I’ve just purchased the Orange Box from Steam, given that it’s now priced down to a quite reasonable $29.99. Unfortunately I recall the last time I borrowed a Steam account to play the game and suffered incredible motion sickness after about an hour of playtime.

The problem isn’t the refresh rate – it’s the field of view, which is 75 degrees. This is much narrower than the 90 degrees typical to most first person shooters, and the problem is exacerbated on a large monitor with a decent video card.

For my own reference, here’s how to fix this problem:

• Click Options / Keyboard / Advanced and check the “Enable developer console (~) key” box.
• Return to the game.
• Call up the console by pressing the tilde (~) key and type the following commands:

  sv_cheats 1default_fov 90fov 90

(Updated Feb. 3/09 to include default_fov command.)