1. Why would anyone want to give themselves motion sickness for a VR game?
2. Maybe people who are prone to motion sickness, or who have vestibular damage, would benefit from some of these tricks, even though VR game isn't their idea of fun.
3. Will people who condition themselves too well to tolerate VR entertainment also break their vestibular system, such as making themselves less likely to be able to recover from a sudden imbalance, or not automatically protect against a fall?
> 1. Why would anyone want to give themselves motion sickness for a VR game?
VR can be amazing. There is nothing on this planet that can provide the same experiences it can. That includes real life.
Something like experiencing floating through space, gazing at an alien sunset and feeling like your body is actually there* without having to deal with pesky things like inventing FTL, radiation shielding, and artificial gravity and whatnot is pretty cool.
* It's amazing how easily our senses are fooled, even with imperfect hardware.
I'm still waiting for HMDs where I can't see the pixels. I have something like 20/12.5 vision (and can also count pixels on a 27" 1080p monitor from normal sitting position)
Give it a bit, it won't last long
There is nothing on this planet that can provide the same experiences it can. That includes real life.
There are plenty of places on this planet where you can rent a real sports car and race around a real track against real people for real.
Until your VR headset emits the smell of burning fuel, rumbles your body so hard that you feel it for hours afterward, deafens you with engine and tire noise, throws so much mud on the screen that your pit crew uses tear-off sheets of plastic to clear it because wipers are useless, and provides a non-zero chance of actually being hurt or dying, your video game is just game.
IRL > VR
VR doesn't have smell. Yet it can render visually things you cannot possibly see in real life. Watching a dinosaur approach and stomp overhead is quite a sight to experience in VR, even more intense than 3D glasses.
The way the view tilts and moves with one's head, combined with the audio alignment, creates a surreal experience.
Whether IRL is better or worse than VR is entirely subjective.
I never said that VR can provide everything real life can and more. I said that it can provide experiences that real life can't and nothing in your example refutes that.
Now, I do agree that real life can provide things that VR can't. Many, many things even. That was not the subject however; it was: "Why would anyone want to give themselves motion sickness for a VR game?"
> Why would anyone want to give themselves motion sickness for a VR game?
VR is fun despite some discomfort, much like other experiences like roller coasters. I'd volunteer to participate in such a study because I'd like to do more VR than my body can naturally tolerate.
> Will people who condition themselves too well to tolerate VR entertainment also break their vestibular system
Definitely worth studying! From the few I've heard adapt, no, it doesn't make them significantly more likely to have balance problems.
I really enjoy that roller coaster feeling both in real life, and in VR games like Jet Island and Windlands.
I'm pretty interested in this and would like to participate in a study as well if given the opportunity. I think one of the potential causes and solutions is it being a self-fulfilling prophecy that may be overcome with self-efficacy as described here [1] for seasickness. My only evidence is that I never knew motion sickness was a possibility when I first tried VR, and my friends with the worst motion sickness were worried about it before they even tried VR, even if they never got seasick or carsick.
From the article and other comments, they also mention figure skating which I never thought of before, and I play ice hockey which is likely similar enough. For reference I've been playing VR since 2016 and never once experienced motion sickness, from any style of game/locomotion.
[1] https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0021-9010.8...
Well I never got seasick on boats (large or small) and even took up windsurfing for a time. When I tried VR initially, naseau wasn't a widely known symptom (late 90s), but I got naseau anyway. So I don't think it's always psychosomatic.
> Will people who condition themselves too well to tolerate VR entertainment also break their vestibular system, such as making themselves less likely to be able to recover from a sudden imbalance, or not automatically protect against a fall?
The sense I get from the article is that "VR balance" isn't essentially different from or opposed to ordinary balance; it's just a greater test of one's balance than one ordinarily encounters in daily life. People who have trained their balance - like figure skaters - find VR less of a challenge; performing exercises which improve one's balance - like the "flamingo stance" described in the article - makes VR experiences easier.
> Why would anyone want to give themselves motion sickness for a VR game?
Cybersickness endurance games. The person who can make themself the most cybersick wins. Ranked competitive matches with loot box mechanics. People will do pretty much anything when competition is involved.
People got motion sickness from non-VR FPS games decades ago. Those who overcame it didn't "break their vestibular system" so it seems unlikely it's going to start now.
Not surprising ice skaters could adapt best. Skating is a surreal feeling of gliding without as much leg movement as a runner covering the same distance.
Snowboarding was very unnatural to me too, yet I persisted and adapted. Now it feels like second nature. It also involves a lot of balance in positions very distinct from the usual human movement. Sadly, it hasn't helped much with VR sickness in my case though.
Honest question: is anyone using any kind of VR these days apart from a few people using it instead of monitors (which presumably don't suffer from motion sickness as the monitors won't move, right?).
Surely no one is using them for games any more? Surely the headsets are all gathering dust up in the attic next to the gramaphone?
Unfortunately almost all VR games in my experience feel more like tech demos than full games. Even Half Life Alyx felt like a demo mechanically to me, but I had a good amount of VR experience before I played it. The only couple of VR-native games I've played that feel like full games are VTOL VR, a flight sim designed from the ground up for VR including buttons to press and switches to flip, and Pavlov, a shooter. Otherwise, many of the best games are VR-additional that can be played flat as well, like Elite: Dangerous, DCS, or the racing games.
> Otherwise, many of the best games are VR-additional that can be played flat as well, like Elite: Dangerous, DCS, or the racing games.
Also Skyrim VR was breathtaking, especially with mods to improve the scenery and clunky menus.
My sister has four kids, a gamer husband, and a Meta Quest 3. The VR stuff is in regular rotation for the older of the kids, though it seems like everyone prefers the Switch or PlayStation.
A former coworker is car crazed and uses a quest 2 in his racing sim setup. Compared to using 1 ultrawide or 3 16:9 monitors it's a no brainer. Much cheaper and more immersive. Plus even small racing sim setups take up a good amount of space in an apartment. Adding monitors to that adds to that a bit but also makes them a lot more visually imposing. It's easier to ignore a weird looking chair than it is to ignore a cockpit with three big monitors an arm's length from the seat.
I mess around in VRchat every once in a while (maybe once-twice a month?) because it still is really fun with friends that don't live close by... but that really is about it. I personally can only get about 30-45 minutes in VR before I get a headache. (Even with breaks)
VR motorsport is fantastic. With a good wheel, pedals, and a rig to mount them on the immersion is intense, and the depth perception adds so much to the experience.
It's not perfect. The FOV on lower-end/older headsets leave a lot to be desired, you can't use button boxes/controls since you can't see your hands, and doing any sort of long race gets exhausting.
I use VR for games, monitors, and movies. They are great for immersion. I can wear a headset for a few hours without noticing any fatigue.
Used mine today for a workout. Super low friction compared to going to a gym.
How does that work? I generally consider working out to be the complete opposite of VR. Was it a VR tennis-cardio type thing?
VR boxing is exhausting. Beat saber at high levels is also pretty sweaty. So yeah, cardio. I also don't play many games on it but it has stuck as a fitness option for years now.
Here is a "Yoga for Building VR Tolerance" article from 2019. https://web.archive.org/web/20190209025553/http://elevr.com/...
My experience with VR motion sickness was that it mostly went away after a couple dozen hours. Occasionally it'll come back for me when I try a new experience, but it's usually gone after another hour or so. Not an insignificant amount of time of course, but if you're designing an experience for existing VR users, I think you can safely assume most of your users have their VR legs at this point
I think this varies widely. I've spent hours in VR. But it always causes a headache, and if I'm not careful then nausea too. They say women are more likely to develop nausea because of they're able to preceive motion a bit more precisely than men.
Really thought this was going to be about Johnny Mnemonic.