TR Forums

So I succumb easily to motion sickness produced by video games. Being mainly a PC gamer this is my bane. Back in the days of college I was unable to play Half-life or Descent for long because they made me sick. This was way before I knew about FOV and its effects.

Fast forward to today where I fully understand how FOV works, why its different across games, and how to fix it (most of the time). I picked up Dishonored this week and after about an hour of gameplay it hits me like a ton of bricks! I had to lie down and pretty much clench my eyes shut and hold on until the nausea subsided.

So my rant is this; I know games are ported to to a fro from consoles but if a game developer makes so I essentially have to edit so .ini to change the FOV is utterly stupid. How hard is to put a slider in the settings? Why do I as a consumer have to go hunt down what .ini I have to edit and enter the value for FOV? And every game is different.

Better yet the easy solution is for every game developer that is going to make a PC port is to set the FOV high! Dang it!

tanker27 wrote:

So I succumb easily to motion sickness produced by video games. Being mainly a PC gamer this is my bane. Back in the days of college I was unable to play Half-life or Descent for long because they made me sick. This was way before I knew about FOV and its effects.

Fast forward to today where I fully understand how FOV works, why its different across games, and how to fix it (most of the time). I picked up Dishonored this week and after about an hour of gameplay it hits me like a ton of bricks! I had to lie down and pretty much clench my eyes shut and hold on until the nausea subsided.

So my rant is this; I know games are ported to to a fro from consoles but if a game developer makes so I essentially have to edit so .ini to change the FOV is utterly stupid. How hard is to put a slider in the settings? Why do I as a consumer have to go hunt down what .ini I have to edit and enter the value for FOV? And every game is different.

Better yet the easy solution is for every game developer that is going to make a PC port is to set the FOV high! Dang it!

I don't quite follow you. FOV? Is it field of view? How is it causing nausea if it's set too low? Maybe it's not a common reaction and only a few people afre affected? But ofc i like to have an as big as possible field of view in any game, unless it's something useful or fun that adds to the gameplay. Let's say dark maps for zombie mode or something like that.

tanker27, i couldn't agree with you more. Despite good reviews, I cant play XIII coz I remember the first hour of it made me nauseous. I will have to investigate if it has an FOV setting in the ini file. What setting works best for you? And how do you watch 3D content? That makes me nauseous too.

Arclight wrote:

I don't quite follow you. FOV? Is it field of view? How is it causing nausea if it's set too low? Maybe it's not a common reaction and only a few people afre affected? But ofc i like to have an as big as possible field of view in any game, unless it's something useful or fun that adds to the gameplay. Let's say dark maps for zombie mode or something like that.

Some people are very sensitive to visual stimuli that don't behave like they should in the real world. This can manifest in different ways.

For example, a lot of people got sick from playing DOOM because of the bobbing motion of the view. Your eyes are telling you one thing, but your inner ear is telling you another. It's basically a form of motion sickness.

Another example: Augmented reality displays. Latency is a huge problem; unless the information in the display tracks the outside world with very low lag (under 25 milliseconds or so), it becomes quite noticeable (especially when you move your head quickly), and can cause headaches and motion sickness-like symptoms in some people.

Given the sensitivity that some people have to these sorts of "wrong" visual stimuli, I could easily imagine that there are people who have issues when the FOV of a game is artificially narrow, i.e. displays significantly less of the scene than you would see if you were looking at it IRL through a window the size of your monitor.

Arclight wrote:

I don't quite follow you. FOV? Is it field of view?

Yes

Arclight wrote:

How is it causing nausea if it's set too low?

Yes I causes Motion sickness if set too low for Computer monitors

Arclight wrote:

Maybe it's not a common reaction and only a few people afre affected?

Yes its a VERY common reaction for PC players. Its not a problem for Console gamers because they normally do not sit as close to the TV/ monitor as PC gamers do.

Arclight wrote:

But ofc i like to have an as big as possible field of view in any game, unless it's something useful or fun that adds to the gameplay. Let's say dark maps for zombie mode or something like that.

No it doesnt "add" to a game

NINJA EDIT: Live action 3D movies normally give me a headache/migraine, But cartoon 3D ones are just fine. However, I shy away from anything 3D.

I don't suffer, but I've often heard people say that low FOV's give them motion sickness.

I've always used max FOV when possible because it gives you a competitive edge in multiplayer and means you spot things more easily in single player games. with widescreen monitors being the norm these days, there's no excuse for low FOV games.

I don't suffer from FOV motion sickness, but it does bother me. There's nothing worse than getting gunned down by enemies because you have tunnel vision.

@tanker27: how do you set the FOV value in Dishonored and/or how do you find how to do this in various other games? Google?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blZUao2jTGA

A designer explains the mechanism behind FoV and why it causes motion sickness.

DPete27 wrote:

@tanker27: how do you set the FOV value in Dishonored and/or how do you find how to do this in various other games? Google?

Yes I normally Google it. More often than not you have to edit and .ini file

HERE is how to do it in Dishonored.

Normally 100 is just about right for me in any game.