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Dk1&2 owner here, I've slowly soured on VR over the past year as my 'reptile brain' has come to associate the headset with motion sickness and I would say I hav

by mentos 11y ago

Dk1&2 owner here, I've slowly soured on VR over the past year as my 'reptile brain' has come to associate the headset with motion sickness and I would say I have a pretty steely stomach. I'm an avid FPS player, spent 4 hours in the HL2 VR mod about 18 months ago with minimal sickness. But the killer for me has been the slow buildup of aversion to VR over time. I've never been more excited for a technology but I fear there are some impossible problems to solve.. Any other dev kit developers feel the same way?

jzelinskie 11y ago
Kickstarter DK1 backer here (and have used DK2). I got burnt out on the hype a long time ago. Ignoring the problems that cannot possibly be solved by next year (eye tracking etc...), I'm not even sure that I'll even buy the first consumer version for Oculus or HTC. We need more games/experiences and time to see if there are software wars between Valve+HTC and Oculus.
koko775 11y ago
Here's my anecdata: DK1&2 owner. I felt the same, but the Crescent Bay demo blew me the heck away. More amazing than experiencing the DK1 for the first time. Then, recently, I tried the Oculus Touch demos. For an hour or so afterwards, I felt like reality was less real than the simulation, even despite its limitations. I felt like the realm of possibilities within that box was infinite, and real-life was limited in comparison.
- theoh 11y ago
  This sounds like a defamiliarization effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamiliarization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamiliarization
forrestthewoods 11y ago
The DK2 sucks. It's just not good enough. Vive, Morpheus 2.0, CV1 are much much much much better. They are good enough.
gfodor 11y ago
The root cause of sickness in VR seems to be either a) slow hardware/slow software, causing judder or b) poor design which moves the player in ways that cause discomfort. The combination of these two is a one-two punch. I'd encourage you to pick up CV1 or Vive in 6 months with a modern rig and take it for another spin with an experience that's been properly designed for VR, I'd be really surprised if you continue to have any problems with sim sickness.
- wyldfire 11y ago
  > a) slow hardware/slow software, causing judder or b) poor design which moves the player in ways that cause discomfort Couldn't it just as likely be the inherent conflict between proprioceptual cues and visual cues causing sickness?
  - Yen 11y ago
    > Couldn't it just as likely be the inherent conflict between proprioceptual cues and visual cues causing sickness? Sure, that's the general concept. OP's two points are specific examples of the causes of mismatch - examples which are well known, and can be mitigated. a) When a program's framerate is high enough, moving your head causes a corresponding change in visual cue. When the framerate is too slow, the visual cue update is delayed from the motion. A mismatch. b) When a game allows you to walk forward in a virtual world, your eyes get visual cues that you're walking forward, even though your body knows you're not. VR applications that instead simulate you sitting in place, and give you visual cues to that effect, limit that mismatch.
    - wyldfire 11y ago
      Yeah, I was talking solely about b), which seems impractical/impossible to mitigate.
      - Yen 11y ago
        First off, I'd definitely recommend reading http://gamasutra.com/blogs/JesseSchell/20150626/247113/Making_Great_VR_Six_Lessons_Learned_From_I_Expect_You_To_Die.php http://gamasutra.com/blogs/JesseSchell/20150626/247113/Makin.... VR-wise, b) can definitely be mitigated. There seem to be two current strategies - either you design the experience to be primarily stationary, or you set up a room that people can actually, physically walk in. stationary-only experiences might seem like a tight constraint, but constraints breed creativity :). Rooms to walk around in have also been done, but they're obviously more effort to set up and maintain, and are typically done by larger institutions.
rocky1138 11y ago
Same. There is one major hurdle for me: it's too big of a pain in the arse to get up and running. In order to work on my game I have to muck about with NVIDIA Optimus (which they still don't have a fix for), take the headset off, change a Windows setting, put the headset back on. No it doesn't work, do it all again ad nauseam. It's got to be a dream to make and play games on and right now, it's not.
- soylentcola 11y ago
  I think a lot of this comes down to your setup. I've been messing around in Unreal Engine with DK2 and don't have those issues because I'm not using a laptop with Optimus. Now, granted, I also have a laptop and it does use Optimus so I'd love for a fix so I could use that laptop as a mobile demo setup but either way, I think it's just a matter of the current implementation requiring you to use supported hardware in order to develop for it or just use it.
  - rocky1138 11y ago
    OK, NVIDIA Optimus issues aside, one still must take the headset off to work on their game then put it back on to test it. It'd be much easier to develop the game with the headset on.
AReallyGoodName 11y ago
Yeah. DK2 owner here. My DK2 only comes out to demo to friends these days. It's not so much the motion sickness for me though. It's just that the novelty wore off and it became a chore. Elite Dangerous with a DK2 was incredible for a quite a while. I used to just fly around space stations and look around. Now after the 100th trading run i prefer the monitor as it doesn't require me to clean lenses or deal with a tangle of cables.
kitcar 11y ago
Don't forget you're using a Dev Kit which is basically 2 years old - personally, although I agree with your DK2 assessment, I am reserving judgement for the consumer version.
ericflo 11y ago
You should not be playing a FPS in VR, especially on anything pre-release like the DK2. Acceleration without some kind of cockpit to ground you is one of the worst offenders, and virtually all FPS games do that by design/necessity. This is one of my worst fears about VR adoption: gamers, especially the kind who will be on the leading edge of this stuff, want badly to play FPS games and they'll find ways to do it and they're all going to hate VR. I'm glad Oculus is putting their "comfort ratings" front and center, and being really vocal about the principles of sickness-free VR, but I'm worried people are going to skip all the warnings and advice and ruin this for everyone.
- mentos 11y ago
  I appreciate that and I only ever played about 8 hours of HL2 VR, I stopped when I beat the campaign and moved on to playing WarThunder for a couple months then slowly tapered off. >>This is one of my worst fears about VR adoption: gamers, especially the kind who will be on the leading edge of this stuff, want badly to play FPS games and they'll find ways to do it and they're all going to hate VR. Part of the promise of VR is being able to negotiate a virtual world on foot which currently has too much of a mismatch to work without sickening the user. So what are the long term solutions to this? To me they are really hard if not impossible problems.
  - ericflo 11y ago
    Cloudhead's "Blink" system is one good first step http://uploadvr.com/cloudhead-blink-vr-movement/ http://uploadvr.com/cloudhead-blink-vr-movement/ AltspaceVR has been doing something similar for a while too. Another idea is something called redirected walking, which basically tricks you into walking in circles even though you think you're walking in a straight line. Someday we may have electronic solutions to sim sickness -- they've discovered that by sending tiny amounts of electricity through our inner ears, they can programmatically control how you feel you're moving. Edit: Here's a video of Palmer Luckey talking about that inner ear stuff (GVS): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CRdRc8CcGY&feature=youtu.be&t=11m5s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CRdRc8CcGY&feature=youtu.be...
jaaron 11y ago
Echoing some of the others here too... As a DK1&2 owner, I had a similar experience, but what brought VR back to me was Elite: Dangerous, a space sim. FPS's are a horrible VR experience currently and likely will remain so until we redefine FPS for VR. With Elite + joysticks, I've not experienced any of the motion sickness in the DK2.
billconan 11y ago
Few months ago, I was very excited about vr. I want to invest myself in vr, develop for it, learn it. I'm also worried about the impossible problems to solve. For me, the biggest issue is the screen door effect. it is said that only 8k per eye resolution can solve this. I think there are still 10 more years before vr becomes small, cheap and good enough.
- wlesieutre 11y ago
  Screen door doesn't depend solely on resolution. If a screen at the same resolution has a better "pixel fill factor", meaning smaller gaps between each pixel, it will have less screen dooring. It may still look pixelated, but that's easier to ignore IMO.
baby 11y ago
Have you tried the HTC vive? I felt like moving around could be the solution. It was definitely the experience I was expecting with VR. Oculus was just weird when I tried it.
blazespin 11y ago
Dk2 really needs a beefy computer. My concern about cv1 is that people will cheap out on computers or run the wrong games and blame oculus for motion sickness. Ovr might want to restrict what apps can be run on what computers. Their mobile version has this benefit. Carmack had real vision leading the charge on their Samsung partnership.

by mentos 11y ago

jzelinskie 11y ago

Kickstarter DK1 backer here (and have used DK2). I got burnt out on the hype a long time ago. Ignoring the problems that cannot possibly be solved by next year (eye tracking etc...), I'm not even sure that I'll even buy the first consumer version for Oculus or HTC. We need more games/experiences and time to see if there are software wars between Valve+HTC and Oculus.

koko775 11y ago

Here's my anecdata: DK1&2 owner. I felt the same, but the Crescent Bay demo blew me the heck away. More amazing than experiencing the DK1 for the first time. Then, recently, I tried the Oculus Touch demos. For an hour or so afterwards, I felt like reality was less real than the simulation, even despite its limitations. I felt like the realm of possibilities within that box was infinite, and real-life was limited in comparison.

theoh 11y ago
This sounds like a defamiliarization effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamiliarization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamiliarization

forrestthewoods 11y ago

The DK2 sucks. It's just not good enough. Vive, Morpheus 2.0, CV1 are much much much much better. They are good enough.

gfodor 11y ago

The root cause of sickness in VR seems to be either a) slow hardware/slow software, causing judder or b) poor design which moves the player in ways that cause discomfort. The combination of these two is a one-two punch. I'd encourage you to pick up CV1 or Vive in 6 months with a modern rig and take it for another spin with an experience that's been properly designed for VR, I'd be really surprised if you continue to have any problems with sim sickness.

wyldfire 11y ago
> a) slow hardware/slow software, causing judder or b) poor design which moves the player in ways that cause discomfort Couldn't it just as likely be the inherent conflict between proprioceptual cues and visual cues causing sickness?
- Yen 11y ago
  > Couldn't it just as likely be the inherent conflict between proprioceptual cues and visual cues causing sickness? Sure, that's the general concept. OP's two points are specific examples of the causes of mismatch - examples which are well known, and can be mitigated. a) When a program's framerate is high enough, moving your head causes a corresponding change in visual cue. When the framerate is too slow, the visual cue update is delayed from the motion. A mismatch. b) When a game allows you to walk forward in a virtual world, your eyes get visual cues that you're walking forward, even though your body knows you're not. VR applications that instead simulate you sitting in place, and give you visual cues to that effect, limit that mismatch.
  - wyldfire 11y ago
    Yeah, I was talking solely about b), which seems impractical/impossible to mitigate.
    - Yen 11y ago
      First off, I'd definitely recommend reading http://gamasutra.com/blogs/JesseSchell/20150626/247113/Making_Great_VR_Six_Lessons_Learned_From_I_Expect_You_To_Die.php http://gamasutra.com/blogs/JesseSchell/20150626/247113/Makin.... VR-wise, b) can definitely be mitigated. There seem to be two current strategies - either you design the experience to be primarily stationary, or you set up a room that people can actually, physically walk in. stationary-only experiences might seem like a tight constraint, but constraints breed creativity :). Rooms to walk around in have also been done, but they're obviously more effort to set up and maintain, and are typically done by larger institutions.

rocky1138 11y ago

Same. There is one major hurdle for me: it's too big of a pain in the arse to get up and running. In order to work on my game I have to muck about with NVIDIA Optimus (which they still don't have a fix for), take the headset off, change a Windows setting, put the headset back on. No it doesn't work, do it all again ad nauseam. It's got to be a dream to make and play games on and right now, it's not.

soylentcola 11y ago
I think a lot of this comes down to your setup. I've been messing around in Unreal Engine with DK2 and don't have those issues because I'm not using a laptop with Optimus. Now, granted, I also have a laptop and it does use Optimus so I'd love for a fix so I could use that laptop as a mobile demo setup but either way, I think it's just a matter of the current implementation requiring you to use supported hardware in order to develop for it or just use it.
- rocky1138 11y ago
  OK, NVIDIA Optimus issues aside, one still must take the headset off to work on their game then put it back on to test it. It'd be much easier to develop the game with the headset on.

AReallyGoodName 11y ago

Yeah. DK2 owner here. My DK2 only comes out to demo to friends these days. It's not so much the motion sickness for me though. It's just that the novelty wore off and it became a chore. Elite Dangerous with a DK2 was incredible for a quite a while. I used to just fly around space stations and look around. Now after the 100th trading run i prefer the monitor as it doesn't require me to clean lenses or deal with a tangle of cables.

kitcar 11y ago

Don't forget you're using a Dev Kit which is basically 2 years old - personally, although I agree with your DK2 assessment, I am reserving judgement for the consumer version.

ericflo 11y ago

You should not be playing a FPS in VR, especially on anything pre-release like the DK2. Acceleration without some kind of cockpit to ground you is one of the worst offenders, and virtually all FPS games do that by design/necessity. This is one of my worst fears about VR adoption: gamers, especially the kind who will be on the leading edge of this stuff, want badly to play FPS games and they'll find ways to do it and they're all going to hate VR. I'm glad Oculus is putting their "comfort ratings" front and center, and being really vocal about the principles of sickness-free VR, but I'm worried people are going to skip all the warnings and advice and ruin this for everyone.

mentos 11y ago
I appreciate that and I only ever played about 8 hours of HL2 VR, I stopped when I beat the campaign and moved on to playing WarThunder for a couple months then slowly tapered off. >>This is one of my worst fears about VR adoption: gamers, especially the kind who will be on the leading edge of this stuff, want badly to play FPS games and they'll find ways to do it and they're all going to hate VR. Part of the promise of VR is being able to negotiate a virtual world on foot which currently has too much of a mismatch to work without sickening the user. So what are the long term solutions to this? To me they are really hard if not impossible problems.
- ericflo 11y ago
  Cloudhead's "Blink" system is one good first step http://uploadvr.com/cloudhead-blink-vr-movement/ http://uploadvr.com/cloudhead-blink-vr-movement/ AltspaceVR has been doing something similar for a while too. Another idea is something called redirected walking, which basically tricks you into walking in circles even though you think you're walking in a straight line. Someday we may have electronic solutions to sim sickness -- they've discovered that by sending tiny amounts of electricity through our inner ears, they can programmatically control how you feel you're moving. Edit: Here's a video of Palmer Luckey talking about that inner ear stuff (GVS): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CRdRc8CcGY&feature=youtu.be&t=11m5s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CRdRc8CcGY&feature=youtu.be...

jaaron 11y ago

Echoing some of the others here too... As a DK1&2 owner, I had a similar experience, but what brought VR back to me was Elite: Dangerous, a space sim. FPS's are a horrible VR experience currently and likely will remain so until we redefine FPS for VR. With Elite + joysticks, I've not experienced any of the motion sickness in the DK2.

billconan 11y ago

Few months ago, I was very excited about vr. I want to invest myself in vr, develop for it, learn it. I'm also worried about the impossible problems to solve. For me, the biggest issue is the screen door effect. it is said that only 8k per eye resolution can solve this. I think there are still 10 more years before vr becomes small, cheap and good enough.

wlesieutre 11y ago
Screen door doesn't depend solely on resolution. If a screen at the same resolution has a better "pixel fill factor", meaning smaller gaps between each pixel, it will have less screen dooring. It may still look pixelated, but that's easier to ignore IMO.

baby 11y ago

Have you tried the HTC vive? I felt like moving around could be the solution. It was definitely the experience I was expecting with VR. Oculus was just weird when I tried it.

blazespin 11y ago

Dk2 really needs a beefy computer. My concern about cv1 is that people will cheap out on computers or run the wrong games and blame oculus for motion sickness. Ovr might want to restrict what apps can be run on what computers. Their mobile version has this benefit. Carmack had real vision leading the charge on their Samsung partnership.