Some Motion Sickness concerns
Mythricia
Norway Join Date: 2015-03-27 Member: 202617Members
Norway Join Date: 2015-03-27 Member: 202617Members
I didn't see any other posts about this at a quick glance, so figured it might be worth bringing this up, since it's not something that affects everyone, but certainly does affect some people very very much.
So, motion sickness - it affects people like me. I can't sit in the passenger seat of a car for more than about an hour before hurling. But I can drive a car for 10 hours and feel fine. My point being that motion sickness is a complex issue and not necessarily solved with a quick fix or two, and to find good solutions you probably need to consult people who genuinely do suffer from the problem and get their input.
I can obviously only speak for myself - but, most games don't affect me, even though I play on a rather large (27") PC monitor at shortish distances, but Subnautica did cause some light concern early on, nothing major and I could live with it for a decent amount of time per session, but once I built the Seamoth - holy batsh** batman. I cannot drive it for more than a few seconds, without physically having to avert my vision, it not only makes me acutely uncomfortable it actually makes my eyes lose focus of the screen. It's real bad.
The reason it's so bad has to do with the inertia associated with the camera - and the fact the camera is sort of semi-attached to the forward direction of the sub itself. It feels floaty and nauseating. I also think the roll has something to do with it - the fact the camera rolls side to side (as it does outside the sub), even though that's not something you directly control, is adding to the problem a little bit. Maybe if that effect was isolated it wouldn't be too bad, but it's definitely not a good combo with the rest of the wibbly wobbly dizzy motion of the camera. One other major problem with it is that the view the diver has when he/she exist the Seamoth or other vehicle. It should be as closely related to the view you had INSIDE the vehicle as possible. Currently your view is suddenly ripped away and you find yourself facing a brand new direction after leaving the vehicle, this is pretty bad - I would feel much better if I could have some object of reference (like a rock or other landmark) actually remain somewhat in the same area of the screen after leaving, as it was when I was still inside. Much less jarring that way.
I've hence dubbed the vehicle The Hurlmobile :-&
As I mentioned I also feel slightly uncomfortable with the diver view itself - when you're outside any vehicles and just swimming around. Swimming in straight lines is fine - however when you turn with the mouse in some cases, I think it's when strafing in combination, things get very weird again - the camera tilts/rotates and has a springyness to it that really triggers the motion sick as well. It happens a lot less frequently than in the Seamoth (inside of which it happens ALL the time) so that's probably why I can deal with it a bit easier. You also have the option of simply not strafing when outside the vehicle, so that's sort of a "manual" solution to the problem.
Now I understand that for probably the majority of people it's not a problem - and we don't want to ruin the experience of most people just to stop a couple of us from hurling every time we play this awesome game. So I would suggest adding it as an option - kind of like colourblind options are thankfully becoming a common feature, as well as FoV sliders (Thanks TotalBiscuit, fellow motion sickness victim, for your FoV crusade).
What this option would do, one hopes, is to disable any rotational movement of the camera that isn't associated with the vehicle or character actually physically rolling - and since this seems to be just an effect, not really having any meaningful gameplay value, even if there is some physical rotation or roll in the movement, maybe just disable that if the Anti-Hurl option is checked.
For the Seamoth, I think it would also be a good idea to either severely limit the allowed camera motion away from the front, since currently you can look almost 90* away from the nose of the sub, only to have the view claw its way back towards the front, whilst the front is also simultaneously converging towards the forward direction of the camera..... Yeah it's bad. So either really limit that, make the view MUCH less "springy" - or alternatively, detach the view entirely.
What I mean by detaching the view is; you could point the camera in some direction, and the Seamoth or <insert other fast moving vehicle here> will then attempt to align to your view at whatever speed it's able to manoeuvre... So, literally making 0 change to the physical motion of the vehicle, simply allowing the camera to "guide" where the vehicle is moving. By doing this, you're preventing the camera itself from moving, as well as preventing the outside world from rotating or moving significantly - all that'll be moving is the frame of the vehicle itself as it tries to align to your new view. There's many examples of games doing exactly this with vehicles - I'm sure you can think of a few. The Warthog in Halo for example - even though it's a land vehicle - actually contiously attempts to alight itself to the camera, rather than the camera aligning itself to the vehicle. You lose some presicion and you lose track of perhaps exactly where in the world space you are, but I think that's very negligible - and also you'll be able to learn and get used to it pretty quickly. I think just in general, this is a MUCH more natural and less dizzying control scheme for any sort of flying vehicle (which a submarine, is, in a way) and that it'd make for a much more enjoyable experience for everyone, not just the hurlies. It also solves another problem with the current vehicles - the mousepad marathon. Turning 90* currently involves moving the mouse from one edge of the mousepad to the other, lifting, moving back, and doing it all over again, literally 5-6 times to turn full circle. This is bad. Really bad. Don't fall into this game mechanics pitfall.... It feels, and is, clunky, imprecise, and slow. Using the method described above, the camera could function with 0 dampening applied to it - you could instantly face your new desired direction, whilst waiting for the vehicle to work its way towards that direction at whatever speed it's capable of. Fly-by-wire I guess - you tell the vehicle where you wanna go, and the computer guides it there as best it can. It's a simple PID control loop, should be relatively easy to implement.
Worth mentioning that this is how pilots in real life fly during more acrobatic flight - they'll focus their vision (by physically turning around in their seat) on the place in space they wish to arrive at, and then they fly the aircraft or whatever they're flying, so that it aligns to their view. It's a much safer and much less disorienting way to fly a vehicle - as opposed to gluing your eyes to the front of the aircraft and letting G-forces throw your view around as you attempt to actually arrive at a place in space you want to get to. There's a reason they do this - particularly fighter pilots - it's because getting disoriented in an aircraft going very very fast, is not unlikely to be fatal... So it's really just a very good practise.
Since we can't move our heads and look around us in 3D space when we're in front of a PC monitor, the best way to emulate this is to detach the camera and give the player full control over it, rather than letting the vehicle have half-and-half control of the camera alongside the player. As I alluded to at the very start of this post - for many people suffering motion sickness, being in control can play a huge role in negating it - simply being the driver of a car allows me to not only drive, but enjoy it a great deal. I feel the same thing probably applies in video games - if I feel that control of the view is taken away from me, it causes bad stuff to happen to your sense of balance.
Interesting to note is that this is a common problem with VR (Virtual Reality) gear, such as the Oculus Rift or similar. One of the strictly forbidden things to do in a VR environment is to take control away from the player - if you force their view to change, it'll cause a rather real sense of discomfort and to some people it's instantaneously bad, and just causes people to have to close their eyes or straight up rip the VR headset off. If you think about it, this is not necessarily because of the VR itself - it's just a result of the viewport being, literally, in your face - it's like an infinitely large screen. So, you can extend the problem to a normal computer screen as well, only the effect is much weaker, since you're viewing a smaller area.... And hence, it affects fewer people. Whilst almost everyone will have a strong reaction to bad VR practises, only some people react to bad camera practises when it's on a screen at arms length.
Hope this wasn't too lengthy, I do tend to waffle on - but I thought I'd include as much information in the post as I could.
The game is pretty great so far - and I do enjoy it a lot - but I really wish I could use the Seamoth for anything other than straight-line-travel....
So, motion sickness - it affects people like me. I can't sit in the passenger seat of a car for more than about an hour before hurling. But I can drive a car for 10 hours and feel fine. My point being that motion sickness is a complex issue and not necessarily solved with a quick fix or two, and to find good solutions you probably need to consult people who genuinely do suffer from the problem and get their input.
I can obviously only speak for myself - but, most games don't affect me, even though I play on a rather large (27") PC monitor at shortish distances, but Subnautica did cause some light concern early on, nothing major and I could live with it for a decent amount of time per session, but once I built the Seamoth - holy batsh** batman. I cannot drive it for more than a few seconds, without physically having to avert my vision, it not only makes me acutely uncomfortable it actually makes my eyes lose focus of the screen. It's real bad.
As a note after proofreading: FPS related issues are not part of the problem I'm describing here - I play on a 144Hz monitor with enough juicy GPU hardware to support it, so it's not a case of motion sickness from low framerates or stuttering.
The reason it's so bad has to do with the inertia associated with the camera - and the fact the camera is sort of semi-attached to the forward direction of the sub itself. It feels floaty and nauseating. I also think the roll has something to do with it - the fact the camera rolls side to side (as it does outside the sub), even though that's not something you directly control, is adding to the problem a little bit. Maybe if that effect was isolated it wouldn't be too bad, but it's definitely not a good combo with the rest of the wibbly wobbly dizzy motion of the camera. One other major problem with it is that the view the diver has when he/she exist the Seamoth or other vehicle. It should be as closely related to the view you had INSIDE the vehicle as possible. Currently your view is suddenly ripped away and you find yourself facing a brand new direction after leaving the vehicle, this is pretty bad - I would feel much better if I could have some object of reference (like a rock or other landmark) actually remain somewhat in the same area of the screen after leaving, as it was when I was still inside. Much less jarring that way.
I've hence dubbed the vehicle The Hurlmobile :-&
As I mentioned I also feel slightly uncomfortable with the diver view itself - when you're outside any vehicles and just swimming around. Swimming in straight lines is fine - however when you turn with the mouse in some cases, I think it's when strafing in combination, things get very weird again - the camera tilts/rotates and has a springyness to it that really triggers the motion sick as well. It happens a lot less frequently than in the Seamoth (inside of which it happens ALL the time) so that's probably why I can deal with it a bit easier. You also have the option of simply not strafing when outside the vehicle, so that's sort of a "manual" solution to the problem.
I think it's interesting to note also that I have 0 problems with things like space-based games, like Elite, Star Citizen (had some problems early on when their camera, incidentally, was acting like it was attached to the neck of the pilot by rubber bands - note the similarity of the problem). The actual act of moving around in a fully 3D space is not the root of the problem - flight simulators also, are no problem at all, whether I be flying level, upside down, rolling, or exploding into tiny pieces.
Now I understand that for probably the majority of people it's not a problem - and we don't want to ruin the experience of most people just to stop a couple of us from hurling every time we play this awesome game. So I would suggest adding it as an option - kind of like colourblind options are thankfully becoming a common feature, as well as FoV sliders (Thanks TotalBiscuit, fellow motion sickness victim, for your FoV crusade).
What this option would do, one hopes, is to disable any rotational movement of the camera that isn't associated with the vehicle or character actually physically rolling - and since this seems to be just an effect, not really having any meaningful gameplay value, even if there is some physical rotation or roll in the movement, maybe just disable that if the Anti-Hurl option is checked.
For the Seamoth, I think it would also be a good idea to either severely limit the allowed camera motion away from the front, since currently you can look almost 90* away from the nose of the sub, only to have the view claw its way back towards the front, whilst the front is also simultaneously converging towards the forward direction of the camera..... Yeah it's bad. So either really limit that, make the view MUCH less "springy" - or alternatively, detach the view entirely.
What I mean by detaching the view is; you could point the camera in some direction, and the Seamoth or <insert other fast moving vehicle here> will then attempt to align to your view at whatever speed it's able to manoeuvre... So, literally making 0 change to the physical motion of the vehicle, simply allowing the camera to "guide" where the vehicle is moving. By doing this, you're preventing the camera itself from moving, as well as preventing the outside world from rotating or moving significantly - all that'll be moving is the frame of the vehicle itself as it tries to align to your new view. There's many examples of games doing exactly this with vehicles - I'm sure you can think of a few. The Warthog in Halo for example - even though it's a land vehicle - actually contiously attempts to alight itself to the camera, rather than the camera aligning itself to the vehicle. You lose some presicion and you lose track of perhaps exactly where in the world space you are, but I think that's very negligible - and also you'll be able to learn and get used to it pretty quickly. I think just in general, this is a MUCH more natural and less dizzying control scheme for any sort of flying vehicle (which a submarine, is, in a way) and that it'd make for a much more enjoyable experience for everyone, not just the hurlies. It also solves another problem with the current vehicles - the mousepad marathon. Turning 90* currently involves moving the mouse from one edge of the mousepad to the other, lifting, moving back, and doing it all over again, literally 5-6 times to turn full circle. This is bad. Really bad. Don't fall into this game mechanics pitfall.... It feels, and is, clunky, imprecise, and slow. Using the method described above, the camera could function with 0 dampening applied to it - you could instantly face your new desired direction, whilst waiting for the vehicle to work its way towards that direction at whatever speed it's capable of. Fly-by-wire I guess - you tell the vehicle where you wanna go, and the computer guides it there as best it can. It's a simple PID control loop, should be relatively easy to implement.
Worth mentioning that this is how pilots in real life fly during more acrobatic flight - they'll focus their vision (by physically turning around in their seat) on the place in space they wish to arrive at, and then they fly the aircraft or whatever they're flying, so that it aligns to their view. It's a much safer and much less disorienting way to fly a vehicle - as opposed to gluing your eyes to the front of the aircraft and letting G-forces throw your view around as you attempt to actually arrive at a place in space you want to get to. There's a reason they do this - particularly fighter pilots - it's because getting disoriented in an aircraft going very very fast, is not unlikely to be fatal... So it's really just a very good practise.
Since we can't move our heads and look around us in 3D space when we're in front of a PC monitor, the best way to emulate this is to detach the camera and give the player full control over it, rather than letting the vehicle have half-and-half control of the camera alongside the player. As I alluded to at the very start of this post - for many people suffering motion sickness, being in control can play a huge role in negating it - simply being the driver of a car allows me to not only drive, but enjoy it a great deal. I feel the same thing probably applies in video games - if I feel that control of the view is taken away from me, it causes bad stuff to happen to your sense of balance.
Interesting to note is that this is a common problem with VR (Virtual Reality) gear, such as the Oculus Rift or similar. One of the strictly forbidden things to do in a VR environment is to take control away from the player - if you force their view to change, it'll cause a rather real sense of discomfort and to some people it's instantaneously bad, and just causes people to have to close their eyes or straight up rip the VR headset off. If you think about it, this is not necessarily because of the VR itself - it's just a result of the viewport being, literally, in your face - it's like an infinitely large screen. So, you can extend the problem to a normal computer screen as well, only the effect is much weaker, since you're viewing a smaller area.... And hence, it affects fewer people. Whilst almost everyone will have a strong reaction to bad VR practises, only some people react to bad camera practises when it's on a screen at arms length.
Hope this wasn't too lengthy, I do tend to waffle on - but I thought I'd include as much information in the post as I could.
The game is pretty great so far - and I do enjoy it a lot - but I really wish I could use the Seamoth for anything other than straight-line-travel....
Comments
especially how it feels and handles
It's interesting you mention detaching the view, as I thought that's how it worked now... Like, if you look around in the seamoth your view will go towards where you look, while the seamoth slowly rotates to match your view (ok it's not that slow, but there is a lag between you looking and it moving).
Granted, it's not exactly like the warthog in halo, but I thought that was kind of what they were going for.
The seamoth rolling.. ugh.. totally agree.
Well you're right in that the Seamoth sort of tries to do the detached view thing - but only sort of. Which makes it even worse imo! Because you move the mouse to the side - and the view moves quickly to the side, making you expect for a split second that everything is wonderful and works as you'd expect.
But then the view fights back - it tries to meet the front of the vehicle halfway or something.
So you have to repeatedly bash the view back towards the side you want to go, which makes your view go LEFTRIGHTLEFTRIGHTLEFTRIGHTOHGOD for a little bit.... Very annoying when trying to turn even a small distance, you have to make the turn 3 times before the vehicle finally gets there instead of trying to say "NO, YOU COME BACK" to the camera.
Very weirdo!
I never watched her play too intensely so I am not sure if there is a 'correct' way or method she is using the dot but she has found some release and that is what made me think to comment here.
Anyways; good luck
I would be interested to see if you also find some help in this. Please get back to me if you do as I am sure my sister would be happy to hear her method has helped others.
I haven't experienced something like it in 20 years, since I learned in a 90's VR rig that I could not play FPS's in VR.
I don't have much to add to the OP's brilliant post, but to reinforce his points. Either nail the view to the front of the vessel, or give us independent camera controls so we can choose to leave it nailed to the front of the vessel (ala Far Cry 3/4).
Fix the damn FOV too. Roughly, you've got the camera sitting as if the player had his nose pointed at the top of the steering wheel and about eight inches away from. Look at it from the outside. Do the geometry. If you want it that restricted don't make the ship a frickin' glass orb.
If anyone is interested please email me at: damon@soothing-scents.com
TY!
Any help the devs can do to reduce this without changing the scope of the game would be greatly appreciated.
I'm looking for a config file, but if anyone else finds a way to disable the atrocious nightmare, please post.
It handles well at high speeds between biomes, but where it affects my eyes is at very low speeds, say as you strafe and turn around a tight cavern to get a good look. As I turn my eyes are expecting the lateral movement across the screen, but that few degree rotation as you stop moving can seem to throw off my inner ear. This gets especially bad if you make a series of small movements in succession where the rotations make you feel like your head is spinning.
Imo, it is easier on my eye/brain when games fix the rotation+lateral movement to happen simultaneously as if rotating inside a ball. It is the delay and separation that seems to get me in the 'moth. It's like I stopped moving but the world carried on, or a bit like being drunk when you try to stand up and inadvertently launch yourself into the opposite wall.
I'm also glad someone has finally mentioned the camera doing the roll every time you turn outside the vehicle as well. It looks good for when I'm in the water, because it simulates water movement and feels natural in that environment, but when I'm in a base or on the ground, it makes me dizzy and uncomfortable.
YES, PLEASE!!! THIS. THIS RIGHT HERE, DEVS, ALL OF IT!
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To the OP,
It is really wise. I know that the same approach used by yogi, who try to hold balance. And nowadays, as a virtual world is a part of our reality, and popularity of VR games and VR technology in everyday life is multiplying together with companies that develop virtual reality, we all should have some point in real world to stay focused on. Remember the movie with DiCaprio (Inception)?