I’m a semi-serious gamer (PC games). I mostly play RTSs (real time strategy) and RPGs (role playing games, sometimes online), but occasionally I like to fire up a FPS (first person shooter). I remember having a friend talk about not being able to play them due to motion sickness. It was never a problem for me. I’ve played the likes of Halo and Doom 3 without a hitch. In hindsight, it might have been a problem once before. GTA: San Andreas would give me headaches. It seemed to be from the motion blurring they were using at high speeds. I never had a problem with GTA: Vice City, which didn’t do the same blurring.
Last year around this time, I broke down and bought a 24" wide screen LCD (Dell 2407). It replaced a 21" CRT. The LCD is a good quality display. Native mode is 1920x1200. Games look great. I really like it. A few weeks later, I received a copy of Half Life 2 for Christmas. When I finally got around to playing it, a strange thing happened. After about 20 minutes I started getting that sweaty sick kind of feeling. My head started to hurt. I got nauseous. I was slow getting the hints, but it finally occurred to me. I was getting motion sickness. I tried to get through HL2, but I just couldn’t do it. 30 minutes was about the most I could stand at any one time and that would leave me feeling ill for a few hours.
Since then I’ve played many other games on this monitor. I’ve played Everquest for many hours straight in first person view. I’ve played Vanguard, Rome: Total War, Civilization IV, Command and Conquer 3? (the latest), and Company of Heroes. I had no problems with any of them. Oh yeah, I even played Dwarf Fortress in all of its splendor and glory with nary a problem.
Christmas of 2007 is now getting close. Two nights ago I realized that I still had a present left from 2006 that I hadn’t played, F.E.A.R. I loaded it up. It hits me with motion sickness almost exactly the same as HL2. I’m not happy. This is a problem for several reasons. First, I like to play these kind of games once it a while. Also, I know RogueGF has already picked up Bioshock to put under the tree for me.
I tried an experiment with F.E.A.R. last night. I set the video card (Nvidia chipset) to lock the screen resolution rather than scale to fit the screen. I then turned the game down to 1600x1200. This caused kind of a reverse letter box effect (black vertical bands down each side). Reducing the screen like this seemed to help a little, but not enough. So Dopers, do you have any suggestions? What can I do to go back to enjoying these games?
Not having played the games you mention, but having played some others (like Bloodlines), my best advice is switch to third person view instead of first person.
I get a sick feeling if I play for any length of time in first person, but over the shoulder I don’t feel sick at all. The only irritation is having to jump back and forth if some actual aiming is required.
Might just try toughing it out and see if it goes away.
I had the exact same thing happen for both the original Half Life and MaxPayne games. To the point where I even threw up from one of them, and I’m not one who usually gets motion sick from real world motion (cars, roller coasters, etc.).
In the case of both games, the sick feeling went away after my initial bad experience. Might just take your brain a while to adjust, I guess.
I can play Half-Life 2, Team Fortress, Portal, and Counterstrike (all use the Half-Life 2 Engine) with no problems, but Aliens vs. Predator 2 made me sick even if I watched someone else play it. Strangely, it was only the space marine segment that had this effect – I could play through as an alien or predator without any problems.
The other one that gets me is pretty much anything that uses the Unreal Engine (I believe). Unreal, Unreal Tournament, UT2003, and now the UT3 demo have all made me woozy and ill.
My suggestions for things to try would be:
1 - Turn off “head bob” if it’s available as a setting.
2 - Change the redraw frequency of your monitor to a higher mHz (but never, ever uncheck the “show only modes this monitor can support” option unless you feel like breaking the damn thing).
3 - Try adjusting the brightness and contrast of your monitor, using the in-game controls if possible.
I’ve experienced the same thing, but for some reason, only with certain FPS games. The first time was while playing Far Cry, but I’ve started to get woozy cold sweats playing Half-Life 2 as well. Never in years of playing FPS games prior to that, as far as I can remember.
I don’t know whether it’s related to the overall improvement in graphics quality (and realism, and perceived motion), or if there’s something specific about the textures or movement in certain games that causes it.
I’ve had the same problem off and on. I find that the highest and lowest resolutions usually cause me problems. However, mid level to higher resolutions seem to be less of a problem for me.
Turning off the head bob is a good idea. You may also want to look at reducing the mouse sensitivity - if any small motion of the mouse is causing a large motion on-screen, that can be an issue also.
This is a strange concept, to me. Even though heads do bob, really the world as we see it, while our heads bob, remains steady, because our brain compensates for it. In my estimation, the head bobbing feature is wrong, as well as being an uncomfortable experience.
I have had this problem personally for years. It has happened with pretty much every game system, including PC, as well as every type of monitor imaginable, from large screen to TV to small monitors. The only commonality is FPS. The first time it ever happened to me was Goldeneye for Nintendo. I have found nothing to help it or lessen the affects. I just cannot play any first person game for more than an hour or so without getting VERY sick. Someone mentioned a month ago or so a game called “Mount and Blade” or something like that for PC, and it was a great game, except for the unfortunate fact that it was first person. I couldnt play it for more than a couple hours, and I haven’t played it since.
I have thought of taking dramamine. I wonder if that would help or not? Maybe someone could experiment and report back.
After a long time lurking, I’ve signed up to confirm this one - can’t let a fellow sufferer go without knowing. (and knowledge is half the battle, GO JOE!)
I’ve suffered from FPS-inspired motion sickness since DOOM and Castle Wolfenstein 3-D (the original Castle Wolfenstein didn’t cause any problems ). I can confirm that taking Dramamine eliminates the problem, as does the cheaper WalDram. I’ve been using it to successfully play FPS’s for a couple of years now. Success meaning no motion sickness, not a higher body count.
Be warned though, the first time you take it it WILL knock you out - in my case for about 4 hours. Since it’s active for about 24 hours that still leaves me 20 or so hours of fraggy goodness. The bright side is, if you take another at about hour 18 it won’t knock you out - it only seems to do that when it’s first introduced to the body.
One slightly odd side-effect is that it seems to improve my ability to judge distances in driving games, like Burnout: Dominator or Midnight Club. I can play those games fine without Dramamine, yet I consistently get better scores/times when on it. Anyone know what the reason for that might be?
I meant to say in my first post that I do NOT have the motion sickness with either flying games or driving games. Only first person shooters. So it must be that the motion on the flying and driving games, while first person, is moving so fast to the point that it does not cause me any issues.
As for why your scores would be better with dramamine, have you actually kept track of your scores, or have you just noticed your scores were better on dramamine without noticing you had some high scores without it as well? I am not trying to discount you, but typically that’s the response you will get from Dopers.
However, there very well could be a correlation. It could be that the motion affect is much more subtle on driving games, but there is still some inner ear issues that are causing problems that we are unaware of, but that show up in lower scores overall.
I am not a doctor, of course. But I play one on TV.
didnt mythbusters do the dramamine vrs home remedy thing and find that ginger was a very effective and non kick your ass alternate?
you might try some ginger tea or something like that. Asian markets sell preserved ginger as a sort of candy that is pretty strange to your average white guy but its edible.
Thanks for all of the replies! I tried the head bob thing. I thought it helped for a while. I’m sure of it actually, but after a little under an hour, I’m suddenly feeling very ill. I guess I’ll try the Dramamine next.
Projammer, if you tell me of another similar sized wide screen that will definitely eliminate this problem, I will give you a heck of a deal on this one.
I’ve read elsewhere that this can be part of the problem with LCDs. As far as I know, all of the mainstream LCDs are locked at 60Hz. I think I used 85Hz on my CRT, so this could be one of the differences. I wish this was something I could change.
For me it was certain graphics engines that did it and it used to be much more pronounced with me as well.
My advice is to build up tolerance. Play until you feel sick and take a break. Next time play a little longer. Soon (at least in my case) you’ll be over it.
Sadly if I go a long time without playing certain games and fire them up again I have to go through the whole process over again.
From what I’ve read, field of view makes a difference to motion-sickness in FPS games.
Valve’s games (Half Life 2, etc) and some other games have their field of view set somewhere in the area of 70-75 degrees. They do this to increase the immersion of the experience (If they wanted to be even more cinematic they may go as high as 50 degrees, because it’s the closest FOV to 35mm video)
Some people’s brain doesn’t like this, which causes nausea.
There’s a page on field of view at the Valve developer’s wiki. Read the note at the bottom. It also explains how to change it (at least change it in Valve’s games)
For other games (I think even Bioshock) you may need to use something like Widescreen Fixer
Half Life 2 was also the worst for me. I used to play Quake III for hours, no problem, but HL2 would make me sick as a dog. And the thing is, it was so cool, I’d play way to far into the sickness and feel like I had a hangover from a 3 day tequila binge. I began stopping as soon as I got the onset of symptoms and was finally able to build up a tolerance to where I could finally play on through and finish.
But, after reading some threads here about how people who were just getting into it liked certain parts, I decided to play it again. And the motion sickness came right back. I didn’t have the stomach (literally) to build my tolerance back up and abandoned it.
I just wanted to chime in to say I had exactly the same experience playing Half Life 2. The only other game to cause me motion sickness was Grand Theft Auto 3 on the PC. I’ll definitely have to try turning off head bob, blur effects.
I get this on old FPS’s before they became realistic. Half Life 1, Shadow Warrior, System Shock, Doom 1, etc. I think it had something to do with how I was so used to how current FPS’s would bend textures/objects to look 3d, that I had trouble with the old method of bending blocky objects. The character always seemed to move quicker in the old games, and the mouse had an unnerving tendancy to move too damn fast left and right but slow up and down (no, not all games had this in the options to change). Never did figure out how to fix it, so I just haven’t played most of those original FPS games.
