Simulator Sickness

[Acoustic-Fury]

I am 31 years old and have been playing video games since Pong in the late 70s. Mostly console gaming, I found PC gaming around 2001.

The first time I had gotten simulator sickness was playing Wolfenstein at a friends house in the early 90s...it was so crippling I actually had to go home from his house and lay on my bed with my eyes closed and breath quick sharp breaths for most of the night to relieve the vertigo and nausea. The next day I went back and played again and had no trouble...I thought it was because it was the first time I had ever played an FPS...

Boy was I wrong. I purchased my first PC when my wife and I got together and I purchased the game Tribes II. That was life changing for me as far as video games go...being able to play and speak to friends and family all over the world through a video game was awesome...plus the game rocked.

Throughout the many titles I've played over the last 6 years, I've never had any issue. I've played all sorts of games and genres but mainly MMOFPS with a couple MMORPGs tossed in.

At the beginning of this year, I built my first computer from scratch. It was a significant upgrade - on my old computer, BF2 had to have all of the settings on low to even play it. It was a tremendous learning experience and I saved a lot of money. I played for a little bit and then took a long break from gaming.

Then Oblivion came out. I heard it was a cool game so I decided after having been away for months from gaming it was time to get back into it.

I loaded it up and began playing. Within 40 minutes, I was crippled with simulator sickness! I tried playing it the next day to try and "power" through it...nope...I was left feeling nauseous the entire day - it was so bad I had to miss a family party!

I thought maybe it was the game. So I loaded up Far Cry (it came with my XFX video card) same results.

I purchased a game out of the bargain bin Unreal Tournament 2004 - same thing. Starting to feel signs of sickness within 10 minutes, crippling headache around 30 minutes and full blown nausea and vertigo around 40 minutes.

I did some research in June and found that if you are susceptible to motion sickness (I've gotten it pretty bad on long car trips when I was younger) you are likely to get or have simulator sickness.

Also, simulator sickness gets worse as you get older. Now that I am in my 30s, I am attributing this as a possibility.

I thought my gaming days were done.

I let months pass and I decided to give it one more shot with Battlefield 2142. This time I found a thread that gave a list of suggestions.

One way was playing in the dark because you can immerse yourself in the environment without seeing stationary objects. (another way was to put a blanket over your head and the monitor if you can't get the room dark enough :lol: )

I tried playing in the dark and it works for me. I just bought a backlight keyboard this morning because as I was playing last night I had to turn on the light to get an idea of what keys I wanted to macro and the light was on for 10 minutes and I started to feel that nausea and headache come on...I turned the light off quickly and the simulator sickness went away immediately.

I have no idea why at this stage of my life this has happened...but I'm glad I at least found some answers.



Anyone else ever get simulator sickness? If so, what do you do to prevent it?

 

[Ididmyc600]

Hi

God that must be awful, cant say I suffer from it, although I admit that the noise made by the dog things in the original HalfLife didnt half give me the heebyjeebies when I played it for the first time.

Regards

 

[SNGX1275]

Have you tried taking those pills for motion sickness?

 

[Teaser261]

Have you cosidered seeing an eye doctor. Your'e in your 30's now. I'm pushin 40 and finally went and it fixed alot of the vertigo I felt all the time. good luck in your quest.

 

[smore9648]

Change the settings in your game options.

Some games of camera shake on & off options, at least in BF 2142 they do, I am not sure about the one you play.

 

[tifc8lraz]

When I would use a computer for a long time, I would start to get an eyeache which would escalate into a massive headache, and I would start to feel sick. I got updated reading glasses and it helps.

 

[TekGun]

I used to get motion sickness from a couple of FPS Doom and Turok, so I just stopped playing those two, however that was a long long time ago on a poor monitor. I dont seem to get it anymore and still play some FPS. Try changing your refresh rate and/or resolotion, (CRT with very low refresh rate can cause fatigue and eye strain). Also try to adjust the distance and height you are sitting in relation to your monitor.

 

[smore9648]

I used to get motion sickness from a couple of FPS Doom and Turok, so I just stopped playing those two, however that was a long long time ago on a poor monitor. I dont seem to get it anymore and still play some FPS. Try changing your refresh rate and/or resolotion, (CRT with very low refresh rate can cause fatigue and eye strain). Also try to adjust the distance and height you are sitting in relation to your monitor.

Egronomics helps a little bit but not much

 

[Chisel N Gel]

Do you get motion sickness from FPS or do you play RTS's and get this too?


ps. There was this one guy (game tester) in the book Half-Life 2 raising the bar that blew chunks when they were trying to make the air/boat level more intense.

 

[aliceaod]

I'm 50 and have simulator sickness too. The eyes tell your brain that you're moving and your inner-ear tells your brain that no you're not, the brain gets confused and turns on the barf mechanism.

The only games that I've been able to find that don't do it are Delta Force 2 and Battlefield 2. I recently tried COD4... can't do it. I wrote to Activision to see if there's a way of turning it off. They said to search the internet for tips and cheat codes. Cheat codes? Excuse me?

Unfortunately, that's all I could find (at least for COD4) was that if you turn on the cheats, you can disable "camerabob" and sway for the gun and stuff like this. I wonder how PunkBuster feels about that! How freaking stupid. I wish they'd give us the option in the games settings to turn that crap off!

If anybody out there has a list of games that we can tweak and how to tweak them to disable that crap, I'm sure that a lot of people would be very grateful. I know I would. I want to play these other games, but simply can't.