Dizzy when playing

Kind of embarrassing but it just started in the last week. No issues at work on the PC. I get sudden spurts of dizziness when playing, enough to stop after 5-10 minutes which - this game isn't really a 5-10 minutes type of game.

I've already tried some basics:
- Move the computer monitor back. No change.
- Turned on more house lights. No change.
- Small usb powered fan on my desk. Always had it.
- Moved to windowed mode and made the window smaller. No change.
- Screen blue light filter. Seem to help, so I messed with contrast and played almost 20 minutes before I stopped.

I've made a doctors appt but wondering if anyone else has been through this or has advice in general. Of course, I'll take my doctors recommendations as priority but will try some folk's suggestions before I go in.

Heyo!

Man, dizziness is considered embarrassing these days? We, er… we won’t get into some of the health stuff I’ve had to deal with. :)

At the risk of asking the bleeding obvious - can you think of anything that changed in-or-around the time you first noticed this? New medication / different medication / altered doses of medication could make you more susceptible to dizziness in a variety of circumstances. I wouldn’t expect it of any reasonably well-balanced and nutritious diet, but either eating very unhealthily or trying one of the fad / extreme weight loss diets could have a very bad toll on you. Have you been under more stress than usual, or were you recently making do with very little sleep?

Even just in-game; if you went from playing a fairly slow and pedestrian totem summoner to playing a Flicker Strike build, the (pretty ridiculous) fast and unpredictable movement could cause problems. Speaking of - is this while playing any character (incl. brand new level 1s), or only on one or two particular characters? If the latter, I’d be interested to hear the elevator pitch of their build(s).

I’m not your doctor, nor am I in possession of any medical qualification of any sort. But, while testing things to get more information for your doctor’s appointment seems prudent, I’d otherwise not go near the game until I’ve heard what he / she / it / they think is going on. Without understanding the cause, I’d be very hesitant to risk aggravating whatever it is.

Hopefully it’s something innocuous like a tablet not agreeing with you or whatever. But if your doctor says they’d like to look at e.g. an MRI scan, please do go along with that. It isn’t worth the risk not to.

Look after yourself.

Oh, and I’d recommend the Lockstep networking mode in Path of Exile’s options menu if your internet connection will play nicely with it. Predictive can result in your game client falling out of sync with the server - if this happens, the server will abruptly tell your client to move you to where you “should” be - and this sudden and unpredictable movement could be detrimental.

The desync could also get you killed in-game, so there’s that. :P

I ended up making my monitors very dark and that seems to help a lot. I think it has to do with how so many things flash on the screen at once. I'm playing EA Champ so the whole screen is playing all the time.

Did it start with the grafx engine update? I get dizzy often since then because it lowered the fps below my usual 90-120 i'm playing at to not get motion sick. Also it somehow screwed with the lighting, some areas are overbright, others are so dark i can't see anything.

Lowering or turning off grafx effects that blur the screen helps, like bloom, antialiasing, dynamic resolution and depth of field.

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user0989 wrote:

Did it start with the grafx engine update? I get dizzy often since then because it lowered the fps below my usual 90-120 i'm playing at to not get motion sick. Also it somehow screwed with the lighting, some areas are overbright, others are so dark i can't see anything.

Lowering or turning off grafx effects that blur the screen helps, like bloom, antialiasing, dynamic resolution and depth of field.

Holy shit. It happened after the update. The freaking update. I've made my monitor so dark to keep playing but the brights are too bright.

I'm around 120fps minimum right now on a 244hz screen. I'll try messing with dynamic resolution if it's on.

I should mention that after I darkened the monitor I've been able to play a few hours at a time.

One could speculate, but honestly the best answer is to consult your medical specialist, this might correlate with literally any possible health issue, or just be a random thing

Are you maybe holding your breath unconsciously? I've heard of this and pretty sure I've done it. People get involved in a game and they start breathing crazy and are not aware of it.