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Comment by vegabook | Hacker News Reader

"Sick from Doom"?? I don't remember anybody getting sick from Wolfenstein or Doom. Controversy around (for the time) violent graphic realism? Sure. Seasickness? No.

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I was one of the developers on the original Doom and got so sick from playing it that it motivated me to debug my code faster. The phases were no problemo, sweating, farting, nausea, then that was it: gotta lie down and hug the cold, firm floor.

I eventually became less sensitive to it. I imagine the same will happen with VR after we get our "VR legs".

Bonus: "VR legs" have been shown to carry over into meatspace. As in, there are VR users reporting "I can read in the car for the first time!" But, it takes a lot of slow, careful build-up to do well.

Conversely, if someone has bad experiences and tries to power-through them anyway repeatedly, it can build up an aversion similar to a "bad tequila night" and ruin VR for that person permanently.

Thanks for making Doom! :)

Interesting info that I was not aware of. I guess I was just a casual player, not a developer like yourself doing it all day long (super-kudos btw - you changed the gaming world). All I remember about Wolfenstein and then Doom, is the wonder, the wow. I personally was amazed that this 3d rendering, basic as it was, was even possible, at the time. We were well before any 3d graphics acceleration. This was bog standard frame buffer VGA, or even, for Wolfenstein, CGA? Correct me if I'm wrong. Silicon Graphics workstations were super-exotic!

I suppose VR has a higher hurdle-rate because the nausea thing has been pre-telegraphed by early adopters of suboptimal beta tech. But I have no doubt that immersive technology is the future.

https://www.google.com/search?q=doomsickness&oq=doomsickness...

Oh, i did. Not enough to keep me from playing, but when it hit, it hit hard. Hard enough that i still get minor flashbacks even from screenshots. Surprisingly, the first game where i did not have that problem was, of all things, Descent. Must have been something specific about the movement and/or projection.

People getting nauseous from first person games was and still is fairly common.

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