Slashdot Mirror
Motion Sickness Remedies for Games?
MagikSlinger asks: "A friend of mine gave me Silent Hill 3 for Christmas (yeah, I know it's old), and I finally got around to playing it. Within 2 minutes, I had to stop and step away from the computer: intense nausea and pressure right behind the eyeballs. I got really, really motion sick playing the game. Does anyone have home remedies, set-ups, video options to make it bearable?"
What throws me is going straight from a first-person-shooter to driving my car. For the first few minutes my reflexes feel all wrong. I keep wanting to move like I do in the game and realize just before the action kicks in that I can't do that.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
If the game permits it, change to third person perspective. This means you will see the game from right behind your character instead of through their eyes. This help me a lot on 3D games that support this mode.
I got the same problem after playing Half-Life 2 for too long (i.e. more than 30 minutes). You may want to try chewing ginger root, taking ginger capsules or dramamine.
From what I've read, the problem occurs when your brain receives movement signals from you eyes while your inner ear tells your brain that you're sitting still. I've heard that the higher the frame rate, the more intense the nausea and that if you lower the frame rate a bit (for exampe, by turning up the resolution, setting the antialiasing and anisotropic filtering higher, etc.) it can help minimize the sickness.
Over time though, you'll probably develop a tolerance for it like I did.
Another possibility if motion sickness pills don't seem to work could be that you are mildly epileptic. Some types of game designs can bring out forms of epilepsy that people don't even realize they have until they try playing such games.
--- It's not my fault this post looks redundant. I just type too slow.
We all attempt to minimize glare as a rule but having worked with UAV operators/observers in Iraq, we found that having a light to medium level of glare helped to settle stomachs and separate the POV. Possibly the only good thing to come out of iraq besides my Katamari times.
Are you sure the game didn't put the monitor into 60 Hz mode? The eyeball pressure thing sounds like how I feel when staring at a 60 Hz CRT.
I quit!
Open the window. I already had that kind of problem when playing in an overheated room with not enough fresh air.
And try to play for session no longer than when you feel you could start getting sick. It seemed that positive playing experience (i.e. not being sick ) was more encouraging for my body and after a while my bearable session time could increase. ( I had that problem with HL2 and I could barely survive 5-10 min in the beginning. At the end I could bear 1 hour session without problem. )
It seems for that also help to try different setting. I can't give you precise advise but check the refresh rate and your screen resolution. For LCD try to adjust the resolution, I have more problem with mine LCD than with some friend's ( mine is older and has a sligthly worse response time ) and generally much more trouble with LCD than with CRT ( but I never tried the brand new LCD with 8ms response time )
I'm more quickly sick in more agressive light conditions, and using a lower brithness/contrast for games ( to avoid the eye burning white an LCD can produce ) helped a lot.
I guess I'm mentally challenged today, but how do I change the FOV exactly?? Can you give an example say with a gaming console on an average-sized TV? Do I sit further or closer to the TV or something? As an aside, I get motion sickness FAR worse when I play console games than when I play them on my computer...perhaps for this reason? I always thought it was because on my computer I on liquidy smooth frame rates, but my framerates are not as good on console games. . Random_Amber
But it's Silent Hill 3. Survival Horror games should not be played with the lights on. And should be connected to a sweet surround sound system for ultimate freakouts.