First Person Shooters

[MusicallyInspired]

It's a first person shooter, but beyond that it's nothing like Doom. It's more like Half-Life.

For you and others who get nauseas playing first person games, have you tried changing FOV (field of view) settings? I've heard this helps tremendously for some people allegedly. Specifically, increasing it so you can see more around you so it doesn't seem so "zoomed in." I'm just curious if anyone has and if it has helped at all.

EDIT: This was split from the: New Acquisitions Thread - Tawmis

[BBP]

Not for me, I do really need a stationary camera.In GK3 I've figured out where to click and how to use the pre-set camera positions so I have to move the camera as little as possible.

People tell me Portal 2 is so good but I lasted like 5 minutes.

[Rath Darkblade]

I agree. I still haven't finished Portal 1 (though I've gone through almost all the levels).

[DeadPoolX]

As I understand it, one major reason some people feel dizzy or nausea in some first-person games is because in real life, whenever we move our eyes or our heads, the brain shuts off our optic nerves for a fraction of a second, which we don't notice and automatically fill in the gaps. Why does our brain do this? It's to prevent dizziness and nausea. Naturally, this doesn't occur when we play FPS games because our brains don't recognize the character's movement as our own eyes or head moving.

You can test this phenomenon out yourself by looking in a mirror and trying to see your own eyes move. You can't do it. If someone else watches you, they'll see your eyes move or if you video record it, you'll see your own eyes move, but you can't see your own eyes move in real time.

The question that usually comes up about now is, "What about VR? Shouldn't the brain behave the same way it does in real life because we're moving our heads?"

Not exactly. VR is different because it effectively fools your brain into thinking you're moving around and interacting with the world in a way that looking a screen could never replicate, BUT... you don't actually feel motion. This causes a disconnect between what your eyes see and what the vestibular system (aka "inner ear fluid"), which detects and regulates balance, in your ears notice.

For reference, the balance mechanism dictated by inner ear fluid is also at play in regular non-VR FPS titles, but to a lesser degree because it's a lot easier for your brain to tell you're watching something as opposed to "living it." For some people, particularly those with overly sensitive vestibular systems, VR can almost seem too real.

[MusicallyInspired]

The brain is a fascinating thing.

[goatmeal]

The brain is a fascinating thing.

One of my favorite Emo Philips jokes:

“ I used to think the brain was the most fascinating part of the body. Then I thought, ‘Look what’s telling me that.' ”

[BBP]

DPX: Sure you can see your own eyes move! Just tilt your head in front of the mirror.

It's like motion sickness, except the other way round.

When I'm in a car, bus, or boat (especially boat), but fortunately not usually trains, I can get ill very easily, particularly if there are a lot of bends in the road or if there's a lot of acceleration and deacceleration. I understand there are multiple hypotheses as to why it occurs. The main one is that the brain gets different information from the vestibular system and the conflict of data causes the nausea.

Whatever. I just try to avoid 3D games, boats and bad drivers.

[DeadPoolX]

DPX: Sure you can see your own eyes move! Just tilt your head in front of the mirror.

No, you can't. You might THINK you're seeing your eyes move, but you can't. You're seeing your eyes in one spot and then the next spot, but that's not the same thing as seeing your eyes actually move.

Maybe this will help explain:

[Collector]

DPX: Sure you can see your own eyes move! Just tilt your head in front of the mirror.

No, you can't. You might THINK you're seeing your eyes move, but you can't. You're seeing your eyes in one spot and then the next spot, but that's not the same thing as seeing your eyes actually move.

Not unlike a film which is a series of frames which when seen fast enough gives the illusion of motion.

[MusicallyInspired]

If you're watching your eyes in the mirror and tilting your head you're just seeing your head move. Your eyes are staying in one spot. But I get the joke.

[BBP]

No your eyes have to move in order for you to be able to look at them. You don't perceive it as moving because they are relatively still, but your eye muscles are working all the same.

Plus due to me being cross-eyed I have seen my own disobedient eye move in the mirror. But that's beside the point. Motion sickness is probably based on conflicting data between what the eyes perceive and what the inner ear and balancing organs feel, and I think aside from GK3 and Broken Sword 3 I haven't been able to play any games that induce it.

[DeadPoolX]

No your eyes have to move in order for you to be able to look at them. You don't perceive it as moving because they are relatively still, but your eye muscles are working all the same.

Did you watch the video? I think you're misunderstanding (or perhaps unintentionally misrepresenting) the entire setup.

Keeping your eyes focused on one location and moving your head is NOT the same thing at all as keeping your head still and moving your eyes. Saccadic masking is a phenomenon that occurs only when moving your eyes, not your head. This doesn't mean you can see your eyes move, you're just seeing your eyes fixate on one location while moving your head, so saccadic masking doesn't take place.

Medical science definitively states you CANNOT see your eyes move (and by this I mean actually moving your eyes, not your head) in the mirror due to saccadic masking. I've been told this by other scientists and physicians (one of whom is my father who's been a neurologist for 40+ years), so unless you think you know more than people who're experts in their field, you might want to rethink your stance on this or at least acknowledge you're comparing two separate and unrelated phenomena.

[BBP]

Let's stop this argument right here, OK? It's completely pointless.

At any rate I'm too motion-sick too quickly to play anything 3D with moving camera, and not remotely interested in first-person shooters beyond the hilarious CD-i cult FMV ones. In GK3 camera movement can be avoided, in Sleeping Dragon I managed to pull through because the camera doesn't always follow George around the way it does in the airplane at the start, and IIRC there are some games I mentioned in the What Are You Playing Right Now where I ended up fanning myself for hours after attempting them for five minutes. Deathtrap Dungeon was a 3rd person slasher where I had similar issues, made some videos of that. The amount of games post 1998 I play is low, very low.

Currently I play Cluedo (Marmalade Games) a lot - and to spiffy the game up there's an introduction video of the board just before the game starts. It's short but in some maps it does make me nauseous (the otherwise gorgeous Sherlock Holmes map). Also it zooms in and out of the player's pawns when their turn starts. Fortunately by then I'm too focused on the notepad to be too bothered by it but it would be nice if game designers just took stuff like that into account - nausea is a very good reason to stop playing a game, and if you know in advance what to suspect you can choose to not-buy, or look into it see how it bothers you before you buy and install it.

I suggest that you try to look up some videos of FOV settings to see if it works for you, MI. I haven't seen much of it, because it didn't work for me.

[MusicallyInspired]

I suggest that you try to look up some videos of FOV settings to see if it works for you, MI. I haven't seen much of it, because it didn't work for me.

Oh I don't have a problem with motion sickness. I had suggested changing FOV settings for people who do because I had heard it helped some people and I was just curious if it would make any difference. Sorry to hear it doesn't work for you. It was just a suggestion.

Interestingly though, I do get VR sickness after a while (much to my dismay) and have to take regular breaks. If I spend too long in VR-land it takes longer to acclimate back to reality and I feel nauseous for upwards of a half hour afterward. I've heard changing the IPS makes a difference in that regard (the distance of each lens between your eyes) but I'm unsure of what to set it to. At least it's manually adjustable on the Quest right while you're playing with a mechanical slider right on the device.

[DeadPoolX]

Something fascinating I've read about VR is that those with glasses, specifically progressive lenses (lenses that are seamlessly divided into long-distance, middle, and close-up vision), tend to do better with it than people without glasses.

The reason is because you need to turn your head to look around in VR, and you need to do the exact same thing with progressive lenses. People with normal vision can look around with their eyes, but if you have progressive lenses doing that means you'll end up looking through the wrong area of the lens.

Looking through the wrong area of the lens (or having a middle focal length that's too narrow) is one of the reasons why progressive lenses are also terrible for computer use. Most people end up craning their head back to look through either the middle focal or close-up focal areas, and this inevitably leads to neck and eye pain.

That's why I got both progressive lenses and occupational lenses*, the latter of which is designed for computer use at the correct distance. It's made looking at a computer screen so much more comfortable it's almost impossible to describe.

* These are prescription-based lenses designed for a specific individual to use on a computer, not glasses off the rack at a pharmacy designed to merely magnify whatever you see. The latter would never work for me, but they do work (at least so far) for Maia.