Why virtual reality makes a lot of us sick, and what we can do about it.
Even if the sickness issue is solved at some point I just don’t ever see VR become a dominant way to game. There are just too many downsides.
Story-focussed games can not direct you where to look. You are completely cut off from the world so you can’t e.g. watch a child or elderly relative while you use it or chat with friends while you work using it. Environments need a lot more work for a smaller market share if you can look at them from any angle. Hardware is much more expensive (and always will be) compared to a system that just needs to render a screenful of content at the same quality level. Your UI options are more limited if you want to keep things immersive.
Exactly, and that’s why we don’t have one. Maybe I’ll get one when my kids are a little older, but for now, it’s a lot more fun to experience things together than to have someone completely closed off in a VR world.
Even if I didn’t have kids, I still probably wouldn’t want it because I’d like to spend that time with my spouse, and looking at an avatar just isn’t the same.
I think the entire line of thinking that you need a first person perspective to be immersed in a game or virtual world is also flawed. As someone who has been on Second Life for more than 16 years now which uses neither VR equipment nor a first person camera 90% of the time I can certainly “feel like I am there” despite all of those factors and in the presence of many other factors that do not exist in RL like teleporting and camming through walls just fine.
Is that ever claimed anywhere? AFAIK, VR has just been marketed as a new way to experience a virtual world, not as the only way to be immersed in a virtual world.
I think VR would be really cool, but it just doesn’t seem to fit with my lifestyle at this point. And I’m not sure if I would be able to handle it since I and my spouse get motion sick quite easily.
I didn’t see a source for the statistic in the article which is a bit disappointing as I’m really interested to learn more about it. It seems pretty high but also there’s quite a lot of uncertainty built into it.
From my experience with VR I found I got sick after a long enough time but was able to get my ‘vr legs’ and have much longer sessions even on more intense games like Windlands where you swing around like Spiderman (super fun if you have the stomach for it).
The other thing to note is that for me at least it’s a spectrum. It’s not just ‘VR makes me sick’ but it depends a lot of the game or activity and there are a bunch of ways for games to try and reduce it. It does take time to get used to some of them though.
Hopefully things become better with time and more folks get to enjoy it because it’s a lot of fun in my experience.
but it depends a lot of the game or activity
Yea, some games I can play for hours.
Others make me feel weird after a few minutes.I can spend a ton of time in Alyx, or doing barrel rolls and corkscrews in Star Wars Squadrons.
I have a hard time finishing a level in After the Fall.I have had a lot of friends over and try it and since they are making up their statics I will do a statistic purely based of my experience. About 5% of VR triers experience nausea when the frame rate isn’t smooth in a moment of movement.
I don’t think VR is going to work for us. My SO and I get carsick really easily, and my SO gets sick playing or watching FPS games on a normal screen. It’s mitigated somewhat by adjusting FOV and higher refresh, but it still causes issues within an hour (usually like 30 min).
I wonder how much of this statistics are from people like us, for whom even “tame” things like being a passenger in a car can cause motion sickness.
Jet Island was the game for me that grew my VR legs, Windlands sounds similar except you also have Ironman thrusters and a skate board. After that I could then spend hours in dirt rally 2.0 which poetically would’ve gave me a bad headache before.
Big range. My main issue is just convenience. I have a PSVR2, and it’s just a pain to use. Like, you really have to dedicate yourself to using it. It has never felt like something you just do spur of the moment. You can’t just sit back and relax.
I prefer AR over VR. AR can do tons of things, and you are aware of your surroundings too.
Though, for gaming, VR makes more sense, but I don’t see it becoming dominant way of playing games any time soon. Maybe when we reach the point of full-body immersion like Matrix, or Sword Art Online.
I don’t think it’ll be a dominant form really. It’s a more immersive method, but not many games will need that. Even for me that is still thinking about picking one up, I mostly am looking at using it for seated cockpit play.
VR was fine for me until I landed on a planet in Elite: Dangerous. The rover pitching back and forth was way too much. Never again will I put a headset on.
There is a comfort mode setting for the ED rover that keeps your view level to the horizon while the rover moves around you.
There is, and it absolutely failed to be a comfort when I tried it after I got sick the first time. The comfort mode functioned, but my brain was done with VR. I could not even use Google Earth VR without getting queasy.
Cuz the metaverse is mostly furry porn?
