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Medicine

Cybersickness Could Spell an Early Death For the Metaverse 135

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Daily Beast: Luis Eduardo Garrido couldn't wait to test out his colleague's newest creation. Garrido, a psychology and methodology researcher at Pontificia Universidad Catolica Madre y Maestra in the Dominican Republic, drove two hours between his university's campuses to try a virtual reality experience that was designed to treat obsessive-compulsive disorder and different types of phobias. But a couple of minutes after he put on the headset, he could tell something was wrong. "I started feeling bad," Garrido told The Daily Beast. He was experiencing an unsettling bout of dizziness and nausea. He tried to push through but ultimately had to abort the simulation almost as soon as he started. "Honestly, I don't think I lasted five minutes trying out the application," he said.

Garrido had contracted cybersickness, a form of motion sickness that can affect users of VR technology. It was so severe that he worried about his ability to drive home, and it took hours for him to recover from the five-minute simulation. Though motion sickness has afflicted humans for thousands of years, cybersickness is a much newer condition. While this means that many of its causes and symptoms are understood, other basic questions -- like how common cybersickness is, and whether there are ways to fully prevent it -- are only just starting to be studied. After Garrido's experience, a colleague told him that only around 2 percent of people feel cybersickness. But at a presentation for prospective students, Garrido watched as volunteers from the audience walked to the front of an auditorium to demo a VR headset -- only to return shakily to their seats. "I could see from afar that they were getting sweaty and kind of uncomfortable," he recalled. "I said to myself, 'Maybe I'm not the only one.'"

As companies like Meta (nee Facebook) make big bets that augmented reality and virtual reality technology will go mainstream, the tech industry is still trying to figure out how to better recruit users to the metaverse, and get them to stay once there. But experts worry that cybersickness could derail these plans for good unless developers find some remedies soon.
"The issue is actually something of a catch-22: In order to make VR more accessible and affordable, companies are making devices smaller and running them on less powerful processors," adds the report. "But these changes introduce dizzying graphics -- which inevitably causes more people to experience cybersickness."

"At the same time, a growing body of research suggests cybersickness is vastly more pervasive than previously thought -- perhaps afflicting more than half of all potential users." When Garrido conducted his own study of 92 people, the results indicated that more than 65 percent of people experienced symptoms of cybersickness -- a sharp contrast to the 2 percent estimate Garrido had been told.

He says that these results should be concerning for developers. "If people have this type of bad experience with something, they're not going to try it again," Garrido said.
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Cybersickness Could Spell an Early Death For the Metaverse

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  • This is why (Score:4, Interesting)

    by aerogems ( 339274 ) on Saturday September 24, 2022 @10:44PM (#62911513)

    I personally figure AR is going to eat VRs lunch. You get about 90% of the benefits without the issues like described in the story. I'm guessing it won't be too long before contact lenses with AR displays built-in are commonplace.

    • but isn't the problem with VR trying to visually simulate motion that the body itself is not experiencing? I would think adding such cues on top of a view of the real world would have same effect?

    • I'm guessing it won't be too long before contact lenses with AR displays built-in are commonplace.

      LOL!

      How would such a contact lens be powered? Where does the PCB with the CPU go?

      Me? I'm guessing that most people won't want to wear contact lenses all day. Or put on VR headsets. The Metaverse will always be a niche thing for practical reasons, not technical ones.

      • by Joce640k ( 829181 ) on Sunday September 25, 2022 @12:34AM (#62911663) Homepage

        How would such a contact lens be powered? Where does the PCB with the CPU go?

        And more importantly: Will it use your eyeball as a heatsink?

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by vivian ( 156520 )

          Simple - just beam microwave energy into your eyeball. What could possibly go wrong?

        • by tsetem ( 59788 )

          And more importantly: Will it use your eyeball as a heatsink?

          Why do I have a craving for microwaved hard boiled eggs now?

      • I'm guessing it won't be too long before contact lenses with AR displays built-in are commonplace.

        LOL!

        How would such a contact lens be powered? Where does the PCB with the CPU go?

        Me? I'm guessing that most people won't want to wear contact lenses all day. Or put on VR headsets. The Metaverse will always be a niche thing for practical reasons, not technical ones.

        A lot of people already wear contacts all day long. My eye doctor keeps telling me I should wear glasses, but they don't correct my vision as well as contacts. If you could fit AR into contacts without frying my eyeball, sure why not; I'll feel like Ethan Hunt. Wearing a big, clunky display on my head all day, that's just not going to fly, though. Maybe for an hour while a play a game, but not eight hours while I work.

      • It's already been done, so you can look at how they solved the issue. I was just figuring in maybe 1-2 more decades they'll have gotten it down to a point where it can be mass produced on a ubiquitous scale. But, for such a small display, I wouldn't be surprised if you could power it off of body heat.

      • How would such a contact lens be powered? Where does the PCB with the CPU go?

        The Microsoft implementation will be a tiny ribbon connector on the contact lens, leading to an Intel NUC stepped to your forehead. The Apple implementation will be replacing your natural organ with a proprietary iBall containing all of the electronics.

      • In 1980, someone made this exact response to somebody else describing the modern phone.
    • no thanks, i dont want technology attached to my body, not even wearables, not embedded in my clothing, or accessories and surely not contact lenses. i dont even use a wristwatch or jewlry, i have a smartphone i occasionally carry in my pocket and i am leary of that considering all the videos i seen of smartphones igniting into flames that resemble blowtorches in people's pockets,
      • Low doses of radiation promote cancer-capable cell

        Low doses of radiation equivalent to three CT scans, which are considered safe, give cancer-capable cells a competitive advantage over normal cells in healthy tissue, scientists have discovered. Researchers at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and the University of Cambridge studied the effects of low doses of radiation in the esophagus of mice.

        The team found that low doses of radiation increase the number of cells with mutations in p53, a well-known genetic cha

        • They're talking about low doses of ionising radiation, not the non-ionising radiation used for communications. What you should be taking away from this is that it's fine to keep your cell phone in your pocket, just don't make your clothes out of bananas.
      • You realize that the sun emits radiation, and without it life couldn't exist, right? There are radio waves flying around the air 24/7, which is radiation; and not just from radio stations, wifi, and cell towers, but cosmic background radiation as well. If you use a microwave, that's radiation. You emit radiation yourself in the form of infrared heat. Whether you like it or not, you are bathed in radiation all day, every day.

    • I personally figure AR is going to eat VRs lunch. You get about 90% of the benefits without the issues like described in the story. I'm guessing it won't be too long before contact lenses with AR displays built-in are commonplace.

      The issues described in the story are typical of anyone doing something that messes with any senses the first time. When I got my VR headset I felt exactly the same and instantly had buyers remorse. That lasted maybe a day or two. By the end of the week I was playing games which not only smoothly changed perspective but also forced a smooth change in orientation which is by far one of the leading causes of induced cybersickness.

      Honestly it took me longer to get used to wearing glasses for the first time. I

      • Sounds like when the computer game Descent came out back in '94. Many gamers reported dizzy feelings.

        For some reason I never did even though I am easily made dizzy. I'll have to try these VR goggles

        Do the first-person multirotor drone flyers ever experience vertigo? I see a line of people with VR helmets on racing drones around a figure 8 course, not sure how they're not all puking.

        What about pilots flying at night under instruments?

        • I had mild symptoms of nausea when I first played Descent but by the second day it was gone. My roommate at the time tried to watch me play and had a much stronger reaction and it never got better. Being the one in control seems to help a lot and your brain can adjust given time. The worst thing to do is try and push through the feeling. It is common knowledge in VR (I play Elite Dangerous) that if you start getting sick, quit immediately and wait a day until your brain has had some time to learn. I tried t
        • "Do the first-person multirotor drone flyers ever experience vertigo?"

          I fly FPV drones and I have to admit that in the beginning I preferred to sit down due to a tendency to have your body respond to what you were seeing rather than what you were feeling. The result of this was that you tend to lean and sway in response to the visual input, sometimes to the point of losing your balance. After a while though you adapt to this and now I always stand when flying FPV without any real issues -- my brain has b

        • It got me at first, but I got to where I could handle it. Even Wolfenstein 3D made me sick at first.
      • by jvkjvk ( 102057 )

        >65% of people definitely do not have cybersickness. At least not for more than maybe the first 2 or 3 times putting on a headset.

        Well that's comforting then! Only cutting your potential customers in half based on the fact they can't use your product without vomiting.

        In what world is your statement a *good thing*?

    • AR for the near future will just be VR with camera passthrough. It will generally be standing up and wireless, so that helps, but latency and vergence accommodation conflict are still a thing.

  • Iâ(TM)m certain that most implementations of virtual reality are likely to make me sick.

    • And I love how we need a whole new term for it. 'Motion sickness' wasn't cool enough? "VR makes people nauseous." wasn't click-baity enough, I guess.

  • by locater16 ( 2326718 ) on Saturday September 24, 2022 @10:51PM (#62911527)
    Cybersickness has been known about for well over a decade, including how many people it affects, and is still an engineering challenge.

    The metaverse hype comes Mark Lizarberg and others out to huff paint, not the people that actually make VR/AR stuff.
    • by Geoffrey.landis ( 926948 ) on Saturday September 24, 2022 @11:08PM (#62911547) Homepage

      Cybersickness has been known about for well over a decade, including how many people it affects, and is still an engineering challenge.

      Oh, at least that-- known for several decades, I'd say.

      I'd assumed that higher refresh rates and lower VR lag had solved that problem. I guess not.

      • by DamnOregonian ( 963763 ) on Saturday September 24, 2022 @11:22PM (#62911581)

        I'd assumed that higher refresh rates and lower VR lag had solved that problem. I guess not.

        Has for me. I'm not sure what they're doing their demo on, but I have no problems with my Valve Index.
        I did use an older oculus once, and it was fucking terrible.

        • Why don't they just call it "VR motion sickness" instead of putting "cyber" in front of everything. If I need to read half the article to finally understand that cybersickness isn't a new VPN computer virus then the name isn't very descriptive.

          That said, I do understand that some immersive games can trigger some phobias. I've had a few episodes of acrophobia trigger from high and narrow places just playing Breath of the Wild, Xenoblade, and Super Mario Odyssey on my TV. I can imagine a VR headset would i

          • Why don't they just call it "VR motion sickness" instead of putting "cyber" in front of everything.

            Fuck if I know. This is actually the first I've ever heard it referred to as anything other than "VR motion sickness"

            Any version of motion sickness is debilitating, even if caused just playing computer games.

            Absolutely.
            The first time I played Skyrim VR I had a real good bout of motion sickness. Only that first time though.
            I found that higher refresh rates helped me a lot. Upgrading to a video card that could pump 120hz to the headset was worth it for me.

            • I was calling it "VR-sick[ness]" back in '95 when I observed that some of us could play Descent, and some of us could not. It crops up in other games, but that remains the #1 example. Literally most people cannot handle playing that game on a monitor of any size without getting urpy.

          • Why don't they just call it "VR motion sickness" instead of putting "cyber" in front of everything.

            I think we should call it "Metasickness"

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          It's not just the frame rate, it's how consistent it is. If you get a solid 120 fps but occasional drops to 60 fps, it's going to trigger motion sickness in a lot of people.

          How many developers, especially ones working in the Metaverse, can ensure their software maintains a constant 120 fps under all conditions?

          Back in the day we had "lag bombs". In some FPS games like Quake you could make other people's computers lag by using weapons that made lots of particle effects, causing their frame rate to drop. That

          • It's not just the frame rate, it's how consistent it is. If you get a solid 120 fps but occasional drops to 60 fps, it's going to trigger motion sickness in a lot of people.

            Don't have a SteamVR compatible headset, I see :P

            They do this nifty trick to interpolate motion between frames if the frametime drops too far. It's pretty neat, and it works really well.
            Means an application can run at a variable framerate somewhere around 80-90, and it'll output 120 of smooth video.

            But no, consistency really isn't the problem. In fact, it's hard to put one's finger on exactly what the problem is.
            Like I said, it seems to go away at higher framerates. Even jarring "lag bombs" as you cal

      • by Miamicanes ( 730264 ) on Sunday September 25, 2022 @12:09AM (#62911645)

        90-120hz doesn't even come CLOSE.

        Just to eliminate VISIBLE "sloshing" (with 1-frame latency between sensing motion and updating the display in response), you need more than 400hz.

        How high does the framerate need to go in order to fully eliminate not only "visible" sloshing/lag, but eliminate it from peripheral vision as well? That's a good question, and nobody really knows. The fundamental problem is, even if you don't consciously "see" lag in peripheral vision, your brain notices it & cranks up your stress hormones.

        Optimized rendering via gaze-tracking might make a scene "look" better, but it doesn't help to prevent VR sickness. Some argue it actually makes the problem WORSE. Subconsciously, your brain notices the scene changing as areas away from your gaze get their detail reduced, it registers as "motion seen out of the corner of your eye", and your brain hits the metaphorical "Danger!" button... because, for most of the human race's evolution, peripheral motion has historically MEANT "danger" (like something sneaking up on you).

        This is why immersive VR is a dead end. Cameras, displays, and GPUs capable of 1000hz+ framerates at a resolution equivalent to a 32" 1080p display 20" from your face are years away. Companies like Meta are doing small, annual, incremental updates the way HTC used to do for Windows Mobile phones, and what we REALLY need is for someone to "pull a Google" and put out the VR equivalent of the original Nexus One... a hardware device that raises the bar SO HIGH (yet, in retrospect, still seems staggeringly inadequate), it utterly BLOWS AWAY the 5-year roadmaps of literally EVERYONE and forces everyone to go through that level of profound and rapid advancement. And, given the de-facto death of Moore's Law, it's not clear that it's even POSSIBLE to pull off a few successive years of leapfrogging advancement anymore.

        The main advantage of using a device like Magic Leap or HoloLens is, the majority of your surroundings AREN'T "filtered" through lag-inducing capture-and-display pipelines. You look through the lens, and see your surroundings in realtime. Your brain isn't quite HAPPY if the rendered overlay doesn't quite sync with your surroundings... but it's more willing to tolerate anomalies without throwing you into all-out VR sickness the way immersive VR does.

        Let's suppose you're playing something tame... like chess, but in VR, with the chessboard rendered in 3D onto some placeholder object on the table in front of you. With a device like Magic Leap or HoloLens, the majority of your surroundings are... whatever is in the room with you, keeping you grounded in reality. You might see the chessboard seemingly slosh around a little as you turn your head, but it registers in your mind as, "the overlaid chessboard is sloshing", not "something is dangerously wrong with my environment, surroundings, and reality". Try the same stunt with immersive VR, and even WITHOUT FPS-like immersive movement unaccompanied by the sensation of motion, you're going to be on an express bus to VR sickness.

        Put another way... "motion sickness" occurs when there's disagreement between what you see and what you feel. VR sickness is ten levels ABOVE that, and primarily occurs because your ENTIRE WORLD is lagged and sloshing. I myself had to get a chair with cupped headrest. When doing VR development, I literally have to close my eyes, put on the headset, press my head firmly into position so it's immobile, and THEN open my eyes (while being careful to not physically move my head around). I now do 90%+ of my development just rendering to a monitor, because spending more than a few seconds at a time looking through the headset is agonizing.

        The truly awful thing about VR sickness is, it doesn't get better. You can't "tough through it". It's a like a sprained ankle... once you trigger it, you be limping and have to be careful for a LONG time afterward to avoid re-succumbing to it within seconds.

        The long and short of it is, VR today is kind of where "3d graphics" were

        • 400HZ? Did you pick that number out of your ass? I've never heard a number anywhere near that. References to an actual published paper or it's bullshit, likely marketing crap.
          • 400hz is approximately the point where high-contrast foveal images become "self-blurring", and it becomes statistically impossible to tell the difference between that framerate and double that framerate when shown in random order. In other words, if I show you 100 high-contrast animations with no motion blur... half at {n}fps, half at {2n}fps, and ask you to press a button indicating which is which... 400fps is the point where almost everyone is wrong at least half the time.

            If, instead, you show two high-co

      • by dfm3 ( 830843 )
        It's not really about refresh rate and lag, and has more to do with the spatial information your brain is processing from your eyes not matching what it receives from your inner ears.

        Those VR setups where where you can turn 360 degrees, and the direction you turn in real life matches the direction you turn in VR, those are fine. Playing VR Skyrim (where you rotate using a control stick in your hand) I was close to vomiting in less than a minute. The engineering challenge is that most headsets are tethered,
        • It's not really about refresh rate and lag, and has more to do with the spatial information your brain is processing from your eyes not matching what it receives from your inner ears.

          ...which occurred because of low refresh rate and lag.

          Or, it did in VR set-ups of decades back. Maybe they've solved that problem now and they have found different problems.

          Those VR setups where where you can turn 360 degrees, and the direction you turn in real life matches the direction you turn in VR, those are fine. Playing VR Skyrim (where you rotate using a control stick in your hand)

          If they're calling that VR, they are pushing the use of the term. I'd call that scrolling.

          • It's not really about refresh rate and lag, and has more to do with the spatial information your brain is processing from your eyes not matching what it receives from your inner ears.

            ...which occurred because of low refresh rate and lag.

            High refresh rate causes your inner ears to sense movement that matches what's on the display?

            • High refresh rate causes your inner ears to sense movement that matches what's on the display?

              No, the other way around. High refresh rates (and low lag) cause your eyes to see an image that matches the movement your inner ear senses.

        • by Zuriel ( 1760072 )

          > where you rotate using a control stick in your hand

          Yeah, there's a reason why native VR stuff has settings for that sort of thing. Though many people have luck acclimatising themselves by playing briefly then taking a break. Eventually your brain gets used to the idea that the VR environment and the real world are different spaces that need to be tracked separately. You need a fair bit of practice with VR before you can go on a VR roller coaster without falling over in real life.

      • I think a decent amount of the issue is the disconnect between your movements in AR versus your body's movement (or lack thereof) IRL. If you are sitting on a cockpit in VR and the VR is just completing your field of vision, that's one thing. If you are walking/running around in a 3-dimensional VR landscape, that's another. I don't know how this gets fixed with improvements in refresh rate or resolution.

        Also, most current devices have the discomfort of having a device hanging in front of your face which

      • by GuB-42 ( 2483988 )

        It is about many things, including refresh rates and lag.

        It is thought that it is cause by a disagreement between the vestibular system and visuals, as in: you see motion but your don't feel it, or vice versa. Lag can cause that, but most forms of locomotion in VR do too. The worst is smooth but accelerating/rotating motion in VR while at the same time, your body and especially your head moves differently. It can really mess you up, even if you can spend hours in a more static game with no issue.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      And simulator sickness has been known for much longer. My take is on what happened here: Mark "the fuck" Zuckerberg, who never had any original ideas but got lucky stealing an idea once, saw his empire was not doing well. Then he decided that the next great thing must be, of course, VR and that would fix his problems. Knowing next to nothing about VR, and thinking that all his money demonstrates that he was so great he did not need to talk to actual experts, he set things in motion. We are now in the "disas

  • by turp182 ( 1020263 ) on Saturday September 24, 2022 @11:07PM (#62911545) Journal

    Given the number of VR users, if this was a widespread issue it would be terribly obvious already.

    Some people are much more susceptible to motion issues. This researcher is in that category. I knew a guy who would get nausea looking at the old Windows corridor screensaver.

    My personal "testing" of this nature was on around 40 family members at a couple of Christmas parties 4 years ago, having everyone walk Ritchie's Plank on a Quest. If you are going to get motion sickness, the falling off the plank will do it.

    Two people couldn't do it (no one got sick). It did stress everyone out, and it is disorienting. That's what's awesome about it if you can handle it. We were ready with spotters for the balance issues.

    • My experience is the same. Of the dozen or so people who have used my headset (admittedly mostly nieces and nephews), only my wife has had a serious problem with it.

      That being said- plank will leave most people pretty fucking disoriented and unnerved the first time they fall, lol
      • We had 20 people in the room doing it at a Christmas party. We weren't casting it, but watching people do it was the highlight of the night.
        * Some people would get on the ground and crawl.
        * Two actually jumped (after being told not to, spotters had to assist).
        * One would not do it at all.
        * One had vertigo, spotters to the rescue (he fell off the plank at the same time, so he was falling in VR while spinning in his head, with people holding him up to keep from falling - he loved it!)...
        * One person did get

    • by blackprint ( 1220318 ) on Sunday September 25, 2022 @12:21AM (#62911655) Homepage

      In my experience it's highly dependent on the program you're engaging with. The plank walk isn't as offensive to most people because your motion is directly linked to your own movement, whereas if you stood still while the video played a character walking forward then it wouldn't end well for a huge portion of people, the disconnect is going to throw your inner ear way off.

      I create content for VR headsets, mostly 360 video productions, and we always create content with motion sickness in mind, usually writing stories around a still camera. Simple things like not moving the camera seems obvious but baffles the minds of greater filmmakers than me (ie. Robert Rodriguez), because they carry a 2D mindset of how to visually wow an audience, but if you understand some basic tenets of VR filmmaking then you can create wonderful experiences that anyone can enjoy -- and I say this as someone who is prone to motion sickness in a VR headset. That said, you can certainly move the camera a little, but it takes deliberate planning and proper staging to make it work without ruining the experience for most people.

      • I do not understand:
        Surely VR means the camera moves with the viewer's head ? Keeping the camera still is not VR ?
  • by eggstasy ( 458692 ) on Saturday September 24, 2022 @11:12PM (#62911555) Journal

    You push on, you evolve, you adapt.

    • by freeze128 ( 544774 ) on Saturday September 24, 2022 @11:31PM (#62911597)
      It could have been worse. You could have contracted Catholicism...
    • by lsllll ( 830002 )
      I used to notice that sometimes during LAN parties (14 hours of mostly playing) we'd play many games and I'd be fine. Then I'd get to one game that'd just make me nauseous and I'd be done for an hour. So I'd agree that it's definitely specific engine/motion that might induce it. Like they always say. You get what you pay for. I've been running a 1080ti@4k for the past 4 years and haven't had any issues, except maybe once or twice.
    • Yeah, I experienced nausea early on when first trying out certain games in VR, so I would stop and then pick it up later. Eventually, it started happening less and less. I honestly think most people who run into this problem can get their brains to adapt with gradual, intermittent exposure. There will be some who can't, and for them we will soon have AR, which will probably be more popular anyway.

      --
      We will soon have the option to harvest our farts, so we can post & comment on stats about them.
  • Garrido had contracted cybersickness, a form of motion sickness that can affect users of VR technology. ... Though motion sickness has afflicted humans for thousands of years, cybersickness is a much newer condition..

    As "cybersickness" refers to a form of motion sickness that affects users of VR technology, and VR technology has not existed for thousands of years, I can't see how one's reaction to the final sentence quoted above can be anything other than "No, duh!"

  • And it would be good riddance, too. It's something almost no one needs or wants and that includes MetaEverything AR is making great strides looks much more promising than Zuck's concoction. P.S.: I must be living under a rock as Ive never heard of "cybersickness" - donno but sounds like something gamers might get.
  • by gkelley ( 9990154 ) on Sunday September 25, 2022 @12:19AM (#62911653)
    I really get sick of the term cyber for everything that involves tech.
    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Yep. Done by cybermorons that think that makes them sound more cyberknowledgeable. At least to people with a clue, it does the opposite.

  • Inject some ferrofluid into the membranous labyrinth of the ear. Then, with a system of electromagnets placed in the ear you can control the positioning information sent back by the nerves to the ear. Or, you know what, maybe bypass it entirely with a neuralink level chip that attaches to the nerve and directly intercepts the nerve impulses and overrides the balancing data signals sent to the brain.

  • I experienced the same when I played Doom back in the day.
  • If they ever solve it, just wait for spin-o-matic, the first computer virus that actually makes the user sick.

  • Oh no!

    Anyways..

  • by Tom ( 822 )

    "The issue is actually something of a catch-22: In order to make VR more accessible and affordable, companies are making devices smaller and running them on less powerful processors," adds the report. "But these changes introduce dizzying graphics -- which inevitably causes more people to experience cybersickness."

    So the solution, to everyone's total surprise, is "don't do it on the cheap" ?

  • Trying to separate the strong from the weak, what could be done to make a VR experience as dizzying as possible, while still remaining reasonably realistic ?

    Things like mixing up the x DOF coordinates and jitter time while in a visually striking but precarious situation ?

    Asking for a friend as I'm totally immune.

  • by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Sunday September 25, 2022 @02:03AM (#62911741)

    It's being sick of idiots using the word "cyber".

    Quite frankly, in our company, "cyber" is used to describe either technology that is ridiculous, overhyped or useless, or people who are.

    • by dargaud ( 518470 )
      While you aren't wrong, the described sickness is the opposite of seasickness. For the latter you feel your body move while the visuals stays fixed (if you are in an enclosed cabin). For the former your body stays fixed while the view goes though all kind of shenanigans. I can imagine some people being sensitive to one type and not the other, but most are probably sensitive to both.
    • It's being sick of idiots using the word "cyber".

      You're in luck. No idiots are using it. Cybersickness was a term coined by scientists and medical researches, people who are quite the opposite end of the spectrum from "idiots".

      The reason for the separate and distinct term is that it is medically very different from motion sickness.

      Now as to if it is applied correctly, from the Oxford dictionary:
      cyber adjective
      1. relating to or characteristic of the culture of computers, information technology, and virtual reality.

      Sounds like a completely accurate applicat

  • This whole metaverse idea sounds like a poor man's version of Oasis from Ready Player One.

  • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Sunday September 25, 2022 @03:52AM (#62911827)

    I can fully grasp the numbers in TFS, but only for people who try something only once. The first time I put on my headset I felt nauseous. The first time I tried a game with smooth motion rather than teleporting I lasted only a few minutes before I gave up.

    Only the first time. It is something I got over within the first week of owning a VR headset.

    Now the only thing that induces any kind of cybersickness in me is stuttering, lagging or low frame rates from poorly optimised games.

    My father visited me for the first time in 4 years last week. He also wanted to try it. Lasted about 5 min playing Half-Life Alyx. A day later he played it for an hour. Before he left he was piloting an X-Wing in Star Wars: Squadrons, an experience that due to the high motion speed and freedom to rotate your view is insanely difficult for anyone who suffers from any sign of motion sickness.

  • I have long suffered with a form of this that I came to know as cydersickness. I find that approaching the tenth pint or so of Scrumpy Jack I begine to enter an altered state known as cyderreality. After around half an hour or so in this virtual world the cydersickness ensues. I have also found it impossible to drive in this state and am typically completely comatose until the next morning. Oddly, there seems to be a bit of a bleed-over into other areas since, whenever I see the prefix "cyber" attached to a
  • I don't know what the researchers have tested with. At least one mention in the article (which I didn't read fully) was for a VR video.

    Videos, and anything else which moves the user in a scene without their interaction, is the worst kind of disconnect for the brain and therefore most likely to create a feeling of discomfort.

    Without knowing what the researchers ran, it's impossible to test the validity of the results for real "metaverse" usage scenarios, by which I mean scenes where the user is interacting w

  • I've had a glaucoma in my right eye since birth, which means that while I can see colour and movement with it, I can't focus or read text with the affected eye. This renders all 3D tech (autostereograms ["magic eye"], 3D glasses/TV and, yes, VR) completely useless to me. Guess I'll never join the metaverse then...not exactly a big loss in my book.

  • by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Sunday September 25, 2022 @06:19AM (#62911927) Journal

    ...but I'm still trying to figure out why I'd want to put on a world-blocking sweaty fitted headset so I can do things on the internet that are already quickly and easily accomplished with simpler, cheaper hardware at vastly lower bandwidth needs?

    Already the internet has managed to fuck up and complicate communication of the simplest idea, where what used to be conveyed by (for example) a single paragraph of text and an image or two now can only be found in 8 minute video descriptions from someone with an incomprehensible accent.

    Why would we voluntarily make that now even worse?

    • Already the internet has managed to fuck up and complicate communication of the simplest idea, where what used to be conveyed by (for example) a single paragraph of text and an image or two now can only be found in 8 minute video descriptions from someone with an incomprehensible accent.

      No, the Internet way is to host a video that is nothing but successive screens displaying the same paragraph of text, backed up by a musical bed. We need more ways of using up all that bandwidth that people have now.

  • cant come fast enough, that abuser of people's data needs to die ASAP
  • by Required Snark ( 1702878 ) on Sunday September 25, 2022 @07:00AM (#62911971)
    A little late to the game: Simulator Sickness [wikipedia.org]

    Though human-piloted aviation has existed since the early 20th century, simulator sickness did not arise as an issue for pilots until much later when the first fixed-base simulators were created. Bell Aircraft Corporation created a helicopter simulator for the Navy during the 1950s, and it was found "that a large number of observers (mostly helicopter pilots) experienced some degree of vertigo during these demonstrations". Navy psychologists performed further study on the pilots who participated in these simulator exercises, and found that 28 out of 36 respondents to their evaluations experienced sickness.

    This has been an issue for a long time for aircraft flight simulators, and there are regulations concerning a waiting period between simulator usage and IRL flying.

    It's kind of pathetic that the VR fan boys are only now finding out about this problem.

    • by Osgeld ( 1900440 )

      They are in denial that VR is a cyclical fad, and that this time it will be different (don't get me wrong its fun... for a little bit)

  • Maybe your product is not ready. There are some lower frame rates that used to make me nauseous, I can only image how bad it must be when there is no stabilizing frame of reference around the edge of your view.
  • The metaphor is getting a little bit thick, methinks.
  • Walter Murch (legendary film editor) identified one of the main problems over a decade ago: the conflict between focus and convergence. With any 3D display system (such as a VR headset) your eyes have to focus on the plane of the display, while your eyes have to converge at whatever virtual distance an object in the display is set to. You can do it, but it tends to be tiring and in the end not very enjoyable. This is inherent in any device that uses 2D (a screen) to simulate 3D, and the only workaround I ca
  • Unfortunately i could not find a study when I googled "pointing a fan at the user", but there are many articles and anecdotes online that say pointing a fan at the VR user helps motion sickness incredibly. I have tried it myself and found it to be true. I also found a suggestion that bringing in fresh air from the outside also helps. Both are pretty easy to do and have virtually no drawbacks, so I think everyone that uses VR should have a (box) fan pointed at them (unless they don't get motion sick and don
  • A new VR shop opened up at the mall nearby, so I hopped on to try it.
    I signed up for a hang glider ride and strapped in. Little did I know that by looking left when it started, it locked that as the front facing viewport. As the ride started, I found myself looking out the right side of the hang glider going up and down.
    Instant sick.
  • I'm one of the rare individuals who gets dizzy from smooth scrolling. If I watch other people's screens (mobile or desktop) while they're scrolling, it becomes unbearable within seconds. There's no way I'll be able to use VR.

    Bring back jump scrolling! It's so much faster & easier on the eyes.

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