Over-smothness?

[Drizzt]

Today I've built a system for a friend, with a Radeon 9000 on it.
To test that everything was allright, I've installed Return to Castle Wolfenstein and played it a bit.

The frame rate was really smoot, and as usual with first person shooters I've started feeling nausea and headeache. Ok, it's normal for me, seems that I can't physically handle this kind of game, dunno why.



This evening at home I've tried RtCW over my system (G400), so to see the old G spit blood...and apart for having a costant frame rate between 23 and 27 (with everything to the max), I've noticed I've not felt any nausea or such.



Anyone tried this before? Have I discovered "over-smothness" illness?

[Kruzin]

Could be that head-bob was turned on with the Radeon system, and off with the G400.
For me, if head-bob is turned on, I get the motion sickness thing, but I don't if it's turned off...

[gt40]

I would feel nausea too if I had an ATI! j/k

Were the monitors the same size? Was there any tearing in either system?Possibly the higher frame rate of the ati had a stroboscopic effect?

[Ribbit]

I have (or had) a possibly related issue with high frame rates. I used to play Descent with the keyboard on my 486/66, which could just about handle it at full detail. When I upgraded to a 486@160MHz, the frame rate went super-smooth, and for some reason it felt to me like I was travelling slower in the game. I used to subconciously push harder on the keys to compensate, and my fingers would start hurting in a short space of time.

[Wombat]

It depends on all sorts of things - size of the monitor, proximity to the computer, other light sources in the room.

[Indiana]

This is normal. When the game is just about smooth, you seem to realize more that this is not real.
HZaving the movement real smooth causes the nausea for some people (me too, unfortunately) because of the differing information the brain gets from the eyes (which do say that there is rapid movement) and the organ of equilibrium which is located in the inner ear (which tells the brain that there is nearly no movement at all).

I had no problems whatsoever playing GLQuake on my Amiga, this was because it was only playing at 20-30 fps. I first got this motion sickness after I tried GLQuake again on the G400/Athlon500 which could of course render the game much faster/smoother.

So for some people smoothness is not only beneficial. But then if your Radeon is too fast you can always make it slower using appropriate FSAA and anisotropic settings, this should remove or lessen the sickness.

[Jon P. Inghram]

Headbobbing = SUPREME EVIL.

/cg_bobpitch 0
/cg_bobroll 0
/cg_bobup 0

Or if you're 100% psycotic, you can turn them UP from the defaults.

[the maddman]

another thing to try, in Quake based games at least, is to adjust the field of view. With optical USB mouses, and cards capable of 60+ fps solid, I find increasing the FOV to about 110 degrees helps a lot, just makes aiming a bit more challenging On Q3 based games, I think it's cg_fov, default is 90 degrees.

[Technoid]

fish view

[the maddman]

110 isn't fish view... 180 is though!