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I have a Vive and have played a decent number of hours in VR, and overall like it quite a lot. It's really amazing how readily our brain will "adopt" two floati

I have a Vive and have played a decent number of hours in VR, and overall like it quite a lot. It's really amazing how readily our brain will "adopt" two floating hands as your own body. I'm bullish on the future of VR gaming. But I do think there's a big hurdle, and that's our inner ear. Teleport-based controls are jank but it seems really difficult to prevent motion sickness when using any kind of movement that translates the camera in 3d space. I tried to play Subnautica in VR, and literally only made it about 10 seconds before I had to pull the headset off and sit on the cool tile floor for a bit. I figured - well, maybe I shouldn't be surprised a sea game gives me motion sickness. And it's not even built for VR anyway. So I tried - I can't remember the name, but it's a game where you fly around building a base in space. Sounded like an awesome idea. I forced myself to play for about 5-10 minutes despite feeling ill almost immediately, and regretted it immensely when I did finally bail out. It seems like this happens to a decent number of people? And why teleport movement is so common? FWIW I don't get particularly bad motion sickness in other, traditional settings. Being a passenger in a car on a windy road will definitely mess me up, but I don't get seasickness, for instance, and also don't mind roller coasters at all.

sjsdaiuasgdia 4y ago
Was the space game Adr1ft? One of my favorite VR experiences, and the only one where I was willing to take motion sickness medication to finish the game.
MetaWhirledPeas 4y ago
My experience is the same. I thought it would be no problem considering my extensive history with FPS gaming, but my early attempts at joystick navigation within VR were pretty stomach-churning. I'm hoping I can grow accustomed to it, but I doubt we could ever ask this of the more casual crowd. The masses will need to be fed simpler VR-centric games rather than the many hoped-for FPS conversions and sequels.
tiahura 4y ago
This. For the good of humanity, I plead with Meta, Valve, Neuralink and whoever it was that just beat Neualink, to join forces to defeat the scourge of mankind - motion sickness! Please!
rjh29 4y ago
There are some techniques. Vignetting the borders of the screen when moving/turning seems to help for some people. I've noticed newer games increasingly have free movement as an option, or no teleport at all, so I think for a lot of people it is possible to get used to it if you play enough. Some percentage will never get used to it though, which sucks.
- Firmwarrior 4y ago
  The VR enthusiast/dev community has gotten caught in a death spiral when it comes to simulation sickness.. They encourage each other to "get your VR legs" and play/demand/make nausea-inducing games, and it just chases away all the normal human beings who don't want to spend months gently training their bodies to become immune to it (FYI, the way it works is you play until you start to feel a hint of nausea, and stop for an hour or more. If you try to fight through it, you'll just condition yourself to feel sick when you even look at/think about a VR headset)
  - adastra22 4y ago
    When it comes to nausea, it’s once and done for me. Wtf would I ever put myself through that again, for a game? I’d rather go outside, thanks.
    - agentwiggles 4y ago
      I want to love VR, but I can't help but agree. I can't think of a time a walk through the neighborhood woods has made me nauseous :)
    - belval 4y ago
      I get where you are coming from but: > I’d rather go outside, thanks It's not like VR isn't actually awesome once you get everything to work reasonably well. I can't just "go outside" and storm the beach of Normandy, or "go outside" and throw fireball/duel with swords in medieval settings. The appeal of VR is that it's something else entirely, it's not a video game replacement, I can't play Pavlov for more than 1-2 hours but when I do play it, after a while I forget that I'm in a game. I am under MG40 fire with my squad in Normandy and I hear the bullets fly right next to me I get the rush that I only get in paintball. And I say all of that as someone who used their Quest 2 for about 45 minutes the day they received it and spent the next 24 hours feeling dizzy.
game-of-throws 4y ago
From what I know, inner ear stimulation (to manipulate perception of balance) is non-invasive, relatively simple, and well understood. But I haven't seen anyone try combining it with VR yet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galvanic_vestibular_stimulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galvanic_vestibular_stimulatio...
- Gigachad 4y ago
  This would probably result in you actually falling over.
amerkhalid 4y ago
Same here, I can definitely handle games in which objects move towards you like Beat Saber or Thrill of Fight. However, if I am moving through environment, I end up becoming motion sick very quickly. In some games like The Climb, I am actually okay with it. Because anytime I fall and forget to close my eyes, I will end up becoming motion sick. It sort of make me try harder to not make a mistake. On other hand, I am tired of games that are rated comfortable but have too much motion. Like Until You Fall, love it but cannot play for too long no matter what settings I use. Also another issue is far too many VR videos have camera pans, zooms, and other motions that make me sick. I have stopped watching VR videos because of this. Videos should have comfort ratings too. Really wonder if people who get motion sick is minority or people who are making VR experiences are minority but they somehow don't experience any motion sickness. Hence, they are into VR.
- joemi 4y ago
  I'm not sure if this is what you were getting at with your last paragraph or not, but I wouldn't be surprised if people who get motion sickness from VR are less likely to want to be VR devs. And that would likely influence the type of content being made. That's my case at least. I was so thrilled that VR was finally becoming somewhat practical now and I wanted to get into VR dev. I got an Oculus Go when they came out as a cheap test, and discovered that I get sick when my viewpoint moves in VR. That pretty much killed my desire to invest more time or money into VR development.
cardanome 4y ago
You can develop a bit of a tolerance to it over time. Personally, I used to get instantly motion sick and now I can stomach games where I walk around freely, at least for half a hour or so. Actual flying or swimming wont ever be in the cards though, I fear. So yeah, if you develop a game, you absolute need to offer teleport style controls or some people will not be able to play it. I guess this is also a hurdle with just adopting existing games/genre to VR as they often rely on fast dynamic movement which would make people puke in VR.
shagie 4y ago
> So I tried - I can't remember the name, but it's a game where you fly around building a base in space. Sounded like an awesome idea. Probably Space Engineers. > I forced myself to play for about 5-10 minutes despite feeling ill almost immediately, and regretted it immensely when I did finally bail out. I don't think that that is uncommon. I recently experienced a bit of that while playing Mechwarrior 5 without VR and not being too mindful of torso / walk centering while in first person and it got to me after a few missions. The combination of a first person view without having the corresponding actual motion is what got to me. As to its commonality and differences... A comparative study of cybersickness during exposure to virtual reality and “classic” motion sickness: are they different? https://doi.org/10.1152/japplphysiol.00338.2018 https://doi.org/10.1152/japplphysiol.00338.2018
munk-a 4y ago
Subnautica is beautiful and immersive... and it's also a game that (in non-VR mode) makes my SO sick in mere moments. Maneuvering in 2D space using WASD is definitely a learned skill that many millennials take to easily after growing up on GoldenEye and the like - maneuvering in 3D space is a whole different ball game and feels intensely unnatural. As another good example Space Engineers and Hardspace: Shipbreaker are quite fun games but can really quickly disorientate me - in the later the stage is small enough that I can usually use landmarking to reorient myself - in the former it's just chaos whenever you're exploring low gravity.
esyir 4y ago
There's a few tricks that VR games can do to handle motion sickness with free movement. Some have already mentioned the edge of screen effects, but another would be tying movement to the "running" arm movements. That, for some odd reason, significantly reduces motion sickness.

sjsdaiuasgdia 4y ago

Was the space game Adr1ft? One of my favorite VR experiences, and the only one where I was willing to take motion sickness medication to finish the game.

MetaWhirledPeas 4y ago

My experience is the same. I thought it would be no problem considering my extensive history with FPS gaming, but my early attempts at joystick navigation within VR were pretty stomach-churning. I'm hoping I can grow accustomed to it, but I doubt we could ever ask this of the more casual crowd. The masses will need to be fed simpler VR-centric games rather than the many hoped-for FPS conversions and sequels.

tiahura 4y ago

This. For the good of humanity, I plead with Meta, Valve, Neuralink and whoever it was that just beat Neualink, to join forces to defeat the scourge of mankind - motion sickness! Please!

rjh29 4y ago

There are some techniques. Vignetting the borders of the screen when moving/turning seems to help for some people. I've noticed newer games increasingly have free movement as an option, or no teleport at all, so I think for a lot of people it is possible to get used to it if you play enough. Some percentage will never get used to it though, which sucks.

Firmwarrior 4y ago
The VR enthusiast/dev community has gotten caught in a death spiral when it comes to simulation sickness.. They encourage each other to "get your VR legs" and play/demand/make nausea-inducing games, and it just chases away all the normal human beings who don't want to spend months gently training their bodies to become immune to it (FYI, the way it works is you play until you start to feel a hint of nausea, and stop for an hour or more. If you try to fight through it, you'll just condition yourself to feel sick when you even look at/think about a VR headset)
- adastra22 4y ago
  When it comes to nausea, it’s once and done for me. Wtf would I ever put myself through that again, for a game? I’d rather go outside, thanks.
  - agentwiggles 4y ago
    I want to love VR, but I can't help but agree. I can't think of a time a walk through the neighborhood woods has made me nauseous :)
  - belval 4y ago
    I get where you are coming from but: > I’d rather go outside, thanks It's not like VR isn't actually awesome once you get everything to work reasonably well. I can't just "go outside" and storm the beach of Normandy, or "go outside" and throw fireball/duel with swords in medieval settings. The appeal of VR is that it's something else entirely, it's not a video game replacement, I can't play Pavlov for more than 1-2 hours but when I do play it, after a while I forget that I'm in a game. I am under MG40 fire with my squad in Normandy and I hear the bullets fly right next to me I get the rush that I only get in paintball. And I say all of that as someone who used their Quest 2 for about 45 minutes the day they received it and spent the next 24 hours feeling dizzy.

game-of-throws 4y ago

From what I know, inner ear stimulation (to manipulate perception of balance) is non-invasive, relatively simple, and well understood. But I haven't seen anyone try combining it with VR yet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galvanic_vestibular_stimulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galvanic_vestibular_stimulatio...

Gigachad 4y ago
This would probably result in you actually falling over.

amerkhalid 4y ago

Same here, I can definitely handle games in which objects move towards you like Beat Saber or Thrill of Fight. However, if I am moving through environment, I end up becoming motion sick very quickly. In some games like The Climb, I am actually okay with it. Because anytime I fall and forget to close my eyes, I will end up becoming motion sick. It sort of make me try harder to not make a mistake. On other hand, I am tired of games that are rated comfortable but have too much motion. Like Until You Fall, love it but cannot play for too long no matter what settings I use. Also another issue is far too many VR videos have camera pans, zooms, and other motions that make me sick. I have stopped watching VR videos because of this. Videos should have comfort ratings too. Really wonder if people who get motion sick is minority or people who are making VR experiences are minority but they somehow don't experience any motion sickness. Hence, they are into VR.

joemi 4y ago
I'm not sure if this is what you were getting at with your last paragraph or not, but I wouldn't be surprised if people who get motion sickness from VR are less likely to want to be VR devs. And that would likely influence the type of content being made. That's my case at least. I was so thrilled that VR was finally becoming somewhat practical now and I wanted to get into VR dev. I got an Oculus Go when they came out as a cheap test, and discovered that I get sick when my viewpoint moves in VR. That pretty much killed my desire to invest more time or money into VR development.

cardanome 4y ago

You can develop a bit of a tolerance to it over time. Personally, I used to get instantly motion sick and now I can stomach games where I walk around freely, at least for half a hour or so. Actual flying or swimming wont ever be in the cards though, I fear. So yeah, if you develop a game, you absolute need to offer teleport style controls or some people will not be able to play it. I guess this is also a hurdle with just adopting existing games/genre to VR as they often rely on fast dynamic movement which would make people puke in VR.

shagie 4y ago

> So I tried - I can't remember the name, but it's a game where you fly around building a base in space. Sounded like an awesome idea. Probably Space Engineers. > I forced myself to play for about 5-10 minutes despite feeling ill almost immediately, and regretted it immensely when I did finally bail out. I don't think that that is uncommon. I recently experienced a bit of that while playing Mechwarrior 5 without VR and not being too mindful of torso / walk centering while in first person and it got to me after a few missions. The combination of a first person view without having the corresponding actual motion is what got to me. As to its commonality and differences... A comparative study of cybersickness during exposure to virtual reality and “classic” motion sickness: are they different? https://doi.org/10.1152/japplphysiol.00338.2018 https://doi.org/10.1152/japplphysiol.00338.2018

munk-a 4y ago

Subnautica is beautiful and immersive... and it's also a game that (in non-VR mode) makes my SO sick in mere moments. Maneuvering in 2D space using WASD is definitely a learned skill that many millennials take to easily after growing up on GoldenEye and the like - maneuvering in 3D space is a whole different ball game and feels intensely unnatural. As another good example Space Engineers and Hardspace: Shipbreaker are quite fun games but can really quickly disorientate me - in the later the stage is small enough that I can usually use landmarking to reorient myself - in the former it's just chaos whenever you're exploring low gravity.

esyir 4y ago

There's a few tricks that VR games can do to handle motion sickness with free movement. Some have already mentioned the edge of screen effects, but another would be tying movement to the "running" arm movements. That, for some odd reason, significantly reduces motion sickness.