Can you get used to VR?

[MariusPolonius]

I never been a motion sickness type of guy, but I gotta say this thing is getting to me! However fantastic and realistic the experience is, riding roller coasters or sudden head movements making me nauseous and weird feeling. Does that ever go away, will my brain eventually get used to it or this is something that once you prone to the feeling it never goes away?

[Anonymous]

To build up a resistance to simulation sickness you need to do the following:

1) Avoid ropller coasters or any other Intense rated experiences to begin with. Start with Comfortable or Moderate experiences.

2) Play a game until you START to feel a little odd or uncomfortable or until you start to sweat and then STOP IMMEDIATELY. Press the Oculus button to bring up the Oculus menu.

3) Take a few long blinks, about half a second each one, and then remove the headset.

4) Take a LONG break, at least a few hours, preferably overnight.

5) Repeat steps 1-4.

After a while you'll notice that you'll last longer before you start to feel odd or uncomfortable and you'll be able to play Comfortable rated games and experiences without many problems. Once you get to that stage you can up the ante and start on Moderate and eventually Intense games and experiences.

What you MUST avoid doing is playing until you feel physically ill because if you do that too often your brain will associate VR with nausea and you won't be able to build up any sort of resistance to simulation sickness.

It should also be noted that people don't suffer from motion sickness in VR, simulation sickness is caused by NOT having motion when your brain is expecting it. It annoys me that people get this wrong!  😮

[falken76]

I've had my rift since August, that was 7 months ago as of this writing.  I'm still not used to it, I can't spend more than 45 minutes to an hour in the rift.  I was always the type to get motion sickness in cars so perhaps that may have something to do with it.  I don't see how using something like Dramamine would work because all it does is make your inner ear hairs stand straight so you don't feel the sway of motion in a car or boat, but some people say it works for them.

I can say this for sure, 100% of the people I've demoed my VR headset to have experienced motion sickness in it.  Especially in roller coasters and Free locomotion FPS games.  Even so, 2 additional rifts were sold as a result of those demos, even with them getting sick.

It is absolutely my belief that all these people on this forum that say they get used to it and it's no big deal are in fact the minority and not the majority or my sample of demo users would have at least one person that didn't feel sick.  Your own experience is bringing you to wonder when if ever this feeling will go away.....  VR isn't getting adopted quickly at all by AAA companies.  All of this must absolutely hinge on Motion sickness and not wanting to waste resources if ROI is questionable at best....  Well that's my assumption at least.

[Micro666]

I got my Rift + Touch controllers about 2 weeks ago, but before that my only experience of VR headsets was a brief 10 min Rift DK 2 demo for he movie Interstellar at an IMAX; about an hour on a friends HTC Vive, and a month of so of playing using a Hololens (ok that's AR not VR).

So really I've not had a lot of VR experience or time to build up immunity to sim sickness. As soon as I had my Rift and sensors all connected up, I got right into it. I installed all the freebie apps I could, and bought a couple too.

I played many games and demos, even the rollercoasters. On that first day I probably used the Rift continuously for around 2 hours. The only games to give me a sense of nausea were Lucky's Tale (when the camera moves), and also Minecraft VR (in full VR motion mode), everything else was fine for those 2 hrs.

Two days later on the Sat, I used the Rift continuously for 4 hours. Played games like Robo Recall, Superhot, Dreamdeck, more coaster, and played Lucky's Tale for around 1 hr. During those 4 hrs of play I didn't feel sick once.

Even playing Lucky's Tale two weeks later, I can feel a small sensation sometimes when the camera moves about, but nothing much. I can easily play Lucky's Tale for more than an hour now with no problems at all.

Minecraft VR....well I think I'll have to break myself in slowly.


Interestingly, my wife tried VR for the first time, and she coped with First Contact, Dreamdeck, Farlands, Into to VR, Surge, and rollercoasters. She didn't feel sick once. However as soon as she played Lucky's Tale she lasted for about 1 minute, and had to take the headset off. The camera movement in Lucky's Tale made her nauseas pretty quickly.

I think my wife will have to break herself into VR slowly... well games that move you about anyway.

Loving my Rift though!!! I bought an additional 3rd sensor to go with my Rift and Touch controllers, however so far I've only used 2 front facing sensors, and have found that it gives me a pretty decent room scale 360 experience. No real tracking issues so far, but then again my play area is around 1.7m x 2.5m, so not massive,

My intention is to get all 3 sensors wall mounted at some point...

Can't wait to see what 2017 brings 🙂

Micro666

[Anonymous]

There will be a small minority of people that won't be able to build up a resistance to simulation sickness, as there are also a small minority of people that are completely immune to it but the vast majority of people will be able to build up a resistance to it as long as they follow my instructions above and don't overdo things.

You can't rush these things.

[MariusPolonius]

Thank you all for all your tips and input. I will try most if not all of the ideas, depending on how fast will I be able to deal with it. In general I am fine with VR, just the rollecoaster experience made me nauseous and I broke out in sweat. 

Btw someone asked me for my computer specs
i7 3770K
gtx 1080
16GB DDR3
Win 10 64

[Expediter]

Yeah don't bother with roller coaster games. I can play any game with full locomotion / free movement and I don't get even the slightest bit of vr sickness. Put me in space/ zero g simulators or on a roller coaster and I can only handle 5 min. 

Just play actual games and if you like FPS, work up to full running locomotion slowly. I bet in no time you will be running around maps having fun in vr in no time. 

[DarkTenka]

1. Take it easy, work your way up to the hard games. Start with something like Lucky's Tale/Chronos/ The Climb, then start with your cockpit/racing games like Eve: Valk, Elite, Dirt Rally. Then start on your FPS/Exploration games.

2. Whenever you start to feel unwell: Stop, close your eyes, take deep breaths (forget about whats happening in game) .. take enough time to re-stabilise yourself and then continue.

3. Have balls. Don't avoid something because you think it MIGHT make you feel sick. In fact have curiosity, if it sounds like something would test your limits then do it, push your limits as far as they can go. Just remember step 2 and take an actual break if you really need to.

Most people really do adapt and can comfortably use all aspects of VR eventually. From my observations, the ones that don't are the ones that are either too scared of it or don't have enough willpower to push through it.

VR isn't just "gaming", its almost a physical sport. It requires stamina to be standing up/ interacting for room scale games yes, but also more importantly you need to train your spacial awareness and hand-eye co-ordination in a way that is very different from normal gaming in order to overcome VR Sickness.

I like to compare it to skiing, it requires a similar kind of spacial awareness and dexterity (although on a different scale) and you want to train yourself up to the more difficult runs. You don't jump on a pair of ski's and go straight down a double diamond run, you do the easy/intermediate until you are comfortable to move up. Treat VR the same.