Octopus Overlords

Does anyone here get motion sickness easily from trying to play FPSs but have absolutely no problem playing first-person aircraft dogfighting type flight simulations or even first-person car racing games?

At first I thought maybe it was the walls that induced the nausea but I get it even when "outdoors" in FPSs.

Anyone know why this happens?

I have pretty much the same problem. My theory on why I don't have a problem with racing games is that the point of focus, while moving, is still pretty consistent. You're looking ahead of the car and the landscape moves by in a predictable and steady fashion.

My problem with FPS games is the herky-jerky nature of them--the sudden swooping around to aim--and that damnable head bob.

I've been able to play some third-person games with relative success. The keys are 1) play in windowed mode if available, 2) play in small increments at first to build up tolerance, and 3) consciously look away from the screen regularly to keep your bearings...kind of like this guy.

I get it BAD in some FPS games, but not at all in others. I know that Head Bob is guaranteed to make me sick but other than that, I can't really identify what's different. I've always just chalked it up to the engine used to build the game and the different physics used in the motion.

I have HORRID motion sickness in FPS and over-the-shoulder 3rd person games. I can't play them at all. Flight sims? No problems.

Motion sickness is probably the #1 reason I don't play FPS games. I can take them for extremely small doses at a time, but after about 30 minutes, I start feeling queasy and it could take hours before I start feeling better.

I almost never get motion sickness otherwise - never been car sick, air sick, or sea sick (all though "spin and barf" carny rides get to me, but not rollercoasters and the like).

I can play FPS's just fine myself, but I cannot watch someone else play without starting to feel ill. I think my body objects because I am not controlling the motion myself and therefore it cannot compensate somehow.

Motion sickness in FPS is generally because your eyes are registering that you are moving, but your inner ear says that you are stationary. Some peoples' brains can deal with that, others can't.

Look at it this way. When you are moving forward and then quickly move to the side, your inner ear/eqilibrium expects inertia to do a certain thing with the fluids in your head. When it doesn't, your sense of balance becomes confused, which leads to nausea.

Chalk me up as one who can barely play FPS games because of the motion sickness. Racing games and 99% of all other games cause me no problems at all, but rare is the FPS game that doesn't make me nauseous. Like someone else said, tolerance will build up in time. I find that the bigger the relative screen size is, the worse it becomes. Sitting farther away than usual helps me a little. When I bought Halo and tried to play it on my big screen TV it was totally impossible. I couldn't get an hour in before I had to stop or die.

My buddy has this problem. He was to play fps games in a window so he can still see his desktop then hes fine. I guess it helps him keep his balence or something. It sucks for him thou cause it kinda takes away from the game, doom3 for example..

I spend most of my time in FPS looking at the world sideways and motionless. Dead, that is. During those brief interludes when I am upright and moving, I do get motion sick.

I get it too in a lot of FPS games and found head bob to be the biggest culprit. If I can shut that off it usually goes away. Of course there's a few games that don't like making it easy to change and a few others that punkbuster will zing you on if you try multiplayer with the bob settings set to zero.

I too get motion sickness from FPS games, I can only play in small intervals. If it's a game that can be played entirely with the keyboard I have been able to put my keyboard in my lap and set back about 4 feet from the monitor. This helps a lot.

This FPS-motion-sickness is not in your blood, I can tell you that. It has nothing to do with your DNA, either. Why? I have two brothers, both avid PC gamers, who can't get into FPS because they have to stop playing any FPS games within 5 minutes. Me, 4 hours straight and no problem.

The only FPS that ever managed to give me any kind of motion sickness was Timesplitters 2 on the Xbox. It's never happened to me once on my PC or on any of the other console fps games I've had over the last couple of years.

And even on TS2 it didn't seem to happen to me at all at first, but it seemed to get a little worse each time I played the game. I think I was just noticing it more each time, but regardless I eventually got sick of it and got rid of the game. I've been fine with everything from Quake 3 to Counter-Strike: Source since.

Add me to the list of gamers who suffer "motion sickness" from playing FPS games. If I haven't been playing any for a while, I have to build up to them - play for ten to fifteen minutes then go do something else. After a while, I can play for a couple of hours at a time, more for a LAN game for some reason. It's much worse if I play on an empty stomach (just like seasickness - it's worse on an empty stomach, believe it or not).

Some games are worse than others, too. I'm fine with the Thief games as long as I'm going slowly, but with the first two, if I ko everybody and start running around, I get "motion sickness" very quickly. There's something about the Dark Engine, I suppose.

I have no issue with FPS at all. Mine stemmed from playing Decent3 years ago.
Once I was done I had this horrible uneasiness about me and felt all 'wierd like'

Never played it again.

Roman

I've never experienced this, but I researched it for a buddy a couple of years ago. Apparently a lot of people report that by placing Post-Its on the front face of the monitor frame, around the screen, they are able to stay grounded in the room and not have these sensations. People also talk about placing objects on the desk right in front of the monitor.

I have a pile of junk in front of my monitor and a printer sitting on top of it. Farcry made me nauseaous in 20 minutes the other day.

Yep FPS bad for motion sickness, flight sims good no problems. Operation Flash Point I can play though without getting queasy. WW2Online wasn't too bad either. So if you want a FPS, but you get queasy try the OFP demo.