Video games and motion-sickness.

[Twilight Wolf]

As I mentioned in the "What you got for Christmas" thread, one of the games I got was Fallout 3. I freakin' love it so far, and I'm very much looking forward to finding out what happens next. However, there's just one problem with it... it gave me motion sickness. Only two other games have done this to me (Bioshock and Quake III Arena), so I'm not sure what the relation is between all of them other than they're in first-person perspective. Yes, I could play Fallout 3 in third-person, but I find it far easier to play it in first-person. However, no other first-person games, including Mirror's Edge, which was infamous for making people sick, have had any ill effects on me, nor has any real-life activity like riding in a car. I've heard that simply playing these games over and over will eventually cure your motion-sickness by convincing your body that it's not necessary to make you sick every time you play a game, so I'm going to try this and hope it's true.

Do any of you guys suffer from motion-sickness while playing games? If so, what's your remedy?

 

[PalmerTech]

Make sure you are not hungry.

That is all I can remember right now.

 

[grossaffe]

Dramamine. Its supposed to do wonders for motion sickness.

My brother gets motion sickness while riding in a car if playing games, watching TV, or reading a book. Dramamine fixed that issue.

 

[Twilight Wolf]

Palmer: I think that might have influenced me some last night. I remember feeling like my blood sugar was getting low and I was getting sick because of it, but it degenerated rapidly from there, and as soon as I turned my PS3 and TV off, I felt much better almost immediately, which tells me I was suffering from motion-sickness, but still felt like my blood sugar was low. I think I might have had an unfortunately-timed blood sugar crash.

Dramamine is something I will look into. I want a more permanent solution, though (one that preferably doesn't make me drowsy), so I'll continue playing as normal and try to train my body out of it.

 

[samjc3]

Palmer: I think that might have influenced me some last night. I remember feeling like my blood sugar was getting low and I was getting sick because of it, but it degenerated rapidly from there, and as soon as I turned my PS3 and TV off, I felt much better almost immediately, which tells me I was suffering from motion-sickness, but still felt like my blood sugar was low. I think I might have had an unfortunately-timed blood sugar crash.

Dramamine is something I will look into. I want a more permanent solution, though (one that preferably doesn't make me drowsy), so I'll continue playing as normal and try to train my body out of it.

are you diabetic? if so, that could be the simple caper right there. if not, i dont know. either way, eat food.

 

[Twilight Wolf]

Nope, I don't have the diabeetus.

Also, even though I played today right after I ate, I started to feel sickly after an hour or so. Not as bad as last night, though. I plan to play some more after dinner, as well.

 

[samjc3]

is it possible these games have some different gamma or hertz settings? i would say it might just be the unreal engine, which fallout and bioshock use, but i seriously doubt it.

 

[Twilight Wolf]

If it were the Unreal engine that was to blame, I should have had issues with Mirror's Edge, too.

You know, framerate was something I considered, since I know Quake III Arena has a framerate of 60+ FPS and Bioshock appears to have a similar framerate (I don't know for sure, but I can tell a definite difference in games running at 30 FPS and 60), but Half-Life runs at 60+ FPS on my laptop and I don't have a problem with it. Then I thought maybe it was the dark environment of the games that was the problem, weird as it may be, but once again, Half-Life is the exception.

Either way, it ultimately doesn't make a difference what's causing it. I'm going to train myself out of it.

 

[ShockSlayer]

Don't stare at a screen with another screen or something bright and distacting in your viewing area. That always screwed with me.

SS

 

[robm]

I've found that higher-framerate games give me the motion sickness. Ratchet and Clank was bad for that. I slowed down the camera speed, fixed it.

I doubt a whole lot of games have that option though.

 

[Aguiluz]

Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction gave me motion sickness, especially the part on the Apogee space station. I stood on a platform that spun around upside down and some direction I can't make out and I felt a bit sick and I got disoriented.

 

[weaver]

Prey for xbox 360 gave me motion sickness when walking on the walls and changing gravity. I also get it if I play psp in a moving vehicle.

 

[Kickback]

I get motion sickness from the camera in Fight Night. playing it for extended periods of time = nasty headache.

 

[XCVG]

It's never given me motion sickness, but Portal is really disorienting.

 

[Jidan]

I do get slight motion sickness while I play stuff in the car after about 20 minutes. I got it while playing my brother's Scribblenauts...

 

[Anonymous]

It's never given me motion sickness, but Portal is really disorienting.

Definetly so, I played that game for about 4 hours, and then went and threw up all over the toilet. it was really bad, my head was gonna explode.

 

[J.D]

When I was a young'n, about 6-9 years old, my daycare had the chair right in front of the TV, and when I played the PS2 I would get really nasty headaches.

Recently, Bioshock is giving me a little bit of motion-sickness, and disorienting at times.