So here's a new one for me, how do you counteract motion sickness when simming in a pit?

A little background. My department recently purchased a driving simulator:

http://www.l-3training.com/applications/land/public-safety-training/police-car-simulator/

it works great, wonderful sense of immersion, etc. We've ran into a couple of problems however:

1) Motion sickness or as the folks at L3 (the manufacturer call it) Simulator Adaptation Syndrome. In short due to the extensive peripheral view afford by the simulator, the conflict between the visual input and their vestibular system (inner ear, etc, the bodies control of balance and motion) can rise to uncomfortable levels for some people. This can be reduced with short exposures to the simulator to build tolerance, and by keeping the driving times short (30 seconds to a minute).

2) Eye strain, being that close to those big screens is just plain hard on the eyes.

So does anyone have any suggestions on how to handle these issues?

The big problem we're seeing with #1, is that people don't want to do 3-4 short drives to get used to the simulator. They all want to hop in and drive a pursuit or something else similar. Sure we can tell them no, but we want people to want to use it, rather then feel it's a pain. I've heard that a full motion base (which is available, if we can get another grant) will either really help with #1, make it much worse for certain folks. By and large most people are able to drive the sim just fine so long as things are kept short, and they get frequent breaks.

I'd have really preferred a projector based system as it really helps alleviate problem #2, since your eyes aren't focusing on something so close. Again if we can keep the drives short, it seems to help. However we've had folks complain even after short drives.

So to anyone who has built a full surround pit, any ideas?

-Jenrick

I know of people who cannot play an FPS due to this kind of problem (my wife cannot watch the screen when I'm doing dogfights in Falcon ). You could remove (if it does not void warranty or similar) the upper cover and letting people see the wall behind the thing and keeping the simulator room dimly lit . You will lose some immersion but i think it would be the lesser evil.

I used to get motion sick from FPS's. Not all of them, just a few. I believe it was from bad FOV and/or the fact that the picture in CRT's could be stretched to fit more or less optimal. So if the width/height relationship was off I couldn't play for more than 10 minutes or so. But I guess I'm just more sensitive to such stuff

They can add basic motion to the sim to help with the inner ear issue and a collimated display to fix the eye strain.

g.

Bluedeath: Hmm taking the cover off is just 6 bolts and doesn't void anything. That's a simple idea, that is certainly worth trying.

-Jenrick

I still get nausea from FPS games...unless they are outside maps and then its completely fine. Flight simulations have never done that to me.

Medication for motion- / travel-sickness, to increase the time a bit?

Meds, were one of the manufactures recommendations.

-Jenrick