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[GorillaChilla]

I have heard that people who get motion sickness playing VR slowly get used to it until it’s no longer an issue. I was lucky enough that VR didn’t cause any motion sickness for me but for the people that did experience it, has it lessened over time? I’m doing research for a video and think that based on other motion sickness adaptations (cars, boats, ect) the body should get used to VR within a few weeks to months. Has anyone’s experience confirmed/refuted this?
For anyone interested I have been looking into scientific studies conducted on ways developers might be able to reduce or even eliminate VR induced motion sickness and have found some promising stuff.

 

[GorillaChilla]

Oh and for those wondering there are actual exercises you can do to eliminate or at least severely reduce motion sickness.

Visual-Vestibular Habituation and Balance Training for Motion Sickness

Abstract. Background and Purpose. This case report describes physical therapy for motion sickness in a 34-year-old woman. The purpose of the report is twof

academic.oup.com

 

[Birdo]

 

[struggler_guts]

I can attest that adaptation is possible. I started only being able to play less than 20 minute bursts of resident evil 7 but by the end I was playing like an hour before I started feeling weird. And that was only in the span of like 3 days

 

[A.Romero]

I don't usually get the symptoms but some times I do. It even happens when playing FPS games some times.

Haven't been able to pinpoint exactly what triggers it.

 

[spawn]

I never had motion sickness. I felt weird after I ended my play session and took off the headset though. Like suddenly the real world seemed like I was floating. Also, when you're driving super fast in Driveclub VR and then drive a real car and obey traffic laws it feels weird

 

[GorillaChilla]

I can attest that adaptation is possible. I started only being able to play less than 20 minute bursts of resident evil 7 but by the end I was playing like an hour before I started feeling weird. And that was only in the span of like 3 days

And do you know how well you handle it since?

 

[pr0cs]

Not sure I want to practice it. VR sickness is fucking terrible, thankfully I haven't played anything recently that triggered it.

 

[Romulus]

The whole thing seems extremely exaggerated in my personal experience of demoing VR. I've seen a few headaches and slight dizziness, but it's almost like people are discussing a different technology when I hear the horror stories. Granted, my slice of the pie is small with only a few hundred people demoed compared to the millions.

 

[A.Romero]

The whole thing seems extremely exaggerated in my personal experience of demoing VR. I've seen a few headaches and slight dizziness, but it's almost like people are discussing a different technology when I hear the horror stories. Granted, my slice of the pie is small with only a few hundred people demoed compared to the millions.

I have puked after playing VR. It just makes me nauseous sometimes. It has happened while playing FPS on a TV as well.

 

[Grinchy]

The whole thing seems extremely exaggerated in my personal experience of demoing VR. I've seen a few headaches and slight dizziness, but it's almost like people are discussing a different technology when I hear the horror stories. Granted, my slice of the pie is small with only a few hundred people demoed compared to the millions.

It's been the same for me. I assume it also just has to do with the fact that people who don't feel any sickness aren't naturally prompted in any way to share that experience, while someone who felt like puking from it is probably going straight to Reddit to talk about it.

 

[Wonko_C]

I have puked after playing VR. It just makes me nauseous sometimes. It has happened while playing FPS on a TV as well.

Does the puking come without warning symptoms? I always thought to get to that point you had to force yourself to keep playing way past the point of nausea and headaches. But I always stop immediately after feeling slight discomfort and the sick feeling goes away in a couple minutes.


Edit: I did once get motion sick so bad I ended up feeling like shit in bed for about 2 hours. That was way back in 2004 while playing Half-Life 2. I chalked that up to the framerate being too high, (60 fps when back then all I played were N64 games.) and the FOV too wide, almost fish-eyed.

 

[jshackles]

I've also puked from VR sickness. I love my PSVR but it's sadly been collecting dust for a while. I tried to force myself to just keep playing it, to just keep trying to adapt to the sickness - just play short bursts, but I eventually got to the point where even thinking about playing PSVR made start to feel sick.

But I'm also getting to be an old fucker and I've learned that the older you get, the harder it is for you to adapt to shit like this.

 

[A.Romero]

Does the puking come without warning symptoms? I always thought to get to that point you had to force yourself to keep playing way past the point of nausea and headaches. But I always stop immediately after feeling slight discomfort and the sick feeling goes away in a couple minutes.


Edit: I did once get motion sick so bad I ended up feeling like shit in bed for about 2 hours. That was way back in 2004 while playing Half-Life 2. I chalked that up to the framerate being too high, (60 fps when back then all I played were N64 games.) and the FOV too wide, almost fish-eyed.

Funny, I got it with HL2 but with a really bad framerate.

In my case it gives almost no warning but when it happens it is a little while after starting playing.

 

[Wonko_C]

That sucks. What usually happens to me is I sweat a bit and start feeling a little nauseous, normally when I'm on an empty stomach and after not using VR for a while, but I re-acclimate very quickly. (And I also do the fan blowing to my face thing since it seems to help me spend hours playing without issues)

Thanks for sharing.

 

[Jtibh]

Well i tried out a few games. Astro i had no issues with and was able to play 2 hours straight.
Same for racing games and wipeout.

But then came skyrim and no i could never play that game. We even tried to set up an ac behing my back to keep me cool but yeah that game gets me sick in no time. And its a long fucking game on top.

 

[GorillaChilla]

It's been the same for me. I assume it also just has to do with the fact that people who don't feel any sickness aren't naturally prompted in any way to share that experience, while someone who felt like puking from it is probably going straight to Reddit to talk about it.

The whole thing seems extremely exaggerated in my personal experience of demoing VR. I've seen a few headaches and slight dizziness, but it's almost like people are discussing a different technology when I hear the horror stories. Granted, my slice of the pie is small with only a few hundred people demoed compared to the millions.

The issue is is that game designers are designing their VR games with consideration for the people that do get sick. For example, multiple devs for traditional games cancelled plans for VR compatibility modes just because they were scared of getting motion sick players angry.

 

[Grinchy]

The issue is is that game designers are designing their VR games with consideration for the people that do get sick. For example, multiple devs for traditional games cancelled plans for VR compatibility modes just because they were scared of getting motion sick players angry.

Yeah, especially when the default controls have every comfort setting ever conceived of turned on so any casual who is trying it out on their own just thinks VR is "teleport only with weird snaps as I turn sideways and some kind of black vignette covering my vision whenever movement takes place."

I personally know to go into the settings of every VR game and turn off anything that sounds even remotely connected to "comfort" but the average user doesn't (which is why it's all turned on by default in the first place). It's just a shame that we feel like we have to treat consumers like unmonitored toddlers.

 

[gifgaf]

VR sickness is not fun, but I don't suffer from it as much as I used to.

I find that being tired and playing some fast paced games can trigger it for me though. I used to take motion sickness tablets or ginger tablets to help when I did want to go full on. Resident Evil 7 was one I religiously took tablets to help. Driving games and flight games can trigger me more than FPS type games with sliding movement although No Mans Sky flight has only ever made me feel slightly ill once and im sure it was because I was tired.

My son gets car sick but never gets sick in VR, go figure.

 

[johntown]

Some games I have no issues with and others are really bad. RE7 for PSVR I could go for hours with zero issues. Sykrim VR for PC with full movement I could only take an hour and I didn't get sick but my head started to hurt. I suppose I could possibly keep at it and try to build a tolerance but I just avoid games that can potentially make me sick and stick to ones that are solid.

I have found that each person is different to their tolerances in VR. Some people have no issues with some games and other cannot play them at all.

I do think eventually you get VR legs but how long that takes I cannot say.

 

[TheSHEEEP]

My son gets car sick but never gets sick in VR, go figure.

They are difference sources of sickness.

One is balance-based (originating in an area around the ears IIRC), the other one is purely visual/mental.
I can get very sick in cars, busses and trains (especially if those go backwards, oh dear) and nothing could ever get me into a rollercoaster - but never had a problem with VR when I tried it. Including VR simulations of rollercoasters.

Control also plays an extreme role in the mental part of such motion sickness.
When you sit in a ride that moves without your doing, you have no control at all - increasing the likelyhood of sickness a lot.
When you drive a car yourself or are in VR, you have full/very high control - lowering the likelyhood of sickness.

 

[Slings and Arrows]

If a pilot suffers from air sickness, during training, these pilots are taken in a hawk fighter jet and thrown around the valleys of Wales for days and weeks on end, until they are no longer air sick.

Grab a bucket, strap on vr. It's going to be one hell of a day.

 

[Stitch]

I had it when I got my Vive. Teleport Stuff was alright but then I decided to play Pavlov and had to stop after a minute. But I didn't want to play with lame teleport forever so I used the Natural Locomotion software.



Somehow I didn't get sick with this type of movement. Maybe because my brain thought I was actually walking. A few months later I actually didn't need it anymore and can move and jump around freely in all my VR games

I guess my body just needed to git gud.

 

[rofif]

I've had dk1 in 2013 adn then dk2, cv1 and rift S... I am still not used walking in vr. I think it's because it's always hot and sweaty and the pixels kinda make You dizzy

 

[Slings and Arrows]

One of these days I'm going to buy an omni-directional treadmill.

 

[Thaedolus]

I’ve only ever experienced it from that Doom (like 1993 Doom) VR conversion. It helps to understand what causes motion sickness and of course games designed to take that into account will minimize that effect.

It really has to do with your visual perception of motion vs your inner ear’s perception of motion. You instinctually expect a certain detection of movement in your inner ear when you see yourself moving a certain way. You’re better able to disconnect the fake first person visual motion when it’s limited to the size of a screen in front of you, but VR takes up your whole field of view and feels real enough that your brain is detecting a mismatch between what it’s seeing and what the inner ear is detecting. Vomiting is usually seen as a way of expelling something that could be toxic as a response.

What seems to fuck me up is using a stick to change my view rather than simply moving my head around. Pushing the stick and having the perspective turn up or down or left or right is like instantly disorienting. Using a stick to walk or teleport seems to be fine because it just feels like I’m hovering around and I’m not actually moving my legs, but somehow the combination of being able to look around and move the stick around to change my view seems to cause an instant conflict.

Interestingly I’ve heard people with poor balance in general get motion sick less. I‘ve almost never gotten sick in a car or on a boat or when flying. My inner ear must be real dull to shit like that

 

[Grinchy]

The only negative instance I ever had was the first day playing VR and ending the night (hours of games and demos) with a game called World War Toons. It was a cartoony FPS with full artificial locomotion.

I couldn't even take like 5 steps forward without needing to take the headset off. I kinda forgot about the game and tried it later on and it never gave me an issue again nor has any game. I love the flying VR games where I can do barrel rolls and crazy maneuvers.

 

[ViolentP]

Beer is my usual goto.

 

[Pejo]

I was surprisingly susceptible to this when I first got my PSVR setup. I didn't have motion sickness in any way previously, but I definitely would experience it, mostly in vehicle based VR experiences. Since playing for a few years now, I almost never get it anymore, so my body must have grown acclimated.

Except Driveclub VR. That baby is still the vomit comet.

 

[Vawn]

For me, it's based on the game.

The DriveClub demo made me sick immediately. There was no getting use to that, though I hear the actual game isn't as bad.

Third-person games, such as Moss and Astrobot, I never felt any motion sickness, even with extended play sessions.

Other games, like RE7 were mostly fine, but i did start to feel a bit uneasy after a longer play session.

I think it's more on the developers learning graphical and performance practices that fix motion sickness. It feels like it is already significantly better than early VR, and I'd bet it will be close to a non-issue for most people by next gen.

 

[haxan7]

I get motion sickness in general pretty easily. Riding in the backseat of a car will do it.

The key for me is to only play something that will trigger it after eating. For some reason, full stomach = little to no motion sickness. Beer also helps as ViolentP pointed out. Dunno why but it does.

I couldn't play Spider-Man without getting a headache until I realized it was motion sickness, then I only played after eating and I was fine.

 

[GorillaChilla]

I had it when I got my Vive. Teleport Stuff was alright but then I decided to play Pavlov and had to stop after a minute. But I didn't want to play with lame teleport forever so I used the Natural Locomotion software.



Somehow I didn't get sick with this type of movement. Maybe because my brain thought I was actually walking. A few months later I actually didn't need it anymore and can move and jump around freely in all my VR games

I guess my body just needed to git gud.

This is quite interesting. I think I will mention this in my video. Thanks.
Valve's philosophy for VR up until recently (and we will see tomorrow with their HL Alyx reveal) has been to "Never move the player" and I think that is a bad way to design games. Looking into how motion sickness can be over come is important for the future of VR.

 

[GorillaChilla]

I’ve only ever experienced it from that Doom (like 1993 Doom) VR conversion. It helps to understand what causes motion sickness and of course games designed to take that into account will minimize that effect.

It really has to do with your visual perception of motion vs your inner ear’s perception of motion. You instinctually expect a certain detection of movement in your inner ear when you see yourself moving a certain way. You’re better able to disconnect the fake first person visual motion when it’s limited to the size of a screen in front of you, but VR takes up your whole field of view and feels real enough that your brain is detecting a mismatch between what it’s seeing and what the inner ear is detecting. Vomiting is usually seen as a way of expelling something that could be toxic as a response.

What seems to fuck me up is using a stick to change my view rather than simply moving my head around. Pushing the stick and having the perspective turn up or down or left or right is like instantly disorienting. Using a stick to walk or teleport seems to be fine because it just feels like I’m hovering around and I’m not actually moving my legs, but somehow the combination of being able to look around and move the stick around to change my view seems to cause an instant conflict.

Interestingly I’ve heard people with poor balance in general get motion sick less. I‘ve almost never gotten sick in a car or on a boat or when flying. My inner ear must be real dull to shit like that

This has been true for me as well. The only thing that makes me feel off in VR is using the stick to turn my head instead of moving my body to turn.

 

[gifgaf]

Valve's philosophy for VR up until recently (and we will see tomorrow with their HL Alyx reveal) has been to "Never move the player" and I think that is a bad way to design games

Suddenly I am slightly worried. Surely they wont make a HL game with teleport only?

Do you have a youtube channel? I am interested in watching this video.

 

[Katsura]

I got it within seconds of taking off in my spaceship in No Mans Sky. It was so bad i had to lie down with my eyes closed for like 10 minutes after. Since then, i've made sure to do at least a couple of minutes of training with various games and it's gotten a lot better

While i haven't attempted NMS again yet, i can play games such as Redout in VR now

 

[johntown]

Suddenly I am slightly worried. Surely they wont make a HL game with teleport only?

Teleport only would be a deal breaker for me. Regardless of motion sickness I want to option for full movement. Considering most VR games give you that option I am hoping Valve at least follows that trend.

What if they made it an on rails HL?

 

[GorillaChilla]

Suddenly I am slightly worried. Surely they wont make a HL game with teleport only?

Do you have a youtube channel? I am interested in watching this video.

I do but I think Gaf frowns on self promotion. I can dm you the video when i'm done with it though.

Spoiler

Welfarewalrus is my channel name though

 

[GorillaChilla]

What if they made it an on rails HL?

Then millions including me would be completely disappointed. Considering the popularity of games that do use traditional movement I like to think Valve has changed there mind but we will know soon enough tomorrow.

 

[Romulus]

Its amazing to me that the people susceptible to VR sickness, most seem to push forward and overcome it.

I never thought I'd live to see a day where gaming was so cool that you'd put yourself through hell just to play Haha

Imagine someone telling you'd need to vomit 4 or 5 times just to play metal gear solid back in the in 1990s.

 

[struggler_guts]

And do you know how well you handle it since?

I don't, no. I was visiting my brother for a week then and I don't have VR myself

 

[Breakfast at Noon]

Just takes patience.

 

[gifgaf]

Its amazing to me that the people susceptible to VR sickness, most seem to push forward and overcome it.

I never thought I'd live to see a day where gaming was so cool that you'd put yourself through hell just to play Haha

Imagine someone telling you'd need to vomit 4 or 5 times just to play metal gear solid back in the in 1990s.

I've had sickness playing flat screen games rarely in the past, my wife can feel sick sometimes after getting stuck in a game and going back and forth trying to find out what to do next.

Gaming in general can cause sickness although I doubt its as widespread as VR.

 

[PleaseWaitStation4]

The only time I felt sick was in Wipeout PS4 VR. When you take a wide corner and your vehicle is sideways, look up through your cockpit window until you even out and the feeling is so real that you feel like you would in real life.

 

[PleaseWaitStation4]

Remember, on VRchat there are many young girls that are in VR for days and they NEVER get sick and it's never even a thing...

 

[bronk]

Shit if you are like me you are never adapting. I feel ill for a whole day if I barely look through menus. Sucks.

 

[INC]

Frame rate can makemyounsick instantly if it's not stable and above 90fps

Do small stints on non gast games like astrobot, do 10mins, take and hour

It took me a few attempts to adjust over a few weeks, now I can play firewall and sairento no problem for hours

My friend was the same

 

[Videospel]

I've not had any major problems using Vive. But one thing that made me feel awful for an hour was playing Quake on my Gear VR. Probably because it doesn't have any head tracking.

 

[Flintty]

I suffered a bit with NMS at first. I enabled smooth motion straight away but kept the dark borders. When I got used to that I removed all the anti sickness features and then got used to it and no longer have problems. I feel a bit sick if I do a barrel roll in my ship but that’s to be expected and adds to the immersion!!

My tip: gradually remove the anti puke features - definitely not all at once.

 

[hariseldon]

The whole thing seems extremely exaggerated in my personal experience of demoing VR. I've seen a few headaches and slight dizziness, but it's almost like people are discussing a different technology when I hear the horror stories. Granted, my slice of the pie is small with only a few hundred people demoed compared to the millions.

Vom depends on a couple of factors:

1. Frame rate
2. Movement type

Frame rate dips will tend to make you feel iffy as real world movement and in-game movement don't properly correlate. The movement issue is a bit more fine-grained however. Quake 2 in VR is a bit fast and can lead to some discomfort for instance but for me it's manageable. I can run iRacing, Assetto Corsa or Elite Dangerous and be absolutely fine, though reversing in the racing sims can be a bit queasy. However there's a space sim - ISS something or other, can't remember the name now - which made me feel really quite ill, where echo arena/lone echo didn't for instance (I think the use of hands to grab your way through the environment makes the movement feel more natural there).

EDIT: I forgot about the Stadium Trucks they added to iRacing. Lots of jumps, big hills going up and down too.. that one does a number on me.

 

[Wonko_C]

No Man's Sky has been smooth sailing for me from the beginning, all comfort options off. Borderlands 2 VR on the other hand has some small skipping issue when you move your head, causing headaches after a few minutes and just making the whole thing unenjoyable.