Comment by JabavuAdams | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JabavuAdams | Hacker News Reader

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VR Dev since 2014, here.

The content is what makes people sick, not the hardware (these days). I haven't gotten sick in VR since Rift DK2. Been using the Vive since. No sickness in The Lab. Recently tried playing Everest VR -- queasy due to lots of flying, slow camera movement. Apollo 11 was a lot better, but still had some iffy swooping camera moves.

Basically, you can not make the same kind of game for VR that you would for non-VR, but developers keep trying and they end up making players sick.

Finally, there's a problem with maximizers vs. satisficers and VR. I would say that it's not about comparing specs and buying the "best" device -- although maybe that's a problem of price point. Instead of looking for flaws, allow yourself to suspend disbelief. This requires good content.

Every single game and experience in Valve's "The Lab" is excellent. On Rift, Robo Recall is excellent. Very few games reach this level of polish (graphics, audio, HCI).

Look at the original Star Wars (A New Hope). The special FX are shite by today's standards. If we were just to compare bullet points of features, it would be garbage. Let yourself be transported.

People get sick mostly because of the neurological issues associated with keeping eyes focused on objects at fixed lengths even though they are perceived as far away in the VR world.

Vergence-accommodation conflict:

https://medium.com/vrinflux-dot-com/vergence-accommodation-c...

If this were true, why can I stay in The Lab for hours, but I get sick in Everest VR in minutes, on the same hardware? Why did the dozens of VR devs I have talked to get sick on 2014-2015 hardware, playing tech-demos, but they don't on 2018 hardware, playing games designed for comfort?

Also, lack of positional sensing (versus angular) on mobile VR devices is a much bigger contributor to discomfort.

I'm not sure why you're so keen on vergence accommodation, but it seems that you're focusing on a tiny effect, when the large effects are known.

Just because there's little in the peer-reviewed literature, does not mean that this is poorly understood by practitioners.

I come from a neuroscience background hence my bias. It's the fundamental way in which we focus on objects in the real world. It is not functioning normally at all with a headset on.

No one Ive met can stay in VR for hours regardless of game. Most of my friends who have tried or have VR devices get sick after 45 minutes. Admittedly they are not VR enthusiasts or hard core gamers however.

That sounds pretty anecdotal for a scientist.

Not a scientist. I'm a developer who has been working in the neuroscience field for 15 years, specifically with brain stimulation devices.

I'm not saying this qualifies as any sort of degree nor was I saying you should count my anecdotes as facts.

It is simply my belief that the vergence-accommodation conflict needs to be solved before VR will be adopted by the masses. I think vergence-accommodation neurological process should stay coupled as it does in nature to provide a completely natural feeling and non strained experience for the user. The research here is scant. Perhaps someone is aware of some ongoing research on this topic.

I'm curious -- which hardware devices? I find Vive and (current-gen) Oculus Rift the most comfortable. The biggest issue for me playing a well-designed game is fogging up due to sweating.

EDIT> I have a relatively low tolerance for motion sickness.

They were Vive headsets. From the moment I put on the helmet something feels off and I can't quite focus on objects comfortably without some kind of strain. I've learned over time to let my eyes just relax and not try to focus but it still gets me after about 30-45 minutes. If I'm in Big screen watching a movie it's not a big deal because my eyes aren't moving around focusing on different objects in a room so much. But if I'm out walking around in Skyrim I feel sick after about 30 minutes.

What are the walking controls in Skyrim? Any kind of locomotion that is not strictly tied to the player's movement is a big no-no for comfort. This is a huge problem for the kinds of FPS games that people want to make for VR. The fundamental problem is that you're not moving but your whole field of view is telling you that you are.

I've read that this is a problem for astronauts IRL when they're in free-fall next to a slowly rotating or panning object that occupies a lot of their field of view. So, that would be a kind of existence proof that it's not vergence, but rather optical flow that is decoupled from the subject's actual motion.

It sucks, but basically FPS games are out for VR, until you can actually run around, leap, etc.

EDIT> Another example -- during a scene in Apollo 11 where the camera (and hence my view) was orbiting the spaceraft while my IRL body was still, I started to feel queasy. I was able to reduce the sensation by looking at the growing space-craft as it started to fill more and more of my field of view -- it was relatively stationary to me. This again speaks to optical flow, and motion that is out of whack with what the player's ears are telling them. Another cheat along these lines is to use a cockpit that is fixed relative to the player's view to reduce the amount of visual area that is giving wrong motion cues.

EDIT2> I'd be interested to know whether you can last longer in a game that uses only your own IRL motion + instant teleport. So, no thumbsticks, mouse, keyboard locomotion -- as these are all known chunder inducers. Unfortunately non-VR games with bolt-on VR are like the worst-case for comfort, but also often the games that we really want to see in VR.

Vergence accommodation conflict is a contributor but not anywhere near a primary source.

The jury is still out on that. There simply is no research to prove or disprove what you or I are saying.

My educated guess is that it actually is quite important and the key to making VR more comfortable for long term use.

I think it is the primary issue. I am a software developer who works in the neuroscience field. I am not an MD but I have read enough research to know you cannot definitively say what the cause is, and that disrupting such natural processes in the brain are likely to have consequences. To me it seems obvious that it's the primary source of the headaches and nausea commonly associated with VR.

For example I have certainly felt sick in the real world from roller coasters. But I have never felt the type of sick I get when I put on a VR helmet. It's another feeling all together. And it comes on differently than any other sick feeling I've had. This is anecdotal of course. I digress.

If VR doesn't solve this issue, VR doesn't go anywhere IMHO. But it's obvious they will solve it in time and as someone who closely follows the field it seems to be one of their primary concerns.

The primary engineering challenge of VR is motion sickness caused by a mismatch of visual and inner ear information, which is extremely well established as causing people to throw up in a wide range of contexts outside of VR. The principles behind modern VR tech are decades old - the reason we're getting consumer VR now, in the late 2010s, is because commodity computing hardware is now fast enough to render scenes and track heads with a low enough latency to prevent motion sickness. However, low hardware latency is necessary but not sufficient to prevent motion sickness - the application developer also has a responsibility not to throw the user around in virtual space without corresponding real-world movement. A great many VR applications do not respect this principle - two such programs were mentioned by JabavuAdams at the top of the thread. Hence, the primary cause of nausea on VR is motion sickness caused by content.

Yes, even in a decent VR experience you will get headaches after an hour or two, possibly or even probably from vergence-accomodation conflict. But that's entirely secondary - you won't last more than a couple minutes on a virtual roller coaster.

I've been working in VR and AR for nearly a decade. I've even built my own headsets. The experiences that make people sick are always low framerate. I've put people through experiences pegged at 90FPS for hours at a time with no nausea.

Perfectly valid point. I still think vergence/accommodation needs to be solved as an important key step in VR dev for more comfortable experiences. Its harder to do than just upping frame rates.

You need foveated rendering to start with but im sure you know the rest. If you want VR, well you need actual VR. Its not enough to trick your vision superficially. You have trick the whole system. I digress.

Foveated rendering doesn't solve vergence accommodation. Your eye will still be focused at infinity regardless of where you are looking, you'll just have the illusion that the foreground or background are out of focus. Eye tracking plus dynamic lenses (perhaps liquid lenses) or real light fields are necessary.

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