How to Prevent Motion Sickness from Halo 3

Halo 3[digg=http://digg.com/xbox/How_to_Prevent_Motion_Sickness_from_Halo_3]In my previous post, I described how I got simulator sickness (a form of motion sickness) from Halo 2. Since then, people have asked about ways to prevent or relieve motion sickness with Halo 3. It seems that Halo 3 is particularly bad for simulator sickness sufferers because of its high frame rate (60 frames per second vs. 30 frames per second for previous Halo titles).

So I’ve done a bit more research on the problem. It seems our friends at the Army have known about this problem for a long time because of their experience with aircraft and combat simulators. They have even developed a set of guidelines for prevention or minimization of the effect. Since it’s a very long, technical PDF document, I thought I would highlight the results for you.

GENERAL STRATEGIES

  • Adaptation: The only reliable way to beat simulator sickness is to play often and build up your resistance.
  • Play short sessions at first.
  • Play only one session per day at first.
  • Don’t go for more than a week between sessions when you’re in the adaptation phase because you’ll “unadapt” yourself.

BEFORE YOU PLAY

  • Don’t play if you’re extremely tired or if you have a cold/flu
  • Turn off all other lights in the room.
  • Sit far away from the TV — as far back as you can while still being able to read small text. Try to make the field of view around the TV set as large as possible to give your eyes some “grounding” room.

WHILE YOU PLAY

  • Short sessions! Short sessions! Short sessions! I know this is frustrating when you have a cool new game, but try to stop playing BEFORE you get sick. Play for only 10 minutes at a time if you can. As you get adapted, your game time will last longer.
  • Minimize your head movements.
  • Close your eyes when you press pause and turn your head away from the screen before opening them.
  • If you can help it, don’t do too many “fancy” maneuvers like airplane rolls or spinning around excessively until you get adapted.

I hope this helps everyone who is feeling squeamish from their new game! Let me know how it goes.

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14 Responses to “How to Prevent Motion Sickness from Halo 3”

  1. Doug

    October 2nd, 2007 at 4:00 am

    I have puked violently every time i have played campaign over the past week… i am in need of driving to walmart for some Dramamine i reckon.

  2. Aegin

    October 6th, 2007 at 8:32 pm

    Thanks for the valuable info. You’ve hit it right on the button in regards to motion sickness sufferers vs. non-motion sickness sufferers. I have no problems with motion sickness whatsoever. I’ve spent a large amount of time in aerobatic planes, boats, extreme sports, etc…. Never, ever had a problem. Then I begun realizing that I couldn’t say the same about video games (specifically 1st person shooters). I appear to only be effected by those. Sports games and so on do nothing, but I experience extreme nausea, dizziness, and headaches just minutes into playing something like Halo, Splinter Cell, etc etc. 5 to 10 minutes on a video game and I spend the rest of my day laying in a bed with a cold pack on my head, moaning like a baby praying I don’t open my eyes and find the room spinning on me.

    There’s more effected by this than people realize. Shame.

    Thanks again for the info!

  3. Andrew

    October 7th, 2007 at 7:16 pm

    my advice: Don’t think about it if you have gotten sick before, and try to rest the back of your head on something. For instance, when i play halo 3 on my couch i put a foot rest out in front of it and then I lay down over the couch with my feet parallel to me. a year or two ago i used to feel nauseated playing some FPS games, then using this simple method i took that down to just getting headaches, and now it’s just a headache sometimes (mostly if i play for more then 2 or 3 hours in a single session)

  4. commondialog

    October 17th, 2007 at 10:08 am

    The adapation thing really works. That’s how I can play FPS now.

    Though I have found that probably the best piece of advice is not to do anything fancy. I still get a little sick when I start doing crazy barrell rolls.

  5. Niko

    October 24th, 2007 at 10:10 pm

    Thank you! Perhaps now I can spend more time playing Portal instead of clutching my head and whimpering.

  6. michael

    December 14th, 2007 at 1:52 am

    i used to get sick all the time when i played hse games to start with but u get used to it after a while it used to be i’d play 4 half and hour and i’d be uder the covers 4 the rest of the day now i can play 4 hours and still feel great its not good when your tired though…………………..

  7. Steve

    December 19th, 2007 at 11:17 am

    If halo 3 is 60 frames per second then I’m Mike Tyson.

  8. Game Dame

    December 19th, 2007 at 7:42 pm

    Here is the low-down on the frames per second straight from Bungie.

  9. Sean

    January 17th, 2008 at 10:08 pm

    when i was a kid i was a die hard gamer but now i instantly get sick from first person games. I never get sick with anything else. The game companies have literally lost a few thousand dollars by not having me around. At least they have guitar hero now. Even the first doom game was bad.

  10. Camey

    January 28th, 2008 at 3:29 pm

    I’ve been using acupressure wrist-bands to help out when playing Halo 3. It’s been working great for me. Also the fact that the graphics are so far improved from previous version has really helped. Side note: the bands helped me w/ Blair Godzilla Project aka Cloverfield as well. :P

  11. don

    June 17th, 2008 at 5:31 pm

    the only thing wrong with this blog is that a game with 60fps should give you a lot LESS simulation sickness really as a smoother framerate is much more natural and easy on the eyes…

    for example try playing a game in 20 frames a second and you should notice you get much worse motion sickness than most other games etc…

    60 frames per second should be much much BETTER for anyone who gets motion/simulation sickness in games..

    btw halo 3 is NOT 60 frames per second :P its 30fps but its probably the stutters in framerate that you notice more now?

  12. Gillian

    June 29th, 2008 at 9:53 am

    I don’t get my body at all – I played Portal with no problems, but Half Life 2 is making me want to throw up!

  13. Dave

    July 19th, 2008 at 1:43 pm

    I’ve always suffered this problem especially with GTA on the PS2, it got so bad that I gave up games all together. However, 18 months ago I got into World of Warcraft on the Pc and could happily play that for several hours on end without a hint of nausea.

    Today, after much deliberation over my problem with simulator sickness, I finally bought an xbox 360 and Battlefield Bad Company. After only half an hours play, I’ve started experiencing mild nausea. Thanks for these tips. Hopefully with a few short sessions I’ll adapt and this horrible feeling will pass. It sucks not being able to join my friends online.

  14. The Game Dame » Blog Archive » How Twitter cuckolded WoW

    January 20th, 2009 at 12:03 pm

    [...] nature of the game. This is a pure first-person game but for some reason it doesn’t induce my simulator sickness. Status: Level [...]