VR is awesome, but motion sickness sucks and it can affect the rest of your day after a bad VR experience. Here are 7 ways to prevent VR motion sickness if you're new.
- Correct IPD setting
- Avoid Poorly Designed VR Experiences
- Avoid Low Resolution Experiences
- Minimize Artificial Movements
- High FPS Matters A lot
- Blow Cool Air While Experiencing VR
- Avoid Rapid Head And Body Movement
- Take Frequent Breaks
Correct IPD Setting
People have different facial dimensions and the distances between two eyes are different for everyone.
If the IPD is not properly set, it can lead to motion sickness. Modern VR technology is introducing automatic IPD adjustment to precisely align each lens to the eye to accommodate different users.
In addition, secure the headset position on the head to prevent micro image shift that can lead to discomfort
See More: High Quality Modern VR Headsets
Avoid Poor VR Experiences
Not all VR experiences are well designed. Some can definitely cause motion sickness, and it's not your fault.
Many VR platforms such as Oculus label the VR experiences with a rating:
- Comfortable
- Moderate
- Intense
Avoid VR experiences that require the user to input artificial movements such as snap head pan and teleportation.
Because the body isn't catching up to what the eyes see, and the brain has a difficult time coordinating the sensory signals, then it leads to motion sickness.
Minimize Artificial Movements
Avoiding artificial movements in VR helps a lot to prevent motion sickness. Snap head pan or sudden teleportation can really disorientate the user and lead to dizziness.
If there is any lag or FPS drop, even for just a split second can give the user very uncomfortable VR experience that leads to nauseous VR handover that can ruin the rest of your day.
Try to experience these things in a stationary position or shut your eye during panning can help reduce motion sickness.
It's a good idea to check out other users' review first before trying.
Avoid Low Resolution Experiences
Seeing low resolution inside VR is like having very poor eye sights in real life without glasses. Any time the user squint their eyes to see, it's inducing eye strain, then it leads to headache.
360 VR is great, but low resolution really impacts the experience on top of the inability to move the head around.
As VR technology improves, higher definition devices are releasing. Currently Oculus Quest 2 only feature 1832 X 1920 per eye, and that's about 3.5 megapixels.
A 20/20 human eye can see up to 576 megapixels according to Discovery, that's about 164X more resolution.
Currently, the Pimax 12K and Varjo XR are the highest resolution devices about to hit the market. Please check them out here
High FPS Matters A lot
High frame rate matters lot in VR, and any lag or micro stutter may not be an issue in traditional on-screen experiences, but makes a huge difference in VR.
Low FPS doesn't necessarily cause motion sickness, but if the computer hardware has a difficult time rendering the image for the VR, any slow image refresh rate can cause immediate sensory mismatch.
Any sensory mismatch will lead to headache and dizziness in VR
Blow Cool Air While Experiencing VR
Blowing cool air to the user while using VR can help reduce motion sickness. It's not clear why a cool breeze on your skin makes you less likely to hurl, but many nausea-prone users have reported that it stops the discomfort before it starts.
Avoid Rapid Head And Body Movement
If the VR experience isn't optimized for rapid head or body movement, please avoid doing those things inside VR.
Rapidly panning and moving without a cord attached to the VR is much better than rapid snap pan or teleportation while sitting / standing in a stationary spot.
Above all, the VR experience has to be well designed for the body to match the sensory coordination, otherwise it's going to lead to headache
Take Frequent Break
Take a break! build up the tolerance for it
VR technology isn't fully matured, and not everyone is going to like it. When you ever so slightly felt the discomfort, just take it off and take a break.
It's not worth dealing with the motion sickness that can affect the rest of your day doing real things in real life.
