Alien Isolation is killing my eyes!

[Carnage1986]

Hi

Today i installed Alien Isolation 10-15 minutes but it was very uncomfortable for my eyes and i shut down the game. I remembered my Half Life days. (I endured because i was younger and have stronger eyes )Because that game was very painful for me too.

I figured out that the games which have these properties make my eyes sore:

1/Too much grey and black color tones in the scenes. I like space themed games but they're real torture for me. For example i couldn't play Dead Space.

2/Corridor FPSs. Especially Half Life. Maybe it's about motion sickness.

3/The games that use too much bright whites and flashbang efects.

What are the reasons of that and what are the advices of yours?

 

[Piotrsama]

Increase the FOV a little bit, to something around 55, 60 and try again, to see if it helps.

 

[TheSlamma]

Hi

Today i installed Alien Isolation 10-15 minutes but it was very uncomfortable for my eyes and i shut down the game. I remembered my Half Life days. (I endured because i was younger and have stronger eyes )Because that game was very painful for me too.

I figured out that the games which have these properties make my eyes sore:

1/Too much grey and black color tones in the scenes. I like space themed games but they're real torture for me. For example i couldn't play Dead Space.

2/Corridor FPSs. Especially Half Life. Maybe it's about motion sickness.

3/The games that use too much bright whites and flashbang efects.

What are the reasons of that and what are the advices of yours?

I had that problem with Dead Rising 2 and RAGE. I know on the forums I read other people had the problem with RAGE also. Basically had to put those 2 games down and uninstall I have 20/15 vision, a 120Hz monitor and have no problems with 98%-99% of other games.

Things that helped me out with a few games were:
1: refresh rate if you have a monitor that can do 120-144hz or 60hz
2: Is there a color blind setting (that helped me in BF3 and BF4, it darkens the screen a lot too)
3: Brightness levels, on my BenQ it's all the way down at 8, I found some good sites that had some basic starting point settings for many monitors.
4: vsync test on and off, most games I seem to do fine with it off.
5: lighting in the room you are gaming on, some people need a calm light behind their screen if they are playing with no other lights on. For me my mancave is really dark, I actually painted the walls in Ben Moore Prussian Blue and used a ceiling paint on it so it was ultra flat (I have an unhealthy hate for sheen). I thought my wife would hate it but she actually likes the look a lot.

I bet other people will have some great advice, mine is really just experiences that I have had to do. It's weird though cause most games I have zero issues with, but probably 4 or 5 games in the last 5 years have given me a few issues, but DR2 and RAGE I never was able to get to a point I could even play, DR2 especially.

I hope you figure something out, from what I have read that game sounds really cool.

 

[Carnage1986]

@Piotrsama and TheSlamma thanks for the answers.

Increasing and decreasing FOV didn't help.

Unfortunately i have 60 hz monitor and no color blind setting in the options menu. Turning on/off VSYNC didn't help.

Lightining on the room is not good and i have no knowledge about that. I'm using LED ampul@low color temperature but i have no idea about this is good choice or not. I need consultancy about this.

But my biggest observation is the games which use grey and black colors much hurt my use. Is red, green, blue color adjustment help me on this issue? for example which channel's(R/G/B) gamma effect grey and black colors most?

 

[Mutilator]

Maybe the issue is you're straining too much to see things in the dark? Before messing with RGB settings if you have an Nvidia card you could try changing the Digital Vibrance under Display - Adjust desktop color settings in the Nvidia control panel - crank it up to 80-100% and see if that helps or not.

If your eyes actually physically hurt it's usually from straining. If it was motion sickness related you'd feel nauseous and have to stop playing and wait several minutes if not hours for that feeling to go away.

Sometimes it's just game specific and there may not be anything you can do about it except play something else or wait and see if they patch something in or a mod comes out to address the issues you're having.

 

[Carnage1986]

Maybe the issue is you're straining too much to see things in the dark? Before messing with RGB settings if you have an Nvidia card you could try changing the Digital Vibrance under Display - Adjust desktop color settings in the Nvidia control panel - crank it up to 80-100% and see if that helps or not.

If your eyes actually physically hurt it's usually from straining. If it was motion sickness related you'd feel nauseous and have to stop playing and wait several minutes if not hours for that feeling to go away.

Sometimes it's just game specific and there may not be anything you can do about it except play something else or wait and see if they patch something in or a mod comes out to address the issues you're having.

I have an AMD card now but when i was using nvidia card i boost up digital vibrance to %100. Is AMD equivalent of this setting saturation? Or anything else? Some people says digital vibrance is just simply saturation but i am not sure of that.

I am not a hardcore gamer now (maybe never) and i don't play for many hours in a day. But this issue become more annoying for me day by day. The doctors are too ignorant on this case they only tell simple advices.

I used to play HL and i could endure in the past but now it's impossible(i tested yesterday)

 

[Maximilian]

@Piotrsama and TheSlamma thanks for the answers.

Increasing and decreasing FOV didn't help.

Unfortunately i have 60 hz monitor and no color blind setting in the options menu. Turning on/off VSYNC didn't help.

Lightining on the room is not good and i have no knowledge about that. I'm using LED ampul@low color temperature but i have no idea about this is good choice or not. I need consultancy about this.

But my biggest observation is the games which use grey and black colors much hurt my use. Is red, green, blue color adjustment help me on this issue? for example which channel's(R/G/B) gamma effect grey and black colors most?

Fix that. I used to play games late into the night with just a side lamp on, it was cosy but my eyes hurt like a bitch sometimes, I just assumed too much time staring at the screen but thats not it. It was the strain on my eyes trying to see in a low light condition. I keep the big ceiling light on now and sore eyes have never happened since.

tl;dr low light causes eye strain, try more light and see if that fixes it

 

[SharpHawk]

Don't play games in the dark. Make sure your monitor's brightness and contrast are calibrated properly (use a greyscale chart), otherwise you may be playing games darker than intended.

 

[Dman8777]

The problem wit Halflife is definitely field of view. That game defaulted to 60 while 90 is typical of FPS games iirc. I had exactly the same issue with HL before adjusting the FOV to 90.

 

[Pandora's Box]

Don't play games in the dark. Make sure your monitor's brightness and contrast are calibrated properly (use a greyscale chart), otherwise you may be playing games darker than intended.

But it's an Alien game! It needs to be played in the dark

 

[SharpHawk]

Yeah, but your eyes will thank you if you don't!

 

[BrunoPuntzJones]

Increase the FOV a little bit, to something around 55, 60 and try again, to see if it helps.

Holy hell! Increase it to 55-60?? What does it start at?

 

[werepossum]

Holy hell! Increase it to 55-60?? What does it start at?

Weasel-in-a-paper-towel-tube, apparently. To me, playing at less than 90 degrees seems weird and distracting, but if it's a good game I just try to immerse myself and ignore it.

I had the same problem with Amnesia Descent Into Darkness; even with brightness all the way up it was simply far too dark for me. Halfway through I gave up - after half an hour I'd have a monstrous headache and my eyes (which are bad) would physically hurt. Normally if I have problems I just increase brightness and then room light, but with ADID it didn't help and may actually have made it worse. Hope you find a solution.

 

[ImpulsE69]

Never had this issue...are you guys playing on very low contrast LCD's? The game is meant to be dark...

I mean yea, straining to see can lead to sore eyes and headaches..but it doesn't affect everyone.

 

[Eric1987]

Yeah, but your eyes will thank you if you don't!

Don't include me in that statistic.