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guiomie | 1 year ago

Is there any technological solution to VR motion sickness? I built up my motion sickness immunity on oculus, could play games well, and then one day got hit with crazy nausea and since then I can’t play, that feeling was so bad, it’s similar to when you eat something and it makes you nausea and you can’t eat it ever again. Is there a technical solution to make sure people don’t need to build nausea immunity? Seems like the biggest UX hurdle to be and without a fix, how can this really take off?

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madamelic|1 year ago

> Is there any technological solution to VR motion sickness?

A fan facing you so you can orient yourself in the room along with starting on a standing pad. Both help you ground back into the world but like you stated, it's largely getting used to it by building up longer sessions.

I am not a neuroscientist or the like but I imagine there are visual tricks that you could employ to improve it. I think things like blacking out vision when turning quickly is one method. I can't speak for sure, but it almost feels like VR games haven't adapted to screens being 2" from your eyeballs.

I'd imagine anything that can help / trick our brains into processing like we are in the world would help. It looks like foveated depth-of-field helps reduce sickness by 66%, I'd imagine because it mimics how our vision works so our eyes are trying to process less at one time.

https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/21/12/4006

Sohcahtoa82|1 year ago

> I can't speak for sure, but it almost feels like VR games haven't adapted to screens being 2" from your eyeballs.

The screen being 2" from your eyes has nothing to do with it, especially since the lenses focus the image as if it was 4 feet from your face.

At least, not for me, so I guess this is just worthless anecdata, but...

I have literally played Beat Saber for an hour straight, then sitting down for PokerStars VR for another 4 hours. Five total hours in VR, and I felt 100% fine.

But put me in Assetto Corsa (racing game) in VR, and as soon as the car starts moving, I'm feeling dizzy. Half a lap around the Nurburgring, and I'm nauseous. After finishing my lap, I'm having to take the headset off and I'm spending the next 15 minutes fighting the urge to puke and then another hour with a headache.

The greatest cause of motion sickness in VR is simply motion in the real world not matching the virtual world motion.

Sohcahtoa82|1 year ago

There's a device called the Otolith [0] that supposedly can cure vertigo and supposedly prevented motion sickness in VR, but they're only chasing the market for solving vertigo.

Curiously, what games are you playing? I find that games that involve real world motion didn't match virtual world motion (ie, any racing or flying game), I feel sick within seconds, but games where the two worlds always match (ie, Beat Saber, Pokerstars VR, Superhot VR, Space Pirate Trainer), I could play for literally HOURS and feel fine.

[0] https://otolithlabs.com/nvrt-technology/

guiomie|1 year ago

Games where I'm sitting down like a car, I wouldnt get motion sickness, but the ones where you walk around with the keypad like Medal Of Honor and Half Life Alyx are the ones that I cant do anymore. I was having a blast with medal of honor, playing 30-45 minute bursts until the nausea once set in very bad and stayed since then.

I dont get any motion sickness from room scale games (real world motion match virtual world) like ping pong or watching movies.

crooked-v|1 year ago

Sure, it's easy: use movement based on actual body motions, like Gorilla Tag does. The nausea rate for arm-swing movement is negligibly low.

But, this takes actually designing for VR, rather than designing the same way as a PC game and then slapping on "but in VR" to it.