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.
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 🤪
Because the article said that women have a higher chance to feel sick and Asian people have also a higher chance, and she is the combination of being a woman and being Asian, and despite that not having any problems. I thought it was noteworthy.
there are pros/cons to each brand, plus there are tons of models across each product line. I own many headsets (index, vive original, vive xr elite, oculus dk2, quest 2) and honestly I can’t say any one of them is the best as each is unique from the screens (oled VS not), wired/wireless, full body tracking, standalone VS pc, comfort, etc.
That being said, I personally go for the vive over quest as it has more accurate tracking (laser VS camera), full body tracking, better screens (OLED), and works better with steamvr.
Plus as a VRChat user I can use vive advanced controls which is a godsend for expressing yourself in VR, other controllers just don’t have as much flexibility in terms of mixing expressions and being able to set intensity levels to each expression ingame.
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.
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.
This. There is a reason why I can play beatsaber without feeling anything. But instantly get sick when playing pistol whip. The level moving around me is just disorienting.
I had to Google what this even was, and I’ve been into VR since the beginning…
Real talk: Apple’s fans aren’t into this… They just want the same shit as last year (a phone) with a higher model number.
Apple stopped selling to people interested in innovation around a decade ago. We moved on, and let me tell you… We were BIG fans after the first iPhone. They sold out. It’s that simple.
Have you watched reviews of people who were allowed to test it? They are mind blowed about how real the AR feels with the fast refresh rate the vision pro achieves. Additionally, they told, that they dis not recognize any drift (e.g. placing something on a table in AR, looking away and looking back, the thing you placed is exactly on the place you put it). Any other AR device yet has this problem according to the reviewers I watched. Many say that too slow refresh rate, too low resolution and the drift are the 3 major things which cause motion sickness. That is way I am looking forward to see reactions of average non techy people. Between, I heard from a lot of apple fanboys (and girls of course) with too much money, that they will buy one (or two including one for the loved ones) and replace the TVs and their monitors with it. And if that really is Working, you may safe more money on those screens, than you spend on a Vision pro.
I doubt the hardware will make a difference. Motion sickness is almost completely down to software design at this point, unless you running 90s VR headset at like 15fps. Low-persistence and 90fps took care of hardware induced motion sickness for anybody except the most sensitive people[1].
What makes VisionPro not have motion sickness issues for now is that it completely avoids any form of locomotion. Everything they have shown so far is standing/sitting in place with some 2D apps around you. That doesn’t make anybody sick on PCVR or Quest either. What makes people sick is fast action games that have your character running around a virtual space. Apple so far has shown nothing doing that. Once they start having games that require people moving around in virtual spaces, the motion sickness will return, though I expect them to cut down on that with store policy until VR has established itself some more.
[1] PSVR2 turns into a high-persistence display when the brightness is cranked up, that still causes issues for some.
Good point, apple is in fact limiting devs to design full VR apps only in a 1.5 meters sphere around the head, until the Vision Pro turns on AR mode again.
Marques has reported that when he tried it, there was a AR presentation where T-rex comes through the a wall and walks towards you even if you move. Like, it adjusted it’s path and turned towards him, but maybe I understood that wrong.
That’s a factor but there’s many and they can vary from person to person. For some the lens type is an issue, for some people it’s simply inability to get it to fit your face properly.
The frame rate doesn’t matter if I start moving with a controller while I am sitting down IRL. I don’t get the motion sickness if I have to actually walk to move in the game, but the disconnect between moving in the game not matching the movement of my body is what really causes motion sickness for me.
But that’s something you can get used to, I fly FPV drones and that feeling was overwhelming in the beginning (way more intense than any VR I tried), but if you keep at it eventually you get used it.
I kept at it for 5 years; I never got rid of that kind of nausea. Only the nausea induced by the visual effect which I had even just playing, like, Work Simulator, at first.
For me it’s the way the motion trackers map head movements, somewhat depends on how it’s implemented in the game, but there’s a way I can move my head that will give me instant nausea in any VR game. I’m not predisposed to motion sickness either, fine on rollercoasters etc.
Look for sea sickness remedies, you should find ginger chewing gum. Chewing gum itself reduces motion sickness and at least if you follow this study peppermint is actually more effective – though ginger itself (without the chewing part) is known to be effective so have you salt shaker ready to sprinkle on their sample size.
Try stuff and see what works for you, it’s not like you’re injecting chemotherapy meds.
As you get older, ginger is basically a cure for most things, and I’ve gone from hating it to craving ginger whenever I feel down.
Ginger candy and ginger beer are fantastic, as long as you’re using the stuff without sweeteners. Sadly, some brands load their stuff with lots of additives and artificial sweeteners to save costs/reduce sugar.
Meanwhile I’m over here still wanting to try it out.
The closest I’ve ever gotten was trying out virtual boy when it was brand new in stores and had one set up for people to try out.
I’d love to try it before buying. Not really interested in buying without it, but that’s not how things work anymore. So I guess I’m just gonna skip it unless it gets massively popular and it’s just everywhere and I’m stuck missing out on something huge if I don’t have it.
Some best buy stores have demos in the US where you can try it out for a bit. I honestly find the social aspects to be the most interesting part of VR (and I’m not a people person). A 10 minute demo isn’t probably going to completely sell you on VR but they can answer questions etc.
Well apparently mine doesn’t. But I really don’t go there anyway. I went there for something specific a while ago to buy for someone else, but in general everything they would have I can get cheaper online somewhere else. Their online store occasionally has a good deal tho. If they had a demo for it I’d go to check it out tho.
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.
Yea it’s like getting your sea legs. I could only play bone works on the valve index for about ~10 min before the nausea got to the “oh shit I might actually puke” level.
Just playing for 10 - 30 minutes a day basically cured the nausea within 2 weeks. After that I could play till the controllers died.
Truth. My kids pay Gorilla Tag, Population: One and a lot of the Meta Quest games (I use ReVive for my HP HMD), those are kinda tough for me to get used to so quickly, but I also play Elite: Dangerous on VR and that is the absolute shit on VR (except for the on-foot part…WTaF Frontier), takes me very little time to adjust to. I love VR, this is stuff I’ve been dreaming of since I was younger, and sincerely hope it doesn’t go the way of 3D TV. It’s a lot of fun.
I’ve heard games like Elite are less problematic, since you’re sitting still and the vehicle is moving. Apparently that makes it more natural, compared to moving around on foot in the game but standing still in real life.
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.
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’m honestly curious about the science behind why VR makes some people motion sick. My first time using VR I never got motion sick once and never have since then. And my sister on the other hand got motion sick instantly when she tried it.
Edit: Fixed my atrocious spelling, must’ve been high or something.
I’m just as surprised when people say they don’t get it. Locomotion is the thing that makes me sick. 1:1 room scale walking? No prob. Teleporting, cool. Joystick movement? Taking a ride on the Vomit express.
The science is vestibular mismatch and your personal sensitivity to it. There are plenty of options for VR activities with no mis-matched movement. And there are plenty of people that can handle a mismatch without any problems.
Basically your inner ear and your eyes are disagreeing about what is happening, and historically when that happened to humans, it was because they ate the poisonous berries. So eventually the people who randomly had the gene where that mismatch leads to throwing up were more likely to live to procreate.
But the brain can be trained, if you are susceptible to VR sickness, play until you start to feel the first minimal symptoms (varies per person, but commonly; warm face, inexplicably sweaty face, or mild dizziness) then immediately take a break. As you continue to do so successfully you’ll notice the response takes longer to come into play and is milder when it does. And if “the berries” keep not killing you, your brain will assume you know what you are doing and don’t need to be protected. But every time it does get too bad, or worse does lead to throwing up, it will reinforce that your brain saved you and it will start coming on more quickly and strongly. Still totally reversible, but best to avoid it if possible.
There are some people who don’t have the response to start with, in my experience it has a surprisingly strong corellation to people with autism, which was nice for us autistics in early VR. We had the whole place to ourselves, hehe. But hopefully we never have to actually worry about poison berries.
Damn thats really interesting. I don’t have autism myself but have never had issues with VR at any point so I guess I’m just lucky. Apreciate the write up!
This isn’t even lies, damned lies, and statistics territory - it’s just nothing. I know VR motion sickness exists (I still get it even after an uncomfortable amount of time in SteamVR sometimes) but that’s… that’s not anything
There’s also different levels of VR. I can get sick with 3 degrees of freedom (pitch, yaw, and roll) if I move around with it on. But with 6 degrees (also includes movement along all 3axes), I’m peachy.
My best friend gets sick watching video games on a TV, but she does fine with 6DOF VR because it’s the disconnect between the motion she sees and what her body experiences that’s the problem
Yeah, if those numbers are anywhere near accurate I have had a significant outlier in my demos to the public so far. I have had less than 5% of the hundreds of people even get mildly nauseous. To get numbers like they are, I would have to cherry pick the worst possible experiences and not prep anyone at all.
“VR” doesn’t make most people throw up, being a terrible host might, but honestly even in that scenario I find their numbers hard to believe. Considering at least 30% of people are completely immune to it and don’t even need to be eased in at all. And another 30% would take a few hours of worst case scenario to get to a point where throwing up is even on the table. So unless they are specifically trying to provoke the worst possible response, their numbers aren’t even possible.
I wish more people who thought they couldn’t handle VR had come to me first. Or any responsible host.
Usually when numbers are presented that way it’s because there are many studies they looked at. So I presume there was one study showing a rate of 40%, another showing 70% and the rest of the studies fell somewhere in between those two extremes, with differences likely due to types of games, types of systems, and any number of other factors, including chance. They could have just averaged all the studies and quoted a number like 55% for example, but I think the other way actually paints a better picture of the data. It’s still possible they’re full of shit, but just presenting the numbers like that doesn’t mean they’re pulling it out of their ass.
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