VR still makes 40-70% of players want to throw up, and that's a huge problem for the companies behind it

stopthatgirl7@kbin.social to Technology@lemmy.world – 721 points –
VR still makes 40-70% of players want to throw up, and that's a huge problem for the companies behind it
pcgamer.com

Why virtual reality makes a lot of us sick, and what we can do about it.

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The "Tuscany Villa" is an ancient demo that I tried in the Oculus DK1 in like 2014 or so, and it made me sick for hours. It uses very fast continuous movement instead of teleport, and it has a set of stairs that will make you instantly throw up if you try to climb them.

It's is perfectly possible to create VR experiences that will not make anyone nauseous, Moss being a good example.

So you are saying that 90s is a remarkable improvement?

I would expect a huge difference in the usefulness of a simulated nose, depending on the content. In a roller coaster the movement of your head (rotation) and the movement of the carriage (translation) are separate and clearly defined this way. You control the Rotation while the game controls the translation. I don't know what this villa demo is, but depending on how the movement is controlled, an unintuitive and unnatural system is bound to make almost everyone nauseous.

Any app that moves the camera (or thw whole world) without user input will make people sick, it's just a law of good VR. Any app that doesn't render at a stable 72fps+ will make people sick. Any app that simulates things that make people sick in real life, will also make people sick in VR.

On the other hand, any app that keeps a stable 90fps, that uses teleport with a very short fade instead of thumbstick movement, and that never messes with the camera position, will not make people sick.

Most people who have tried VR and have felt sick, were basically victims of awful, non-optimized VR experiences, and awful VR hardware like Google Cardboard and variants.