Why do games make some people ill?

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Play Paintball

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I've been curious about this problem since I played HL2. It is the only game that makes me ill when I'm playing it. I ended up wearing sunglasses just to play it. My eyes would start to hurt then I would get head aches and nausia. Even when slowly walking the character around.

I now of some other games where I would get headaches just by watching someone else play, but when I palyed the same game nothing would happen.

No, I was not sitting too close to the monitor. :)
 
Something to do with...brains. Or eyes. Motion sickness?
 
it makes me ill too, especially garrys mod.

i think it has to do with the FOV settings it has, it's like it's slightly zoomed in.
 
here is what i think you you should do... STOP! just stop playing games for a while, go sit down on the coutch and watch a little tv, make a snack, take a nap, and other little meaningless things such as that just to get your mind off it. I could very well be something that your mind just developed over time from looking at one screen for so long. I get motion sickness if i read in the car! so it might work opposit as well. when i read/get sick in the car its cuz the car is moveing but my eyes are in one postion not going with the flow of the car. May, just maybe its opposite for you, your eyes are going every where on the screen at once while your character runs around but your body does not move...
* just a theory, proably totaly retarded... but i do suggest takeing a long nap... that helps for just about anything.*
 
It sure does. See ya in 5.

Well i get that sometimes to. Like the day before yesterday. I went to sleep at 9oclock. Woke up 8 hours later and felt like a new person. :D
 
Ya, I figured it had to be motion sickness. But the thing is, I can play other games like the Doom and Quake games, Splinter Cell, Call of duty, Medal Of Honor etc, Racing games and others for the same period of time and nothing happens. Where as with HL2, within a couple of minutes I get ill.

But the sunglasses stoped that and I was able to continue.
 
I wonder if it has anything to do with the monitor's refresh rate...maybe it's set lower when you're playing HL2...
 
Some games have given me headaches yeah.

The semi auto rifles such as the Gewehr in Call of Duty 2, when aiming down the sight, that gave me a headache for some strange reason.
 
SgtSpamBoy said:
I wonder if it has anything to do with the monitor's refresh rate...maybe it's set lower when you're playing HL2...
Click to expand...
That's the first thing I thought of.

Maybe he is just playing for too long or needs to eat something? I feel ill when I play for a long time and don't eat because my brain forgets it need more than games to survive so the body is like "YOU IDIOT GO FEED ME" *growlgrowlgroan*
 
when i used to play prince of persia, m eyes used to get all ****ed up from trying to focus on the character and the weird pseudo 3d backgrounds, and i wouldnt be able to focus both my eyes on anything for a while. but that was more to do with depth perception i think.
 
i think i know what the problem is. i had the same problem.

lower your mouse sensitivity bigtime and your problems should go away.
 
I get sick if I go on in the morning straight from bed. I need to take 30minutes to wake up and have something to eat or I just feel dizzy sick all day.
 
Which monitor you are using, CRO or LCD? I am using LCD and there is, until now, no problem.

I must mention that getting sick is good. You get sick because the game is of a high realistic. The sound is real and the movement is real. So when you move your mouse, your brain thinks that you are moving your head. It ends up with getting sick.
 
I heard someone say it's because HL2 looks closer to real-life than any game before it. It creates a frame of view problem for the brain. The background (ie your room) doesn't move, while the images on the monitor does. It makes the brain confused.

At least that's what I heard...
 
There has been some good oppinions so far.
"Omar" brings up a good point. I could understand that.

For me, it did not matter if I had anything to eat or not and If I was playing to long. Like I said earlyer, within a few minuts I would start to feel ill.

I wonder if HL3 will be similar. Anyway, keep the coments coming.
 
There will be no 'real' HL:3. Each half life game will now be ep's. It's been said by gabe.
 
Getting sick while watching a monitor ain't a new thing. Your eyes sense movement, but your balance-controlling thing between your ears tells your brain that you're not moving. This causes a conflict which could result in nausea. Also, a CRT screen updates itself at a rate of 50 hz - 100 hz. The lowest, 50 or 60 hz setting could also cause headache because the updates are "too slow" in that mode and while you won't see the blinking, the effect could be bad for your eyes in the long term.

My recommendations would be 1. buy a LCD monitor 2. have a break every 45 minutes of playing, look out of the window and refocus your eyes constantly so they don't get "used to" watching stuff at close distance 3. increase screen refresh rate ( if you're on CRT)
 
CodeFire said:
There will be no 'real' HL:3. Each half life game will now be ep's. It's been said by gabe.
Click to expand...
No it hasn't. He has said that he is looking towards it, but ultimately, if the fans want a proper sequel, that is what they will get.
 
Motion sickness usually happens when there is a little time shift between your orders with mouse/keyboard and movement you feel when watching the screen.
It's the same in cars when you feel moves that you don't actually expect.
The view angle also has an influence, with a narrow angle of view the moves can feel unreal. You can loose your orientation, so your brain has to find it again by looking at something outside your screen. This constant reorientation job quickly gives you headhaches.
If you have the stuttering problem, all those little stop and go, even hardly noticeable will make you sick.
 
If sunglasses eliminated the problem you may want to simply adjust the gamma setting.
 
No, it's the FoV. I distinctly remember Valve talking about this way back when.
 
might be the resolution.

I just played the condemned PC demo the other day and the default resolution was set fairly low as i was trying to work my way up to see how many settings i could turn up before i noticed significant performance loss.

I starting playing and almost immediately my head began to hurt.

the next time that i played it, i had the resolution turned up higher, problem gone
 
List of thing when u are sick when playing games

1.Headace at the back of you head like too much fluid.(more of Migrane)
2.Constant Blinking.(when eyes need to rest and refresh just like a com)
3.Lost concentration.(also when doing work)

My suggestion: Go rest ur eyes for 5min at least.
 
Hay Play Paintball remeber me? i gave you that HL2 Music, You have asked me this befor but i will reply a post anyway............

Have any of you thought that it might be the person and not there moniter? i mean not everyone has the same eyesite, if we did there would be more problems, But valve know about this prob befor we had the airbout thay where going to have a jetski BUT that made some of the testers blow chunks, so if this is a prob alot of people have i don't think the moniter has anything to do with it at all But it might.

http://store.valvesoftware.com/productshowcase/PDFs/RTB/04_JetSki+APC.pdf
 
Play Paintball said:
I heard someone say it's because HL2 looks closer to real-life than any game before it. It creates a frame of view problem for the brain. The background (ie your room) doesn't move, while the images on the monitor does. It makes the brain confused..
Click to expand...

haha, that sounds cool... let's all go back to amiga graphics!

there could be something to it though, because it looks more natural than most other games..
but in that case, why dont we get the same thing from watching a movie?
 
Ever played F.E.A.R.? thats more real than Half Life 2
 
I thought HL2 to be the most realistic looking game I've played. Not the graphically most impressive though.
 
Yeah, it was because of all the decay. The litter and rust was beautifully implemented.
 
No no no, HL2is not realistic (in the game play i mean, and if you thing im rong think about it) F.E.A.R is more realistic in the game play, and thogh you say HL2 is more realistic in the faces, You must not have a very good vidio card to run FEAR at full settings (i have 256) and run it a full, my sister has 128 and can only run at half.

Also no game is realistic, if there is name it, and don't say Ranbow3 Ravenshild
 
Sparda said:
No no no, HL2is not realistic (in the game play i mean, and if you thing im rong think about it) F.E.A.R is more realistic in the game play, and thogh you say HL2 is more realistic in the faces, You must not have a very good vidio card to run FEAR at full settings (i have 256) and run it a full, my sister has 128 and can only run at half.

Also no game is realistic, if there is name it, and don't say Ranbow3 Ravenshild
Click to expand...

Operation Flashpoint
 
Sparda said:
No no no, HL2is not realistic (in the game play i mean, and if you thing im rong think about it) F.E.A.R is more realistic in the game play, and thogh you say HL2 is more realistic in the faces, You must not have a very good vidio card to run FEAR at full settings (i have 256) and run it a full, my sister has 128 and can only run at half.

Also no game is realistic, if there is name it, and don't say Ranbow3 Ravenshild
Click to expand...

1. FEAR is not realistic. You try beating up twenty soldiers in slow motion with only your feet. Yeah, tell us how that goes.
2. Operation Flashpoint, Falcon 4.0 and its flight sim brothers, Geoff Crammond's Grand Prix games, the Combat Mission series, a lot of old tank wargames, simulators etc, Virtual Skipper, blaaaaaaaah
 
Sparda said:
No no no, HL2is not realistic (in the game play i mean, and if you thing im rong think about it) F.E.A.R is more realistic in the game play, and thogh you say HL2 is more realistic in the faces, You must not have a very good vidio card to run FEAR at full settings (i have 256) and run it a full, my sister has 128 and can only run at half.

Also no game is realistic, if there is name it, and don't say Ranbow3 Ravenshild
Click to expand...
I never said that Half Life 2 was realistic. I said that the faces were more realistic.
I've seen FEAR run at high and I can't say that I thought the faces were more realistic. They didn't have the hugh amount of expressions that the people in Half Life 2 had, which really went out of its way to suggest that these were real people.

Skuldodd is right by the way.
 
Play Paintball said:
I've been curious about this problem since I played HL2. It is the only game that makes me ill when I'm playing it. I ended up wearing sunglasses just to play it. My eyes would start to hurt then I would get head aches and nausia. Even when slowly walking the character around.

No, I was not sitting too close to the monitor. :)
Click to expand...

Hey,i know the answer to that.get ready for a science class.ok
now,in our body, balance and head position are controlled by inputs from three places 1) eyes 2) vestibular apparatus-ok,ok,inner ear and 3) sensory nerve input from your arms,legs and neck. normally all three work in unison.
what happens when you play a game is that your eye constanly tells ur brain that u r running ,jumping turning left& right-whatever but ur inner ear or your sensory nerves from neck etc do not provide matching information-resulting in nuasea,vertigo.the degree varies from person to person.
most of us get" conditioned" to this in a short while( the brain realises the eyes are lying to you) and u stop getting nausea.
 
hari66 said:
Hey,i know the answer to that.get ready for a science class.ok
now,in our body, balance and head position are controlled by inputs from three places 1) eyes 2) vestibular apparatus-ok,ok,inner ear and 3) sensory nerve input from your arms,legs and neck. normally all three work in unison.
what happens when you play a game is that your eye constanly tells ur brain that u r running ,jumping turning left& right-whatever but ur inner ear or your sensory nerves from neck etc do not provide matching information-resulting in nuasea,vertigo.the degree varies from person to person.
most of us get" conditioned" to this in a short while( the brain realises the eyes are lying to you) and u stop getting nausea.
Click to expand...
Wow well sounds right to me.
 
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