I play games where using a VR headset is a competitive advantage. Racing sims and flight simulation, combat and aviation. I get quite bad motion sickness from VR (DK1, DK2, both are bad), so I know that within a few years I have no chance of making it in any online multiplayer games.
Funnily enough, the first sensations of motion sickness in a flight simulator have a resemblance to what I feel when I go flying in a small aircraft. However, in real life, I get used to it, VR just keeps on getting worse and worse.
What makes it worse is that once you stop playing, the VR-induced motion sickness doesn't stop. It goes on for hours, bad balance and mild nausea. It gets worse if the lenses in the Rift are a bit off (they must be adjusted for every person), that leaves me incapable of reading or writing for the rest of the day.
So yes - it's really that big of a problem. If a 30 minute gaming session leaves a significant portion of the customers incapacitated for hours afterwards, there's no way you can call it a product and put it on the shelves.
BTW, I have high hopes for a competing product in development, the CastAR head mounted projector. It doesn't block your view of the real world so it might not cause as bad motion sickness. That also makes it viable for more serious flight simulation where the Oculus is useless because you can't see the flight controls (ie. your hands on the gaming controllers).
Yes, I have. They work pretty darn well. I even used the FaceTrackNoIR application which uses a bog standard webcam with face tracking, which worked fine when I didn't have a beard, but beard or glasses screws it up. You need a high frame rate camera to make it work, the Sony PlayStation Eye (60 fps, you can disable vsync, can be found cheap second hand) is a popular choice.
On my TODO list is building a DIY head tracker to be used with FreeTrack or other open source tracking solutions (forgot the names). I have an extra PS Eye waiting for that but I'd need to obtain some CCTV lenses (without IR filters) for that.
I don't think you have any chance of survival without a TrackIR or an Oculus in online combat flight simulators against guys who have one. Situational awareness is everything in dogfighting.
Okay, just wanted to be sure because you're absolutely right that they're practically a requirement.
Definitely build yourself an IR tracker. Should cost you less than $10 in components and it works far better than face tracking. FWIW, the FaceTrackNoIR+point tracking plugin > FreeTrack (the latter hasn't been updated in years and the former plugin is based on FreeTrack's codebase).
To not experience any VR sickness with the state of today's technology, you must either be using exclusively the tame applications of the technology -- such as garden walk, home tour, etc, and not trying out any FPS games like TF2 or something -- or you have something biologically off about your linkage between your natural balance sensors and how your brain tries to correlate them with what your eyes see.
Either way, that's good for you, embrace the future more easily than the rest of us :)
Because motion sickness is a well understood phenomena; the cause of which the previous commenter was discussing.
The usage of the term "off" was probably a poor choice of words, but I didn't detect any negativity in his tone despite "off". eg:
"Either way, that's good for you, embrace the future more easily than the rest of us :)"
(the last part of this post is also targeted towards jsprogrammer who suggested there was an air of superiority with the former post. Sometimes, it's entirely possibly you can read too much into another persons comment)
>Because motion sickness is a well understood phenomena
Sure, one that ballpark-range around half of people get. Neither side is more standard. Is this different, does it affect 98% of people or something? I'm not suggesting negativity, I'm suggesting that perhaps Kiro is not at all an anomaly.
If one doesn't conform to the perceived norm, some believe the nonconformers must be lacking in some respect and take it as a sign of inferiority to their percieved dominate and self-described "natural" culture.
Only a small number of people have gotten to try out HTC Vive so far, but I am yet to see someone complain about VR sickness when using it. Gabe Newell also said that "zero percent of people get motion sick" while using that system.
I got a DK2 when it first came out. When I tried a rollercoaster, I felt a little off but ok. Over the next few weeks I noticed slight nausea with the Zelda demo, Tuscany, and the Tiki boat. But that was nothing until I tried Quake 2. After fifteen minutes of playing, I couldn't stand up, and was extremely ill for several hours. Since then anything where I am not seated triggers the same feeling again.
I think the brain/balance issue is very common if not the norm; much more than is accepted in the community. It will be a disaster if it's not solved before a commercial release.
I once convinced my girlfriend to wear the DK1, in one of the demos that came with it (Tuscan villa), without her moving, just looking around a static location.
In less than 10 seconds she ripped it off in a sick panic, and spent the rest of the afternoon looking green on the couch.
Apparently that indicates you are more than likely male. VR sickness affects women at a higher rate than men. It's interesting what we learn about how perception works from trying to trick it. http://qz.com/192874/is-the-oculus-rift-designed-to-be-sexis...
Have you tried 3D glasses in big movie theaters like IMAX? Or watch a movie like Avatar or Jurassic Park (re-released 3D edition of the 1993 movie) on a good 3D TV. You should see the 3D effect there.
But some people only see 2D, e.g. with only one eye or eye-problems.
3D IMAX does the trick, i can really see the 3D effect and i find it very impressive. 3D movies like Avatar do not work so well though, it gives me the impression of having several 2D layers instead of actual 3D effect (it lacks depth, again). But Oculus is even worse than that, I don't see any 3D effect at all.
I have never experience it myself either, but I saw a lot of students that experienced it in the VR lab. Especially people who had not 100% eye-sight on both eyes had a lot of troubles.
So it is a serious problem, and VR won't fly in consumer space until this is fixed. Important is also the head-tracking, and a low input latency as well as a high display refresh rate. So VR might be a fade like 3D TV, and augmented reality displays like the former Google Glass could be the winner. But who knows.
As John Carmack said in a talk, they found that there is a variety of sensitivities out there. Some people deal with it just fine, some are sensitive and some are super-sensitive.
I have a DK2 lying around unused. Besides some trouble getting it to work at all, I haven't been using it much because after the previous session I felt sick for an hour.
But probably it's only because it's working as intended. Last session I tried a bunch of roller coaster sims, so maybe feeling sick just means it is working properly :)
Sickness comes from two places: how the "game" is made, and how much are you resilient against sickness.
For instance, when I tried DK1 for the first time, I was able to test many demos for like 45 minutes, and I didn't felt a lot of sickness. Meanwhile, a friend of mine held only 5 minutes.
This friend of mine (who owns a studio and he wanted to develop for virtual reality), started to train himself and his colleagues, using the Oculus every day till they felt sick. After 1 month, they were able to play Unreal Tournament with the DK1 for 15-20 minutes, and use normal demos for an hour or two.
I highly advise you to try this out too: you can just improve!
I've only ever used an Oculus DK2. If it isn't perfectly calibrated for my eyes before I use it it's basically unusable. I'll most likely vomit within 30s to a minute.
Once it's calibrated I can't play for more than 15-20 minutes without getting a slight headache.
I'm pretty resistant, I got slight nausea after playing Unreal Tournament on the DK1 for 20 minutes or so but I've yet to experience it with the DK2 even with low frame rates.
