Simulator Sickness Cures?

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

[jpt.d]

When I started playing quake3 again I had a problem with getting extremely dizzy. The problem was the bobbing, turning that off fixed it perfectly.

Doc, it hurts when I do this

[SpaceLifeForm]

Well, then don't do that!

Re:Doc, it hurts when I do this

[zcat_NZ]

.. play progress quest [progressquest.com] instead.

Re:Doc, it hurts when I do this

[kometes]

> Well, then don't do that!

$120 please. Next patient.

Re:Doc, it hurts when I do this

[Sauron23]

These are probably the same people who try and look around corners in FPS's by moving their heads. I used to get sick playing flight sims, the rolls would screw with my inner ear. I'd find myself rotating my head with the roll, flipping back and forth in my chair like I was having a seizure. The answer for me was to quit playing flight sims. shrug, maybe this will work for you too.

Re:Doc, it hurts when I do this

[NNKK]

I do the same thing, but I don't get sick.

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.

[Billy]

This was the only thing I found when I got violently ill from Q2/Q3. Play time increased day after day and eventually you get through it--no fun though to be hurling after a frag fest for this reason...

Re:Ya gotta play through it.

[gartogg]

Hurling After a frag fest will now be limited to those who havew also been participants of a beer-fest simultaneously.

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.

[Fryed]

It appears very few people like to follow your advice about avoiding 3d shooters while drunk. And, according to this article [salon.com], the ones who aren't playing drunk are playing stoned/rolling/on speed/etc.

Hrm, maybe they're on to something....

Easy

[Noodlenose]

10mg im Metoclopramide or 4mg sublingual Prochlorperazine

solutions

[farnsworth]

games have become much more realistic, causing ... severe nausea. any updated tips on avoiding this problem?

you have two options:

1. throw up
2. stop playing games that make you nauseated

Try this.

[Domini]

On some games (using Quake 3 as an example) it is possible to minimise or totally remove the 'bobbing' and 'weaving' effects of the game. There are also settings for extra visual features which can be disabled.

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

[Domini]

The term described the way some people take a beutiful ganme and turn down all the settings. This enhances the frame rate, but more importantly makes objects simpler/easier to see, understand and kill.

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

[sporktoast]

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

[itwerx]

If I had mod points I'd give you one.
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

[PsndCsrV]

I seem to get a really bad headache and some nausea after playing Half-Life for a long time. I have a decent computer with a Geforce 2 GTS, so I know I have a high framerate and response time. I've finally concluded that it is probably from the fact that to open a door, you have to run into it... and having my face 1-inch away from a door isn't something I'm used to doing. The headache stems from trying to focus on something that close to you, or rather, that your mind thinks is that close to you, but not being able to. I keep trying to focus, but it's never going to happen.

As far as solutions go? Beats me... if only I could play HL with all the doors already opened. :-)

Re:Headaches

[PsndCsrV]

And maybe if you donated a little $$ to the "get me a new game" fund, I'd care.

Motion sickness.

[Neck_of_the_Woods]

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?

[watchmaker1]

Play tetris.

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

[Descartes]

The one thing I've found that really causes motion sickness is trying to play UT on a projector.

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

[DeFaultRyan]

I occasionally have this problem. VR-type headsets send me running to the bathroom immediately, but never had a problem with Doom. Only occasional trouble with the Quake series, and had a short bout when I first started to play HALO, which I was able to correct. The problem I've noticed is when the images you see from the game become convincing enough, or overwhelming enough that they actually start to convince your brain that what happens on the screen is real-life. I suppose that I didn't get sick from older games because it just wasn't realistic enough, or I had a smaller monitor, or side-scrolling games don't really trick the mind into thinking I'm moving. My solution, back up from the screen and take your eyes off of it for a second whenever you get a break in the action, and don't catch yourself constantly staring at the same point all the time. When it takes up a smaller part of my field-of-view, my mind doesn't get tricked into thinking I'm actually in the game, so I don't get sick. This worked like a charm last week when I started feeling a little queasy playing HALO in my living room. Was about 4 ft from my 27" TV. After moving back to about 7-8 ft, symptoms disappeared! Not moving randomly about like a spaz in the game is a good idea. When your brain has a chance to anticipate the movement (ie. when you are in control instead of your buddy), you tend not to get sick. That's why passengers in fighter jets always toss their lunch about 5 seconds in while the pilot is just fine. PS: Staying cool helps for me as well.

medication

[Morgoth_Bauglir]

Eat candied ginger while you play (slices of ginger that have been packed in sugar)-- you can get it at Asian food stores. Very tasty too.

Re:medication

[pastyboy]

Ginger pills will alleviate motion sickness. Especially good while skiing in a whiteout.

Solutions...?

[cr0sh]

There used to be a company (can't remember off the top of my head) a few years back that was creating a "vestibular" stimulation system - apparently they had patents on the tech, and according to those patents, an AC signal of a certain frequency and amplitude is induced in the skin from the forehead to just behind and below the ears, which in some manner stimulates the vestibular region of the brain (in some manner, I don't know how), and by varying the amplitude, frequency and difference between each side, etc - the device, while under computer control, could make the user feel like they were tilting, moving, or falling. The company claimed they could even make people fall off their seats. Supposedly it was a more advanced and developed version of a certain device used by doctors to treat motion sickness, except it was directional and computer controllable. They were supposed to "go beta" and release a development SDK and API for game developers, but I don't know what happened to them (and as a part-time homebrew VR developer, I was interested).

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

[mshadel]

I've been subject to motion sickness for quite some time, and I've had some luck with bonine, wristbands with beads, looking at the horizon, etc. But ultimately overcoming motion sickness is about reprogramming yourself to accept the disconnect between sight and body motion at a subconscious level. In other words, play through it and tell yourself that it's just a primitive raaction and you can learn to overcome it. Do your best to keep emotional reactions like fear, anger, self-pity, etc. from weakening your resolve. Believe that you will overcome the nausea and make it a challenge, not a handicap.

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

[moroderzone]

On why simulator sickness happens, most of this slashdot discussion has been focused on the sensory conflict theory. Joseph J. LaViola Jr. has an interesting paper on the subject. He states in his paper "A Discussion of Cybersickness in Virtual Environments" that there are three theories of what causes motion sickness: sensory conflict theory, the poison theory and the postural instability theory.

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

[Captoo]

Play with the monitor turned off.