In 2006, I got more headaches from The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion than I did from cramming for school exams. I played days upon days of Oblivion, but not on a PC – I was stuck on an Xbox 360, which was new and shiny but still barely capable of running Bethesda’s new RPG. Every play session more than an hour gave me a dull headache, which I blamed on simply too much Oblivion. It wasn’t until years later that I found forum threads online with people complaining about the same thing – and they blamed Oblivion’s field of view, or FOV, for giving them headaches or nausea.
But game developers will tell developer Crytek. “It sounds straightforward at first, it’s ‘just’ the angle of vision that you want to give the player. It seems to be a simple balance between providing the user all the relevant information all the while providing an image that looks good.”
