Anatomy Of A Nauseating VR Experience

This weekend at Oculus's first Connect event in Los Angeles, I experienced amazing VR experiences on the developer kit 2 (DK2), Samsung Gear VR, and the brand new Crescent Bay feature prototype. I've participated in Oculus demos that have had varying success in creating a sense of presence, but none has caused the motion sickness or nausea I've heard others discuss... until now.

I had two different experiences today that left me feeling ill. Again, I want to point out that this was a rare experience, and the two demos caused the problem for two different reasons. However, the reaction was the same, and I thought it worth sharing.

For those that haven't used a virtual reality headset yet, there are some basic things you should be aware of. Presence is the feeling of being inside the virtual experience. There aren't best practices for moving in the virtual space yet, but the best demos I've tried map camera control to the positionally tracked head-mounted display.

This allows you to move your head closer to and farther from the scene, but also means that you are directly in control of looking around (including speed) with your natural head motion. Most of the first-person demos I've played are casually paced, and do not attempt to directly mimic first-person view in a PC or console game.

Simulation sickness is often caused when your brain isn't fully tricked into believing the motion you're seeing in front of you. Whether it's not smooth enough or simply doesn't feel natural, the feeling isn't much different than motion sickness.

The first demo to cause it today is a gorgeous game being developed in Unreal Engine 4. It's a first-person puzzle game with clever moments and poetry scraps that help progress the story. I was warned that frame rate was a problem, and the developer included a "comfort mode" that put quarter turns on the Xbox 360 bumpers.

For the first couple of minutes, I was fine. However, the camera is on the thumbstick. While I was able to look around at my environment, camera mapping was still relegated to the control pad. This created a disconnect between my head motion and the camera positioning. Strike one.

The frame rate then started to dip, I believe. It slid under 75 frames per second, which while not perceptible to my eye, was entirely obvious to my brain. The disconnect between visuals and brain processing widened. Strike two.

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Anatomy Of A Nauseating VR Experience