Around one-third of all people who play games suffer from some degree of motion sickness.
And depending on the individual and the game being played, the feeling of nausea can be quite severe.
In this article, we’ll look at whether or not gaming glasses help then we’ll look at all the best ways to find relief from motion sickness.
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Do Gaming Glasses Help With Motion Sickness?
Gaming glasses unfortunately don’t do much to prevent or eliminate motion sickness, nor were they designed to.
Instead, they focus primarily on eye strain by reducing the long-term effects of blue light.
Outside of doctor-prescribed medication, Dramamine, or perhaps Boarding Glasses—the eyewear equivalent of magnetic bracelets—motion sickness while playing games can only be reduced by situational methods.
The word “situational” is necessary because no one person’s personal experience with motion sickness is the same as another’s.
Potential solutions could be a range of things, some which work for a few, others that work for others.
What Causes Motion Sickness When Playing Games?
When playing games and watching all of that movement unfold on your TV or computer screen, your brain begins to receive conflicting signals from your muscles and joints, eyes, and inner ear.
Your eyes are sending signals to your brain telling it that you are at the center of all this movement, but yet your inner ear is not detecting any movement at all.
It is this conflict created among your senses that causes motion sickness by sending mixed signals as to whether you are moving or not.
It’s basically the disconnect between what your body is feeling and what your eyes are seeing.
How Can I Stop Motion Sickness When Gaming?
Dealing with motion sickness as a gamer is the same as dealing with it on a boat, in a car, or in a movie theater.
Here are a few things you can do that may help:
Sit Further Back From The Screen
Sit back further from the screen with lights on or an otherwise bright environment so that you can see the surrounding room as well as what’s showing on your TV or monitor.
When the screen in front of you takes up too much of your field of view, the feeling of sickness is caused by the motion on the screen telling your brain that you should be moving when you are only sitting still.
By sitting back and allowing your field of view to take in the stationary room around the screen, it helps your brain to understand that what’s on the screen should be moving, but you should not.
Take A Break
It’s not what gamers want to hear, but unless you want to fill your shoes with the morning’s breakfast, take a break occasionally.
It doesn’t have to be often, just enough to stretch your legs and get some air.
Change The Game’s Settings
This is especially helpful with FPS games which are the most likely to cause motion sickness.
Reduce motion blur, widen the field of view, and reduce “head bobbing.”
A low field of view can be almost like tunnel vision and cause the onset of motion sickness.
The frame rate you are playing at and screen ghosting can also make a difference.
Lower frame rates can cause motion sickness as they slow down and distort movement on-screen.
If you have the option, try turning on G-sync or V-sync so that the game and monitor refresh at the same rate.
This can avoid screen tearing, inconsistent frame rates, and other synchronization problems.
Try to ensure that you are at least getting a steady 40-60 FPS when playing, even if it means having to lower screen resolution, graphics, or upgrade your video card.
Ghosting or image blur can also add to the issue.
It usually happens on older screens that can experience a kind of flickering and blurriness while playing games due to a low refresh rate.
Try to play on a screen that has a refresh rate of at least 60 Hz.
Those are primarily the cause of motion sickness in FPS games and most will have an option for reducing or eliminating it.
Related Article: Are Gaming Chairs Good For Long Hours? (And Which One Is Best)
Take Medicine Or Herbal Remedies
Supplements Dramamine, prescription Scopolamine, ginger root (in the form of chews).
There are a lot of remedies available whether it’s OTC or prescription.
Play In Third Person View
If you begin to feel nauseous it can sometimes help to change your view within the game from the first person to the third person.
This will broaden your field of view and stop you from feeling so immersed in the movement while seeing everything through the character’s eyes.
Turn Down The Blue Light
Too much exposure to blue light has been shown to have all types of nasty side effects with nausea and dizziness being among them.
Most monitors and TVs can have their blue light levels adjusted in your device’s settings, sometimes found under night mode.
Turn the blue light down as much as possible.
Try A Sea-Band
Sea bands are bracelets designed to reduce motion sickness when traveling by boat.
However, many people find them to be effective against all causes of motion sickness, including driving and gaming.
Sea bands work by utilizing a stud that’s placed on the inside of the wristband.
This stud stimulates the P6 acupressure point by exerting pressure on it and has been shown to alleviate the feeling of nausea and other symptoms of motion sickness.
Try Different Games
This might be an option unless you’re a competitive gamer within a certain genre or a professional gamer.
However, switching from a first-person to a third-person perspective can alleviate the symptoms.
Focus On A Stationery Part Of Your Screen
You’re not going to be able to play very well if you keep your eyes focused on a stationary part of your screen, but this can help if a feeling of motion sickness suddenly comes over you while you’re playing.
Taking a moment to focus on the crosshairs or some other part of the game that is not moving can offer some quick relief and may even be enough for you to continue playing afterward.
Open A Window
Do you ever remember feeling sick in the car and finding immediate relief as soon as a window was opened and fresh air flowed in?
It works and the same is true if you’re gaming in a stuffy room.
A little airflow could make all the difference.
What Do Gaming Glasses Help With?
Gaming glasses help with overexposure to blue light.
Everyone is spending a whole lot more time staring at screens nowadays, and the amount of blue light being absorbed from so much viewing is dangerous and potentially damaging.
Some people experience that damage quicker or in worse ways than others.
There are generally four types of lenses (tints) to choose from, depending on the severity of a person’s reaction to overexposure.
Amber:
Reduces the intensity of blue light by up to 65% and is supposed to be the best of the four for seriously reducing eye strain over long gaming sessions.
Liquet:
Not as heavily tinted as the amber version, the Liquet lenses reduce blue light exposure by 35%.
Crystalline:
If you only have small issues with blue light during gaming sessions, crystalline lenses may be the best fit.
They only knock the edge off by reducing exposure up to 10%.
Outdoor:
Reduces blue light by 90%.
These are sunglasses, for outdoor use.
Overexposure to blue light has several potential side effects such as eyestrain, insomnia, damage to the retina and macula, and eye fatigue
Gaming glasses help with all of these and give your eyes more long-term viability.
Do Gaming Glasses Help With Headaches?
Gaming glasses help with headaches indirectly by reducing the cause of the headaches.
When the negative effects of blue light are reduced, headaches as a direct correlation to those side effects should be reduced as well.
The fly in the ointment, however, is a 2015 study conducted by Pacific University College of Optometry.
The study concluded that Gunnar Optiks’ gaming glasses had no significant impact on eye strain over anything else.
So the jury is still out on how effective the blue-blocking gaming glasses are.
Most of it will probably boil down to personal preference and perhaps, even a bit of the placebo effect from good marketing tactics.
Can Playing Video Games Damage Your Eyesight?
Outside of marathon sessions, gaming has beneficial properties where the human eye is concerned.
Contrast sensitivity, visual attention, visual reaction time, and hand-eye coordination all improve from moderate playing times.
While there may not be an end-all cure for the side effects of overexposure to blue light, or the motion sickness sometimes brought on from gaming, there are at least a known set of positive physiological changes derived from gaming.
Motion sickness is most commonly experienced in first-person games or third-person games (like Resident Evil), where your camera is very close up to the character.
This point is further illustrated by the 2012 PS3 game ‘Journey’, a game with wide fields of view throughout that people report having very little amounts of motion sickness while playing.
You are also less likely to experience motion sickness if you are in control and playing the game as opposed to just sitting and watching it.
With this knowledge, at least you’ll know what games are likely to be an issue for you.
Unfortunately, gaming glasses don’t help with motion sickness and it’s entirely possible that they don’t even relieve some of the effects of blue light.
On top of that, the science on blue light damage is not even remotely settled.
The best way to enjoy video games and deal with motion sickness—or any other unhappy side effects from enjoying your favorite hobby—is to do it the best way you know how with the remedies that work for you.
