[MUD-Dev] Viewpoint and motion sickness was:Neverwinter Night s

[Derek Snider]

From: Brian 'Psychochild' Green, June 18, 2001 6:58 PM

> As a person that gets motion sick from 3D games, let me give some
> input.
 
> I've been playing a bit of Unreal Tournament lately, so this is a
> topic currently near and dear to my heart, er, ...stomach?

>> Nothing influences motion sickness more than a slow frame-rate,
>> and also (and especially combined with) a claustrophobic scene
>> where there's too much stuff right in your face (which often
>> causes the frame-rate to drop).
 
> I will have to disagree with this vehemently given my personal
> experiences.
 
> I was able to move around in 2.5D games fairly easily without the
> general sense of nausea I get when playing more modern games.  I
> was able to DOOM all night in college, and I played Meridian 59
> without any nausea.

Well, certainly way too much fast movement is going to be a little
overwhelming, but what I was trying to emphasize, was that it was
more-so the jumpiness than the actual speed of the movement.

Many games and graphics cards boast 60+fps.  Unfortunately this is
usually the top fps, and when the scene gets too complex, the fps
can drop dramatically.

When standing still, the fps is very high as everything is cached.
While barrelling along, the game has to be loading new data,
textures, recalculating things, and with an internet game, it has to
be relying on information from the server as well.  Few games
maintain a constant framerate while moving around.

If the fps has dropped to 15 or 20 fps, and your character is moving
along at breakneck speeds (say 20 feet per second), you're not
getting enough fps for the amount of movement you're doing, and
therefore your vision is clunking along in one foot chunks or worse.

DOOM maintained a high constant framerate.  It loaded the entire
level into memory, all the BSP trees were precalculated, and when
playing multiplayer, it didn't have to worry about any monsters.
Lastly it's also likely you were playing it on a 14" monitor as
opposed to a 19" monitor.

If your 3D game is giving you nausea, try sitting a little further
back from the screen.



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