Hacker News Reader

Comment by kemiller | Hacker News Reader

I don't think it's a content issue as much as a comfort issue. Literally everyone I know who bought a VR headset, high-end or low-end, has said more or less the same thing: It's impressive, but it starts to hurt after an hour or so. Hard to get and stay immersed when you're in physical discomfort.

View on HN

It's not just physical comfort though that's definitely a part of it. It's also how fiddly it can be to find the sweetspot where image is not so blurry. There's either screen door or mura effects depending on screen technology. There's the clunkiness of the controls on most games. There's high potential for motion sickness. Most games require quite a lot of space which a lot of people won't have. It isolates the player from the surrounding environment which is not always an adequate position to be in. On games with more movement (boxing, beat saber and other rhythm games, etc) there's the heat that accumulates in the headset, which is not only uncomfortable but can make the lenses blur and the headset to start slipping. So many issues. Some smaller, some subjective, some dependent on player, but any given player will have a stack of issues to deal with any time they hop into the virtual world.

Agreed. Uncomfortable in many ways:

- Heavy on the head, making the neck sore after a while.

- Press into the face, which can also get sore.

- Seals around the face, which is claustrophobic.

- Insulates head/face, making hot and sweaty.

- Even high resolution headsets look pixelated, making things like reading / trying to see details irritating.

- VR motion sickness is very real, (with guides on how to develop your VR legs... which takes multiple days of careful practice).

Despite current headsets being excellent from a technical perspective, IMO they still need to get significantly ligher and more physically comfortable, significantly higher resolution, and ideally solve VR motion sickness in some way...

It's also way harder to jump in/out of a game session. I have to take a dramamine, clear the area, put on the damn thing, make sure my focal calibration didn't get messed up, then actually play... and if something beckons me mid-session it's a chore to take off the headset and put it back on again.

Versus with regular gaming, if my phone buzzes or the laundry goes off, pausing the game and putting down the controller takes two seconds.

One thing I also miss is being able to just jump from the regular game on a monitor into VR and back. Star Wars: Squadrons is the only game I can think of that even has VR as an in-game option to toggle. Everything else requires a full restart of the game to switch to VR or even the purchase of a separate VR version of the game.

That's something that should have been handled much smoother, especially given the comfort issue that might force people to not play everything in VR. But alas, VR support in regular monitor games is extremely rare to begin with and that area of VR never really got much support.

As somebody who's deep into the VR space, most of that is just bad ergonomic design by the headset makers, as a result of them trying to make headsets look (rather than actually be) lighter in the marketing material.

For the kind of design that's actually comfortable, look at third party suppliers like BOBOVR, which have various designs that have actually learned from what's done in other industries. For example, halo strap designs (like https://www.bobovr.com/products/s3-pro) distribute the weight around the head like a hard hat/welding mask instead of clamping things to your face, making the results immensely more comfortable.

There are comfort solutions but if there's nothing compelling enough for you to do so, you probably won't seek them out. (fwiw Globular Cluster is the general solution for Quests!)

I just got a new different headset (Quest Pro, coming from an Index) and I had to figure out how to make it comfortable enough, because you're right that out of the box, they rarely are. (Except Index, which is still one of the best all-around headsets, even years on)

But I figured out a comfort fix because I'm hooked: I'm in VR 10-20 hours a week these days, because I use it to transcend my physical body and hang out with friends around the world. There are even sleep worlds in VRChat where people literally sleep in VR! Also, less intentionally, sometimes you're hanging out and someone passes out on the couch and starts lightly snoring. As above, so below. :)

In some ways, sci-fi is here! It's just, like bars, beaches, or boardgames, not for everyone.

That sounds like a great tool for quality of life improvement for lets say disabled people or very old. A thousand times better than sad empty look down the street, if they are even capable of looking out of window.

For regular folks, you must have messed something up in your real life pretty badly to waste it in VR in such ways. Real life can have amazing experiences, adventures, passions, extreme sports, experiencing different cultures through real social interaction. But it requires actual effort to get there, not just throwing some money at the problem. Efforts build character, lack of them shows.

If all that sounds old school, boy am I glad to belong there.

While comfort is an important issue with a lot of low-hanging-fruit solutions (top-straps!!!), it's a hole every serious VR user will mod themselves out of. There are numerous third party solution to make existing headsets more comfortable, be it complete strap replacement, facial interfaces or top straps. Even alternative headsets like the BigScreenBeyond or Xreal that are substantially lighter and smaller exist. The option are out there.

> It's impressive, but it starts to hurt after an hour or so.

The issue is that "impressive" wanes after a few weeks or months, while comfort tends to improve by additional adjustments and customization. What VR is missing is long-term content, the stuff you use VR for after the initial wow-factor has vanished, the stuff that takes advantage of the 360° 3D screen in front of your eyes and the 6DOF controls without just being gimmicky.

That's one issue I think Apple handled much better than Meta. On VisionPro you have full 2D app support, so most of the apps just work. It might sound boring, but VR needs to embrace that kind of boring when it wants to survive long term, since boring stuff is what people do with computers 24/7.

On Meta Quest things are much more of a mess. There is no clear vision for what's the headset is actually good for. You have a few lackluster games here, a few exercise apps there, a "Metaverse" that still feels woefully incomplete, basic 2D app support without Google Play Store, no easy way to watch movies and a whole lot of other half done ideas.

I agree with this being a user and a VR dev myself. A couple of things that make the experience somewhat tedious is that you can't really get comfortable if you are on a sofa and then decide to lay down and turn side-to-side. Which you can just watching a movie or playing a game casually using a TV etc.

  Another reason personally also, it is more tedious to develop games for VR wearing and taking off the HMD all the time. I can imagine this would deter other developers not wanting to make VR games, it's already a slow painstaking process to make games already.
 
  I think also the amount of apps you have to switch on your desktop if using PC also means you keep taking the HMD on and off before you begin to play. Too many barriers to entry when it should be a convenience thing, wear and go!
 
 Not everybody is physically fit/young/healthy or wants to just do physical gaming which i think leads to lack on incentive to use VR too. I personally play most games now via my monitor or projector screen and use VR for simracing as there really is no comparisson here. So VR Great for sim cockpit type games, flying and racing but for everything else, it's back to good old pancake mode monitor instead.

So there's now edu-tech start-ups working on VR training. Which does sound cool, like provide an immersive experience in hospital room with different patient scenarios for example. My spouse got to try one recently and it sounded like a mixed bag in practice. Lots of problems with people feeling sick, not having glasses that fit under the goggles etc.

An hour is much more than I can do. I want to play in VR, but every time I try again I regret it. And it only takes about 15 minutes for the pain to start (and a couple days at least to subside). I really truly love playing Beat Saber, but I just can't ever let myself do it again (until and unless headsets get dramatically lighter).

It's not even comfort for me, it's the hygiene of it. Touching greasy skin and then sharing... ick. You really need a personal device for everyone which is pricy.

I got these little fabric covers ("VR cover") for my HMD so the cleanliness aspect is a bit better managed. A couple people can use the first one and then I can swap it to a new, clean one, etc.

To give you one counterpoint, I can wear my Quest 2 (with upgraded head strap) for hours and not get tired or uncomfortable, and I suffer from motion sickness normally too.

The one trick though is that I drink about a liter of water every hour I'm using the headset, even when doing low impact games like golf. The headset is super dehydrating, and I suspect that is the cause of many people's discomfort.

You have to have a bottle nearby that you can drink by feel.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com