Anti-epilepsy filter?

[carguy_]

Originally Posted by Untamo

Well said.
Way to go Ubi. Let's put a knife in the eye of 99% of people to please the 1%. Some credit should also go to the crazy Ameerikan legal system for allowing ridiculous legal cases.

Funny you brought it up, because the majority of Europe is nothing like the American legal system! I for ona am 90% sure that in my country a lawsuit in such case wouldn`t hold up. And Ubi is somehow assuming that it would lose every single case over a lack of such epilepsy filter.

[Herra Tohtori]

Ok, after sleeping a bit I can take a more rational look into this.

My earlier comments still hold true: This type of blanket policy from Ubisoft is silly, there is virtually no chance of litigation anyway if the seizure risk is clearly announced in the product. Optional filter to reduce the thing would be laudable. There is also no way to safeguard against photosensitive epileptic seizures completely, so probably somewhere, at some time, will suffer a seizure anyway looking at the filtered game, so I don't know what protects Ubi from litigation there.

However, like some in this thread have pointed out, we have only heard the developer's version of the events so far. While I want to give them the benefit of doubt considering they are the ones with most intimate knowledge of their game, I would wait to hear back from Ubisoft as well on this issue.

I'm not cancelling my order, at least not at this point. I'm fairly confident that at some point the game will run smoothly on a modern PC. What I am more concerned of is that the anti-epileptic measures will disfigure the realistic graphics - things like propeller effects and the like, which tend to be flickery in real life (making them nonflickery and "epileptic-safe" would make them look worse). Even then, simply an option to switch that off to achieve better looking results would be preferred option.



Oh and by the way, games and videos don't cause the sensitivity to epileptic seizures. They simply act as a trigger for people who have that sensitivity. Blaming them for causing seizures is foolish, much like blaming peanuts for peanut allergy.

In fact, instead of screening games and video for their tendency to cause epileptic seizures, it would be better to screen people for their tendency to suffer photosensitive epileptic seizures. What better way to find out than expose them to situations that can trigger it - in safe environment rather than wait until they get a car and drive along a road with trees on the side and the sun shining from the side, flickering on and off between the trees, causing them to get an absentia seizure and veering to the opposite side of the road or hitting pedestrians or whatever?

Or, as one of my friends pointed out, if they're walking on the street, see an ambulance with flashing blue lights, collapse on the street and get run down by a truck?

There are much more dangerous spots to find out you're susceptible to photosensitive epileptic seizures than while playing a video game. In that light, the fixation to video games and their risks seems disproportionate.

Oh and much like epileptic seizures, oversensitivity to something like peanuts can develop sort of silently, and then when a person is exposed to peanuts, they go into anaphylactic shock and can die seemingly out of nowhere.

That doesn't mean removing peanuts from all products is necessary. It is a good reason to keep track on where peanuts are used, and mark not only products that contain peanuts, but those manufactured on lines where peanuts are also used. This is a standard in food industry, and it's sufficient for them to put a small label in food products that might have traces of peanuts.

So, if Ubisoft's policy really is a blanket statement to refuse releasing any games that fail some arbitrary epilepsy screening, I find that utterly ridiculous.

Waiting to hear back from Ubi via Ms.Kleaneasy, and hoping that a sensible solution can be achieved despite how unlikely it's looking just now.

[swiss]

Originally Posted by mazex

The other solution here seems to be that I should tell him that no, you can't play computer games ever in your life even if all your friends do it all the time. That is not for you, go can go play on the yard outside instead...

Afaik there are other triggers as well.
What about Strobos? Every Disco has them.

[jimbop]

Originally Posted by Codex

According to the article referred to by Tree, there IS NO legal requirement to implement such a filter.

That's why it's called 'voluntary'. Ubi's choice and given then 2008 lawsuit I can understand why (short review here). If you want to publish with them you have to do it their way. Not to mention the public health angle.

[KeyCat]

Originally Posted by MikkOwl

UBI's "Silent Hunter 5" was a sim I was looking forward to greatly (bought 3 and 4). I cancelled the pre-order when I found out about the constant-connection-to-UBI-servers. Rise of Flight I also skipped.

Same for me and I unless I can buy a Steam free and filter free version of IL-2: CoD somewhere I will skip this one as well...

To bad UBI continue to act like morons, it affect us flightsim fans as well as 1CMaddox!



/KC

[jimbop]

My guess is it is probably down to poor communication on both sides and a late understanding that CoD wasn't going to pass Ubi's QA. You can imagine the awful moment of realisation! This was probably there since 2008 but no one from Ubi thought to make sure 1C understood it - hardly a late policy change or anything like that I think.

I haven't cancelled my steam pre-order yet. I am hoping that we will see some decent vids emerge from Russia over the next couple of days showing settings tweaks (disable this, modify that) that remove the game-stopping problems in the short term. Then optimisation patches should cure it properly over the coming months.

Anyway, the Australia release is April 1 (yeah, you US guys aren't feeling so bad about the delay now, huh?) so enough time to wait and see.

[MicroWave]

Originally Posted by mazex

...So should I let him play computer games or not, for the rest of his life?...

That's your decision to make until he is old enough to make this decision for himself. That's what all the parents do. People (children included) have all sort of disabilities and live with them. This forum is not the right place to ask for parenting advice.
It makes me sad to hear that your child has problems, but bringing this up again and again is pathetic.

[mazex]

Originally Posted by MicroWave

That's your decision to make until he is old enough to make this decision for himself. That's what all the parents do. People (children included) have all sort of disabilities and live with them. This forum is not the right place to ask for parenting advice.
It makes me sad to hear that your child has problems, but bringing this up again and again is pathetic.

Pathetic? Thanks for that.

[mazex]

Originally Posted by swiss

Afaik there are other triggers as well.
What about Strobos? Every Disco has them.

Even if they are cutting down on them for the same reasons (government recommendations etc) I have 10 years of testing until that problem comes into play

Originally Posted by MicroWave

That's your decision to make until he is old enough to make this decision for himself. That's what all the parents do. People (children included) have all sort of disabilities and live with them. This forum is not the right place to ask for parenting advice.
It makes me sad to hear that your child has problems, but bringing this up again and again is pathetic.

You should be ashamed with that statement, really you should.