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Comment by mcbuilder | Hacker News Reader

It's always struck me as curious that some game engines cause greater motion sickness that others, despite being similar. For instance I can play UT 2004 and HL1 based engines all day, but put me in front of a Source engine game and I want to barf after 15 minutes. Doom 1 engine makes me nauseous, but Build engine not so. Obviously it's the way my particular brain is picking up on the subtles cues from the engine, so I'd love to be able to strap something on my head and be able to enjoy more titles.

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If I feel nauseated during a game, I look for some way to increase the field of view. That always does the trick for me.

Several years ago, I ran into the exact same nausea with the Source engine as the GP, but when I increased the FOV the problem went away.

I've run into nausea with other games that have a narrow FOV. Increasing the FOV (when possible) usually fixes the problem.

As far as I understand, the late Total Biscuit was similar. He frequently advocated for FOV sliders in games. I greatly appreciate his help making FOV sliders more popular.

Teared up a bit reading that last paragraph; I'll never forget his dogged insistence on checking for FOV sliders in options menus.

I've attempted this with Skyrim. Still no dice.

If I remember correctly, the Source engine increased the field of view from 75 degrees to 90. So you could definitely get sick on Half-Life 2 when Half-Life 1 is just fine for you. You might try lowering the field of view in Source games.

I too have wondered this! In fact, Doom 1 was the only game to ever make me throw up (9 or 10 years old at the time). Despite playing all kinds of games comfortably, Half-Life 2 makes me nauseated.

For some reason I've associated the sounds of those games to the sick feeling. I've always wondered if the sound has anything to do with it OR if my brain is just reminded by the sounds and is trying to warn me "I've been sick here".

I would assume your latter conclusion is probably right, but the former would be more interesting!

Yep!

I can play endless hours of Halo, WOW (In FPV), GoldenEye Can't play Red Faction, Portal, Portal 2, that climbing game on Oculus rift...the list goes on.

I've always thought that "bad" physics engines were easier to deal with than ones that were really close. I think with the good ones I've played on, its kind of a visual perception version of the uncanny valley.

Sounds like you might have issues with large field-of-view. Halo was designed to be played from a couch looking a TV somewhat far away, so it has a fairly narrow FOV. I know that at least some of the games you listed (Portal, Portal 2) have configurable FOV. Portal in particular also introduces a particular kind of motion blur to deal with the high-speed movement and rotation in that game, and you could have issues with that.

What is the difference? Head-bobbing patterns make some people sick and those can vary quite subtly, as can fov and perhaps rendering distance (portal has no horizon) and how much you look up/down.

Same here. Played through Half Life 1 with no mishaps at all, but an hour or so of Half Life 2 used to make me very sick.

As did others here, I found that the solution was to disable bobbing. Worked like a charm IIRC.

I’m very resilient to motion sickness but playing Black Mesa made me very sick. I think the real problem is the head bobbing, which is more subtle in some games than others.

That is fascinating. Have you eliminated framerate and field of view as possible causes?

Have you tried comparing Counter Strike and Counter Strike: Source?

Exactly opposite in my case: if I try to play HL1, I’ll probably throw up in 5-10 minutes, but playing games on source engine causes no issues.

What was your UT2k4 username?

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