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Comment by EngineerBetter | Hacker News Reader

A handful of games developers I know that have used Oculus Rift complained of sickness after 20 minutes or so. Apparently it's better with recent revisions of the hardware, but to put it in perspective the prior revision had one chap needing to lie down in a dark room he felt so awful!

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I played Valkyrie on the DK1, it was awful, I felt sick for about two hours afterwards.

I played it on the DK2 about a year later. I felt a slight twinge, especially when the head-tracking hitched, but afterwards I felt fine.

Also played a racing game on the DK2 around the same time with no ill effect. I think the head-tracking really helps here.

When my mate finally got in DK1(and we finally got HL2 working with it) I found the load a terrible user experience. Going from head tracking and immersion to a sudden frozen image that is fixed in your view while your head moves.. Crazy vertigo. I didn't really get sick from it, but it definitely was not the most fun I have had playing a game.

These things will get sorted out relatively quickly though I imagine.

I imagine that's the kind of thing that can be solved with more design experience - some kind of low-computing-load "loading room" that at least gives you control of the camera, for example.

I had that a few years ago with an earlier red-blue 3d system, and it was terrible for 20-30 minutes. I had to lie down.

It's also known as "Doom-Induced Motion Sickness" or DIMS. (1)

Motion sickness in a car or boat is caused by a conflict - the inner ear says "you're moving" and the eyes say "you're at rest".

With a game, this is reversed - the eyes say "you're moving" and the inner ear says "nope!". This was worse, or at least unfamiliar in a bad way.

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/dec/19/video-ga...

http://kotaku.com/5869607/how-motion-sickness-can-ruin-games...

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.254333-Doom-ma...

This effect goes back way before FPS video games.

Eg, I got this badly as a kid in the early 80's at Disney World, in the O Canada! Circle-Vision 360° theatre. Within seconds of starting the movie, I felt the whole room moving around and I nearly hurled. Luckily since the room is stationary I just sat down with my eyes closed for the rest of the film and recovered pretty quickly afterwards.

Many shortcuts that we normally get away with when looking at 3D on a screen become really jarring in VR. The following article lists a few interesting ones that are often forgotten, such as shading:

http://qz.com/192874/is-the-oculus-rift-designed-to-be-sexis...

Ignore the clickbaity title, the article has good info.

> one chap needing to lie down in a dark room

Sounds like the standard reaction. The real horror stories are about people who are wasted for days after trying Oculus Rift.

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