, stations, fortresses, etc. This could be pretty dizzy especially if you spend a lot of time in gaming.

Try some more opened FPS, like Call Of Duty, MOH, Half Life, Far Cry. Or some of horror shooters you can't play more than 10 minutes, because of heart attack: F.E.A.R., AVP2, Suffering,...

I must admit this is pretty silly theory, aye?

Just play on better refresh rate and play in small portions. Or if you prefer to play longer, then make a half hour break, after each hour of play.
 
i actually had a temporal lobe seizure...

from first person games.

its the frame rate... it gives you a head ache.

it hurts the eyes...

and if the game is real cheap... it will have a slow frame rate.

the slower the frame rate... the more it bothers the mind.

i dont play them anymore.


but..

halo... didnt give me any problems... it had smooth game play.

-MT
 
It's more likely to do with Refresh rates and their Frequency.

All 3D graphics nowadays is usually reliant upon the same drivers and generally as a rull of thumb follow the same method in program for drawing up the refresh rate of redraws to give you a Framerate.

Depending on what Frequency the refreshes are, what size screen you have and what type of screen (Type in the sense if the screens pixels are orientated like a Monitors or diagonally orientated like older televisions) will decide on how effective the movement refreshes are, especially in the "Lateral" directions.

To cut my explaination short, basically what makes people ill is the Lateral movements of moving their character, not so much from moving their character Left or Right but actually Turning 180° in either of the two directions to perhaps shoot at someone behind them etc.

To cure it, there isn't necessarily much that can be done for some since they might naturally suffer from motion sickness. However for the rest of us it's a two part fix, Better equipment for us and better programming by those that pump the games out.

A few of the more recent First/Third Person shooters have started to use the "Bloom" effect during turns, this does to my knowledge lessen sickness caused because the frequency of redraw is somewhat different when all the crisp/sharp edges are blurred. However I would need confirmation from other games players before suggesting to developers that... "this is the way to go".
 
Simple solution: pharmaceuticals. Try some Meclizine HCl or Dimenhydrinate. It does take 1/2 to 1 hour to kick in, but until you find an actual cure/workaround, it may be your best option. I recommend the Meclizine over the Dimenhydrinate, because there is no drowsiness.

You could also try drinking ginger ale every time you play. Make sure it has real ginger in it, because most of the big brands just use artificial flavor.

I get motion sickness in real life, in cars, and sometimes airplanes, or if I spin around too much. But games never affect me.
 
Actually, I've just read that standard anti-emetics might not work for simulator sickness, since they are caused by different things. You could try it though.
 
domesticated om said:
For the past 7 or 8 years, I have been heavily addicted to first person shooter games like Quake, Counter Strike, and Unreal Tournament.
Click to expand...
what? no doom? :confused:

about unreal, how do you get into the building on one of the maps?
i can't remember the level number but it's a big medieval open top building with two large wooden doors.
there are also 2 or 3 animals running around and a large lake.
i tried this level about 5 or 6 times and i can't get the doors open.
i wonder if the animals have something to do with it?
 
I've played many FPS PC games and have never felt dizzy except with two games. One is Oblivion (the 4th Elder Scrolls game). I have a relatively high end computer and pushed up most of the video settings, but the swaying grass and leaves made my head swim. It was nice if you kept the mouse still and just looked, but as soon as you moved around, it was not a pretty experience- yap, frame rate drop. Even though it's sacrificing the whole point of virtual forests, I've now just lowered all the extra graphics and even though it doesn't look as nice, I can now play it without feeling sick. The second is Thief: Deadly Shadows. It was trying to be visually intense but didn't really live up to that, just made me sick and the cursor felt too sluggish. Still haven't found a good way to reduce the setting so I can play it without it looking like a game from 10 years ago. So I recommend if you're feeling sick from it, lower your settings, it might help boost your frame rate if you can't do anything about a better computer or monitor frequency etc.
 
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