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

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨stopthatgirl7@kbin.social⁩ to ⁨games@lemmy.world⁩

https://www.pcgamer.com/vr-still-makes-40-70-of-players-want-to-throw-up-and-thats-a-huge-problem-for-the-companies-behind-it/

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

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MossyFeathers@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Some researchers did a study several years ago and found that adding a virtual nose decreased motion sickness significantly. However, I don’t think I’ve seen any developers try this. I wonder if it’d help.

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- LordOfTheChia@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  
  adding a virtual nose decreased motion sickness significantly
  
  Behold, the VR headset of the future!
  
  Image
  
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- Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Virtual glass frames
  
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- MarcomachtKuchen@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Id love to See that. I cant even imagine how interesting some of These noses for Alien games might Look
  
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LordOfTheChia@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Would be nice if the author had done a bit of research an the specific things that had been done in VR since he tried his DK2 to prevent nausea:

An Oculus DK2, a PC that couldn’t quite run a rollercoaster demo at a high-enough framerate, and a slightly-too-hot office full of people watching me as I put on the headset. Before I’d completed the second loop-de-loop, it was clear that VR and I were not going to be good friends.

For one, non-persistent displays have become the norm. These only show the image for a fraction of the frame time. Valve discovered that the 1/90th of a second an image is displayed is enough to induce nausea if the head is moving during that time.

Elimination of artificial movement is another. The reason Valve focused on games with teleport movement and made a big deal of “room scale” early on was to eliminate the nausea triggers you encounter in other types of experience.

Valve had an early version of Half Life 2 VR during the days of the DK2, but they removed it as the artificial motion made people sick (myself included). Also remember the DK2 did not have non-persistent screens.

For some, sims work as long as there is a frame in their field of vision to let their brains lock into that frame of reference (ex car A-pillars, roof line, outline of view screen on a ship interior, etc).

Also it helps if your PC can render frames under the critical 11.1ms frame time (for 90Hz displays). Coincidentally, 90Hz is the minimum Valve determined is needed to experience “presence”.

Lastly, it has been noted that any movement or vibration to the inner ear can for many stave off nausea. This includes jogging in place while having the game world move forward:

github.com/pottedmeat7/OpenVR-WalkInPlace

I’ve use the above to play Skyrim VR without any nausea. Good workout too!

For car, flight, spaceflight simulators, a tactile transducer on your chair (looks like a speaker magnet without the cone) can transfer the games sound vibrations to you and therefore your ear and prevent nausea.

I’ve literally played over 1,000 hours of Elite:Dangerous this way as well as Battlezone VR and Vector 36. All games that involve tons of fast artificial movement.

The main issue is too many people tried out VR cardboard with low and laggy framerate, persistent displays, and poorly designed VR experiences and simply write off all VR as bad and nausea inducing.

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- Noodle07@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  /thread
  
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- rambaroo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Do you really expect people to read all that shit? VR is a niche product that hasn’t and won’t solve this problem. Get over it.
  
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ExtraMedicated@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I just keep getting annoyed when I see an interesting looking game and find that it’s VR-only.

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- NeryK@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Honestly even the very best VR-only games are only interesting because they are in VR.
  
  Half-Life: Alyx is IMO still the best of those and it can be played outside of VR thanks to mods… But in that case it’s a curiosity, not an actual good traditional game.
  
  HLA in VR is incredible though and I wish there were more games like it.
  
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  - BruceTwarzen@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    When i look at vr titles, i still feel like i'm buying a tech demo, not a game
    
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  - lorez@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    I don’t have problems with VR. I sold my Quest 2 cos there are not games like Alex, which I enjoyed a lot, and that’s a pity. I see it going the way of 3D.
    
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BadEngineering@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Having a fan blow into your face really helps too. I cant play more than 10 or 15 minutes without one, but with I'm fine for hours.

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- Cl1nk@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Which kind of fan do you use?
  
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  - GBU_28@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Anybody really. Young, old, helps if they’re taller
    
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  - greavous@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Only
    
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- dinckelman@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  If a game uses smooth locomotion, instead of teleportation based movement, I cannot play it without sir blowing into my face, or sometimes been at all. Otherwise I have no issues at all
  
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Steeve@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
40-70% is quite the confidence interval lol

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Glide@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I wonder if this 40-70% demographic has actively tried to play it a couple times? My first experience with VR was incredibly disorienting, and yes, made me feel nauseated. But after playing for 2-3 hours across a handful of 15-20 minute sessions (passing it around a few friends for an evening) that just went away. Once the body uses it a bit and learns, even high-movement non-teleport movement games stop being an issue.

I wonder if I happen to be in that upper percent, or if the numbers in question are a matter of people who tried it once in their life and felt sick.

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- Piemanding@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Heard somewhere that it can get worse if you try to power through the nausea and sickness. Like your body remembers that it made you sick before and wants to actively avoid going through that experience again. So if you start feeling sick, especially when you first start out, stop playing.
  
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- Katana314@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  That’s just it; the first-time experience is so critical in every game, and often every console.
  
  The systems that needed users to follow 30 steps to set them up, or try them 8 times until they could avoid nausea, often failed.
  
  Convenience is important.
  
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- ChexMax@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Since you’re asking for anecdotes: my VR headset consistently made me sick following 30 min to an hour at the absolute max. I still played dozens of times for short spurts, but it never got better for me.
  
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  - Glide@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    I kinda am, tbh. I don’t believe for a second that my experience represents everyone, but such large numbers also don’t seem to make sense to me.
    
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- SPOOSER@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I played VR and had a blast. It was usually the ones that were mounted to the ceiling at a mall arcades. I could play no big deal for hours. My brother in law got a vr headset for Christmas and I tried to use it and got unbelievably sick after 20 minutes of playing it.
  
  I played super hot, some moving zombie game, and that plank game on thw vr headsets at mall arcades with no problem moving around, twisting, and moving fast. I played a stationary puzzle game on my bil’s. I dont know what causes the sickness but it was veey bad on his unit. I womder if the suspension at the mall arcades made the difference, rather than having a free roaming headset.
  
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- rambaroo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I have better things to do with my time than to train to play shovelware video games.
  
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DrQuint@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
In 5 years from now, VR will be 5 years away of becoming mainstream. Just like 5 years ago.

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- JokeDeity@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  LMFAO, a lot of you guys sound so fucking bitter and I don’t understand. I used a Rift years ago and it was so much fun, zero nausea the very first time I played it and I played it for hours. The tech has only gotten better and better. Stay mad. 😂
  
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scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Big reason why I just never understood why Meta bet the farm on VR/metaverse. Such a stupid move, literally everyone knew that VR wasn’t ready for mainstream. The only people willing to get it were tech nerds and some gamers, and really that had nothing to do with the metaverse, it was because they could play games in it.

Until it gets stable and doesn’t feel like I’m strapping a brick onto my face, it’s not going to happen mainstream. It also can’t just connect to a PC, average people don’t want to be strapped down to something. And I know, that’s a lot to ask, but if you want to base your entire company on VR, those are the hard realities. People want something like sunglasses, not something that feels like duct taping a laptop in front of their face

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BruceTwarzen@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
There are definitely games that make me more suck than others. But even the "good ones" are kinda weird. Like I can't imagine playing a vr game for an hour or so. That's why i don't even bother anymore

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- cottonmon@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Yeah. I can play Thrill of the Fight with no nausea after several matches. I also didn’t get sick from Vader Immortal or other games like Beat Saber or Crisis VRigade. Games where you move in-game but stay still in real life though, I feel like throwing up after a short time.
  
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  - Ultraviolet@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Especially if there’s head bob. That simulates the exact difference in your senses of vision and balance that triggers seasickness.
    
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- AdamantRatPuncher@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  minecraft gives me simulation sickness. Time 30 minutes and i’m done. The interesting part here is how it started doing it suddenly; i take a pause from videogames in general and now i’m even less used to full 3d. So hey, i can’t see myself using vr.
  
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dangblingus@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
It also doesn’t feel at all like you’re looking at something in front of you. It still feels like you’ve got 2 TV’s strapped to your head.

I guess I’m old school and just play games with m&k or controller. DINOSAUR I am.

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- Chailles@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I disagree. I definitely feel like I’m there with everything scaled up to real size. Like I never really considered how absolutely massive Radroaches from Fallout were until playing Fallout 4 VR.
  
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- Kanzar@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Which headsets have you tried?
  
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deafboy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I’ve never felt more sick than after trying the VR for the first time. GearVR on Samsung Galaxy S6. Never happened again though, regardless of how much time I spent in.

The main issue on this headset was that I felt like my head was really small, while turning. I think the camera was just rotating on it’s own axis, or around a sphere that was way smaller than a human head.

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- Maalus@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Phone VR isn’t really VR. It’s a poor excuse of an attempt. It’s pointless to compare gearvr to anything in the actual vr space.
  
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  - deafboy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    The only difference between gear and quest, is that the phone cannot be taken out of the quest, plus it has more sensors.
    
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stephenc@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I can’t believe people are still on the VR gimmick train. 99% of what they want from VR is interactivity which can be done with a standard computer screen and the Wiimote-like controllers. Looking around with your head is neat-ish but is really the primary cause of the motion sickness and essentially cuts you off from the real world which can be incredibly dangerous as well.

Companies have tried to make VR a thing for decades now, and now that graphics and hardware technology have advanced, they’re doing a major push trying to make it an acceptable, “it’s everywhere now, so many people are using it” thing when it’s really not. It’s a niche device with a market share less than Linux or MacOS and yet they say those are too niche and insignificant to care about while praising VR. It’s time to give it up and accept that VR is a worthless gimmick, and if you want interactivity, find better ways to do so without making people sick and cutting them off from the world around them.

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- tal@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  
  Valve’s “fake Windows Linux device that just runs Windows games without paying Microsoft money – how is this not a violation of Windows TOS”
  
  Valve uses a build of WINE called Proton, not Windows. Microsoft's TOS terms apply to Windows. They don't have anything to do with software that's simply able to run the same binaries.
  
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  - stephenc@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Trolling? No. What part of my history makes you think that?
    
    Wine (and by extension, Proton) is simulating a Windows install with no Microsoft license. How is this not a clear violation of Microsoft’s TOS? I can see if you are just using it personally how it can be a grey area, but VALVE IS USING IT PROFESSIONALLY, INCLUDED WITH THEIR INSTALL, FOR PROFIT. Microsoft should sue the fuck out of them.
    
    If you think that’s a troll, you have issues with reality. You can’t just create your own version of Windows (even one like Wine) without repercussions. Get over yourself.
    
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Ganbat@lemmyonline.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I’ve used VR a few times, and I can confirm that the only part that makes me throw up is the price tag.

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Lexam@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Yeah still have my Rift CV1, but it is sitting in a box.

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Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
[deleted]
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- scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Quit politics and rage baiting. Go find any of the other thousand threads
  
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  - Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    It was just a joke about how unpopular Congress in general is lol, you can relax 😄
    
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