Simulator Sickness Cures? 34
jensend asks: "Two years ago, Ask Slashdot posted
a question about 'simulator sickness'. Since then, games have become much more realistic, causing (in many cases, my own included) more severe nausea. any updated tips on avoiding this problem?"
When I started playing quake3 again (Score:2, Informative)
Doc, it hurts when I do this (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Doc, it hurts when I do this (Score:1)
Re:Doc, it hurts when I do this (Score:1)
$120 please. Next patient.
Re:Doc, it hurts when I do this (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Doc, it hurts when I do this (Score:1)
I find myself trying to look over hills, around corners, etc. in Everquest and FPS's all the time.
The only time I've ever had a motion sickness problem was in Quake2 after a round of heavy tweaking of settings. I'd left my framerate unlimited, and started getting sick. Set it back to 43fps and all was good.
Ya gotta play through it. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Ya gotta play through it. (Score:2)
Ob-on-topic:
Don't Play 3d shooters while drunk. Dizzyness and barfing aren't the problem, cleaning the keyboard the next morning is!
Re:Ya gotta play through it. (Score:1)
Hrm, maybe they're on to something....
Easy (Score:1)
solutions (Score:2, Informative)
you have two options:
Try this. (Score:3, Informative)
like so:
seta cg_bobroll "0"
seta cg_bobpitch "0"
seta cg_bobup "0"
seta cg_runroll "0"
seta cg_runpitch "0"
The problem will still be there, however, but only to a lesser degree, as it is the insconsistency between what the eye sees, and the ear feels. Which will still be prevelant.
One can also play around with refresh rates and field-of-view settings to lessen certain side-effects.
LEGO Quake (Score:3, Interesting)
Another effect this has is that it also disassociates the game word a little from real life, perhaps making it a bit less nauseating wrt. motion sickness.
"Just shoot the squarish-looking block"
I've never suffered from any form of motion sickness since I was 2 years old, so this is not a personal experience, just an idea.
I'd like to hear from people who do suffer what the following settings do for their malady:
/cg_picmip 20 (or higher)
/r_textureMode cg_nearest (not sure of this command)
Re:LEGO Quake (Score:4, Informative)
You are on the right track, but not exactly for the correct reason.
Motion sickness typically results from too great a psychoperceptual difference between the messages the brain gets from the eyes and what comes in from the inner ears. We are biologically tuned for the sorts of skills that are also useful in FPS games (spacial acuity, tracking moving objects, tuning in visual abberations in an open field). The problem is that the FPSs don't simulate *enough* of the sensory inputs. The biggest problem is that there is no actual feeling of movement detected by the inner ear. (Ride simulators that pitch and sway have their own problems. They usually don't match the physical movement to the visual clues well enough.)
So what's to do?
Some over-the-counter motion sickness med, like Dramamine may help. Consuming some ginger helps a bit, but only for about 30-60 minutes. Those things really just calm the stomach, so you'd still need Tylenol/Advil for the headache (skip the aspirin, it'll make the stomache worse). But these things only treat the symptoms.
Most people who get motion sickness have better-than-average visual acuity. Their ocular muscles have a great response reflex to movements and their brains are used to a high accuracy in tracking. Give them a book to read in a car, and they get nausea from the subtle jumping and bumping of the text that wont stay still. And their eye muscles will get fatigued from all that correcting and recorrecting. People with more relaxed eye muscles have brains that are used to a "lower resolution" input, and apply a greater degree of persistence of vision to everything already.
So what does this mean in practice for treating the cause? "Don't do that" has been mentioned already. Reducing the resolution to LEGO quality gives the ocular muscles and visual acquity/tracking reflexes a lot less to spaz out about. Another solution is, believe it or not, alcohol (or other depressants). Of course, your trigger reflexes will also be blunted, so your game may not necessarily improve. (-:
Until an inner-ear stimulation system with an accurate enough response time is developed, that's probably it.
Re:LEGO Quake (Score:1)
I've always wondered why FPS make me feel nauseous almost immediately and I never understood how other people could play them for hours unaffected.
Headaches (Score:2, Interesting)
As far as solutions go? Beats me... if only I could play HL with all the doors already opened.
Re:Headaches (Score:1)
Motion sickness. (Score:3, Informative)
I find the I get motion sickness when I get hot in a moving car/truck/plane etc..etc. Most of the time this also only happends when I am the one that is not in controll of the said object.
Hence when I started to play games as a kid I noticed that I also started to have the same issues. Ironicly enough the cure to both turned out to be the same. Keep cool! I don't mean this in a "Hey baby, check out my package" kind of way I mean cold like your nipples could cut glass cold.
Also found that if I used things that helped with sea sickness fixed my problems as well. The bands with the buttons on the inside fore pressure points don't work as well but they did offer me some relief.
Over all the only thing that really really helped and cures me to this day is keeping your body cold and having a little break every 29 minutes or so to re-orient.(spelling?)
I wish you the best of luck and turn that air down low, get a nice cold drink, and launch a scud.
Cheers,
Sick from FPS? (Score:1)
I find that problems vary by game. back in the day DOOM or the original Quake would make me want to hurl after a few minutes, but I could play Descent without problem. I blamed it on the bob and roll effect.
Recently I played Halo on a friend's XBOX and became ill and remained ill for hours afterwards. Of course, this was on his Sony Projection TV, displayed on his bare wall at 117" diagonal. And the display was, due to a rickety table the projector sat on, rotated about three degrees counter clockwise. Makes me queasy just thinking about it.
My wife, notorious for her motion sickness problems, has to turn her head when the new Commercial for Driver on the XBOX comes on TV. It will make her sick, just watching it on a 37" TV from across the room.
Bigger Screen (Score:1)
All of my housemates thought it would be great,but when we finally set it up, I could barely even watch someone else play.
Disassociation between visual and spacial simuli (Score:1)
medication (Score:1)
Re:medication (Score:1)
Solutions...? (Score:2)
Aside from that, you have two other options - increase the amount of stimulus, or decrease it.
By that I mean:
Increase the amount - right now only your eyes are sensing the "movement" in the game, and your ears are also getting cues. You may want to have some form of "touch", beyond the joystick, perhaps also a sense of real movement for your inner ear. Try to move around a bit, to simulate the walking. Or, try to set up a full immersive VR system, with sound, HMD, two-axis treadmill (ok, that last one will be hard - look into the DOD's dismounted soldier project), maybe some fans for "wind". Smell won't play much a role here.
Decrease the amount - are you sitting to close to the monitor, or do you have the image on a large monitor or projection system (ie, big screen TV)? You may be getting "immersed" - but without actually standing and moving in the environment (simulator sickness wasn't much of a problem for me playing such games as "Dactyl Nighmare", because you had to stand and move around - and I get sick while trying to read in a vehicle), your inner ear is getting different signals from what your eye is telling you - you either need motion to your body (see above), or you need a non-moving frame of reference - so play on a smaller screen, or move your field of vision back so that the edge of the screen (and surroundings) come into view. On occasion you may want to glance around the room (when you are at a point in play when you can - it doesn't need to be a long stare, just a brief one).
Also - don't play in a dark or dimly lit room - even if you aren't close to the screen, in a dark or dimly lit room, after a while, the screen will seem to "fill" your view (it is some kind of psychological thing), further immersing you. This happens with HMDs that have small FOV's as well (it doesn't compensate, but it is an interesting thing to keep in mind when shopping for an HMD). This "effect" can make a small 15 inch monitor seem to "suck you in". This is just something I have experienced - I don't know if it is universal, or just me. But keep it in mind.
Also, keep play time down, take breaks every so often (in VR circles it was recommended to take a break every half hour or so of full immersion - not sure if this was just one of those "8 glasses of water per day things", or what - but it seems like good advice).
Other than those things, your only other option is to not play...
fight it out (Score:1)
I had a roommate who taught flight lessons in small aircraft, and he ran into people with nausea periodically. The ones that stuck it out and continued the lessons usually felt fine after no more than ten lessons. They were willing to suffer to overcome their limitations.
Play your 3D games boldly and with purpose!
Off-axis Viewing and Alternative Explanations (Score:1)
Some other interesting points he makes:
Women are more susceptible to cybersickness than men.
Age plays a factor. We are most susceptible as children, and as we approach 50 years old or later, cybersickness is almost nonexistent.
Posture has an effect: Simulations in which you are standing, you get sick more often then if you were sitting.
My personal opinion many video gamer are not sitting in the proper position in front of the monitor for which the video game is rendering. I think this "Off-Axis" viewing may contribute to motion sickness. To make sure that people view the image from the correct viewing angle and distance, there could be an options section of the video game where you calibrate your sitting position. If nothing else, just put a paragraph in the instruction manual.
Very easy to cure (Score:2, Funny)