I can't believe I found this thread! Many of the described problems hit sooo close to home! I remember having my eyes randomly tired on some days at first half of previous decade, I was in early 20s, didn't work yet, mostly played computer games. Sometimes I was tired while watching a movie half into the movie. Sometimes I could play games all evening and only mild fatigue occurred and then other day I had eye pain the first hour I sat behind a computer. Then I started noticing in second half of decade that if I played all evening my eyes were horrifically tired. Some games tired me a lot faster than others, but I don't know why. Maybe color scheme? I was afraid what will happen when I start working as a software engineer and o boy, when I did start working, all my fears came true. For two years every week day I was exhausting my eyes to severe levels, I got random blurriness outside when on stroll after work, horrible pain etc. Got several migraines that I previously had once in a decade. Weekends were too short to really recover. Fluorescent lights and big bright windows in the office only made things worse. I could never enjoy my work. Only longer holidays could bring me some comfort. Then corona happened. The first year was a bit easier on me, I could schedule my work through entire day instead of 7hrs in a block separated by 1 hour pause for lunch that is the standard here in offices. My free time suffered but at least it was manageable. Then, I don't know for sure what happened, I might have fetched my work computer around that time (before that I worked from my own home one), but for at least last year and a half problems are back to pretty high intensity even if I don't work 7 hours condensed. And getting worse… Now I also have occasional nausea, dizziness… Monitor didn't change, only computer (has shittier 60Hz GPU via HDMI, mine has 144Hz refresh rate via DP). I started noticing that sometimes my eye muscles or brain are so tired that I cant see sharp on the screen anymore. I enlarge fonts by a lot. Even the TV can be horribly fatiguing for me, the smaller it is and the brighter the room with LED lights, the worse it is. Its like I broke myself by forcefully working through pain, now it practically wont stop, there is baseline at almost all times. I remember sitting with my colleague in a restaurant, it was dimly lit but behind him was an LED light. After 2 hours I almost went mad, not only eyes but brain was going mad. If I accidentally shine phone's flashlight into my face for even a second it causes me eye fatigue and nausea. I started to be bothered by sunlight a lot more. Tasks that require more visual acuity on the screen are sometimes causing me discomfort (like precisely tracking something with a mouse in photoshop). Watching someone's hand shake when hes showing something in it in a YouTube video is very stressful. I almost never read articles on a computer in their entirety because its not pleasant to read
I use f.lux all the time plus the monitor's built in function for reducing blue light, I cannot bear unfiltered bright monitor screaming into my face, destroys me pretty quickly.
In all those years since I started working, I went to see 3 ophthalmologists and several opticians, I cannot even start counting how much money I gave for all the different glasses and appointments, but its in thousands. From the beginning I knew that my left eye is somewhat worse than my right in prescription. Almost all of opticians and ophthalmologists measured a small amount of astigmatism (-0.25 to -0.5) in both eyes, most said its not worth correcting. But even when they corrected for it, sometimes I could see perfectly, sometimes not, but prescriptions were similar (differing for about 0.25 usually and 10 degrees angle). But all prescriptions with cylinder caused me nausea and I almost vomited, and brain overload appeared after about a week or two. I'm very sensitive to every small change in prescription or even frames. Two ophthalmologists said it's due to dry eye but treatments made no change in my pain and fatigue.
Now I'm trapped: I cannot bear cylinder correction on glasses, but I think need it to manage this problem, I cannot explain this weird problem with screens otherwise. And its not just screens anymore, now when I play volleyball in a hall that has very bright LED lights, it destroys me. Fluorescent light are a bit better because they are dimmer but not much. I'm thinking about MRI and neurologist but I read that many of you were there and nothing showed up. This thing is really affecting my psyche. Especially when some doctors think I'm imagining it … My sleep cycle is completely broken and I cannot get it back in order since working in bright day is a lot harder than at night. When I get up my eyes usually hurt from previous day fatigue. I dare not even change jobs so that situation will not get worse… I'm trapped in this "work in parts through entire day" so that I can manage, but it killed almost all my hobbies…