Thread: I feel like throwing up

  1. #1
    In my head happyclown's Avatar
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    Thumbs down I feel like throwing up

    Today I bought World of Warcraft, to see what the fuss was all about, and also to see if my 7 year old P4 could handle it.

    Big Mistake.

    I played it for about 30 minutes, and got motion sickness bad. It's now an hour later, and I still feel like throwing up. I can't handle 3D. Time to lie down. Will cancel my subscription in the morning.

    Oh yeah, the P4 handled it easily in Windows 7 Pro.
    OS: Linux Mint 13(Maya) LTS 64 bit.

  2. #2
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    I have this same problem with just about any game shown from a first-person perspective. Most of the time I try out a copy or a demo of the game before I buy it, just to make sure I don't make myself completely sick. So far, the list is very short. I played Oblivion in 30 minute segments because I really wanted to play it, even though it frequently made me sick. Most of Fallout 3 was okay, but there were still times it made me queasy. Borderlands and Mirror's Edge were both unplayable. I would have liked to have been able to play Portal.
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  3. #3
    Registered User VirtualAce's Avatar
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    Don't remove the game just yet. Most game engines use a 60 to 70 degree FOV. That usually makes people very ill. If you can find a way to widen the FOV to around 80 to 85 you will notice a huge difference. I did this with Call of Duty 4 b/c the first level on the ship made just about want to toss my cookies. After going to the console and widening the FOV I was able to play the game just fine.

    The sad fact is games do this to bring you closer to the action, to ensure the engine doesn't have to render a ton of items on screen at one time, and to flatten the projection. However an FOV of 60 would be like walking around looking through a rifle scope all day long. Rainbow Six Vegas 2 and several other games were horrible about this and it made most people stop playing the games. Note that if FPS makes you sick then if the game offers a 3rd person view you can use that - the FOV will be near 90 in 3rd person games. I played most of Rainbow Six Vegas 2 in 'cover mode' which was it's 3rd person mode when you took cover behind objects. Walking around in FPS, however, made me very sick.

    If you are on widescreen then 60 FOV is just absurd. To find out if there is a widescreen patch or fix you can go to WSGFWiki. They have a huge list of games there that have been fixed to work with widescreen and wider FOVs. I've submitted a few of the fixes myself b/c I, too, get very ill with narrow FOVs.
    Last edited by VirtualAce; 07-31-2010 at 10:19 AM.

  4. #4
    Unregistered User Yarin's Avatar
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    I wouldn't bash WoW because of that, though. Not everyone gets first-person shooter sick, just like not everyone gets sea sick or book-reading car sick.

  5. #5
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    I got pretty bad "FPS sickness" when I played my first FPS game ever (Crysis). So I just played in short periods (20-30 minutes).

    After a week, though, it gradually got better. Now I can play Call of Duty 4 (and all other FPS I tried) for hours at a time without feeling anything.

    So I think it will eventually go away if you keep going. Whether it's worth this initial "pain period" is up to you. For me it took about a week (a few hours play in total).

  6. #6
    Devil's Advocate SlyMaelstrom's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Yarin View Post
    book-reading car
    I hate book-reading cars!
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    Doesn't it also depend on how far you are from the monitor though? If the FOV is smaller, you should be able to move further from the screen to make it seem more normal. If the FOV is bigger, you'd have to move closer to the screen. I'm not sure about it, but I can imagine that to be true...

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    I tried everything when I first started playing.

    FOV, resolution (to get higher FPS), distance, screen height, etc.

    They didn't really help noticeably for me. Only time did it.

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    I got this when I played Max Payne a long time ago. It feels like the room is spinning to adjust to your character, and not your character actually turning. Terrible.

  10. #10
    In my head happyclown's Avatar
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    Bubba, you make some good points.

    The "camera" is permanently behind the game character, and I can't change the FOV. But I have since pulled the camera back behind the character as far as allowable, so that the character is about 15 meters in front of me. This means I can see a wider FOV, whereas before the camera was almost at the character's body, and I could only see a few degrees to the side of it. This has helped a little, but the downside is that instead of "being" the character, I am really an observer from 15m behind, so fighting and interactions with the environment feels detached. But I bought the game only to explore the world of Warcraft, not for fighting, so it's really not a problem.

    And I am now playing 10 minutes at a time, so the effects aren't so bad. And I try to turn as little as possible too, or shut my eyes when I have to turn.

    EDIT: If anyone is planning on buying Wow, be aware that after you install from the 5 CDs, you will need to download about 10Gb of updates before you can play. Took me about 18 hours.
    Last edited by happyclown; 08-01-2010 at 12:06 AM.
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  11. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by happyclown View Post
    The "camera" is permanently behind the game character, and I can't change the FOV. But I have since pulled the camera back behind the character as far as allowable, so that the character is about 15 meters in front of me. This means I can see a wider FOV, whereas before the camera was almost at the character's body, and I could only see a few degrees to the side of it. This has helped a little, but the downside is that instead of "being" the character, I am really an observer from 15m behind, so fighting and interactions with the environment feels detached. But I bought the game only to explore the world of Warcraft, not for fighting, so it's really not a problem.
    o_O
    Bloody FPS. And bloody FP view.
    Complete and utter nonsense, I tell you.
    It's normal to view your character from 15 meters behind. Normal, I say! >_< Why won't you agree, damn you!?!
    On a side note, this is the first time I've heard people becoming sick by viewing a narrow FOV. I have never any sorts of problems with any games.
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  12. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by happyclown View Post
    Bubba, you make some good points.

    The "camera" is permanently behind the game character, and I can't change the FOV. But I have since pulled the camera back behind the character as far as allowable, so that the character is about 15 meters in front of me. This means I can see a wider FOV, whereas before the camera was almost at the character's body, and I could only see a few degrees to the side of it. This has helped a little, but the downside is that instead of "being" the character, I am really an observer from 15m behind, so fighting and interactions with the environment feels detached. But I bought the game only to explore the world of Warcraft, not for fighting, so it's really not a problem.

    And I am now playing 10 minutes at a time, so the effects aren't so bad. And I try to turn as little as possible too, or shut my eyes when I have to turn.

    EDIT: If anyone is planning on buying Wow, be aware that after you install from the 5 CDs, you will need to download about 10Gb of updates before you can play. Took me about 18 hours.
    You can zoom out even more by increasing the allowed zoom distance in the settings i believe, if they haven't changed that since i played.

    Also, about the updates. It really depends where you buy your copy, i have 2 copies of the game, and the first one i bought was a 5-cd "loads-of-missing-updates" copy, yet the second i got only had one DVD and i was only missing like 500mbs of updates after installation.

    Oh and almost everyone plays the game in 3rd person view, the fps view just doesn't work for any kind of serious pve or pvp - nobody uses it...
    How I need a drink, alcoholic in nature, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics.

  13. #13
    That weird Java guy xniinja's Avatar
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    I experienced video game motion sickness for the first time yesterday, that has never ever happened to me before. I have had a nintendo 64, gameboy color, gameboy sp, gameboy ds, gamecube, and an xbox 360. and it has never happened to me before. (I see where all that money went though)

  14. #14
    Unregistered User Yarin's Avatar
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    @happyclown

    You forgot to mention the great soundtrack.

  15. #15
    the hat of redundancy hat nvoigt's Avatar
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    WoW has tons of graphic settings. Some are even hidden away in a settings file.

    Have a look at this forum thread for those variables you can set in the UI.

    And there is a ton of things you can change about the camera and other settings if you know where to look.
    hth
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