[dre54673]

I had a similar experience. I bought an Odyssey+ but returned it because I felt motion sick every time I tried it. I've read you're supposed to just power through and eventually you get used to it, but that seems like an easy way to guarantee your product will fail. I had friends try it and they also felt the same way.

AR may be a different beast. I don't usually hear people describe it as uncomfortable, mostly just lacking power and content. I also think the market for AR would be much bigger than VR. I think that is why Apple, MSFT, and Google are focusing on it.

[moron4hire]

> I've read you're supposed to just power through and eventually you get used to it

Wheeeeere did you read that?! I've been in the VR industry for the last 6 years and everyone I know vehemently recommends against doing that.

[topmonk]

It's called, “getting your VR legs”, akin to sea legs. It worked for me, at least. As an extreme example, I can now play as a character in a space suit, twirling and spinning around for hours, without getting motion sickness. I also regularly play rally racing games where I'm constantly subjected to bumps and jumps, and don't notice it at all. This was after around 100 hours of VR, I think.

Actually I've found the experience somewhat magical, in that I get the same stress relief from being couped up all day by leaving the house to go do something outside as just playing a game for an hour or two. It feels like I'm actually going to another place, nowadays.

This really only started when I got the high end, Valve Index, which has a 90hz+ refresh rate, so maybe that has something to do with it.

[moron4hire]

That is only one component of what can cause nausea or headaches within a VR experience. Please see my reply further down for more detail

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21473859

[topmonk]

IPD alignment is adjustable on most headsets nowadays. My experience is anecdotal anyway and I fully accept that some people can't handle it.

That said, being on a boat for hours is hardly something we were evolutionarily designed for either, yet no one writes scare mongering articles and posts about that. So you might be doing a disservice with all this worry you're stirring up.

[moron4hire]

IPD adjustment knobs are there, getting it correctly calibrated for your eyes is still not easy. It takes either a direct messiness with a ruler or a 5-10 minute calibration process in-headset.

And again, motion sickness is by far the least of your worries. My point was "don't just assume nausea is motion sickness". There are other defects that can cause nausea that are not adaptable.

[topmonk]

> There are other defects that can cause nausea that are not adaptable.

I think you're wrong about that. Any proof?

[dre54673]

There have been many threads on reddit about this. There aren't that many VR information sources out there so that's where I used to get VR info.

Examples: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/PSVR/comments/...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/oculus/comment...

[moron4hire]

Oh, /r/Vive and /r/oculus are dumpster fires. I don't know /r/PSVR, but considering what I know of reddit and what passes for "culture" amongst gamers, I expect it's much the same.

Very, very few actual developers in those boards.

[jawngee]

Yes but a lot of users with real world experience.

"Getting your VR legs" is definitely a real thing.

[moron4hire]

See my reply to your sister post from TeMPOraL. I sincerely believe one should never attempt to "power through" feelings of nausea or discomfort from VR experiences.

[TeMPOraL]

The question of VR motion sickness is not something you want to ask developers, but actual users.

[moron4hire]

I'm not saying every developer is a psychologist, but getting advice from users is definitely the blind leading the blind.

More concretely, there are a number of different artifacts of current VR systems that will cause different side effects, depending on how long you expose yourself to them. Unfortunately, the common vernacular lumps all of those issues under the title of "simulator sickness". While simulator sickness is a well-known problem, it is by far not the only one, and if you're experiencing nausea or discomfort during a VR experience, you should not just assume it's "simulator sickness" and try to "power through".

IPD mismatch is your eye telling you things are at a different distance from where they feel when grabbing or traveling to them. In AR, this can make 3D objects look like they are swimming, yet also remaining stationary, which is disconcerting but ultimately not a big deal. In VR, it can make you feel kind of dizzy, a bit like you're swimming, because the effect is very similar to viewing things through water, or a glass of high refractive index. If you've ever had to switch between contacts and thick glasses, then yes, it is trainable.

Some people find bad depth cues to be nausea inducing. There is evidence that the brain weights different depth cues more or less strongly depending on one's overall hormonal balance. People with higher testosterone levels judge depth through motion. People with higher estrogen levels judge depth through relative object size and shadowing. This isn't just "men vs. women" as there are any number of reasons your endocrine system could be off the normal distribution, but it is why a lot of women feel very uneasy immediately upon putting on a headset and why men tend to not like monoscopic 360 content. The effect is so strong for some women that I've never seen anyone even attempt to power through it. The best solution is to stop using that particular app and start using one with better graphics.

But most importantly, low framerate can cause a violent, persistent nausea and headaches, within seconds. "simulator sickness" on the other hand, takes extended exposure to develop. Higher framerates are always better, but 75Hz seems to cover about ~85% of people, 90Hz seems to cover ~95% of people A VR experience, and 120Hz covers ~99%, which at that point is actually better numbers than people going to the movies watching action movies. This is one of the reasons I found it so disappointing that the Oculus Quest was set to 72Hz; we should be going up, not down. If the application you are using is not running a very high framerate, you're in for an extremely bad time, with it only getting worse the more you expose yourself to it. You absolutely must not try to power through low framerate.

So this is why I say "don't try to power through sim sickness". It might not be sim sickness. Take breaks whenever you feel bad. Whatever "VR legs" are, if it's just the proprioception or IPD mismatch, you'll eventually get there even if you don't "power through". But there are plenty of other issues that you should definitely not try to "power through".

[djmips]

So Valve and Occulus both basically just gave developers an SDK and said have at it. There were some pointers, easily ignored and there was no QA like you might have with Nintendo that would tighten up some of these issues across all VR apps. Then you have the endless variety of computer specs and a bunch of different VR hardware. It's so easy for a bad app, bad hardware, bad configuration, bad advice to upset the apple cart and cause a bad experience where it could be one of any of the issues you mentioned and others you didn't like bad tracking or just bad programming. With all that it's no doubt that their are a lot of people who 'tried VR' and gave up.