Worse motion sickness?

[Scofthe7seas]

On the DK1 I was able to check out all of the demos, all of the roller coasters, everything. I only got a bit of motion sickness once or twice, and it always was after using it for a long time, and under other circumstances (long day, tired etc..)
But so far with the DK2, I have been getting some crazy motion sickness from several demos. I started getting it looking at some of the water effect on quake 2, and again on quake 1 (just playing normal for a while)
But I just tried the Helix coaster, and I couldn't even survive the thing. Ugh, had to take it off. That NEVER happened on the Dk1! Has anybody else felt similarly?

As an aside, all of these demos have been running in extended mode, if that matters.

[smartbart80]

just wanted to jump on the bandwagon and say that the motion sickness is so bad for me that it makes me not want to use it ever again. I'm no longer excited about this product as I once was. I never tried dk1 and I've only had dk2 for a couple of days. I hope something is done about that before the retail version is out. I'm also very disappointed that the issue of motion sickness isn't addressed enough or at least that's my impression.

[BrotenTechCorp]

one main problem is you need correct depth in VR. Many game designer like to scale the size of the environment down. In VR I found less vertigo when using 1:1 real world scale. Also many game the velocity is very high. Think in games like unreal and quake you are running at over 100mph. This will greatly increase vertigo as well.

I have a space sim, and first try playing I had the ship flying at 22000mps, I vomited instantly when hit the throttle.

[sgallouet]

after few month of DK2, the only time i feel sick now is when the camera do a head movement style turn while my head don't actually move.

before, the worst was HL2. in fact the first time i played HL2 i almost wanted to vomit after just few minutes and though VR and FPS never gonna work for me. but that is gone already. now i can play hours and never feel sick at all even while running and jumping everywhere at full speed. and yes...i can't wait for HL3 VR.

[jsipprell]

It might help people just a little to understand what exactly is going on with "sim sickness" (which is just one type of motion sickness) biologically. Or at least to understand what the current widely accepted hypothesis is, speaking very generally -- it's not a sufficiently well researched or understood problem by any means.

Kinetosis (motion sickness) occurs in certain people whose brains are wired in a specific way experience a profound and substantial disagreement between the part of their neurology that handles body positioning/balance and any other major cognitive neurological subsystem. Both the wiring and this second subsystem are interrelated and completely individual, which is why you might be able to sit looking at the bottom of a small boat in 15 foot swells for hours and feel just fine but five minutes on a particular VR sim becomes unbearable. You might not have the right neurological makeup that triggers from your vestibular sense telling you everything is moving while your optical sense disagrees (sea sickness) but that doesn't mean you wouldn't trigger from the opposite situation (vestibular sense says not moving, eyes say moving). It's all very specific to individual biology and the way your brain happened to end up connected; some people get motion sick just from being a passenger in a moving car because part of their brain thinks they are driving and disagrees with their vestibular senses about what acceleration and motion should feel like moment to moment.

So, when such a person having a neurology susceptible to being triggered is then triggered this results in a rapid ramp-up of weak neurotoxins in the brain generated by the brain itself. The hypothalamus -- a "puppet master" in everyone's brain responsible for regulating all automatic body functions -- senses this and, lacking a specific way to lower these neurotoxins, opts for the drastic option of last recourse which is rapid temporary dehydration. Dehydration pulls fluid across the blood brain barrier and the neurotoxins in that fluid can then be altered by the liver into harmless metabolites and flushed by the kidneys. The best way to rapidly dehydrate an otherwise normal healthy person is to cause them to vomit -- and thus the hypothalamus sets about to make this occur, but of course we aren't directly aware of what our hypothalamus is up to so the afflicted person only knows something is wrong when they start experiencing nausea or pre-nausea symptoms (cold sweats, tiredness, metallic taste, etc).

There are interesting hypotheses about the underlying mechanisms that cause these neurotoxins to be overproduced, and some of that has to do with the very thing that makes it possible for someone to acclimate to motion sickness of a particular type, but I've rambled on long enough about neurology as it is.

IMO, it's important for sufferers of kinetosis to realize one commonality experienced by almost every victim which is that you can't fight your way through an episode, at least not very rapidly (you might be able to over many hours or days). It's not like the experience of drinking too much alcohol and becoming overly intoxicated where mere vomiting will bring instant substantial relief. Vomiting in this case doesn't directly remedy the underlying problem which is what is causing all this neurotoxin production. To stop that you must first remedy the underlying "disagreement" (by altering your sensory environment) and this must be followed by a decrease in neurotoxin levels significant enough that your hypothalamus stops freaking out. The longer you try to fight through it, the higher the neurotoxin levels will be and that can directly correlate to a long miserable recovery period lasting many minutes or even hours.

That being said, frequent sufferers who cannot acclimate sometimes are able to recognize a threshold for themselves where they know they need just a few seconds of environmental change to recover as long as they don't pass the threshold and in that sense they can "fight through it" up to a point. Where that threshold might be though would of course be completely different from person to person.

[Scofthe7seas]

Well, I think most people who have had motion sickness have probably looked into it, and even read the wikipedia page about it so I think knowing the exact cause doesn't necessarily help much with the actual feeling. But one point you make is definitely true, and something that people with the problem should greatly heed. Once you start feeling it (and if you've had it a few times, you know EXACTLY how it feels when it starts coming on) you need to STOP. Immediately. No kind of, "Let me just finish this level.." mentality because in my experience, motion sickness affects you exponentially.
One horrible example I had was when I did exactly that, and then I went to the gym to do my laps in the pool. Motion sickess + draining your bodies physical capabilities = the flu (basically :lol: of course not the actual virus, but the feeling) I don't have the sickness as bad as some of you here, but when I did this, I was unable to go into work the next day and that's never happened before. I can't imagine what this would do to you that suffer it worse than me!
Long story short, if you start to feel sick, rip that sucker off your head!
I don't want to quit it, even though I have developed a kind of fear of the device. I'm not 100% certain about some of the things some of you have mentioned because like I said before, I didn't have any (or very very little) motion sickness after using the DK1, and I think many of the things mentioned here were also present in the DK1. So... who knows!?

[jsipprell]

Well, I think most people who have had motion sickness have probably looked into it, and even read the wikipedia page about it so I think knowing the exact cause doesn't necessarily help much with the actual feeling.

I'm sure there are those who've researched it, probably some more than others, but there's a real shortage of substantive information on the phenomena. The wiki page basically just repeats the standard mantra of "it's not entirely understood" with a few additional details, and that's quite true if you're talking about very specific neurological events starting from the root cause (there are competing hypotheses). In the past few years there has been a significant increase in the amount of research performed and while there are still many technical neurological questions the need substantive answers, it's my opinion that there is now enough information to very broadly make some systemic neurological conclusions. Conclusions such as that we can be pretty sure that all of these experiences are actually manifestations of the same thing -- kinetosis. Or that the underlying causative processes are varied, involve many different potential systems and are quite unique to each individual but the final general resultant neurochemistry is roughly the same for non-outliers as is the regulatory negative feedback responsible for the symptoms.

To take this all to its logical conclusion, I think it might be advisable for frequent "sim sickness" sufferers who haven't yet done so to consider trying medication as a source of potential relief, specifically something like diphenhydramine (OTC generically as Dimenhydrimate, common North American brands are Dramamine and Gravol but it's all the same so don't waste your money). I say this with some words of caution though, and I'm sure this is obvious to lots of people, but diphenhydramine has a wide side effect profile which almost everyone will notice. For some people it's just a little dry mouth or minor disorientation which they quickly get used to while other people find the side effects extremely unpleasant or even a bit debilitating. It also doesn't work for everyone, even when used for the typical on-label reasons like sea sickness, but it does work for a lot of people. Start with a low half-otc dosage if you've never used it before and see if the side effects are pronounced as well as if the kinetosis symptoms are suppressed at all.

Oh, and dimenhydrimate "works" by subtly interfering with the way certain neurons in your brain talk to each other. It's not exactly clear how or why but for some reason this causes them to be unable to initiate the sort of neurological gang warfare that kicks off the runaway upregulation. It's a bit like secretly replacing all of a potentially violent gang's knives and guns with rubber chickens prior to urban combat -- has to be done before the battle has started to be meaningful so wait an hour or two after taking the medication before engaging in any vr immersion that would normally trigger you.

I would definitely be interested in hearing if anyone has had positive or negative results from dimenhydrimate or similar pharmacological relief (excluding sided effect issues) as well as whether they had any previous experience with it related to non-virtual kinetosis.

[bigpickle]

I've had brutal motion sickness from the DK2, like vertigo and travel sickness all at once. It KO'd me so bad I lost the whole day in bed laying still. I was using DCS at the time and I noticed there was a small but constant stutter, im betting 100% it was that that did it.

My system was at the time:

i7 2700k
MSI Z77 extreme 6
GTX 760
16Gb ram
win 7 and games on SSD

I have a new system now :

i7 4790k
Asus Z87 Sabertooth
MSI GTX 980
16Gb ram
win 7 and games on SSD

My last part (gtx980) arrives tomorrow so once its in and ive tested my games out, I'll post back and say if the system update has helped.

[bigpickle]

Couldnt report back yesterday sorry was KO'd again in bed cos of this damn thing, wish I'd never bought it now.
My new system helps the judder thats for sure but all it takes is one scenario or one game to be loosely implimented and it brings on the sickenss and vertigo, which for me in turn brings on a migrane. (Some on the anti sickness compnents in migrane drugs are mentioned above by a prevoius poster coincidentally)

In short dont waste your cash on new rig components, because really nothing will help, if you get motion sickness you will get it no matter what.

[feelthree]

If Tuscany makes you sick I'd appreciate some testers for my idea :

viewtopic.php?f=20&t=16770

[Kethalpak]

I found playing Elite Dangerous to be an awesome experience once I got the lag to stop, I played for hours and felt fine.

I played minecraft for 5 minutes and threw up.


I think its the way in which the game is designed, Elite is designed to make you feel as though your sitting in a cockpit and all the motion is happening 'outside'.