Ok, I get motion sickness - royally. Put me in the back of a car on a hilly, curvy SE Ohio road and in about 20min I'll be wishing I was dead and looking like it too. Bad thing is it's getting worse as i get older, yay!!

Now a few weeks ago I bought a new monitor and picked up a widescreen with a 2ms response time. Now ever since games that normally didn't fire up my motion sickness have started too and ones that would lay me out just lay me out quicker. Has anyone ever heard of widescreens affecting motion sickness? I've tried to check the web and have seen posts of people suffering the same but no definite answer or tie in.
I've got the focal length at around 24in.

I have had something up with the inner ear on one side - pinched off tube, negative pressure, vertigo/dizzy spells since last fall but it comes and goes (at least the major pain does) so I'm not sure that's really the cause, the 19in lcd didn't seem to affect it much. I've wondered if switching from the 19" crt at work (used bigtime) to the new lcd at home could be doing it.
any ideas?

Motion sickness usually results from your brain getting mixed signals. That's why it effects you worse in the backseat of a car than it does when you're in front. Your body feels that you're in motion, but all you see is the non-moving back of the seat in front of you, so you don't see motion. Mixed signals.

I would guess it's probably a similar deal with the widescreen monitor, only in reverse. It's taking up a larger percentage of your field of view than the old monitor did. The visual centers of your brain perceive that as motion, but your inner ear doesn't feel motion. The contrast is what's making you sick.

My guess would be that moving farther back from the monitor, so it takes up a smaller percentage of your field of view, and you have more non-moving visual cues, is about all that would help.

Dramamine IV?

I have read that visually induced motion sickness appears to be more common nowadays. Google for visually induced motion sickness. I used "TV" and "movie" instead of monitor.

Some of the information I found made reference to movies with lots of movement causing motion sickness. Cloverfield and Blair Witch Project came into discussion. I think that Bourne Ultimatum and Battlestar Galactica could cause the same symptoms.

A colleague of mine, back home, used to tell me he could not play first-person shooters because of motion-sickness. In his case, his vision was not perfect. Therefore, also think that vision problems such as astigmatism could aggravate the motion sickness.

So, it is more common than you thought. Go and see a doctor. Or... send me your monitor

Films like that don't really give me motion sickness. They do however, incite a powerful urge to jump to my feet in the theater and scream "STOP MOVING THE GODDAMNED CAMERA YOU MORONS!"

Now, I kinda like it in BSG. But, yeah....that'd suck with the new screen.

There is that problem too. Which is getting to be annoying and I'm going to see if it can be eliminated this summer. Have to dig a little deeper into the surgeries yet.

Yea I'm quite familiar with the physical causes of motion sickness, which is why I wondered about the inner ear, further scrambling of the signals. Though in the case of the monitor is more due to the eyes seeing motion and the body not sensing motion. hmm simulator pod....

I'll try and move the monitor back some. I actually pulled it forward a bit lastnight and wasn't sure if even the golf game was bothering me. I managed to get the joystick installed and was playing a bit of Flyboys first - which started it.

Normally a cheap MS pill will work enough, due to it being eye caused, but I really hate to have to continually take the stupid pill. Just sucks.

Crap; ear and eye problems. I've got a really small vertical astigmatism in one eye that after about ten years from diagnosis, I apparently was able to fully compensate for (gov't full physical exam including eye test - asked about my problem and the optician did the eye curvature test on me...barely noticed the irregularity, but couldn't find any affect on my vision) That and a progressive neurological problem with the auditory part of my brain interpreting sound (harder and harder to pick out someone's voice with background noise), and neither of these seem to induce MS. Guess I'm lucky - here's hoping remedies to your problems are a) effective, 2) prompt to be completed, c) relatively painless and d) relatively CHEAP.



Buy a cheap rumble pack for your chair maybe? (or even 'test drive' one first? Borrow a friend's/rent one?) Maybe the small vibrations might do enough for your inner ear to lessen the conflicted senses?

Heck, Dancer just suggested a low-tech alternative; get a friend/roomie/significant other/family member to stand behind you and shake your chair for you at key points! She watch me play games like GTA3, anyway, and used to grab my chair back and wobble it when I was wrenching a car around - it was kinda fun... she'd also do screeching sound effects with her mouth which weren't terribly neccessary, but all the more funny.




'Card has nailed it, of course. Heck I remember reading once or twice of 'visually-induced motion sickness' mentioned in the front of some game manuals, right after the "photosensitive seizure warning" when I was twiddling my thumbs during long installs, and having the monitor further back while in a well-lit area were the two main remedies for each issue (the 'use a smaller screen' one is RIGHT out; and the 'don't play while tired/fatigued' I think was more for the PSS...though that might be a factor, too... )

Had it done in December 2004. I am so glad I did. The only problem I have is one type of textured wallpaper I haven't gotten used to. Otherwise, it's been great.

Yea my brother had work done back when it was still new in the states, went to Canada for it, and he's still fine. I just never dug into whether or not they could work on an astigmatism and if it was a walk out the same day or have to do the 24hr patch.
Part of the hassle is I was finally informed a couple years ago that 'hey you should be wearing the glasses all the time'. I'm like, 'umm they never told me that before'.