As anyone who knows me or has seen me wincing in the corner of a press event will attest, I suffer from unfortunate and partially debilitating headaches, and have done for some 8 years, often daily. I have some nerve damage in my neck and it causes pain, nausea and visual disturbances, along with dizziness and fatigue. It sucks, but everyone has a cross to bear. What it does do, though, is make me a fairly authoritative voice when it comes to the hot topic of the day; 3DS dizziness.
Obviously I can only speak for myself, but I feel like I have had a fairly typical experience with the machine. On starting it up for the first time, I felt a dull buzzing sensation in between my eyes, which caused me to repeatedly shift my focus and fiddle with the slider. The first half an hour was actually quite unpleasant, and I had to shut the thing off. The headache lasted for 5 or ten minutes before subsiding. As someone who knows headaches on a personal, friends-with-benefits level, I knew this was being caused by the tech.
I turned it on later, and played Pilotwings for a good hour. The pain returned, and again, I shut it off. I was pretty worried at this point – I loved the 3D effect, but it didn’t love me. Still, I persisted, and with each session, I felt my eyes getting used to the sensation of individual focus. Interestingly, it didn’t exacerbate any headache I already had (a similar, but different feeling), and it wasn’t made worse during a weekend hangover.
Now, when I put the machine on, I suffer little to no ill effects from playing whatsoever. My eyes have learned to not try to consume the entire image but to simply accept a point of focus, much like you would do in real life. There are occasions when I feel eye strain, but I feel that from working at a computer screen most of the day, or indeed hammering an FPS on the HDTV.
After the Sun’s scientific test on the 3DS’s effect heart rate and blood pressure, it would be interesting to see similar tests on other games. I personally feel that anything that can affect adrenaline and ‘fight or flight’ responses when the body is stationary could lead to long-term health issues, particularly anxiety-based disorders. However, in my distinctly non-medical opinion and experience, 3D is not the cause. The contents of videogames themselves, coupled with a tendency to immerse ourselves in them for too long without using our bodies, is far more dangerous.
That’s a social issue, though, and not one that needs to concern Nintendo or any other videogame manufacturer. And as for the3DS dizziness, then, I feel like it’s just a matter of conditioning. Or you could just turn the bloody 3D off.
Tags: 3DS
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