this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2023
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Why virtual reality makes a lot of us sick, and what we can do about it.

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[–] [email protected] 110 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Posted this reply in another instance, but several years ago researchers found that adding a virtual nose dramatically decreased motion sickness. However, I haven't seen any developers adding one in games. I wonder if it'd help.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (2 children)

When the camera movies without me physically moving, I am throwing up immediately. Do you mean a virtual nose would fix that?

[–] [email protected] 65 points 1 year ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Ok that sounds interesting. I just though that glasses wearer might not have motion sickness as often due to the glasses being similar to the VR(or keeping the glasses under the Headset

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I wear glasses (which I keep inside the helmet) and have mild motion sickness when moving in VR. The faster I move in-game, the worse it gets. Racing games are OK because I don't move inside the car, I suspect having a static dashboard is similar to a virtual nose.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

Glasses wearer here. VR makes me nauseous af. And not just during, for hours afterwards. Its not an intense 'I have to vomit' but a queasy feeling that persists. I'm old though, and my kids have zero issues with it.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Glasses wearer here, I still see my nose with the glasses on. VR gives me mild motion sickness but only when moving around in a "smooth" way (Teleporting or walking irl is fine but using regular controller movement makes me want to throw up after ~30 minutes)

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Findings showed the virtual nose allowed people using the Tuscany villa simulation to play an average of 94.2 seconds longer without feeling sick, while those playing the roller coaster game played an average of 2.2 seconds longer.

Yeah instead of throwing up immediately, you won't throw up until 2.2 seconds in. Problem solved!

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago

I wonder if that is why Voldemort is so angry all the time. It's because he's nauseous.

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[–] [email protected] 60 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I'm in the other camp. The first time I squeezed my 155m spaceship through the tiny mouth of a rotating space station in VR, I wept like a baby. (An Anaconda in Elite: Dangerous)

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (4 children)

First time I logged into the corvette and looked down the ship, it completely changed the game.

Just wish headsets weren't so heavy.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

Absolutely, ED in VR is indescribably breath taking. Basically an entirely different game

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[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I feel like all I see in the VR space is endless articles on new hardware and basically nothing on quality VR games. I always thought I'd upgrade my Vive to an Index or something better one day, but so far the only compelling reason is HL: Alyx and I'm not spending that kind of money on a single game.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Ms flight simulator is quite clunky and hard to get good frame rates, but damn if you can put up with that it's an awesome experience in VR. Also beat saber.

For quite awhile now those have been the reasons for VR. Sad really. Still these two things are compelling.

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Idk about 40-70% that seems ludicrously high. I play all the time, mild motion sickness when I could not run the game well, otherwise no issues.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That seems high to me as well. Obviously this is anecdotal, but I've introduced probably 20 friends/family members to VR and none of them have had issues with motion sickness.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Simulation sickness is real, and more common than most gamers (a population that tends to self-select for people without that trait) think. This prevalence doesn’t surprise me at all. It’s not severe for everyone. You might not notice if a friend had it, except that they might play fewer video games with you. (They might not, some people are fine unless in full VR.) People aren’t generally keen on going “You know that thing that you like doing and that I’ve seen 5-year-olds do on the internet? I can’t do it, it makes me vom.” It doesn’t exactly feel cool.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

All those who get sick obviously stop playing. So if you ask the users, basically no one gets sick. Because those who get sick are not users any more.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I haven't touched my VR headset and over a year. VR games just are not good and have very little contents and very little replayability. What I'm trying to say is it's still very much a gimmick.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The one I want to play is HL:Alyx

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)
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[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I enjoy VR gaming and I get motion sickness.

The trick is to slowly acclimate, which takes patience and body awareness. Play for a short amount of time, pause the game when you start to feel slightly warm (or ideally just before that point), and go do something else for 20 minutes or so. With time, the play periods will get longer and the rest breaks will get shorter. Eventually you may stop needing the rest breaks.

A couple caveats: my sample size is 1, a hiatus of more than two weeks means retraining again, and you have to be firm with yourself about stopping on time.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm just trying to chill out with a game though, not slowly build up tolerance to cyberspace

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (9 children)

You get used to it. I think people try it for a short while and give up.

Even playing fast-paced shooters on a widescreen will make me slightly “screen-sick” if I haven’t played in a month or two, but it goes away by the next day.

I found VR to be worse for the first couple days, but then it fades, too, and pretty quickly it becomes second nature.

Worst thing I found with VR headsets is the heat. Those displays and sometimes the gpu (depending on headset) get warm, and the HMD is snug on your face so it gets too warm sometimes.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (2 children)

40-70% and 80% for women sounds insanely high. I got a used HTC Vive to have beat saber parties with people and so far none out of about 20 people have experienced nausea even with heavy drinking.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yeah, I would say there are definitely specific experiences you could make that make 80+% nauseous(I have pretty good VR legs but moving platforms can still disorient me). But a well designed VR game accounts for that, see something like Beat Saber.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (3 children)

And you even have some vr fans just blindly claiming that all games should use gliding for movement and that having the option to teleport ruins the game even if they don’t use it. even though gliding (they call it natural locomotion) makes people sick because it’s obviously unnatural. They claim there is no need for movement systems that don’t induce motion sickness because it’s a matter of getting used to “natural locomotion” an anyone who doesn’t get better is because they are lying🙄.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (8 children)

It's a tricky issue. On one side, yes, it will make some people motion sick, but on the other side limiting a game to teleport drastically limits what you can do in the game. It means nothing of currently established monitor-based game mechanics work in VR. You essentially completely lose locomotion and environmental navigation as game mechanic and everything becomes a static gallery shooter. It also means that multiplayer completely stops functioning, as while yourself zapping around might be acceptable, having the other player just randomly switch placed is certainly not.

Modern VR has been around for 10 years and so far nobody has figured out how to make teleport gaming work. Meanwhile all the unofficial VR mods gets celebrated, since despite their locomotion issues, they actually feel like full games in VR, which the teleport games never archived.

At the end of the day, it's a far better idea to design games for the people that want to play them, then those that don't. The early focus on teleport has regressed the VR industry for years and the conclusion after 10 years is basically that it causes far more harm than good. You don't win anybody over for VR by showing them games that look far less impressive than what they are used to from a monitor.

Also worth mentioning that there are alternatives to teleport that aren't stick-locomotion. Lone Echo or Gorilla Tag have you move around with your arms and hands. This gives you smooth motion without inducing or at least drastically reducing motion sickness issues. Those mechanics still feel quite a bit underused in the modern VR landscape.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (5 children)

That's why I basically dropped VR, and even when playing, I only played beat saber. Alyx was a very bad experience for me (mind blowing game, but not if I'm sick after 15 mins) and with that, every other game with movements (no mans sky ship is very bad)

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Did you play Alex with the free movement or the jump to location? I can't do the free movement modes but jump works fine. Similar to beat saber in that you are stationary.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (12 children)

People get very stuck on this part, and I genuinely don't think it's the issue.

Look, l have very decent "VR legs" at this point, but I'm still not a likely spender and I don't play long games in VR or crack out my headsets very often at all.

The issue is not motion sickness or space or tracking stations. The issue is having to put something on my face and not being comfortably on my couch, free to go pee or get a snack without removing a thing from my face.

And yeah, it's uncomfortable. That's part of it. A version of it that looks and feels like glasses would be less of a problem. But the thing is, those aren't a thing that exists, they are not even an incremental step that we can get to at any point, and also TVs and monitors look just fine.

VR is a neat trick, and I gladly keep my headsets around for any time when something actually interesting pops up. But it was never going to be the next big thing.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (7 children)

VR continues to make more sense as an arcade-like attraction than as a consumer product.

Except for the part where I would have to wear a headset that 5000 other people have also worn. (And except for the VR sickness that, it turns out, I'm very sensitive to).

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (6 children)

its an issue of refresh rate tbh.

I went from vr at 90fps/90hz to 144fps/144hz and i went from motion sick to acceptable.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

What kind of statistic is 40-70%? For women It "goes up to 80%", where does it start then? The numbers, what do they mean?

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (2 children)

1990s: VR is the future. Put these on!

2000s: VR is the future. Put these on!

2010s: VR is the future. Put these on!

2020s: VR is the future. Put these on!

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

Some people even get sick just from the wrong FoV and motion speed combination in 3D games, this is just 10 times worse.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I did have motion sickness at first but got used to it quite quickly. It actually disappeared on the 2nd/3rd day of use I think. I have absolutely no problem driving race sims all day long if needed, I’ve been using my VR gear for 3 years now.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (5 children)

As much as I want VR to be awesome, I've had motion sickness from playing Portal while sitting at a desk. Consequently, I think this is just one of those technologies that I have to be happy for other people to enjoy.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I easily get motion sick with first person games, so I can't imagine what VR must be like. My only recourse, however, is imagination because I have a nerve disorder in my face, which makes it extremely sensitive and I can't wear VR gear because of it. I'm far from alone when it comes to people with health issues and VR.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

HTC, Valve, and Oculus (well before the Facebook buyout) established very early on that frame rates of 90 fps or higher with a response time of <1 ms were critical factors for preventing motion sickness. Meta either hasn't gotten the memo or just doesn't care.

Even with well-established VR legs, I start feeling unpleasant if my FPS starts dropping below 75 for extended periods of time.

Aside from that, it's also down to game development. I've been seeing newer, inexperienced VR developers creating scenes that don't take into consideration how our brains perceive motion; and they end up creating some nausea-inducing scenes or game mechanics, in addition to doing things like shoving your head onto the floor or through an object. The easiest example is pressing into a wall or table, and the colliders shove your head and body back when you're not expecting it.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I am highly susceptible to motion-sickness and figured I'd need to test drive before spending $200+ on some new VR gear.

I suspected this was a problem.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I went on a a VR rollercoaster with my new girlfriend (asian) at a amusement park where they move the cart according to the movement in VR.

She was totally OK, and I was totally wet of sweat, down to my underwear. I really almost puked.

But I have that problem even on a bus and in a car as a passenger (so I basically always drive if possible). Big ships, trains and airplanes are totally ok.

When I was about 9 I had to puke on the bus and my dad didn't want to have to clean the buss so he let me puke into the pocket of his jacket 🤪

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

A suggestion that worked for me was to have a fan blowing on you while playing.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (5 children)

For those with nausea, I've had some good results with ginger candy. Something chewable that is comprised entirely of ginger.

I take it with me whenever I give a demo somewhere.

Works in seconds.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It really depends on the person and the hardware. I've seen people with PC-VR setups that get sick, but are 100% okay with wireless. I think it's an issue of FOV, FPS, and overall just getting used to wearing a big box on your face.

I see a ton of people shitting on VR because they get sick, saying that it's just a gimmick and it'll pass. I think it's a neat piece of tech that deserves to get better, hopefully the issues will be ironed out over the generations.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I never felt sick from just VR, but the continuous movement (rather than teleporting) made my brain confused like I wanted to fall over, but after a few hours of it I got used to it for good and now have no problems with VR, other than fatigue of moving around so much aha.

I think most people could break it in, but are reluctant to keep playing or play again once they feel sick doing it. While its easy to get immersed, you have to disconnect yourself from it a bit and remember you are in the real world, when friends and family try it I have to make sure they dont walk into walls, but on my own I have full awareness of my surroundings even when I am blind to it. It just takes time to get used to it.

It's a really fun experience, I hope it keeps getting developed regardless of sickness issues. Higher framerates are definitely important, the 120Hz mode on the Index is definitely recommended, any lower and its much more likely to be sickness inducing.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think most people could break it in, but are reluctant to keep playing or play again once they feel sick doing it.

The article author reports trying twice: first a rollercoaster, and then a racing game. Then cites a study about people getting sick in their first 15 minutes of use.

I think you're right, but some people just aren't going to give it another try. I think this tech is likely to be one of those big generational dividers that old people just won't tolerate (like computers or cell phones, or the thousands of prior things).

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (17 children)

I bought a Vive since I was careless and wanted to see what the VR hype was. Considering that I've probably used it less than 100 hours in about 4 years, I think of it as a bad investment.

In its current technologically limited state, VR feels more like a gimmick than a real experience. I think that all of what VR is currently trying to do is still waiting for that uninvented Star Trek holodeck technology to come around anyway. Headsets and wands are unwieldy and breaking down/setting up the system is a PITA.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A big part of reducing motion sickness for me was to ensure that the lenses were set to the appropriate pupillary distance. If they're too wide or to narrow, that can affect your body's ability to handle VR

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