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

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[-] MossyFeathers@pawb.social 97 points 9 months ago

Posted this reply in another instance, but several years ago researchers found that adding a virtual nose dramatically decreased motion sickness. However, I haven't seen any developers adding one in games. I wonder if it'd help.

[-] Danc4498@lemmy.ml 30 points 9 months ago

When the camera movies without me physically moving, I am throwing up immediately. Do you mean a virtual nose would fix that?

[-] MossyFeathers@pawb.social 57 points 9 months ago
[-] Johanno@feddit.de 13 points 9 months ago

Ok that sounds interesting. I just though that glasses wearer might not have motion sickness as often due to the glasses being similar to the VR(or keeping the glasses under the Headset

[-] SomethingBurger@jlai.lu 25 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I wear glasses (which I keep inside the helmet) and have mild motion sickness when moving in VR. The faster I move in-game, the worse it gets. Racing games are OK because I don't move inside the car, I suspect having a static dashboard is similar to a virtual nose.

[-] Daisyifyoudo@lemmy.world 13 points 9 months ago

Glasses wearer here. VR makes me nauseous af. And not just during, for hours afterwards. Its not an intense 'I have to vomit' but a queasy feeling that persists. I'm old though, and my kids have zero issues with it.

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[-] jballs@sh.itjust.works 13 points 9 months ago

Findings showed the virtual nose allowed people using the Tuscany villa simulation to play an average of 94.2 seconds longer without feeling sick, while those playing the roller coaster game played an average of 2.2 seconds longer.

Yeah instead of throwing up immediately, you won't throw up until 2.2 seconds in. Problem solved!

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[-] Crackhappy@lemmy.world 17 points 9 months ago

I wonder if that is why Voldemort is so angry all the time. It's because he's nauseous.

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[-] Haus@kbin.social 59 points 9 months ago

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)

[-] netburnr@lemmy.world 19 points 9 months ago

First time I logged into the corvette and looked down the ship, it completely changed the game.

Just wish headsets weren't so heavy.

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[-] chipsydev@lemmy.world 12 points 9 months ago

Absolutely, ED in VR is indescribably breath taking. Basically an entirely different game

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[-] greenskye@lemm.ee 42 points 9 months ago

I feel like all I see in the VR space is endless articles on new hardware and basically nothing on quality VR games. I always thought I'd upgrade my Vive to an Index or something better one day, but so far the only compelling reason is HL: Alyx and I'm not spending that kind of money on a single game.

[-] Kage520@lemmy.world 11 points 9 months ago

Ms flight simulator is quite clunky and hard to get good frame rates, but damn if you can put up with that it's an awesome experience in VR. Also beat saber.

For quite awhile now those have been the reasons for VR. Sad really. Still these two things are compelling.

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[-] KeefChief13@lemmy.world 40 points 9 months ago

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.

[-] ante@lemmy.world 15 points 9 months ago

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.

[-] PostmodernPythia@lemmy.world 32 points 9 months ago

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.

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[-] Turun@feddit.de 12 points 9 months ago

All those who get sick obviously stop playing. So if you ask the users, basically no one gets sick. Because those who get sick are not users any more.

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[-] JCreazy@midwest.social 32 points 9 months ago

I haven't touched my VR headset and over a year. VR games just are not good and have very little contents and very little replayability. What I'm trying to say is it's still very much a gimmick.

[-] LazaroFilm@lemmy.world 11 points 9 months ago

The one I want to play is HL:Alyx

[-] Moobythegoldensock@lemm.ee 12 points 9 months ago
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[-] marshadow@lemmy.world 27 points 9 months ago

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.

[-] thenofootcanman@lemmy.world 14 points 9 months ago

I'm just trying to chill out with a game though, not slowly build up tolerance to cyberspace

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[-] mordack550@lemmy.world 25 points 9 months ago

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)

[-] Itsamelemmy@lemmy.zip 13 points 9 months ago

Did you play Alex with the free movement or the jump to location? I can't do the free movement modes but jump works fine. Similar to beat saber in that you are stationary.

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[-] 5BC2E7@lemmy.world 25 points 9 months ago

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🙄.

[-] lloram239@feddit.de 20 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

It's a tricky issue. On one side, yes, it will make some people motion sick, but on the other side limiting a game to teleport drastically limits what you can do in the game. It means nothing of currently established monitor-based game mechanics work in VR. You essentially completely lose locomotion and environmental navigation as game mechanic and everything becomes a static gallery shooter. It also means that multiplayer completely stops functioning, as while yourself zapping around might be acceptable, having the other player just randomly switch placed is certainly not.

Modern VR has been around for 10 years and so far nobody has figured out how to make teleport gaming work. Meanwhile all the unofficial VR mods gets celebrated, since despite their locomotion issues, they actually feel like full games in VR, which the teleport games never archived.

At the end of the day, it's a far better idea to design games for the people that want to play them, then those that don't. The early focus on teleport has regressed the VR industry for years and the conclusion after 10 years is basically that it causes far more harm than good. You don't win anybody over for VR by showing them games that look far less impressive than what they are used to from a monitor.

Also worth mentioning that there are alternatives to teleport that aren't stick-locomotion. Lone Echo or Gorilla Tag have you move around with your arms and hands. This gives you smooth motion without inducing or at least drastically reducing motion sickness issues. Those mechanics still feel quite a bit underused in the modern VR landscape.

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[-] MudMan@kbin.social 23 points 9 months ago

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.

[-] Kichae@kbin.social 11 points 9 months ago

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).

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[-] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 23 points 9 months ago

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.

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[-] BitingChaos@lemmy.world 20 points 9 months ago

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!

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[-] spudwart@spudwart.com 20 points 9 months ago

its an issue of refresh rate tbh.

I went from vr at 90fps/90hz to 144fps/144hz and i went from motion sick to acceptable.

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[-] although8172@lemmynsfw.com 19 points 9 months ago

Headline: VR is Still is Fucking Dope for 30-60% of Players

[-] webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 19 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

What kind of statistic is 40-70%? For women It "goes up to 80%", where does it start then? The numbers, what do they mean?

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[-] Gsus4@feddit.nl 17 points 9 months ago

Some people even get sick just from the wrong FoV and motion speed combination in 3D games, this is just 10 times worse.

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 16 points 9 months ago

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.

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[-] voidavoid@lemmy.ca 15 points 9 months ago

As much as I want VR to be awesome, I've had motion sickness from playing Portal while sitting at a desk. Consequently, I think this is just one of those technologies that I have to be happy for other people to enjoy.

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[-] Disgusted_Tadpole@lemmy.ml 15 points 9 months ago

I did have motion sickness at first but got used to it quite quickly. It actually disappeared on the 2nd/3rd day of use I think. I have absolutely no problem driving race sims all day long if needed, I’ve been using my VR gear for 3 years now.

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[-] all4one@lemmy.zip 13 points 9 months ago

A suggestion that worked for me was to have a fan blowing on you while playing.

[-] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 points 9 months ago

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.

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[-] Smacks@lemmy.world 12 points 9 months ago

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.

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[-] finthechat@kbin.social 12 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

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.

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[-] verysoft@kbin.social 12 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

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.

[-] NounsAndWords@lemmy.world 13 points 9 months ago

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).

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[-] FluffyPotato@lemm.ee 11 points 9 months ago

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.

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[-] Treczoks@lemmy.world 10 points 9 months ago

Most of them throw up because of the motion. With what I've seen of Metaverse, I can understand that they throw up because of the content, too.

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[-] bagelberger@lemmy.world 10 points 9 months ago

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

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[-] weew@lemmy.ca 10 points 9 months ago

First person shooters already make some people feel nauseous. It's the disconnect between your vision telling you that you're moving while everything else, especially your balance centers, saying you're not.

VR kinda makes it even worse if you're not on some 2D treadmill

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this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2023
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