Why virtual reality makes a lot of us sick, and what we can do about it.
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)
First time I logged into the corvette and looked down the ship, it completely changed the game.
Just wish headsets weren’t so heavy.
Absolutely, ED in VR is indescribably breath taking. Basically an entirely different game
I’m usually fine with motion sickness while playing VR, but Elite man…
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.
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.
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.
That’s a true statement. They might just be macho, or they might be just sparing your feelings about a really expensive device you own. I know it made me nauseous, but I didn’t say anything because my buddy was excited and spent a lot of money on it. It’s not like I have to play it forever… it’s just that one time.
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I started by playing while standing and moving smoothly in game and I couldn’t last long before getting sick. Now I play seated with snapping in game movement and I can play for hours without issue. Depending on how you define it, I don’t think it’s surprising to see so many people say VR makes them sick.
40-70% seems reasonable if it includes the people who eventually get used to it.
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.
For me, I seem to be one of the lucky people that don’t get motion sickness. I still don’t like VR. Why? Because the stupidly low resolutions they run at in order to achieve better frames makes it hard to even tell what’s going on. You can forget about being able to read any text. It’s like playing the game with a wire mesh separating you and the screen it’s so bad. Last time I used a VR headset was HTC vive though.
Depends on the HMD. I’m using an HP headset on a 3080 GPU. Framerates aren’t a problem. Screen door effect barely registers. Porthole…better than most, but FoV is pretty good.
It’s what you are expecting on an OLED widescreen vs the HMD you use? Is it going to be perfect in 4K? No…the tech isn’t there yet.
With DLSS you can achieve a pretty high resolution when using VR headsets. The HP Reverb 2 have a quite high resolution (2160p per eye) and the screen door effect is reduced significantly, IMO to the point that it’s not noticeable anymore.
The reason the Vive felt low resolution wasn’t because it was trying to get better performance, it was because it wasn’t that dense of a screen, and the lenses it used.
I remember in the heyday of the N64 3D games would make people nauseous. Especially watching someone play, I remember my mother just couldn’t be in the room while I was playing Shadows of the Empire. She’s a BOTW veteran now. I think there’s definitely some getting used to it.
Yeh, it’s far worse to watch someone else play. I never watch YT vids of others playing. Blergh, can’t handle what they expect their brain to see when my brain is looking a diff direction.
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)
I got super sick the first few times I played. I could only manage 20 mins at most and I would be in bed for the rest of the day due to terrible headache which goes away the next morning.
After a couple of times of experiencing that, I could play for 1-2 hours and without a hint of headache. I understand how everyone is different but I’m kinda amazed how the body works sometimes.
Which headset did you use? I had the same experience with my old Rift. Got a used Quest 2 recently and all my problems just vanished. I can even do smooth locomotion now which was impossible before.
Might be worth checking out some newer tech in case your HMD was first gen
I have a quest 2, tried with both standard lenses and prescription.
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.
I’m just trying to chill out with a game though, not slowly build up tolerance to cyberspace
Fair enough, and I didn’t mean to imply that everyone should. It’s totally understandable to decide the juice ain’t worth the squeeze.
That is understandable in the moment, it’s alot if the only pay off is one game. But I would argue it is very worth it overall. It’s a small price to pay to permanently be able to handle it and have no qualms about future VR games/uses.
Plus most games and experiences don’t even cause VR sickness to the most susceptible people, so if you pick and choose your games and stick to ones that don’t cause issues, you can play VR without any conditioning right away too.
As this is my personal strategy as well, I would like to add that your sample size is now 2, with a 100% success rate :3
Although for me personally I don’t have to retrain that quickly. My resistance to motion sickness certainly gets weaker over time, but I seem to have reached some kind of baseline, compared to my previous state, where about five minutes could give me an awful headache, while now I can take it for a bit longer, even after not being in VR for a month or two.
Speaking of, we need more VR games. I’d love to play more of them, but nothing new is really big and exciting or anything, which is how these long breaks even happen.
My sample size is much larger and indeed that has been the case. I’ve been hosting VR demos for 10 years now, since DK2. DK1 was bad news for people even slightly prone to motion sickness. 3dof is only viable for motion sick prone people if they can keep their head exactly where the game expects it to be, which you can’t.
With each new generation of headset, there has been so much less prep for getting random people into it and making sure they wouldn’t even get mildly nauseous. More software options without translational movement and much less obvious safety nets in games that do. You can always find at least one game/experience that is right up someone’s alley that won’t cause motion sickness even if it turns out they would otherwise have been really sensitive to it.
But I always let them know that when they do want to start branching out from the “safe” choices, that they should treat it like sea sickness, limit exposure at first and build up sea legs. Ideally never get to the point where you would throw up, try to stay as far away from it as possible while still having fun. You will eventually notice one day that you haven’t thought about it in a long time.
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🙄.
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.
First person games also make me motion sick, for lack of a better word, because I’ve got permanently screwed proprioception (so less “sick,” more “horribly dizzy”), so I’ve never even dared try VR. I feel like the market is a lot more limited than companies might think it is.
I actually wonder if proprioception has a lot to do with it. We pretty much use all of our senses with proprioception, and they are more limited by VR. No matter how good the eye tracking is, there will still be big blind spots and no matter how good the 3D sound is, it still won’t quite replicate how real sound moves between your ears. And then, of course, you have the illusion of walking without moving your leg muscles. This won’t change for a while. Not without major technological advances in VR gear.
I also cannot play 1st person games for this same reason. But oddly enough, VR games actually make me feel less motion sick than flat 1st person games do.
I’m pretty sure that Meta is the only company that thought there’s a big market for VR, and even they seem to be giving up on it. Apple’s device seems more oriented to giving you a private workspace than a real virtual world - like a big array of virtual monitors to replace actual hardware - and that avoids the worst motion sickness triggers. Of course, their device is also priced far out of mass market.
The most popular applications for VR are all games, and even the gaming companies are doing very little development in that space. Fewer people think VR will be a big thing than thought 3D TV would be a big thing.
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.
I see a ton of people shitting on VR because they get sick, saying that it’s just a gimmick and it’ll pass.
And that’s such a weird take for them to have, which I have also seen. I get sick real easy from VR and it doesn’t make me mad at VR, it bums me out that I’ll have to wait for something slightly more accommodating to come out first.
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!
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.
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).
It makes a bit of sense for that, and there are HMDs built for that purpose that are… eh… less gross? I guess?
But mostly it’s a secondary device. A toy you keep on the side and pop out for parties or when something reignites the novelty.
VR is Guitar Hero. Does that make sense? I think that makes sense.
VR is Guitar Hero if Guitar Hero was $500.
I had a full compliment of Rock Band instruments, including the keyboard that came out with Rock Band 3. Also the PS2 and 360 versions of the Guitar and even the modular one they made for the remake on PS4.
So what you’re saying is VR is exactly like Rock Band.
But there are people who think VR is worthwhile. If 40% of those people get sick from it, then that’s 40% of the users gone
Yeah I’ve been interested in replacing my index eventually, this headset looks pretty promising:
https://store.bigscreenvr.com/products/bigscreen-beyond
Each one is custom to your face, and it’s extremely light. I’m sure the future will bring more headsets like this
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
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.
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).
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.
I see VR arcades in suburban malls fairly often, maybe give that a shot first. The VOID experiences were great but they went out of business during the pandemic.
You just need a bit of knowledge that is tough to get without knowing it exists.
The main component of VR games that causes problems for people is when the motion in game doesn’t match the motion you are really doing. There are plenty of games that don’t have any of that. And even when you are ready to start trying games with that, you can overcome it if you experience it bit by bit. Just play until you start to get a warm/sweaty face or a bit dizzy feeling, then go do something else for a bit. You will build up the time it takes to trigger that feeling and it will be more mild as you keep training out of it.
I’ve been demoing to people for 10 years and have had less than 5% of people even get mildly nauseous during a demo, even fewer recently. The methodology of the test in the article can’t have been anything other than them picking the worst possible experience and having people endure it for an hour or until they felt sick with no explanation of what to look out for. Since 30% of people are literally completely immune no matter how bad their test could have possible been.
Even back with the DK2 and the crappy choices for software back then it was still pretty uncommon to make someone sick, and usually it was either my fault or a hardware issue rather than something that could be attributed to VR as a whole.
I am never sick when doing roller coasters or reading in a moving car, but I was really nauseous after my first 15-min VR session. I was pretty scared I fucked up buying a Valve Index only to get that much sick playing… But I had a feeling (hope?) that I could get used to it: After about 2 weeks of playing a bit every night I was no longer getting sick at all. I can go until the controllers run out of battery now.
To me the effort was worth it, but I have a friend that was the opposite and didn’t enjoy experiencing virtual worlds that way…
My advice: If you ever try it then try to ignore the sickness -as you can get used to it- and focus on how much you enjoy being immersed in virtual worlds.
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.
The Quest is really easy to use since you don’t need external sensors, but it’s underpowered and also from Facebook.
We need wider FOV and better screens. The controllers are okay I think. Hopefully with apple stepping in we get more desperately needed content.
I’m not sure if even Apple can turn the tides. I can’t see how Apple can succeed if Meta struggle finding a market even with their much cheaper models.
Maybe they will find a market among the most diehard Apple/tech enthusiasts, but it’s probably going to end there.
The OG Vive is a really horrible experience compared to modern VR headsets already. There are incredible technological advancements being made and to say all VR is doing is waiting for some Star Trek technology is incredibly ignorant. And frankly an insult to those super talented engineers that are breaking new ground on a yearly basis.
Sorry if I sounded disrespectful to the brilliant people working on this tech. I don’t mean to say they aren’t making insane progress in the field. However, I stand by the main point of my original comment: until VR makes a lightyear jump in tech and frees itself of the headset and the wands/hand pieces (or minimizes them to the point of negligible discomfort), I won’t be sold on VR as a consumer.
I get that but I feel like we’re much closer than you think. Hand tracking has been a thing in budget headsets for years now and it’s really solid. There are quite a few really fun experiences that don’t require controllers at all.
Apple is about to ditch controllers completely, combining hand tracking with eye tracking. The displays are almost as sharp as real life and headsets today are fully wireless, standalone computers while being 50% slimmer than your Vive. Oh yeah, they also map the environment automatically and have high definition 3D passthrough with AR capabilities.
A lot of that stuff was considered science fiction when the Vive was released. What you want from VR is happening within the next decade, no lightyear jump needed.
So glad I didn’t but an oculus. All of my friends got themselves and their kids headsets and I’ve yet to hear about them being used often. Everyone I know that has a vr headset told me to never buy one. Complete waste of money.
Yeah of all the people I know that rushed out to get vr none of them mention it now, a lot of streamers I watch did a video or two then have never done another one. It’s such a great idea but also so many issues to work around.
I think most people don’t really want to be totally immersed, I like just relaxing watching some YouTube and playing games, having a snack and a drink, chatting to friends on my phone… a game has to be so much better if it’s going to hold my full attention but pretty much universally vr games are far worse than their screen based versions - hitman vr for example, there’s a million videos of people playing and laughing at how bad it is and almost none actually playing properly
