Well, half an hour of playing Painkiller just left me feeling like I was about to have an epileptic fit, though to be fair in the past I couldn't last even a few minutes in a game like that, let alone half an hour. I'm going to try Precursors next, as it's another game I really want to play, I managed to get it on sale, and it's only part FPS so hopefully it'll give me a break every now and then.

Oh, and as for the ginger ale. I have no idea why it works as it doesn't have any actual ginger in it, but it does seem to make a difference.

I have some of the same issues, it's mostly motion sickness while playing first-person style games.

In my case, most of the time the culprit seems to be a low field of vision/view (FOV), e.g. a FOV of only 70 makes 99% of games unplayable (even worse if there's blur involved (especially the motion kind).
Solution: Increase FOV, around 100 works great for me.

I've also had some issues with The Witcher 2, which for me is that the camera is too zoomed in on Geralt.
Solution: IF it was possible to zoom just a bit further back it would solve the problem.

Extra tips:
Turn off any kind of blur.
The same goes for extreme cases of depth of field use.
Alot of newer games uses a small dot in the center of the screen (turn this on), for example
Mirror's Edge uses this.

I have gotten sick once when i played the first Soldier of Fortune, but because it was summer i would assume i got heat stroke or something that made me susceptible to it - as that is the only time it has ever happened

Edit: Wrong thread.

RUNE.
I actually threw up after 15min of playing.....GG
and threw up 2nd time after few more min....

MonstaMunch, your dedication to gaming is inspiring. That's a Desert Bus level of commitment right there. I hope you find out what makes the biggest difference for you.

I know you said you tried fiddling with the graphics settings, but I wonder if the almost unavoidably lower frame rate of Witcher 2 is part of the problem. I know that's not all there is to it, but I've heard that low frame rates and low refresh rates don't help.

Played Doom in ps1, I had to go barf a little and then continue.. Then I said, Wolfenstein 3d wasn't any easier.

If I'd have to bet I'd say it's the inner ear. Somehow you take in a lot more vocal info from your surroundings while playing and the headphones distort that flow of information for the brain. You get sick because that's conflicting with your other senses. Those other cures are most likely placebo and stuff that's the most soothing for the senses.

Hopefully over time you'll get accustomed to such-and-such games and won't need all this crap to play them.

Thanks, all sounds about right :) And yes, the idea is just to use whatever I can to be able to play for long enough to stand a chance of getting used to it. I can now play Mass Effect for extended periods of time, but Painkiller still destroys me pretty quickly. Precursors seems a little better, but that's because all I do is stand there and die. I also got Far Cry but haven't gotten around to downloading it yet :)

Just my two cents: there are so far only two games that made me physically sick, to the point i had to stop to play them or throw up on my screen ^^ : half-Life² and Duke Nukem Forever.

Each time, it turned out that increasing the FOV to 90-100 solved TOTALLY the problem.

So, I'm not saying it's the case for every game, but that's something you could try on your games before having to use pills or other ways.