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Motion Sickness Remedies for Games? 146

Posted by Cliff from the stepping-away-is-one dept.
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?"
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Motion Sickness Remedies for Games? More

Motion Sickness Remedies for Games?

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  • donno, would using a smaller monitor/sitting further back help? i don't game but i would imagine this would help.

    • Flunarizine (Score:5, Informative)

      by acariquara ( 753971 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @07:59AM (#14914731) Journal
      It could work - if not, try Flunarizine - I got it also, helps a lot. Do not get the tablets, they will knock you off, try getting the droplet version. 5 to 10 drops works best on an adult male without (much) drowsiness. I find it faster and longer lasting than Dramamine.
    • Keep kicking devlopers in the nuts until they stop making games like this. 99.9% of the time nausua is caused by a crappy in game camera implementation. Either it's too jumpy, or the fisheyed aspect used to "make the world look bigger" is at fault. My wife and two of my co-workers suffer from this. While alot of games are no problem, there are others where the camera implementation was so bad that they're running from the room to puke after a few minutes.

      For those of you pissing on this guy as needing to "g
    • The basic problem is that IF what you see on your screen feels realistic enough for your brain, it will cause a "reverse" physical motion sickness (i.e. not "too much of a stimulus" but instead a "too less or not at all stimulus"). That is, if you're sensitive enough, both for physical AND visual motion sickness.

      So you can cure the visual motion sickness in two ways:
      1. Make the game feel LESS realistic. Increasing FOV or backing away from the monitor makes you feel more like looking at pictures/movies than

  • Change the FOV (Score:5, Informative)

    by Nomihn0 ( 739701 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @02:17AM (#14913792)
    Change the field of view so it matches what your eyes expect from a 1 foot viewing distance. Your typical FOV is around 120 degrees, in real life. First person shooters often have 90 degree FOVs which are non-proportional to the size that the monitor or television is in your true FOV. Fix it and you should have a virtual, space-accurate, "window" that you look through.

    Also, try taking Dramamine about an hour before you begin playing. Seriously.

    --Best of luck!

    • Re:Change the FOV (Score:5, Informative)

      by zephc ( 225327 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @02:36AM (#14913865)
      Ginger also apparently has benefits against motion sickness (for some anyway). The parent's FOV change suggestion is your best bet though.

    • Re:Change the FOV (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Although people see around 120 degrees just look how little of those 120 degrees the screen in front of you takes up. It's like 40 degrees, maybe 30. And if you try playing games set to 30 degrees POV... with that narrow a field of vision it'll be difficult to play or see anything.

      So the only way to take up 120 degrees of vision is to get it filling up your field of vision, either with a projector or 24 monitor setup [plastk.net].

    • Re:Change the FOV (Score:4, Interesting)

      by gutnor ( 872759 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @06:11AM (#14914453)
      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.

    • Re:Change the FOV (Score:2, Interesting)

      by random_amber ( 957056 )
      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
      • Unless it's in the options menu, you can't on a console. this is a PC gaming trick only.
        Usually you can change it with a command in the console (of quake/doom/UT/etc) such as "/set_fov 120". Sometimes you have to manually edit a config file.
    • Matching your true FOV to the game's FOV is a good idea from a point of view of minimising 'simulator-sickness' (yes, that's the proper name for this nausea - it comes from the flight simulation business) - but it's not always 'reasonable' to do that with video games.

      I'm currently sitting 70cm from my 35cm (width) monitor screen - this gives me a true FOV of just 28 degrees!

      FYI: Measure the distance between your eyes and the screen - measure the screen width and set the FOV to 2*arctan(screen_width/(2*eye_
    • Whats interesting is that only SOME FPS's cause this for me.

      Black - I recently purchased this and within several minutes I had a headache and felt very nauseous. I attribute part of this to the slow controls...you can't move around the screen anywhere NEAR as quickly as with a mouse on a PC, which really helps with the motion sickness for me. I'm returning this because the game itself is boring after you get past the eye candy.

      Golden Eye - The only levels I could play were the Library and any outdoor leve

      • All FPSes cause this for me. First time I saw doom, I watched it for 5 minutes, then went home puking my guts out. TO this day I can't play any games that do first person.
      • I'm the same. Doom, Descent, Half Life/CS, UT, Battlefield, Halo - no problem at all. But any more than about 5 minutes of Timesplitters 2 gives me a headache and nausea that lasts for at least an hour after I stop playing...

  • OK... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Spy der Mann ( 805235 ) <`moc.liamg' `ta' `todhsals.nnamredyps'> on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @02:26AM (#14913823) Homepage Journal
    First of all. Have your eyes checked, you might need glasses.
    I often get motion sickness when I play 3D games, but usually it takes at least an hour of continuous play for that. A couple of minutes is VERY RARE.

    To see how bad your condition is, try going to the theater and watch a movie (yes, the theater). If you end up with nausea and headaches, you DO need to see an optometrist.

    Second, try not to move the point of view very often. When you do that, you might get migraines. This happened a lot hwne I played Prince of Persia for the first time.

    Also, you might try using the 2D controls instead of the default 3D ones (to see if the camera is easier on you), and please, DO NOT RUN OR TURN AROUND LIKE CRAZY! A couple of 360 degrees turns on a 3D game is enough to leave you on the ground.

    Try to take it easy, click on the map often (triangle) to see where you're going. If you get tired, press pause and close your eyes.

    Try also adjusting your monitor to deliver a smaller view area.

    Blink often, and if you get the least bit dizzy, press pause and look elsewhere. Do not stare at the screen so much.

    A strategy I use is to close your eyes or look elsewhere when the camera is doing a quick pan. Remember that there's a button to adjust the point of view to first person.

    If all of this fails, give up on the game and stick with your old games. It's not worth it. Finally, if you got money and good lawyers, try suing Sony for not putting warning labels on these games :P
    • Do you have trouble riding in a car, too? I've been motion-sick from riding in the back seat, but never from a videogame; it feels like when I'm in firm control of a fixed perspective (such as a videogame or a car) then it doesn't bother me, but when I am not...

      • Everyday travelling sickness? (Score:4, Informative)

        by der_joachim ( 590045 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @04:19AM (#14914161) Homepage
        [OT] @ereshire: what you describe, sounds more like normal everyday travel sickness. Here's a few things I found dealing with it (disclaimer: I go to work every day by bus and train, and occasionally have some travel sickness. However, I am NOT a medical expert.):
        • Try facing forward when travelling. Many European buses have some seats facing backwards. Avoid them like the plague.
        • Closing your eyes is not a good idea either. Neither is reading a book. You can only feel the bus moving, which makes it even worse.
        • For bus commuters: if at all possible, try to sit at the front, preferably behind the driver. The trip will be less bumpy.
        • When in the back of a car, try to get plenty of fresh air.
        • What I found to be a golden tip: listen to music while on a trip. Don't ask me why, but I found that listening to music reduces the feeling of sickness. Probably has to do something with travel sickness being an inner ear imbalance.
        • Additionally, you should avoid eating and drinking spicy food and drinks, and food and drinks that are heasy on the stomach.
        • Pills. They have been mentioned several times before in this thread.
        Hope this helps.
        • Actually that reminds me, chewing gum is good for equalising inner ear pressure. Might be worth a try.
        • The road has a lot to say. I've always (since the age of 3 of something) had trouble with travel sickness; when I was younger, I often got out of the car and threw up when I got out of the car. It's gotten better, though. I still get travel sick riding the winding mountain roads in central Norway, but this summer when we got on the highway in Sweden with its straight, nice roads, I was reading books and everything. I was amazed at the huge difference. Music does, as you also mention, also work. I'm thinking
        • I hear you on the books. For some reason I can't read a book if I'm riding in a car. I once pulled out my brother's GBA and tried playing that on a 45 minute trip. I think I loaded the game up (Bionic Commando? Not sure) and after the screen scrolled for a few seconds I shut it off and had my brother pull over. I leaned out the window and though I was going to lose it. Didn't lose it, but I never play games in a vehicle now.

          Movies aren't too bad if it's dark out, and I can always type and do bits of w

        • Barley Sugar

          I make sure I have some for any long car trip or plane flight.

          In some strange joke, as a sufferer of sever motion sickness all my life, I was raised on one of the great scenic coastal drives in Australia. I used to get motion sick going to school everyday. I am expert at targetted vomiting, either through car windows or into the gutter from a moving car...

    • All this is nice and pretty against nausea but will get you fragged in FPS and dead in Silent Hill really fast.
      The front line is not a place for sick people! ;)

    • Second, try not to move the point of view very often. When you do that, you might get migraines.

      That sounds like the culprit here. "Pressure right behind the eyeballs" is a clearly migrainous symptom. I bet the person in this story sometimes gets headaches that make him want to sit quietly and do nothing.

      I don't know about Silent Hill 3, but I have chronic migraine and Silent Hill 4: The Room was a horrible experience. It is loaded with flickery, jumpy, grainy visual effects that light up every motio

      • Focusing your view on the CHARACTER instead of the monsters does a lot of help! I've been doing that so often that it became natural for me when playing a 3D game.
  • I've occasionally had similar problems with FPS's and games like Descent, especially after playing for a few hours. (But it never happened after just a few minutes.)

    In my case, the only thing I found that really worked was to play another sort of game, one that didn't have me spinning around like a mad-man, at least for a while. RTS games worked nicely, for example, since they're usually played from a top-down perspective, or older RPGs like Baldur's Gate II. (NWN might be OK too, but it's more 3D th

  • Grow a pair, you sissy.

  • Ginger (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Luis Cypher ( 257898 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @02:34AM (#14913856)
    I get this also.
    After a few minutes play I am sick , 30 minutes I start to vomit and need to lie down for a few hours.

    There are things that work such as motion sickness tablets.

    However if you intend to play a lot I suggest taking ginger, it actually does work and wont slow your reflexes.
    Another thing is "head bob" if the game has an adjustable head bob (like F.E.A.R does) try different settings, I get the sickest, very quickly, in games wich have no head bob at all.
    • I often get motion sickness from games. Generally it is games which involve running quickly through small indoor areas. So Quake, Unreal, Return to Wolfenstein etc. But a game like Counterstrike, i've never had a problem because of the pace.

      Curiously, since moving to LCD i get it much worse. One thing i have found is that my eyes need something not moving to make me feel less sick. In racing games i always race chase-cam, Ghost Recon I play in 3rd person, in flight sims i fly with the cockpit view. I find b
    • I'd like to second the ginger root and the head bob. Just chew or suck on a slice of ginger root before playing. Commercial over the counter motion sickness medicine works too, but is more expensive.

    • Your ailment sounds particularly similar to mine. Some games affect me much more than others: I only lasted through about 20 minutes of F.E.A.R., Battlefield 2 about 45-60 mins, Counter-Strike or Doom 1 & 2 I can play for hours. But I couldn't make it through more than 10 minutes of Half-Life 2 (I didn't even last through the opening train ride in HL1). Strangely, it's only first-person games that affect me, though even that's not an exclusive category. WoW from third-person perspective is fine as I've
    • I agree. FPS games with head bob are the worst and after that new games. I think it has to do with not having my eyes not "knowing what to expect" Another thing for headaches is to bump up the refresh rate to over 72hz The next thing is PRACTICE. Take your time and learn how your input moves the screen, your sickness sounds like mine and after the first couple of days I am usually over the sickness. If for some reason none of these are possible, I do a lot of LAN parties at a game center where the monitor

  • Try driving afterwards (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Spazmania ( 174582 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @02:38AM (#14913870) Homepage
    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.
    • What about this guy who trashed his car by -purposedly- driving into an overtaking vehicle because his reflexes from the game (some violent car race) he was playing before kicked in and he -could- do that?
      • Shit, that's nothing. Go drive a quick car around a track on track day. Even after a few laps it's very frustrating when you have to drive a slower car on the street. After even 30 minutes of track time I still get the sensation for at least the rest of the day, and sometimes the next day too...

        I've never had the video game racing thing happen, I think because no matter how real the game, it's nothing close to reality. I suppose if the game were to take place in a surround video system, where the field
        • Gotta feel the torque.

          There's nothing like feeling your body being thrown to one side or the other of your harness.

          Sure, a great driving game with force-feedback steering wheel "feels" the same as driving ... but your body doesn't feel it at all. Rumble just isn't enough. Its like trying to tell a pilot that pulling Gs in a flight simulator is the same as real jet flying.
      • I always fight the urge to do just that after a week long GTA binge...

  • Ginger and Light (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Malkin ( 133793 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @02:40AM (#14913876)
    This is nothing to be embarassed about. I occasionally have problems with games that are jittery, have tunnels with low ceilings, or use any kind of camera-bob.

    Dramamine does really work, but if Dramamine makes you too sleepy, some people get good results from eating candied ginger, or drinking a real ginger beer/ale with a high ginger content. (If you live too far out in the suburban wasteland to find a good craft ginger beer, you can homebrew it with basic brewing equipment -- but don't go to too much trouble, unless you've verified that ginger actually helps you, first.)

    Also, make sure that you play in a well-lit room (yeah, I know, it's a horror game, but playing a dark room will make your head hurt).

  • Sea-band (Score:4, Informative)

    by Psychochild ( 64124 ) <psychochild.gmail@com> on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @02:48AM (#14913905) Homepage
    I've never used them myself, but a friend of mine swears by Sea-Band [sea-band.com]. It's supposed to be good for different types of nausea, and he says it works wonders to combat the motion sickness he gets while playing games.

    Again, I've never used them, just passing along info that might help. They could be total quackery for all I know.

    Different people have different reactions to games. There's been a lot of writing trying to explain what causes motion sickness. Personally, I get motion sick of I haven't played fast-action 3D games in a while. After I play for a bit, I can go for hours without getting the reaction. But, if I don't play those types of games for a few months I find myself back at square one.

    Some insight,
    • But, if I don't play those types of games for a few months I find myself back at square one.

      Same here. To the questioner, while pressure behind the eyeballs sounds like a scary medical issue you might want to get checked out even if you give up on the game, I too was extremely queasy starting off. You just have to build up some resistance. It's been months now, but I could play for an hour or better and only feel slightly something if I hadn't eaten anything yet that day. Even at my peak resistance, watchin

    • Re:Sea-band (Score:5, Funny)

      by jamesh ( 87723 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @06:24AM (#14914489)
      My wife swore by them during her 3rd and 4th pregnancies (and maybe 2nd too, can't remember).

      She also swore at me lots, but that's another story :)
    • They work, and you won't get the drowzy effect that many over-the-counter medications will give you, such as Dramamine (meclizine hcl). They also aren't very expensive, and there are a few knock-off brands around. If your local pharmacy doesn't sell them, ask them to order you a pair.

      It's a simple accupressure band that has a small knot-like area that fits over the inside of your wrist, about 1" up from your hand.

      An easy way to see if it will work for you is to have someone else play the game while you s

  • An Alternative... (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Bootle ( 816136 )
    Might I offer a possible alternative solution... Stop Playing!

    Seriously, headaches, carpal tunnel, eye strain, etc. aren't worth it for serious work, physical damage is completely unacceptable for play.

    Play a different game.

    • Re:An Alternative... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Kattana ( 635282 )
      Yes, play chess or some form of sport, no one was ever injured in a sport, maybe quail hunting is the game for you.
    • I never played 3D games since doom,only 2d or 3D-perspective games.
      I value gameplay much more than some graphics.
    • Might I offer a possible alternative solution... Stop Playing!

      Bah, lamer! :-)

      In the good old days, you wiggled a joystick to a monochrome intercourse simulator until your wrist got sore. Nowadays, the intercourse simulators don't get developed anymore, and you aren't supposed to receive physical injuries either?

      Pfft, the wussy years of 2000! :-p
    • Where's my mod points when I need them? I let three expire recently because I just didn't care, and now here's a post that needs to be modded up!

      I played console video games on the Atari 2600, the NES, the Sega Genesis, and of course computer games from those eras...and then when smooth-motion FPS games came out, and other games adopted the same type of motion, I couldn't play anymore - so I didn't.

      If I really feel like playing a game, I find a telnet BBS and play some Land Of Devastation, or I play somethi
    • Seriously, headaches, carpal tunnel, eye strain, etc. aren't worth it for serious work, physical damage is completely unacceptable for play.

      You say that as if, somehow, play is less important than work. If I'm going to risk damaging myself, I'd much rather take the risk at play than at work. As the old russian proverb says; "The church is near, but the roads are icy. The pub is far, but I will walk carefully." :)

      Afterall, people take larger risks for the sake of "play" than work all the time. Recreation

  • Third person perspective (Score:3, Interesting)

    by baywulf ( 214371 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @02:59AM (#14913946)
    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.
  • a blindfold perhaps...
  • It gets annoying, but try gaming with lights on. It helps to allow you to focus on other things. If you start feeling dizzy, give it a pause and close your eyes for about 15 seconds. Try placing an object nearby (within your field of vision) that you can stop and focus on, get some extension cables or wireless setups so you can be farther away from the screen. These are little things that seem to work for me, but I can't promise it'll work for you.

    • Re:Ideas (Score:3, Informative)

      by caffeination ( 947825 )
      You *shouldn't* be playing with the lights off in the first place.

      • Re:Ideas (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Gulthek ( 12570 )
        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.
        • Playing Doom 3 through my home theatre system with the lights out kept my heart going for a while.

          My wife came in the house after work and turned the lights on and she said I looked stricken with horror when I looked at her.

          Resident Evil 4 however takes the cake so far for me. With my PLII system bringing evilness from all-around and the sheer *lack* of sound when most of the bad guys approach ... not to mention how you can travel chunks of territory in which there seem to be no baddies at all, then be sur
    • I actually find its easier to play with the lights off - having the items on the screen move but everything else in my field of vision stay put seems to be what causes all the nausea problems for me... and turning off the lights removes them.

  • Remedies (Score:3, Interesting)

    by phalse phace ( 454635 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @03:03AM (#14913958)
    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.
    • For a moment I thought you said lower the refresh rate, which is a terrible idea. 60Hz (the default setting on many systems) hurts my eyes. Make sure you're using the highest refresh rate your monitor and video card will handle!

  • Another thing it could be is... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Cherveny ( 647444 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @03:21AM (#14914014) Homepage
    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.

  • In this one instance GLARE is your friend (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Sting_TVT ( 959719 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @03:28AM (#14914030) Journal
    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.

  • Refresh Rate (Score:3, Interesting)

    by 2008 ( 900939 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @03:40AM (#14914071) Journal
    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 know you're not going to like this, playing Silent Hill and all, but you probably need backlighting behind your monitor.

    A bright monitor in a dark room already produces significant eyestrain; combined with 3D motion on the screen, it can quickly cause motion sickness. It's a good idea to have the wall behind (or the surfaces around) your monitor softly lit, both to reduce the contrast and to give you points of reference.
    • These are some good points. You can also try looking away from the screen during loads, and defocusing slightly when spinning in first person perspective.
  • My solution: I don't play FPS games. I was a very reluctant convert to 3d games at all (I didn't have a Playstation until long after the SNES was supposed to have been dead), but I've found that most RPGs have fairly reasonable camera angles. I also play things like Civilization and Age of Empires on the PC, which are lovely, challenging games but aren't hard on the stomach.

    Other than that, on any game that gives you trouble, pause frequently and look away from the screen, that helps quite a bit.
  • Back when I had time for such things, i'd jump into Quake3 and play for a bit against the bots for some target practice.

    Sometimes i'd play for a few minutes and then feel so sick that i'd need to lie down, and I wouldn't feel well again for hours.

    Other times I could play for hours and feel fine the whole time. Actually, one time I played for about 12 hours on and off at a lan meet without incident, obviously not against bots though.

    I never pinned down what the difference was. Same game, same computer, same
  • I don't get motion sickness at all. I am fine in cars, boats, planes, showground rides, etc. Not a problem.

    A few minutes in front of any FPS and I'm experiencing the same symptoms. I've worked out why. It's the shit way they manage the perspective in the game. Things don't move like they should in the distance and really close up. I haven't seen a game that I can play for more than 1/2 hour or so...

    You probably won't be able to play any FPS at all.

  • Ginger has official MythBusters support :-) (Score:5, Informative)

    by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @07:53AM (#14914718) Journal
    They had to figure out who in the MythBusters crew was susceptible to seasickness. Adam was a sure bet because of previous seasickness during the Jaws Special. Sure enough, Adam got quesy within 3 and half minutes on the chair. After a half an hour in the chair, Jamie was still fine. Kari and Tory were both fine as well. Grant became the final test subject. He lasted longer than Adam, but he got sick as well.

    Remedy Testing

    Homoepathic tongue tingler. They used a unnamed spray that you squirt under the tongue as often as needed. Grant was sick within 10 minutes and vomited some small chunks. Adam was sick within 4 minutes.
    Wrist straps: They wore little gray wristbands that are 'Barry Manilow's choice.' Adam was sick within 90 seconds. Grant got sick as well. They've gotten pretty quick with bringing a bucket to Grant.
    Ginger pills: It worked! Adam and Grant were both fine.
    Small shocks on the P6 Accupunture point (on the wrist):Z Both Adam and Grant got sick.
    Placebo: They told Grant and Adam they were getting an over-the-counter pharmaceutical remedy, but they actually gave them vitamins. Adam's reponse: "I hate this [bleeping] chair" after three and a half minutes. Grant: "This is among the most effective, if not the most effective."
    Over-the-counter pharmaceutical drug: Worked on Adam and Grant, but it made them both a little loopy.

    Only thing that worked without any side effects was the ginger pill.

    Ginger pills: plausible
    (source) [kwc.org]

    So there you have it. :-)
    • ... None of the voodoo remedies worked at all, while the placebo was highly effective. Evidence, perhaps, that homeopathy works entirely on a placebo effect, and so doesn't work at all on people like the Mythbusters who don't believe in homeopathy?
  • Try Ginger. It's an ancient remedy for motion sickness of all kinds. My Fiancee swears by it now. 3D games have always made her sick.. and now that she discovered Ginger (thanks to Mythbusters) she can play too.

    http://www.healthcastle.com/ginger.shtml [healthcastle.com]

    Google around for some suggested doses. I've heard as little as a pill or two before, to as much as 5 for the entire day before. Course, being it's a "spice" (if you've ever eaten sushi, they always give you a pile) doses can be liberal. experiment and fi
  • I have been playing FPS games for about 10 years (castle wolfenstein) when I was about 30 years old. When I first started playing I had no problems. I played quite a bit. As I got older I played less and started feeling sick when I did play. Sometimes I could not play for more then 15 minutes. Here is what I discovered:
    1. The more you play the more desensitized you get. But, you have to deal with feeling sick to get used to it.
    2. The running around looking for stuff or being lost is much worse. I
    • I find my motion sickness occurs for similar reasons. If other things are going on like puzzles, talking to characters, or killing (cut scenes like Tenchu or Manhunt really help) I can last almost indefinitely but 5 minutes of running around non-stop (i.e. having to retrace steps or search for some obscurely hidden object) can cause me problems. Better camera behavior for a game helps too.

      The quality of the background also makes a difference. Paying attention to the fact that things at a distance should
  • I had motion sickness for a while when I switched from 19" CRTs to 21" LCDs. I remember the boat-ride in HL2 as particularly nauseating. Try to change the distance between you and your screen a bit, adjust the height, etc. I used to play Quake2 (Lithium, so very spastic movements) and Quake3 quite a bit without ever having problems. Now that I played a bit with the distance and positions, I've no longer had any problems (though I'm not tempted to try HL2's boat ride again :) ). I noticed that if I see the r
  • I'm sure at least some of these games just aren't programming their graphics correctly. I'm able to play virtually any game without any sort of sickness at all, have been for years but there are are tiny minority of games that make me feel ill the second I start moving around in them.

    The first one I ever noticed was Duke Nukem 3D and to this day, playing that game gives me motion sickness even though I can play countless other games on the same day and not feel sick at all.
  • I am an avid Americas Army player. It is FPS (for those who don't know). When you die, you switch to the POV of one of your teammates. Usually you switch to 3rd person, and have full control of the POV. On some server, the admins force you into a 1st person POV when you die and switch to a teammate (helps prevent ghosting). Whenever I am on a server that does that, I get a little motion sick. It never happens when I'm playing, and never when I'm dead and watching a teammate in 3rd person. Only when I
  • I got a 55 inch rear projection tv and I've found that since I went to component video inputs that the higher res settings of my PS2 and XBox give me motion sickness too on shooter games.
  • "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?"

    If you are prone to motion sickness, this is normal despite what other replies have claimed. I forget the exact number, but something like 20%
    • Interesting correlation. I also get sick from first person video games within a couple minutes, and I can't read in a car.

      Personally, I found a great way to prevent getting sick -- don't play the game. It's not like it's something you're really into (since you can't do it). If I was blind, I wouldn't visit many art museums and stand in front of the paintings. There are a wide variety of games and entertainment out there other than FPSes... many don't even need a computer or console.

      --
      Evan

      • Interesting correlation. I also get sick from first person video games within a couple minutes, and I can't read in a car. Personally, I found a great way to prevent getting sick -- don't play the game. It's not like it's something you're really into (since you can't do it). If I was blind, I wouldn't visit many art museums and stand in front of the paintings. There are a wide variety of games and entertainment out there other than FPSes... many don't even need a computer or console.

        Michal Jordan had ba
        • If you're puking you can't play. Any more than a man without arms can sail a normal sailboat. It's a physical limitation. If you can work around it, more power to you, but if you can't, don't obsess over it. Most preferences are very flexible; you can find other things to get into and enjoy.

          Otherwise, you're getting really upset and obsessed over something you haven't really done much of anyway (since you get sick moments into doing it). You might as well pine over not being royalty or not being a twi

  • I sometimes get motion sickness playing WoW. Here's what I found:

    When I bump up the resolution to 1920x1080 with quality settings set to max, I get dizzy easily. I guess its the realism factor of getting 70+ FPS in this res.

    When I take the resolution down to 1280x1024 and lower the quality to its lowest setting, I don't get sick as much because I can see the pixelation and artifacts that make this picture look lousy.

    Try a lower resolution and quality setting in your game, make it actually look bad an

  • At a previous workplace, a favorite break activity was Q3 deathmatches. At first I could only play for a few minutes without getting sick. As the days went by, and I kept playing, I started to not feel so bad. Eventually I adjusted completely and was able to play without any feelings of sickness. The interesting thing is that after I left that job, and left off of regularly playing, I get motion sick when I try to play these types of games again, so the adjustment only seems to last as long as you keep play
  • 1) turn off player and weapon bob...
    The mode in many FPS games where the picture bobs up and down as you move (to simulate each footfall). Set it so that as much as possible you glide rather than bob when you move.

    2) reduce fish-eye effect
    Some FPS games have a wierd fish-eye effect... as you rotate, things moving towards the edge of the screen gets unrealistically large and even may warp/wrap. try adjusting field-of-view/perspective if the game supports it.

    Many games have more settings hidden away in config
  • The most commonly accepted cause of motion sickness is a discrepancy between the reports from your eyes and your inner ears. If your head says you're moving and your eyes say you aren't, you'll get confused and sick. If your eyes say you're moving and your head says you aren't, same problem.

    Do you feel ill when you spin around in a circle until you're dizzy? Same problem.

    I have this very issue. I have trouble travelling in cars unless I can look out the front window. Staring at things ahead of me in th

  • Simulator Sickness (Score:4, Informative)

    by cr0sh ( 43134 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @01:40PM (#14917280) Homepage
    If you want to know how to combat the issues you are experiencing, then you need to search on Simulator Sickness [google.com].

    Simulator sickness is something that has been known about for many, many years, and has had a lot of study put behind it. While people were experiencing similar motion sickness issues with the advent of very large movie screens and "wraparound" 360 degree panorama movies in the 1950's and 1960's, it wasn't until fairly realistic flight-simulator systems were being developed in the late-1960's and 1970's that the issue started being widely studied, because now pilots training on large motion-platform simulators and such started to become more common, and they were experiencing such issues (not good PR for the simulator company - many times the builder of the plane!).

    What has been learned is enlightening, and there is a lot of research on the issue (and a large resurgence in interes of the phenomena happened in the 1990's when virtual reality system users experienced simular issues). The main problem is two-fold: as you approach (or attain) full-immersion in a simulated world, you need to make the inputs to your brain (eyes and inner-ear are most important) as synced up as possible. Any deviation from this is likely to cause motion-sickness. Thus, if you are in a fully-immersive environment where you are driving or flying, your real-world cockpit needs to move (or at least feel) as real as the real thing would, and more importantly, those movements cannot be out of sync of the motion "on screen" (whether that screen is in front of/wrapped around you, or as an HMD). If you are in a standup/walkaround VR simulation, you need to be able to match the movement on the screens of the HMD with the movement you are making in real life (3D tracking). If it is out of sync (mainly head movement) - say you turn your head, and the turning of the scene lags by a few milliseconds, you may (most likely will) experience motion sickness. In large motion-platform simulators (like flight simulators), the same issue is at play, but this time with the movement of the cockpit relative to the screen movement.

    So, what is the solution to your problems? Many other issues can come into play: refresh rate of the scene is important, of course, but so is the refresh rate of the display, which others have noted. I have read comments here that lowering the resolution/effects can help - these may be pychological remedies (make it more cartoony looking to break the immersion factor more?), but if they work, who cares (I have never seen a study on this, but it is an interesting idea, and makes sense from a simulation perspective). Basically, if you are trying to fully immerse yourself into the game, you can't do it halfway - either take it as fully as you possibly can (full-immersion HMD with full 3D tracking of body - ie, $25,000 will get you there), or stop trying to do this: turn on or at least brighten the room lights so that the screen isn't the only thing your eyes and peripheral vision rest on. Move back from the screen so you can see the edges and stuff around the screen. You might try standing and moving as you play (or move more while sitting). Maybe try a recliner that rocks so you can move more. Play on a smaller screen rather than a large big-screen projection TV.

    Yes, I know, none of these suggestions are great - but doing these things will help. Also be aware, as others have noted here, that there is a certain portion of the population who are prone to general motion sickness (sometimes these poor individuals get nauseous just sitting up in bed in the morning). Not much can be done (except to stop playing the games) to help these people. I will note though, that one person posted here about this saying that people who get nauseous while reading a book in a moving vehicle are prone isn't completely correct - it may indicate they might be prone, but I can te

  • I have never been able to read a book, play video games, or really even read a map in the car... but otherwise I seem to be ok (don't mind going backwards, etc.).

    In my teens I tried to play DOOM... and noticed, after about 5 minutes, that I was definitely feeling ill. The next day I decided I would try again, and just ignore the feeling and keep playing... I got to about 10 minutes and I was nearly passed out on the floor feeling so, so sick... so much for that.

    Many of my friends are gamers so they get real
  • The only ever game that bothered me at all was Metroid Prime. Your viewpoint through the 'helmet' was kind of skewed in a bubble type of way. Dark Forces for the PC way back had the same thing, but never bothered me...

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