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Half-Life 2 Causes Nausea, Looks Good in Doom Engine
BrookHarty writes "There is a large number of users reporting nausea while playing Half-Life 2. There is a thread on the Steam powered forums that talks about the wide spread problem. Some other sites are actively talking about the motion sickness, PlanetHalflife, 3DGPU, usenet group comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action has an active discussion, and gaming IRC network Gamesurge on channel #Halflife2." In related news from people with too much time on their hands, Jacques Chester writes "Folks discussing the visual merits of the Source and Doom 3 engines might want to look at this. The goal is to see what Half-Life levels might look like in Doom 3. An eerie result."
come for the naked robots, stay for the zombies
FPS games have been making people sick for years. Ever since Doom exploded onto the scene, this has been an issue for some people. Of course, it's worse in some games than others - Descent is a perfect example - and I haven't heard about wide-scale problems in a huge release such as HL2 before.
Remember, kiddies: Playing HL2 can also cause epileptic seizures or carpal tunnel in addition to the nausea. Just like every other game out there can...
Goo goo g'joob.
Playing HL2 can also cause epileptic seizures or carpal tunnel in addition to the nausea. Just like every other game out there can...
As can porn...but I don't really think that will stop anyone
Monstar L
FPS games have been making people sick for years. Ever since Doom exploded onto the scene, this has been an issue for some people. Of course, it's worse in some games than others - Descent is a perfect example - and I haven't heard about wide-scale problems in a huge release such as HL2 before.
This is a much more rampant problem. I noticed it too when playing and this has never been a problem for me before. I then come look and see EVERY forum has a thread about this. The problem seems to be the very low fov HL2 uses - 75. Most games use at least 85-90. This is of course changable inside the game.
But even without something to compare to, I think the Doom3 pictures look cool. Ironically, I was thinking about trying FPS games again(I've never gotten into them before), but the pictures on the back of the HL2 box looked pretty unrealistic from a graphics standpoint. Now I'm thinking this Doom3 with HL2 textures looks cool, even though there are complaints that the textures are pixellated? What's the best looking game out there, then?
Handles the huge outdoor maps from HL2.
I think this is where the Doom engine completely falls on its face.
When I first played the game, I experienced nausea. Same for Quake and a few others. The main thing that worked to alleviate the nausea was being in a room cool enough to keep me comfortable. That was the ONLY thing to offset nausea for me.
So if I experienced nausea as far back as Doom 1, does that make me cooler, or just more weaker when it comes to FPS playing?
We all know it'd look somewhat similar to Doom 3 itself.
I don't have too much to say on this topic, except for the fact that I can only play HL2 for about an hour or so before having to stop from motion sickness. A good 30 or 40 minute break and I'm all good to go.
The strange thing is that I have never experienced this in all my years of gaming. From Wolfenstein to Doom, Quake, Unreal, and the original HL and CS, I have never had any motion sickness problems. I have heard reports that it's to do with the narrow FOV, but I'm still unsure how to change that (anyone?) and other people say it has to do with jitters in the gfx, but from what I can see it's running silky smooth.
Anyway, this does at least make me feel better, that I'm not the only one with the problem. Any suggestions would be helpful (anything is better than the post on the steampowered forums: "Grow some balls and stop getting sick from playing video games" great advice.. thanks)
I've already seen the posts (This isnt anything new!) posts start, so since I submitted the story I'll respond.
The problem is more people are reporting sickness from this game than the past. I started feeling sick myself, and my friends also reported it. I'm an active gamer, and play in Cyber leagues, local gaming events, and lan parties. Not a n00b in the gaming department in any stretch. I've played almost every FPS since wolfenstien 3d.
What is strange, is CounterStrike Source isnt making people sick, but Half-Life 2 is. The theory so far is Half-Life 2 is so visually perfect to the real world, that its starting to trick peoples mind causing nausea.
Really, don't mod these guys +insightful, its not the normal level of people getting motion sickness. It's lots more. Do a google search, its everywhere.
BTW, I still play, just have only doing 1 hour at a time. About 2 hours and I also start feeling the same as other posts. I only posted when I saw the steam forums, planet half life forums, usenet groups and even people on IRC, way too many people saying the same thing.
.. even Spectre VR.
.. its good to go outside, i rarely ever barf up lunch out there ...
virtual reality is not all its cracked up to be
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
I haven't yet read the article, so I'm not sure what they mean by "motion sickness". The only motion is you running/walking, you in a swamp boat and you in a dune buggy. Not a big deal and no different than any other game out there. I mean, really - even graphically, those sections (though great) are no more realistic than most of today's modern console based racing games.
However, if they're talking about motion sickness from the heights- I will concur. It is natural to fear great heights and most people do - this game takes advantage of that. Near the beginning, there is a part of HL2 wher eyou have to cross a large iron bridge, but you have to do it *under* the bridge, using the steel girders and broken mesh catwalks. The birds as they fly around, the sounds, the wind, the shaking of the structure and the realistic portrayal of height literally had my palms sweating and my vision narrowing. In fact, I eventually had to stop playing the bridge level and ask my younger brother to get past it for me, because it bothered me so much.
Unfortunately, heights play a large part in this game. ARGH. Still, I can't see it being enough to make you feel outright nasuea.
I managed to fix this by dumping the FPS below 30 by turning on 4x AA. and turning everything up as high as it would go, this caused thefluidness to go away and the nausia and cold sweats as well.. lol stupid game makes me sick.
Now if only they could fix the securom copy protection on the retarded disc version of the game, I am seriously thinking of shipping it back to them for a refund as it has eaten my DVD +/- R Drive. As in destroyed the hardware. Go Vivindi go.. right to hell..
I've suffered from DIMS for years. Does anyone out there have any good tips or ideas for curing (or reducing) the problem of motion sickness? With all the upcomming games that I'm worried will cause it that I want to play (Halo 2, Metroid Prime 2, HL2, Doom 3, etc), I'd love to know.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
I don't think that it's motion sickness or other such stuff in the game. I think it's the graphics.
And no, I'm not kidding or being sarcastic at all. When I play the game, I often get nausious looking at the overly-realistic monsters (such as those nasty things on the ceiling). Last night it got so bad that I literally had to quit the game and lie down. Playing Half-Life 2 doesn't make me sick cause of motion sickness; I don't get motion sick- it's the graphics.
- dshaw
from the steam forum: "In fact it seems I only get sick playing DirectX games."
I know, this story was not news-worthy, but I do appreciate it. I do not usually get sick while playing fully immersive games. With Half Life 2, though, it is another story.The games in which I do not get sick tend to be low geometry, high FOV, reflex shooters. This obvservation leads me to agree with the parent poster. My Half Life 2 sickness may, in part, also be due to the very low FOV. Another thing that I noticed, while playing through the video test, is that the textures are not static. You may say "wha?", but I mean from the viewer's perspective. I could see the equivalent of scanlines at tricky points of geometry on a single object. This wasn't an antialiasing artifact, mind you, this was something entirely different. As I've never seen it before, I cannot do much better in describing it. However, I feel that it might account for some of the nausia that people feel in game.
Lastly, the player's perspective feels disproportionately small compared to the environment, especially at higher resolutions. As a player, I feel as though I am swimming through an environment all to large for me. This messes with my frame of reference, especially when picking up objects (which then float several feet in front of me) and completing puzzles (in which the perspective is very misleading). My biohazard suit doesn't fit me like a glove. Not even the gloves.
If you haven't invested in Pfizer yet, now might be the time. I'm predicting a 27% spike tommorow when investors realize that several million gamers are planning on buying several cases each of Dramamine for Thanksgiving weekend.
Is this nausia centerd aroung a group (older people) of is it just for very dedicated gamers. I'm 14, and play on average for 2 hr chunks, and have never noticed any nausia. Mabey this problem effects only older people, or mabey (problably) you need to play for more than 2 hrs at a time, which is not a great idea. Mabey its a reaction for not seeing sunlight for over 48 hours.
s'funny, I used to spend hours playing Descent, and it never caused me any problems at all. Neither did Half Life (haven't tried HL2), Halo, Wolf3D, Doom, Quake or UT.
But I can't play more than about 20 minutes or so of Timesplitters 2 without feeling deathly ill for hours afterwards...
Descent is a perfect example
Decent is the only game ever to make me sick. I almost hurled once and never played again. Games that require Dramamine to play are not fun.
Gee I only feel sick when I remember what I paid for my video card .....
How is this news?
Someone who didnt read the articles would post that. The problem is the amount of people getting sick. Most people who never have gotten sick are NOW getting sick. The increase is the news.
Remember, kiddies: Playing HL2 can also cause epileptic seizures or carpal tunnel in addition to the nausea. Just like every other game out there can...
You can do a simple google search and see how many people are getting sick. This isn't people who normally get sick, we are talking hard core FPS players.
Not sure how you got modded +insightful, its pure flaimbait.
"It has officially been eleven minutes since the last Half Life 2 story..."
I completed Descent 1 and 2, completed Doom3, and currently play UT2004 for up to five hours at a time and have not gotten even the slightest bit sick from any of these, but driving the boat in HL2 gave me instant nausea to the point that I felt like I was hungover and about to throw up. I even tried ditching the boat and swimming, but finally hit a point where radioactive waste made a tunnel impassable. After numerous half-hour sessions over the weekend, I finally made it past the boat sequence last night and was able to play for several hours with no problems at all.
Well, I'm 22 and have no problems.
I love the HL2 engine.
Also, FOV stands for field of view for those who don't know.
I work with graphics, 3D specifically, a lot both in modeling and coding so I would assume I'm immune to just about anything a computer monitor can display, well -- except goatse.cx...
I also do very well on spatial relationship or mechanical tests. You know, tests on gears and such.
Just looking at the game engine itself I've noticed that the shadows and lighting in general is botched. It all seems to be from the same angles, or at least: the wrong angle(s). Obviously it's no Doom 3 engine-wise when comparing light or shadow realism. I haven't seen much testing yet to determine how Half-Life 2 does shadows. Seems because people can't recognize the fault consciously, they must do it unconsciously =)
Have you looked at the colour scheme of this site yet?
See this Planet Half-Life forum thread.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Who knew that HL2 would cause unintentional bulimia. Will reports of weight loss be next? ;)
Descent 1/2/3/Mercenary rock so much it's worth playing them through the nausea. Just keep a bucket beside you. Eventually you'll run out of vomit, and then you can keep playing until your brain melts out your ears and your eyes turn to red-veined yellow bricks.
I'm reading all these posts on steampowered and here and, well.. all over the place, and I started wondering why I am not getting nausiated also.
Then it occured to me. Since I have tunnel vision (around 18 degrees), I'm USED to the narrow FOV. Go figure... a disability coming in quite handy!
If the porn your looking at makes you nauseous... thats REALLY kinky.
Smoking is an expensive, slow, and unreliable method of suicide.
Older games as far back as Doom, Heretic, and Rise of the Triad also had this weird "fishbowl" view, yet it didn't make me sick.
I've experienced motion sickness (car & boat) and the sensation you get from the FPS games is quite similar. I also don't like heights, and that feels quite different. The simulated heights in games have never been a problem, more the Blair Witch-style movement. And different games have affected me to different degrees.
If you steal this sig, the only people who will profit are professional criminals.
Nausea is not just limited to Half-Life 2, I have been playing Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, another Source engine game, and after playing that game for a while I feel a little nauseous. In VtM:B if one is in first person before entering combat, entering combat causes the camera to enter into third person, that may be what is causing my nausea. Then again, maybe the low fov in first person on VtM:B may be causing it too.
When I played No One Lives Forever 2 a while ago, which is another low fov game, and which gave me nausea too initially. After playing the game a while I just got used to the motion of the game and I no longer had any nausea when I played to NOLF2.
In doing some research on this post, one article suggested that no to do the activity that causes the nausea on an empty stomach. The article also suggested that it may help to eat a small, low-fat meal before the activity.
Impersonating Tycho from Penny Arcade since before there was a PA.
"The Steam Forums are temporarily offline", anyone got a cache?
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
It's spelled "maybe". And your first sentence makes no sense at all. Maybe you should pay a little more attention during English class.
Can you install hl2 on two computers with the same liscense?
Any game with a hovercraft mode is guarenteed to make me motion sick.
Beyond Good and Evil has been making a good attempt at it also.
I remeber getting woozy playing Descent years ago, could be one reason I don't play FPS much.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
shut the fuck up you stuck up ass (literally).
I also had nausea issues playing HL2 -- I've had it to lesser degrees with other FPSes, like Doom 3, Quake 2/3, and Max Payne 1/2. HL2 is much nastier, though; after the first hour, I really thought I was gonna hurl.
So is there a solution? Here's mine: don't play in full screen mode. I run 1280x1024, so I'm currently playing it at 1024x768, and it helps a lot. Seeing it in a window seems to do the trick.
Why I find strange is that I'm usually very susceptible to motion sickness (I get it playing the natural selection mod for halflife1), and I haven't experienced any playing halflife2. Could it be because my ancient video card doesn't allow me to play any higher than 800x600 (which is very playable btw)?
"If the porn your looking at makes you nauseous... thats REALLY kinky." ... said 'UranusReallyHertz'.
"Derp de derp."
I know it wasn't the point of your post, but I thought I'd offer a tiny addendum to your note on potentially having epileptic seizures whilst playing Half-Life 2. With PC games, you have the advantage of being able to adjust the refresh rate. This means that if the monitor is refreshing at 60 Hz and causes a seizure, changing it to 75 Hz or 85 Hz or whatever could (should?) fix the problem entirely. As an additional aside, raising the refresh rate also improves the sound of the cheap radio I have sitting next to the monitor. :)
It was the pirate babes, seriously. I get seasick. :-\
Kids these days. They don't know the difference between classic, and just plain old.
HL2 seems to use traditional shadow techniques. Basically, it fakes it pretty well. Lighting in HL2 isn't real time like the lighting in Doom3.
Personally, I'd love to combine the lighting of Doom3 with everything else from the Source engine. THAT would make some awesome gaming.
I'd add my voice to those who said this is newsworthy because the problem is widespread. I'm also one who never got sick for playing games but get sick by playing HL2. In about 20 to 30 mins. I begin to feel quite uncomfortable, and can't play longer than an hour, which might actually be a good thing.
To add my experience, proposed solutions from changing the fov (I even tried 120), to setting high refresh rate (I had already set it at 85hz) to disabling AI in ATI CCC to dsiabling AA, did little to solve the problem. I still get sick and sort of decided not to play any more. (I was in the Ravenholm.) As some other posters mentioned, the problem may in fact be in the way the textures are drawn.
Doom3 managed to scare the shit out of me at many occations and I loved every minute of it.
It seams HL2 has the ability to scare the shit out of people's mind's and bodies. That's twice as scary imo and all the more exhilerating because of it.
--- CatsCradle
a lemon friend of mine couldn't play jaguar xj220 - because he got driving sickness.
Just because he always lost. That was a great game, needs a new update.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Simpsons Hit N Run Causes Nausea for me.
Great game but playing it is very hard. I strugled through lots of it but could not get past 1/4 of the game.
holy cow i thought it was just me needing new glasses or something
this sig has been discontinued.
I emailed the second picture in that set of HL2/Doom3 screenshots to my wife and asked her: "What do you think this is?" She called me up and said, "A picture of a basement hallway." I asked if by picture she might mean a photograph, and she said, "Sure." When I told her that the picture was from a 3D rendering engine, she was surprised. She thought it was real. That's some damn impressive technology.
When some bright person while develop a tool that will allow you to convert the maps automatically between HL2 and D3 and vice versa.
If you own both, I see no issues with such a gizmo.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
Sue Valve today!
And the nvidia and ati (those guys are guilty too).
Hey, in the worst case, every game will put a warning when they load.
Lately I've just played Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 a lot and made other people sick instead of me. :-)
-Rob
Marriage doesn't have to suck!
You can basically reach any point in Far Cry. See a mountain? Why not scale it! It's usually possible unless it's the edge of a map.
Amusingly HL2 does not make me sick -- but playing Doom and other old FPS shooters such as Wolfenstein 3D and Descent do. Even more strangely I was able to play those games all day way back when. Now I try playing Doom for 3 minutes and I feel sick.
New games don't bother me, but I have had some problems with the original Unreal Tournament. The government seems eager to spend lots of money right now maybe they should have a study on first person shooter sickness.
I've played the latest games FarCry, Doom3, Half-Life 2 all at 1600x1200 @ 60Hz on my 21.3" LCD via DVI and never had any issues. Maybe it's the CRT. I remember when I used to have a 21" CRT and GTA:VC was locked @ 60Hz. I would have a headache after an hour or so of playing due to the flickering. But I can play Half-Life 2 for hours w/o any headaches, other than the rest of the family complaining that they haven't seen me in a few days. :-)
It's remarkable how good the HL2 levels look in the Doom 3 engine, and how awful the Doom 3 levels look in the Source engine. Of course, you have lighting and bump-mapping to consider, but even so, the artists behind HL2 did a damn fine work with the much more limited engine (graphically).
:)
Not that the Doom 3 crew didn't, i just think they had things easier
I know 20,000 people who want to sure Valve:)
No other FPS has given me nausea or headaches before HL2. For me when I pan around quickly on certain levels, it would make me sick to my stomach. I was kinda bummed that I had to stop playing after an hour of play the day I got it. For me it had to do with a combination of things: 21 inch trinitron 1280X1024 resolution sitting about 2 feet from the monitor mouse sensitivity too high FOV too low I've been playing FPS games for more than 10 years, and don't suffer from motion sickness, fear or heights, anything afaik. I'll try the +default_fov 90 trick and see how I react.
I haven't played these games so can't say for sure. But a similar problem happened to people in a planetarium that ran a demo (racing down a highway) meant for an ordinary screen. Apparently you get sick when you have lots of stuff racing on the sides of your peripheral vision (and presumably not locked to your body spatial sense, otherwise you would get sick just running).
A well lit room is good but possibly the game itself is fundamentally the culprit.
My idea of motion sickness is that the brain thinks it has been poisoned, and so tries to barf the poison out.
I was only motion sick once in a computer game ages ago, and thought it was because the graphics had unnatural colors to them. Greenish/teal that is. You also had the option to make your character bob up and down like you do when walking, but increasing or reducing the bobbing did nothing to reduce the nausea.
I also didn't get accustomed to the game. In fact, I felt like a got sicker much quicker later on. Maybe I just noticed the symptoms earlier, I don't know.
So maybe if you play with color filters you could reduce the nausea.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
It's odd that thus far noone has mentioned the unquestioned king of upset stomach and dizzy headache FPSs (Turok). I've played FPS since Wolf and very rarely get nauseous but every Turok title does it. http://firstpersonshooters.org/ (soon to be down)
I am returning this game and I reccomend you all do the same if you are as disappointed as I am with HL2's performance.
I cannot play for more than 30 minutes without feeling nausous (and I've adjusted the refresh and Fov).
The stupid "loading" screens are completely unacceptable.
Valve responded to my request for return by stating that their policy is to not accept returns. WTH??? I bought this thing online, downloaded it online, cannot play unless online. Let me return it you THEIVES!!!!
I have already started American Express disputing this charge for this defective product. I suggest you all do the same.
And if these needs are not satisfied, we need to get a Class Action lawsuit going against these THEIVES!!!