Half-Life 2 Causes Nausea, Looks Good in Doom Engine

BrookHarty writes "There is a large number of users reporting nausea while playing Half-Life 2. There is a thread on the Steam powered forums that talks about the wide spread problem. Some other sites are actively talking about the motion sickness, PlanetHalflife, 3DGPU, usenet group comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action has an active discussion, and gaming IRC network Gamesurge on channel #Halflife2." In related news from people with too much time on their hands, Jacques Chester writes "Folks discussing the visual merits of the Source and Doom 3 engines might want to look at this. The goal is to see what Half-Life levels might look like in Doom 3. An eerie result."

News? Bah!

[Gothic_Walrus]

How is this news?

FPS games have been making people sick for years. Ever since Doom exploded onto the scene, this has been an issue for some people. Of course, it's worse in some games than others - Descent is a perfect example - and I haven't heard about wide-scale problems in a huge release such as HL2 before.

Remember, kiddies: Playing HL2 can also cause epileptic seizures or carpal tunnel in addition to the nausea. Just like every other game out there can...

A few more reasons, and a suggestion

[Nomihn0]

I know, this story was not news-worthy, but I do appreciate it. I do not usually get sick while playing fully immersive games. With Half Life 2, though, it is another story.The games in which I do not get sick tend to be low geometry, high FOV, reflex shooters. This obvservation leads me to agree with the parent poster. My Half Life 2 sickness may, in part, also be due to the very low FOV. Another thing that I noticed, while playing through the video test, is that the textures are not static. You may say "wha?", but I mean from the viewer's perspective. I could see the equivalent of scanlines at tricky points of geometry on a single object. This wasn't an antialiasing artifact, mind you, this was something entirely different. As I've never seen it before, I cannot do much better in describing it. However, I feel that it might account for some of the nausia that people feel in game.

Lastly, the player's perspective feels disproportionately small compared to the environment, especially at higher resolutions. As a player, I feel as though I am swimming through an environment all to large for me. This messes with my frame of reference, especially when picking up objects (which then float several feet in front of me) and completing puzzles (in which the perspective is very misleading). My biohazard suit doesn't fit me like a glove. Not even the gloves.

If you haven't invested in Pfizer yet, now might be the time. I'm predicting a 27% spike tommorow when investors realize that several million gamers are planning on buying several cases each of Dramamine for Thanksgiving weekend.

Re:I wish there were "control" pictures also.

[theclam159]

Half-Life 2's graphics are excellent but not especially remarkable. The water looks the best I've ever seen in a game. Doom3 has a better engine, visually. However, Doom3 looks worse than Half-Life 2 because Valve appears to have a higher caliber of artists than iD does. Doom3 looks as good or worse than the screenshots. Half Life 2 looks better than its screenshots because screenshots don't give you the awesome physics engine. When you throw a grenade, things fly around realistically, looking amazing. Doom3 has some physics effects, but nothing even nearing the realism of HL2.

If you didn't like FPS games before, but want to try them again, Half Life 2 is the best choice. It's been hailed as the best singleplayer FPS ever released and I completely agree. I wouldn't worry too much about the box art. Both games are among the best ever released visually.

Re:I just want to see how Doom ...

[alphaseven]

Are HL2's maps really that huge though? Like on the outdoor maps you'll hit a loading screen pretty quickly, and the maps look larger than they really are because of a "3d skybox", a low polygon model that's enlarged to 16 times (or something) and placed around the map. All those hills and buildings around in the distance look great but you can't actually reach them.

Re:It is news when it happens this much...

[Babbster]

Why not stop? My friend used to play doom3 and throw up, or nearly so. Why? Just do something else for fun, rather than suffering through some game.

Good advice. The same thing happened to me the first time I was exposed to Steam. This is why HL2 will not darken my PC until there is a Steam-free version, a version that won't make me vomit.

FPS and nausea...

[lpangelrob2]

I agree with the general direction of these posts, except I've always gotten sick when playing first person shooters (except Wolfenstein 3-D, for relatively obvious reasons). It's strange because I don't get carsick. However, if I'm watching video taken from a moving car, I do get carsick. The same with any movie that resembles the Blair Witch Project... that's why I didn't think that movie was very good. But I digress.

Lately I've just played Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 a lot and made other people sick instead of me. :-)