Why do poker rooms feel different ?!?!

Strange heading I guess because all poker rooms ARE different (unless you play at shared site like Titan & Mansion).

What I mean is why is it at a Full Tilt tourney I feel I'm at the table, I feel comfortable, I feel I have a handle on the other players and can generally give a good account of myself, whilst at Poker Stars or Mansion I feel "removed" from the game and consequently struggle to get up a head of steam.

The weird thing is that the opposite is true when I play ring games.

As a consequence I generally limit my tourney play to FT & my ring games to Mansion & PS.

Maybe its "feng shui", maybe its psychological, or maybe I'm just a fruit loop, but if anybody can put a handle on what makes a poker room feel "live" I'd appreciate it.

I had not thought of it that way, but I agree. I like FT so much better than PS. I think it is the way the table is arranged, where I can see everyone's avatar head on at FT. It appears to be an overhead view on PS. It's been awhile since I played on PS so they may have updated it, but that's how it was the last time I played there. I felt as though I was looking down at the table from the ceiling. Also, I like to see the expressions people make their avatars have at FT.

I am jealous

A couple of contributary factors possibly, at FT you are automatically centered at the tourney table, not so at PS, if you choose a preferred seat this only applies at ring tables, also at showdown FT shows all hands automatically, again not so at PS.

Why it still seems to effect me in tourney play I'm not sure.

I always have avatars disabled, though i saw a friend play at PKR and it appeared there was more skill in manipulating your avatar than playing poker.

The biggest reason I feel different on one site compared to the next is I mainly play at one site. If you get becomes used to one site others may become less comfortable, not sure if this is your case or not. I do definitely agree sites feel different competition may be different too. Course you mentioned the big two and I would bet competition is rather even between pokerstars and tilt.

Have any of you tried to change the layout of the Pokerstars software? I think the one where it becomes grey and black changed a lot for me

I'll give that a try thanks