Before we get into the situation, we are going to define what motion sickness is and it is something so simple that it is a contradiction in perception, since no matter how much technology we have, we are still the same species that hunted on skins and lived in caves. That is, our body was not designed to play video games, but neither to travel by car or ride a roller coaster.
So when our body perceives a change in the environment that does not coincide with our body position, it ends up generating a biological process that ends what we call dizziness. Motion sickness is something that if we are regular video game players it may seem absurd or a minor problem, especially if we have been playing with them for several years without problems, but keep one thing in mind, we are not all the same and in the same way that there are People who have epileptic seizures in games are also disoriented and even nauseated by rapid camera changes.
What is motion sickness in PC video games and what causes it?
Currently, the vast majority of video games both on PC and console are mostly rendered in 3D in real time and therefore generate a three-dimensional environment on a two-dimensional screen. In them, the eyes that present the scene is the game’s camera itself, which we can control through the second analog stick on the control stick. (Xanax bars) There are also other methods such as the use of small electromechanical elements such as gyroscopes and accelerometers that allow us to tilt the gamepad to move the camera.
Most experts will tell you that the reason that causes motion sickness in gaming is not known, but it always has to do with a very simple biological process in our body. If you start running a marathon, both your eyes and your sense of balance will inform your brain that you are moving, there is no conflict in the information that reaches the brain. On the other hand, there are people who when both information do not agree end up in the process of nausea and dizziness.
Why did we talk about camera changes in the first paragraph? In most games, what most causes tides to people who suffer motion sickness are travelin or very fast camera movements, and it gets worse if we talk about games with first-person action and that apparently our neurons do not interpret the movement in the same way as in the third person. In summary, there are many factors that can lead to us suffering from motion sickness, but there is no clear one that we can point to as the main culprit.
If you get dizzy playing this is what you can do
If you are one of the people who gets dizzy when playing your favorite video games and this ends up frustrating you by the fact that it does not allow you to enjoy them properly, do not despair, since there are ways to solve or at least alleviate the problem. First of all, what you have to do is adapt your environment:
- If you have a very large screen, it may be that it ends up affecting your field of vision due to the fact that your brain can interpret it as the vision of the world around you. The simplest solution? Use a smaller screen or sit further away from it.
- The second solution that we recommend is none other than ventilating and illuminating the room or living room from where you are playing well. So try that the light in the room does not come only from the television or the monitor.
- Keep the room well ventilated, if doing so does not allow you to hear the game well, we recommend using Bluetooth headphones. In console you can connect some with cable to the mini Jack of the control unit to be able to listen to the action with the control instead of the television.
The second type of solutions has to do with adjusting the graphic options within the games themselves, there are a series of settings that you can deactivate or vary to alleviate the dizziness in the games.
- The first thing you have to do is increase the drawing distance or Depth of Field, which is the horizon in which the game is drawn. In games, this pattern is usually adjusted so that the CPU and GPU have fewer elements to calculate on the screen, but it can also distort the perception of objects and cause motion sickness.
- Disable Motion Blur or motion blur.
- Adjust the sensitivity of the mouse, if you play with it, or of the right stick of the control knob so that sudden camera changes are not detrimental to you.
- Avoid if possible to play games with first person action and move it to third person if you can.
Another solution, but for this you will need a powerful PC and a good gaming monitor, is to play with high frequency screens, but you will need hardware that moves the games at said frame rate and therefore you will have to lower the resolution. It is not a panacea, but it helps a lot.
If you suffer from motion sickness then virtual reality is not for you
One of the problems that virtual reality has not been able to solve is the problem of nausea and dizziness, which are magnified when using virtual reality glasses. That is why if you have these problems and doubts whether to jump to VR, we recommend that you bear in mind that motion sickness problems are magnified when playing with glasses of this type.
Therefore, if you get dizzy when playing a video game from a television we do not recommend buying an HMD, since due to technology limitations if you suffer from motion sickness you will not be able to enjoy the experience well and it will be rather unpleasant. We are not saying this to speak ill of virtual reality, but for the fact that it is not cheap, it requires a very powerful PC and there is nothing worse than spending money on something that you cannot enjoy.
