[martinsb]

I wander why Huang did not mention -- in my opinion -- the main issue with VR - the fact that many people (including myself) cannot use those headsets for a longer time than say 10 minutes without getting dizzy and sick. Or are these the consequences of those issues he mentioned - like "the physical worlds do not behave according to the laws of physics"?

[kybernetikos]

Have you tried experiences where you do all the moving yourself - like most vive games? I never had terrible VR sickness, but when I used the DK1 I could feel my body change temperature by itself fairly quickly and then would need to breathe carefully to stay ok. In Vive where I'm controlling the movement I have basically no noticeable sickness. I know that's not everyones experience, but if you haven't tried room-scale vr, I recommend it.

[rictic]

I can second that. I don't know of anyone[1] who's gotten VR sickness from a room scale Vive game. Only doing teleportation and 1:1 tracked motion has solved the nausea problem for essentially everyone.

[1] Including my partner who gets nauseous from even short car rides, to say nothing of boats, airplanes, or the DK1.

[jshmrsn]

I am not an expert in VR, but I know one of the main causes of sickness from VR headsets is the latency between the user's head movement and the simulated camera movement. Basically, there is lag between when you move your head in real life to when the VR headset displays that new view angle to your eyes.

Reductions to this latency is an ongoing effort and companies like Nvidia are definitely in that space.

[jobigoud]

We already have infinitesimal latency thanks to predictive tracking in both the high end headsets. The main source of sickness nowadays is vection.

[Kiro]

Is this really true with the newer iterations? I've been to VR events and not a single person became dizzy or sick afaik.

[empath75]

I don't think it really is. I've had the oculus for a couple of weeks and the only thing that's come close to making me sick has been a wreck while playing Project Cars. I'm fine even with minecrift and ethan carter without comfort controls. There are a few sorts of movements that make me a tiny bit queasy (like moving backwards and then forwards quickly), but they're pretty easy to avoid doing.

[pessimizer]

So what you're saying is that for you, it's true.

[Kiro]

How else would we measure this if not by peoples' experiences?

[bouk]

I felt super sick when trying the Oculus DK2, but had no issues whatsoever with the Oculus CV1/HTC Vive

[VLM]

I've sailed a bit and seasickness is an unpredictable issue that affects many people, yet, people can and do eventually power thru it. And it comes back if you're on land for awhile. Some folks say it goes away permanently if you sail enough. I would imagine VR seasickness will have plenty of old wives tales handed down.

Socially/culturally yet another thing separating hard core gamers from the general population is probably not good. On the other hand, any future hard core VR gamer being able to jump on a real life boat and not puke is probably very good for the boating sports.

Another interesting cultural point is like many other people I don't get seasickness nausea even under pretty bad sea states until someone else pukes, then I start feeling queasy. I suspect this will be an issue for VR gamers at LAN parties. The first guy to puke at a LAN party who makes everyone else queasy is going to be a meme in 2030. I would imagine playing sound drops of people vomiting over teamspeak will be considered VR cheating, and likewise a soundboard app to generate vomiting sounds will be a cheap source of money.

Much as energy drinks are identified with hard core gamers, its not unlikely scopolamine sea sickness patches will be a thing in the gaming scene. Along with fake herbal preparations that don't work, people hiding the patch to pretend they're elite and seasickness proof, etc. And of course the patch has some interesting nasty side effects which will likely become part of gamer culture. I predict scopolamine patches will be sold decorated up like energy drinks.

Anyway if you're looking for some way to "tag along" with VR as a startup, look into anti-seasickness technology.