PC gaming gives me a headache

[Atarifever]

For awhile a couple years ago, I was playing a lot of PC games. Lately, I've been trying to get back into it, but am having trouble playing the games I already own on it, as they all give me headaches. I feel uncomfortable when I play them too. Genre doesn't matter. Even Team Fortress 2 (a game I love) is making my head hurt. Last night, I played Avadon: The Black Fortress for about an hour, and enjoyed the game, but ended up feeling gross physically. I then went and played some Sin and Punishment: Star Successor on Wii, and felt much better. Anyone else have this problem, or a problem with any type of game or system that makes your head hurt?

One change in my life that I think may be the cause is that my new job is much more demanding (emotionally and technically) than my last one, and perhaps sitting in front of a monitor is not as relaxing as looking at a nice big screen TV, using a nice console controller. As well, my new job has me typing a lot of reports (like a lot of reports) so maybe I'm also at capacity for monitor staring.

[ActRaiser]

I've heard that high latency displays might be a culprit. What type of monitor do you use?

If it's a laptop you might consider an external monitor with a higher refresh rate. Assuming you can output the video signal you might have much better luck.

If it's a framerate issue you could try turning down some of the graphic settings to see if that helps.

[Oltobaz]

I recently purchased "PC glasses" while in Japan last week. I've no idea whether this is a popular product in the US or not, but I find it's an useful product when sitting up close to one one of my arcade monitors: my eyes no longer itch anymore! It might also help reducing headaches for all I know.

[Atarifever]

I've heard that high latency displays might be a culprit. What type of monitor do you use?

If it's a laptop you might consider an external monitor with a higher refresh rate. Assuming you can output the video signal you might have much better luck.

If it's a framerate issue you could try turning down some of the graphic settings to see if that helps.

Thanks! I do use my laptop, and it is not really intended for gaming. It has a VGA out, but I have a TV that still supports that, so would that be better, refresh rate wise?

[Atarifever]

I recently purchased "PC glasses" while in Japan last week. I've no idea whether this is a popular product in the US or not, but I find it's an useful product when sitting up close to one one of my arcade monitors: my eyes no longer itch anymore! It might also help reducing headaches for all I know.

A lot of people I worked with at my last job had those PC screen covers. I think I have one kicking around somewhere. If the glasses are just a filter, maybe it'd work the same way?

[ActRaiser]

Thanks! I do use my laptop, and it is not really intended for gaming. It has a VGA out, but I have a TV that still supports that, so would that be better, refresh rate wise?

Yeah, if your TV is fine for you to play console games with then the VGA input will be okay. As to whether your laptop is fast enough is another story. The worst that you could do is try it and see how it goes.

http://www.monoprice.com/search/index/? ... y_1=Cables

If you don't already have a cable try monoprice.

Hope this helps

[Oltobaz]

I recently purchased "PC glasses" while in Japan last week. I've no idea whether this is a popular product in the US or not, but I find it's an useful product when sitting up close to one one of my arcade monitors: my eyes no longer itch anymore! It might also help reducing headaches for all I know.

A lot of people I worked with at my last job had those PC screen covers. I think I have one kicking around somewhere. If the glasses are just a filter, maybe it'd work the same way?

It's worth trying!

[ptdebate]

When I read the title of this thread, I expected you to complain about software issues, because that's my biggest gripe about PC gaming--namely, the fact that it's tethered to Windows, a horrible operating system.

[Atarifever]

When I read the title of this thread, I expected you to complain about software issues, because that's my biggest gripe about PC gaming--namely, the fact that it's tethered to Windows, a horrible operating system.

Actually, if it was about anything besides real, physical headaches, it'd be about most of the PC gaming community. I once did a thread somewhere asking if anyone else had weak hardware and wanted to talk about games. I got a ton of replies, all saying "get a real computer, noob" or "better for you to just get a console if you're not going to use a real computer." Another time I said I wished Steam had a way to enter or detect system settings to only show you games you could play. I had to go very in depth explaining over many pages that I was not saying Steam should lower system specs generally, which was assumed as I must just be a contrarian who "should just go buy a proper PC and stop trying to ruin it for everyone." And don't get me started on piracy with those guys. Apparently, piracy only exists because of DRM, and really, if you have to sell your games to make money on them, man, you're just doing it wrong. You have to make a free game, or people will steal it, but don't put transactions in it, or people will hate it and not buy it, but don't release it physically, because that's stupid, and don't make it cheap, because it needs to be optimized. It's simple really. Just make free games to give away and work at McDonalds.

[Vexer6]

I think FOV(field-of-view) may be an issue, i've learned from watching Totalbiscuit's videos that a narrow FOV on PC can cause headaches for some people, especially in first-person games. So next time you play a game on PC, try and adjust the FOV to make it wider(though some PC games do not have FOV settings, I don't know if TF2 has any) and see if that helps any.

I've personally never had any problems playing games on PC.

Windows is not a "horrible" operating system at all BTW.

Most PC gamers don't want to pirate games, that's only a small and vocal minority. Though I do recall some people being jerks on the PC Gamer website after I mentioned how I thought Alien Isolation was overrated, they are all saying things like "OMG you only hate this game cause you suck at it" and other things to that effect.