75 Hertz makes me sick

oleschmitt · Post by **oleschmitt** » 20 Jul 2006, 16:29

Hi, when I set the screen refresh rate to 75 Hertz instead of 60 Hertz, I feel sick.

When I go back to 60 Hertz I feel OK again.

Is this me or it's really possible to happen?

Post by **BongoTrumman** » 20 Jul 2006, 16:50

You should be just fine with 60hz. LCD does not use the same technology as crt where 60hz can give you a headache. I don't notice any difference switching to 75hz from my regular 60hz.

skeeder · Post by **skeeder** » 20 Jul 2006, 17:16

75hz is actually making the monitor faster, this could cause some weird things that cause your eyes to strain giving you a headache.

Jupix · Post by **Jupix** » 20 Jul 2006, 17:42

Some games are known to cause motion sickness at high FPS and a certain FOV (Half-Life 2 comes to mind, they said even their own beta testers became ill). AFAIK, it's got something to do with the FOV being too narrow or something. Maybe 75Hz is just that bit faster for you that it makes you feel sick.

CodE-E · Post by **CodE-E** » 20 Jul 2006, 20:27

Afaik motion sickness is caused when your brain is tricked into thinking that you're actually, physically moving about. I guess in some scenes at a particular FOV/framerate/whatever, your brain noticed that you're just looking at a screen, but at some it gets tricked and you start feeling dizzy and stuff. I guess some monitor refresh rates -- one of the many variables which influence whether or not your brain gets tricked -- feel more natural to your eyes than others.

Post by **Paradigm Shifter** » 20 Jul 2006, 22:04

It's certainly possible.

And as TFTs don't really 'need' a refresh rate (they report 60Hz to windows so that the graphics card/OS doesn't have a fit) I would just use 60Hz. Also, if you are setting it to 75Hz over DVI, that's likely your problem - DVI is specced at 60Hz...

oleschmitt · Post by **oleschmitt** » 21 Jul 2006, 17:16

Hi.

First I want to thank you all for all the useful answers.

Second I want to say how impressed I am with all the education and kindness you all have demonstrate in answering my doubt.

I was ready to read some dumb answers, like "duh, if 75Hz makes you sick, simply don't use it", but you all take the question seriously, as indeed it was.

I don't know as much as you guys, but your attitude incentivate me to share the few I know with everyone here in the Forum.

I've heard something about motion sickness before, something that happened in Japan during an anime premiere, lots of kids felt sick due to the intensity of images change in PokemÃƒÂ³n first episodes, but I never thought that it could happen with monitor refresh rates.

Thank you all once again.

Ewout_vB · Post by **Ewout_vB** » 21 Jul 2006, 17:25

It's interesting how people are affected by the refresh rates in different ways.

For me, for example, 60Hz gives me extreme headaches and I see flashing in the screen especially with white screens. But, some of my friends and apperantly you too can't stand 75Hz, I even have a friend that can stand it all except for 85...

The brain is an interesting organ, to say the least.

Regardless, this effect will be gone with an LCD since it creates the screen by a different method. I can't wait to get mine - my CRT is driving me insane because of the refresh rates and a broken powersupply for it.

CodE-E · Post by **CodE-E** » 21 Jul 2006, 21:09

Second I want to say how impressed I am with all the education and kindness you all have demonstrate in answering my doubt.

I was ready to read some dumb answers, like "duh, if 75Hz makes you sick, simply don't use it", but you all take the question seriously, as indeed it was.

I don't know as much as you guys, but your attitude incentivate me to share the few I know with everyone here in the Forum.

Yeah, this forum doesn't seem to have any trolls at all. Very unusual, especially considering that this forum's starting to get fairly big!

Post by **Paradigm Shifter** » 22 Jul 2006, 09:44

It's interesting how people are affected by the refresh rates in different ways.

For me, for example, 60Hz gives me extreme headaches and I see flashing in the screen especially with white screens. But, some of my friends and apperantly you too can't stand 75Hz, I even have a friend that can stand it all except for 85...

The brain is an interesting organ, to say the least.

Regardless, this effect will be gone with an LCD since it creates the screen by a different method. I can't wait to get mine - my CRT is driving me insane because of the refresh rates and a broken powersupply for it.

I personally can't take <100Hz on CRT monitors. Which kinda limits what models I can buy, but that's not a problem. ;)

Yeah, this forum doesn't seem to have any trolls at all. Very unusual, especially considering that this forum's starting to get fairly big!

We're gettings some fairly high-level links from very popular sites, too. But Trolls aren't tolerated. ;)

oleschmitt · Post by **oleschmitt** » 22 Jul 2006, 14:07

I've wrote to Ewout_vB in PVT affraid of the discussion to get too off-topic for this section, but it was not fair since the discussion keep well going here.

Well, I also saw "flashing" stripes with 60Hz, what forced me to use 75Hz. That's why I tryed to use 75Hz in my LCD monitor too. Knowing that LCDs are different than CRTs, I won't do that again.

I've done some research about motion sickness and I found this article:
http://unreal.boomtown.net/en_uk/articles/art.view.php?id=8643

This thing is called "opto-kinetic nausea" (fancy, isn't it?).

Obviously some people are more eye-sensitive than others. In average, people can see lights flashing on and off about 50 times per second (50Hz). Above it, see a static image (or light).

But Paradigm Shifter needs 100Hz??!!! What kind of image processor does your brain have to see flickering below that frequency? Near yours mine seems to be an old 386...

PS.: Just to make it clear: I was trying to use 75Hz in my LCD monitor. In CRT the perfect was 75Hz. In LCD seems to be 60Hz.

Post by **Paradigm Shifter** » 22 Jul 2006, 16:54

But Paradigm Shifter needs 100Hz??!!! What kind of image processor does your brain have to see flickering below that frequency? Near yours mine seems to be an old 386...

Eh, I dunno. All I can tell you is if I set the refresh rate on a CRT to <100Hz, I've got a splitting headache inside an hour. 85Hz I can normally cope with if I can take short breaks every 15 minutes or so, but 75Hz or less and my eyes hurt inside a few minutes...

One of the many things TFT's do that make me favour them dramatically over CRT monitors now.

Widescreen Gaming Forum