Half Life + nausea?

DerekDRP said:

Does anyone else get sick from playing portal for too long?

If I play longer then 20 minutes it feels like I get car sick type of sick and my eyes get buggy with in that amount of time.

Does this seem weird to you?


And I'm sorry for bringing up an old post.

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Yeah, I get sea sick from portal. Too bad, its a great game.

Wow, this is real interesting I actually know what they are talking about with the HL2 issue, but it never really got to bad for me to where I had to stop playing. The motion blur in Gears of War and Crysis also does soemthing to my stomach.

My brother in law gets nauseous from games that have multiple things happening at once. Which keeps him from playing alot of FPS.

The reason I have found that generally causes nausea with HL2 is due to the high amount of higher resolution or photo-similiar textures, coupled with the odd FOV that is generally associated with FPS's (not a standard human FOV btw) Being ran in a high frame rate (30+) can cause tracking problems and cause your eyes and your brain to start no communicating properly and cause you to feel sick. Kinda like when you spin around in circles, your eyes are having problems tracking what you see while your brain says you are either moving, or not moving. In the case of HL2, your brain is saying that you are no moving due to the the fluid in your ears that determines whether you are moving or not, and yet your eyes insist that you are hauling ***, falling, flying etc. Thus you end up feeling sick. Now some people, like me, no matter how much I spin around, I never seem to get sick, so I never have problems with getting sick from video games.

shard said:

The reason I have found that generally causes nausea with HL2 is due to the high amount of higher resolution or photo-similiar textures, coupled with the odd FOV that is generally associated with FPS's (not a standard human FOV btw) Being ran in a high frame rate (30+) can cause tracking problems and cause your eyes and your brain to start no communicating properly and cause you to feel sick. Kinda like when you spin around in circles, your eyes are having problems tracking what you see while your brain says you are either moving, or not moving. In the case of HL2, your brain is saying that you are no moving due to the the fluid in your ears that determines whether you are moving or not, and yet your eyes insist that you are hauling ***, falling, flying etc. Thus you end up feeling sick. Now some people, like me, no matter how much I spin around, I never seem to get sick, so I never have problems with getting sick from video games.

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Me neither, in fact, the first few times I tried HL I had no problems. But for some reason the one time I decided to beat the game I got nauseous a few times throughout the game. It was really mild though, I could get back to playing in a minute or so, I just needed to get up and walk around my house a bit

nasvemos671 said:

Wow, this is real interesting I actually know what they are talking about with the HL2 issue, but it never really got to bad for me to where I had to stop playing. The motion blur in Gears of War and Crysis also does soemthing to my stomach.

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Odd, I found that motion blur helps me somewhat, as in its easier on the eyes. Like in Team Fortress 2, I notice that without blur, there is just sharp edges moving really fast. Ill never understand the human brain...

changing the fov to 90 in the console (have to type sv_cheats 1, then fov 90) eliminated the nausea for me...
it was horrible, id have to lay down after 30mins of playing...now no problem

I had problems with the grass in oblivion, but that was a headache, not naseua. Luckily for me it was also an easy fix though

This has been discussed quite a bit before:

2-year-old thread:
http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=434045&highlight=sick&page=2

3-year-old thread:
http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=344803&highlight=sick&page=3

Anyhow, here is what I wrote in those threads. I'm wondering if any of you have made similar observations:

I have experienced this "motion sickness" (or whatever you want to call it) ever since the original Wolfenstein 3D and Doom. Symptoms are nauseau, headache, and dizziness. I get these same symptoms if I try to read in a moving car. The funny thing is that when I think of "motion sickness" in the traditional sense, I think of people who can't ride rollercoasters or other fast-moving rides at amusement parks. I have NEVER had a problem with rollercoasters, long road trips, flights with lots of shake due to turbulence, etc., but 3D games can have me feeling awful in a matter of minutes!

Another interesting observation that I've made is that these symtoms almost always occur in one of the following circumstances:

- I'm playing a new game/map trying to find my way around. The map layout is confusing and I can't determine which way to go. Getting lost on a map makes me sick in a matter of minutes.

- I'm trying to monitor my framerates or admire the scenery in a game instead of just playing and focusing on what's directly in front of me.

Once I am familiar with the layout of a map and fully understand how to play the game, the motion sickness symptoms do not return. For example, I can play RTCW: ET for hours on end as long as I know the maps. However, if a server is running a custom map that I haven't yet seen, I sometimes experience motion sickness during that round. It happened again with COD2 multiplayer. Playing through the maps the first few times often had me feeling sick, but now that I know most of the maps, I don't have an issue.

The one exception to these observations is levels with vehicles! I think the airboat on HL2 would get me sick no matter how many times I played the level. Same goes for the buggy in Far Cry, tank missions in COD/COD2, etc. Pretty much any vehicle that lets you look in a different direction than the one in which the vehicle is moving will cause a problem.