POE2 Eye Strain: Am I the Only One?

Update: I think I found a workaround for the eye-strain problem… kind of.

During the 0.3 season, I tried messing around with NVIDIA’s built-in overlay filters to reduce brightness or lower contrast. I tried many different filters. The strategy was: apply a filter, play for an hour, eyes start bleeding, take a break, rinse and repeat.

After all those experiments, I found that the Night Mode filter at +30 intensity gives pretty good results for my eyes. I can play for several hours. Raising it to +40 gave me almost 6-8 hours of playtime without major discomfort.

The downside is that it messes up the colors in the game, but after half an hour, you barely notice it anymore unless you go watch some POE2 streams or guides on YouTube. Your browser is not affected by the filters, so the colors will appear in the default way - MUCH brighter. Be careful!!! It will hurt your eyes almost instantly, and after 5-10 minutes, you may be forced to take a break! I don’t know why, but switching back to the default colors seems to strain my eyes even more than just playing with the default settings from the start. I think it’s worth mentioning.

So yeah, it helped me a lot, and I wanted to share it here.
It might help someone.

How to:
- Open NVIDIA App (Start -> NVIDIA App)
- Go to Settings (mid-left side)
- Go to Features
- Turn ON NVIDIA overlay (you can also find a keyboard shortcut here, which you can use later to open the overlay)
- Turn ON Game filters and Photo mode
- Launch POE2
- Open NVIDIA overlay (two ways):
1) Go back to the NVIDIA App and click the triangle icon in the top right corner (same place as your Username or Log In button)
2) Use the keyboard shortcut from the previous steps
- Go to Game filters
- Select Profile 1 (this makes it much easier to turn off the filter later if you play another game, just go back to the overlay and switch the profile to "None")
- Go to Available filters
- Find Night mode and click it (it will move the filter to the Active filters list)
- Go to Active filters and select Night mode
- On the right side of the filter, click the ▼ arrow (this expands the settings)
- Set Intensity to 30 or 40
- Close the overlay (top right corner X button)

Please share your experience. I’d like to hear whether this workaround works for you as well.

there is so much more to this than overlay settings...

-if you play with lights off or on (darker the room -> more strain)
-adequate lighting in your room (lumens and direction of sources, reflections on screens)
-distance from your eyes and size of the screen
-if your line of sight is centered on the middle of the screen, your neck position may cause eye strain
-if the monitor "vibrates" if you use arms/stands -> eye muscle strain
-digital vibrance
-monitor settings and specs (adjust hue, contrast and gamma for adequate brightness)
-monitor color calibration
-excessive brightness or artificial gamma settings
-unstable frame time, unstable vertical freq
-eyes with natural dryness or "evaporative tears" condition
-lack of nutrient intake like sodium and potassium to normal levels
-Air conditioning and moisture

and remember to take pauses, rest your eyes or exercise with horizon fixing (do not look at the sun)
and so on...
finally, see your eye doctor, as we get older we lose our near-sightness making you squint and tire quicker
my glasses have blue filter on the lenses, another thing to consider

i never owned LED monitor for gaming, they say it makes the black color more real, but when pure white appears, the "flashbang" effect is worse

Move back from your monitor and use something that filters some of the blue light. Nightmode in windows, changing the RGB values to remove some blue, using those old people blue blocker sunglasses that they started marketing as "gamer glasses", external software to control RGB values(f.lux is great). Make all backgrounds for webpages/OS grey/black so you don't flashbang yourself when looking at a webpage. I know it may sound counterintuitive but having light in the room helps a lot, you just want a soft yellow kinda light vs LED white. Those smart blubs are great for this as you can choose any color and brightness level. I've used f.lux for over a decade as windows didn't have night mode back than and you can set it per program if what you are doing is color sensitive work and have it change with the time of day and it can also control smart lights. I work in IT so I stare at a screen a lot.

"

anicho#3148 wrote:

I have tears rolling down my cheeks when I play, then I remember I need to blink. All part of the fun. I'd love to have a staring contest with doriyani and see who wins.

He has a contingency for that

Never had any issue but I also by default lower the brightness and activate night mode on everything (windows, browser, some game) as I'm naturally sensitive to artificial light (triggering crippling migraine).