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Comment by HPsquared | Hacker News Reader

I find those types of games intolerable due to motion sickness - the inner ear is at odds with what the eyes are seeing.

In-game, the aircraft's seat is constantly rotating and accelerating all over the place. The seat I'm physically sitting on is not moving. This causes a great deal of motion sickness.

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I found cockpit games to be the least nauseating since my "avatar" was seated, just like I was. The only thing moving was the view outside of the cockpit so it was like having a window into another scene. For bonus points, I would arrange the throttle and stick so they were in the same place as their virtual representations, so when I moved my hands, they matched the character's hands in the game as long as I kept them on the throttle/stick controllers.

Anything where I was "walking" around gave me the same disconnect you mentioned - my avatar was walking around but my body was seated in a chair with hands on a controller or joystick.

Have you tried doing "VR" with a large monitor or TV and a simple webcam on top? There are apps available that let you do this. Basically it just adds some basic head tracking (limited range of course) using off the shelf hardware you probably already own. I have yet to see anyone in my personal life (limited anecdotal evidence of course here) get sick from this type of "VR" and it is also much easier for your computer to run (basically just requires as much compute as the game without head tracking) since there is only one screen instead of two. Also allows you to make sure to keep a very high framerate which is the most common cause of motion sickness.

Do you have an example of a game/app that lets you do this? I've never heard of this before but I'm super interested.

I messed around with ViewTracker and FaceCamNoIR years ago before I got one of the early Oculus dev kits. You had to limit your motion a bit, but it was somewhat cool for changing the angle of perspective in flying games. But honestly it just made me want to try out VR even more.

Nowadays I haven't used any of them in a long time because the Oculus is outdated and barely usable. None of the newer options seem worth the cost for me (in money or Facebook attachment) so I haven't played with any of that in a while.

Supposedly you get much better results using a phone actually ( maybe becuase of the DoF camera?). SmoothTrack for iOS comes up ( I have not personally used it). I was already using an old phone as a webcam however for my desktop so I have the thing on a big gooseneck arm already - might try this myself!

Looks like people are saying the other issue with webcams is they are low framerate - there are dedicated devices it seems like TrackIR (more money) but I bet a phone with a decent FPS camera could work well. Theres also software called OpenTrack (and people are saying to get a high FPS webcam with low latency). Some people on reddit are even using a wiimote to reduce CPU useage supposedly.

Biggest thing though is you want the largest screen possible - otherwise you will barely be able to move your head and still be looking at the monitor (best experience I had was in a theater with 3 full imax screens side by side)

Ironically you get motion sickness on a real plane, as a passenger, for the opposite reason... you can feel the forces, but you can't really see the motion.

That's not ironic, it is perfectly consistent with the phenomena of motion sickness -- sight not correlating to motion. Irony is when Ronald Reagan got a gunshot wound when the bullet bounced off the bulletproof window and hit him in the chest.

Neither you nor GP gave an example of a traditional meaning of the word Irony. Both of the examples represent the more modern definition of situational irony as "something that is amusingly unexpected". I don't think you can say anything is not ironic under that definition. After all, everything makes sense if you understand it well enough, so any level of surprise would be ironic because what you understood pointed to one outcome and a different outcome was produced. All that is left is whether you find the difference to be amusing or not.

It is the act of 'the thing that is designed to protect you has caused your injury' that is ironic; not that it is 'amusingly unexpected'.

What is this 'traditional meaning' that you speak of?

Older usage of the word does not include amusing coincidences such as this. It used to be used to describe speech which intentionally meant the opposite of its plain meaning for humor or emphasis, such as sarcasm, or in dramatic context a situation where the audience has greater awareness than a character.

Words change and this is a meaning everyone seems to want I guess. I was just pointing out that once you go down this route, its pretty hard to differentiate between what is ironic or not because its a broad and subjective definition.

Your assertion does not make sense to me. Your definition is that the situation is ironic because a slightly broader statement of that situation is ironic? It sounds like you are just saying its ironic because it seems ironic. All that means is that it gives you a feeling which you associate with that word. The reason it seems ironic is that the unexpected outcome of a "life-saving" thing actually resulting in injury, is amusing, because it is the opposite of its intention. In fact almost every time something has a net positive influence on overall outcomes, there will be cases where some outcomes are worse. If you are shot and the surgeon goes to perform life-saving surgury, but it turns out you have an allergy to the anesthetic and it kills you, is that ironic? A doctor who was intending to save you actually killed you. I don't know about this definition but I guess its the one we're stuck with. I'll probably just call it an amusing coincidence though.

> If you are shot and the surgeon goes to perform life-saving surgury, but it turns out you have an allergy to the anesthetic and it kills you, is that ironic? A doctor who was intending to save you actually killed you.

Oh come on.

A device which was made for one purpose and one purpose only -- to stop the president from getting shot ends up getting the president shot. This is the direct opposite of the intention of the thing's existence -- hence "intentionally ... the opposite of its plain meaning".

If you want to purposefully dilute things to make a point you can do that, but it is dishonest.

I disagree. I think my original post is perfect irony.

Effect X being caused by Y and solved by Z AND X being caused by Z and solved by Y is irony.

Dictionary definition: “ a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects”

You selected the relatively modern definition from the dictionary. That usage is fairly recent and is very broad in definition. The verbal and literary definitions are usually the ones that pedants are protective of. I specifically said that it fits that modern definition. I was actually criticizing the parent for calling out your usage, as if his example was more ironic than yours.

Solution: wear a VR headset on the plane which displays the horizon in a way that makes motion visible, and keeps a book in the center of your view :)

That's actually a great idea for a niche app. Could probably work for seasickness and carsickness as well.

It was inspired by motion sickness prevention glasses I heard about. They are hollow with water inside halfway to provide a horizon that reflects real motion. I think the perk to the VR thing is to be able to watch movies or read books without that little line getting in your way. But I don't know how pronounced that line is.

Edit: Interesting, the glasses actually have hollow rims with a blue fluid.

It seems like the kind of thing a small number of people would be interested in, but they'd be happy to spend a lot if it actually works.

I wonder if the smallest delay or lag rendering this horizon line would make things even worse. I guess this thing needs to be very timely.

You can get motion sickness in a real plane as a pilot too. In flight school I saw many cases, in the summer they used to fly early morning and late afternoon to avoid strong thermal currents. The situation is more similar to seasick on rough seas, everything is moving and sometimes in unpredictable manner.

Is that why I got motion sickness I wonder? I spent a couple of hours trying out various vr experiences and after sitting to look at a video of whales, standing to play various first person shooters I sat down to play a racing game and got motion sickness. Affected me for the rest of the day and really put me off vr, which is a shame as I thought it was incredible at first.

It's a big part of the "comfort" rating that Oculus has in their store. Some games have a lot of movement (e.g. a table tennis simulator), but as long as the movement matches up there's minimal risk of motion sickness.

I even can't handle first person shooters where the camera moves around using a control stick (the sensation of movement is unpleasant). Some games solve this with a mode where you sort of "snap" from one position to another rather than "moving".

VR motion sickness is a tricky problem. Much like regular motion sickness, some people get over it after a period of time, and some never do.

It's highly dependent on the type of VR content you're looking at. For most people, the moment the camera or your character moves at odds with your real head, they get uncomfortable. My job is developing VR stuff and still when head tracking gets out of sync for more than a second, I get dizzy and have a headache the rest of the day.

If you want to continue with VR, I'd say stick with standing experiences. Try out the racing game now and then, but quit at the first sign of discomfort. You may find that your brain gets used to the conflicting input over time, or it might not. No way to tell without trying it.

Interesting! I just assumed if the latency was consistently good enough that motion sickness wouldn't be a problem. I'd feel dumb buying a fancy VR rig only to not be able to play for fear of barfing all over my keyboard.

I played a lot of Descent in the 90s and beyond, and got really used to 6dof flying, which at the time some folks couldn't stomach, so perhaps I'd do OK.

Same. Then I tried Overload VR (Descent remake) with the Oculus and lasted about 50 seconds...

Overload is the only game that has ever made me motion sick in VR.

Sounds like you need a motion simulator.

For example:

https://www.yawvr.com/

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