Comment by Hasknewbie | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Hasknewbie | Hacker News Reader

I'm on the "will flop like 3D TV" bandwagon, but for another reason than just the lack of killer app and high price. I think a lot of faithful are just trying to wish away a significant barrier to entry: motion sickness.

I know lowering the lag reduces this issue, but it does not completely solve it.

I have a friend who has an interest in VR so he tried the various models being demoed in shopping malls when he could find them in the US and the EU. Always the same problem: motion sickness. So he would ask the people managing the demo kits and would usually get the same answer, a bit more than 50% of the people who try have that same problem. Then a few months ago I came across an article that was essentially raising the same point (can't source it, sorry. The number they gave was closer to 40%).

So basically it seems about half of the target audience asked to shell out a small fortune will have "puking on the carpet" as their most memorable VR moment... Not really a recipe for success.

I'm guessing your friend tried the PSVR or Oculus Rift with heavy use of a controller while seated.

Having tracked hands, moving around (instead of turning with a controller) and using teleport (or just room scale 1:1 movement) reduces the percent of dizzy people to zero. If you use slow artificial locomotion with comfort features (e.g. FoV reduction), that number is about 5%.

I am aware that these prevent nausea or dizziness from happening, but what does it say about the viability of the medium if all of its content must have that kind of constraints? VR allows experiencing so-called 'presence', except in practice said presence must not match anything else than that of your actual body at that moment. We end up quite far removed from the "freely explore virtual worlds" that VR is marketing.

I'm not sure how are you interpreting the "constraints". Yes, it's difficult to adapt existing games to VR, but it's possible. Having proper artificial locomotion for 95% of the public and comfortable teleport based motion for the remaining 5% sounds like a good compromise.

That's not a separate point from "lack of a killer app" -- most motion sickness is a result of bad content, that violates rules of good perceptual design.

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